Read Online Tiger Bound by Doranna Durgin - Free Book Online Page B

she put her hands over his at her stomach. “What...?” she asked, lifting her head.
    “You saw something,” Maks told her, quite simply.
    “Katie!” the woman let her words explode on a breath. “I was so worried—what on earth—?”
    It was Maks who brushed the loose hair from her face, one hand scraping it aside even as she realized he was there—right there—and glanced aside at him in surprise, still too dazed to protest. “A nightmare,” he told the woman. “A waking memory. Gone now.”
    Katie’s laugh had an edge of tears in it. “A nightmare,” she said. “Oh, God, Maks, you were—”
    Splashing blood, startled green eyes...
    Maks’s own eyes.
    But Katie was pulling herself together fast, straightening within his grasp, not leaning on him quite as hard. She found her friend. “Marie, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just so relaxed working on Rowdy...it snuck up on me. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
    “Never mind that,” the woman said, dismissing her fears with a wave. “As long as you’re all right. You will be all right? Are you getting help with... this? ”
    Katie’s response rang with an honesty that surprised Maks, considering the words. “I’m getting help,” she agreed. “I just started, in fact.”
    He understood then. She meant him. Whether or not she truly believed in him or trusted him. It shouldn’t have filled him with so much warmth. Or so much relief.
    Marie risked a glance at Maks, but persisted. “This...it doesn’t have anything to do with what Roger Akins is blathering about, does it? He doesn’t really have something on you, does he?”
    Roger Akins. Maks’s hands tightened against the soft skin of her abdomen; her hands settled on top, light and cool and not nearly large enough to cover his. She shook her head at Marie. “Akins is just looking for a way to dodge the consequences of his own brutality.” A shudder ran through her, the energies still fluctuating around them; she tensed with the effort of hiding it, silently nurturing her intent to gather evidence so she could call the local authorities. “It’s got me on edge, that’s all. Anyway, I guess we’re done for the day—but this one’s on the house, Marie.”
    Marie dismissed that with a wave, too. “It most certainly is not. Rowdy is clueless, as usual, and I’m perfectly fine. But don’t you worry about it just now. I’ll leave a check on the counter on my way out. You,” she said, and she looked directly at Maks, as if he’d never exploded out of sleep at her, never showed her his snarl, never pushed a basic shield right through her. “You take good care of her, then.”
    “That,” said Maks, “is why I’m here.”
    * * *
    Katie dimly realized that Marie had left, taking Rowdy with her; that Maks still held her, letting her recover as slowly as she needed. She had been so taken by surprise, the vision so much stronger than expected, so much more real and immediate...
    The healing she’d performed on Rowdy’s rock-inflamed digestive system and surgical repair—deeper than usual, more personal than usual on this day of fear and danger and surprises—had somehow left her open.
    Vulnerable.
    And now she stood with Maks’s arms around her, surrounded by the sharp layered scents of man and tiger.
    It should have felt threatening. Maybe, in a moment, it would. For this moment, it came as a comfort. His arms, his breadth, and his strength.
    Glinting metal and splashing blood, a blur of startled green eyes, a muted roar and a cry of pain—
    “Oh, be careful!” She cried it aloud, turning in his arms. “Maks, be careful!”
    “Ssh,” he said, the word not quite right. “Let go of it, now.”
    He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. She didn’t see like this; she never had. As much as her recent intuitions had driven her to call on brevis, this was so much more than her usual impressions of activity, her flutters of borrowed emotions and expectations. It was all of