Mounted By Her Weretiger Mate (Steamy Weretiger Paranormal Romance) Read Free

skipped a beat and I knew something wasn’t right.
     
    “O-okay,” I whispered, and as I stared at the tiger before me I could feel a blistering heat rolling off of Jake, my arms tingling with gooseflesh as I heard him growl so much like the predator hidden in the shadows.
     
    “Now!” he roared, a dark orange blur moving past me at impossible speeds. I saw him only for a moment before he dove into the darkness, a pained yowl emanating from the shadowy foliage.
     
    In that moment, I didn’t see the Jake I had known back at the camp. Instead, what had leapt farther than any human into the shadows to save me had been massive, powerful, and almost monstrous.
     
    I ran as fast as I could, hoping that in my panicked state I could find my way back to the camp without running into either of the monsters terrorizing the jungle. To my relief my sense of direction didn’t fail me, and I collapsed onto my sleeping bag moments later in a crying heap. I could only hope that Jake made it back as safely as I did.
     
    The rest of the camp awoke to the sounds of the beasts fighting deep into the jungle, but as the moments passed, the sounds faded. I did my best to hide my fear from the others, telling them that I’d awoken from a nightmare when the sounds of fighting began.
     
    Some of our porters told us that two tigers were fighting out in the jungle over territory, and I only wished they knew how right they were—and how wrong at the same time.
     
    It was hours before Jake returned, well after the rest of the camp had gone back to bed with a few people on watch for the fighting cats out in the jungle. Somehow Jake slipped past them all, and before I knew it, he’d snuck up behind me.
     
    “Lana,” he whispered only inches from my ear, “I need to talk to you. Now.”
     
    I jumped, and somehow managed not to scream my head off as I whipped around to face him. I wanted to smack him, to call for the people on watch, or kiss him for saving my life. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to do more.
     
    “What are you?” I asked, wrapping myself in my arms in a feeble defensive measure. I knew nothing would stop a monster like him if he wanted to kill me.
     
    “Not here. Follow me,” he whispered, offering his hand.
     
    I wasn’t sure why, but I slid my considerably smaller hand into his, letting Jake lead me farther from camp where no one could hear us talk.
     
    “I’m not a normal person,” he began, drawing a scathing glance from me before he continued. “You probably figured that out, but I need to explain.”
     
    “You’re some kind of monster,” I said, putting my back against a tree to keep my legs from shaking.
     
    “I’m not a monster,” he growled, making me shrink back in fear.
     
    “Then what are you?”
     
    “Cursed,” he said, rubbing his hand over his face in frustration. “I was cursed for what I did a long time ago.”
     
    “What did you do?” I asked, my brow furrowing. Now I was curious, despite how ridiculous this all sounded. Who believed in curses?
     
    The same people who just watched their guide turn into a giant tiger monster, I thought in reply.
     
    “I used to be a hunter,” he said, looking up into the waning moonlight that drifted through the canopy. “A poacher.”
     
    “You were a criminal.”
     
    “That’s another word for it, yeah,” he said, sighing before turning toward me, a look of sadness I’d never expected to see covering his face. “I was hunting a tiger out in the jungle—alive. I had a client who wanted a pet, and I wanted a payout. So I tracked one, a huge tiger the likes of which I’d never seen out by a village, but when I finally had it cornered, all I found standing there was a man from the village I’d seen a hundred times.
     
    “He told me that for what I was about to do, I’d be cursed for the rest of my life to become the animal I had been hunting. And ever since then, I’ve lived with a monster inside of me.”
     
    “You kind