Tigers Like It Hot by Tianna Xander Read Free Book Online

to be shifters.”
    “What would you do if I was a real shifter and I changed into an animal right here and right now?” Mac asked, suddenly serious.
    “Oh, I don’t know. What kind of shifter would you be?” She smiled. She obviously thought this was turning into some kind of role play and was slowly working her way into a part.
    He’d heard that the people who liked to dress in costumes liked to do something called LARPing —Live Action Role Playing . Perhaps this was a start to one of those LARPing sessions. Gareth had no idea. “We’re good shifters. We have a strict code of conduct.”
    “That’s good.” She smiled. “I love a man with discipline.”
    “We have that in spades,” Mac added dryly.
    “What else?” She sat up straight, her hands in her lap, her eyes wide.
    “We can’t force a female to do anything she doesn’t want to do. In other words, if you want to leave, we cannot force you to stay. We can detain you for a moment,” Gareth added when she lifted a brow, no doubt thinking about how he’d stopped her from leaving town not long before. “However, if you truly wanted to go, we would have let you leave, had you forced the issue.”
    “We live in a secret place called the Caspian Cascade. We can’t tell you were it is, more than show you, but we can’t show you unless you agree to live with us there.”
    “Live with you there?” She frowned. “Why would you want me?”
    “Because you’re our mate.” Mac blurted the words out. He obviously wanted this over with as soon as possible.
    Jessi blinked at them for a moment, and then stared at them, her eyes wide. “Mate?”
    “Yes. As in, you are the one woman with whom we can mate and procreate. We would like to take you home with us to be ours.”
    “Mate?” She blinked again, her expression owlish. “Both of you?” Her cheeks reddened as the implication no doubt dawned on her. “So you’re saying that if I go back to this cascade place with you that I would be your woman? That we would…” She swallowed. “We would live together and you would both expect to have sex with me?” Her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed as she sat awaiting their answer.
    Gareth hesitated. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but he could see that she was more angry now than intrigued. Mac, on the other hand didn’t see it and jumped in with both feet.
    “That’s it exactly. I’m glad you understand,” Mac said with a huge grin.
    “That’s not the entirety of it, though,” Gareth felt compelled to add.
    “I’ll bet.” She pressed her lips together. “I suppose that it just means that we live together, you two get sex whenever you want it and I’m just the happy little woman?”
    Finally, Mac saw that something was wrong. “I don’t understand. This should make you happy. How many human women have two shape shifting mates to call their own?”
    He wasn’t sure how he knew, but Gareth knew that was the wrong answer. Not to mention the fact that he knew that most women wanted commitment and, so far, neither he or Mac had alluded to the fact that it would be a permanent relationship.
    “I see what you two are doing.” She stood up, her expression twisted into a frown. “Who put you up to this? Billy, Bobby, the Anderson twins? Who?” She started to pace as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Will they never let me live it down?” She turned to them her hands on her hips.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gareth replied in an attempt to calm her down.
    “Bull chips you don’t know what I’m talking about. I was nineteen, for crying out loud. I thought sex meant love. I didn’t know the difference. I wanted someone to love me so badly that my mind wasn’t in the right place. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a small town, one of only two fostered children there. We had no real mother or father. We had no one to love us for anything other than the food stamp and welfare money they got.” She