Ravaged by Her Weretiger Prince (Steamy Paranormal Weretiger Shifter Romance)

  RAVAGED BY HER WERETIGER PRINCE

  (Steamy Weretiger Paranormal Romance)

  Meghan Archer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All participants in these fictitious events are consenting, non-related adults over the age of eighteen.

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  Copyright 2015 True Desire Publishing

  All rights reserved.

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  RAVAGED BY HER WERETIGER PRINCE

  (Steamy Weretiger Paranormal Romance)

  The sound of my ringtone cut through the last moments of my peaceful dreams. It had been a fantastic dream, one where I a gorgeous man lavished me with attention, all the while having my every whim catered to by an army of servants.

  I always loved dreams like that, which made the sight of my boss’s telephone number all the more irritating. Harvey was insufferable enough when I was clocked in, but calling me on my day off? That crossed a line.

  I contemplated letting it ring through to my voicemail, to act like I’d never gotten the call or slept through the obnoxious sounds I’d assigned to his number to match his winning personality. But something in my gut told me that missing this call might be a bad idea.

  “Hello?” I mumbled, still working the sleep out from my eyes.

  “Amber? Hey, sport!” Harvey’s condescending voice made my guts clench. God, how I hated that man, especially when he used pet names you’d use for a kid and definitely not for a grown-ass woman like me. “Gonna need a huge favor from you, kiddo.”

  “It’s one in the morning, Harvey. Couldn’t this have waited until I came into work?”

  “No can do, slugger. I’m gonna need you to handle this ASAP. We’ve got a last-minute delivery coming in—a big critter, from what the people upstairs are saying.”

  “We’re getting another animal?” I asked, my voice rising and any trace of sleep evaporating instantly. “Without any notice? Shit, Harvey. Do we even know what species it is?”

  “Nope,” he said, and I could practically hear the smile on his face. “Big boss upstairs just said it’s a big animal. Very dangerous, and we need a keeper there to make the hand-off. I figured you’d be perfect, since you’re on call this month.”

  “Since when?!” I hissed, my heart beginning to race. I closed my eyes, trying to bring my pulse back down to normal. Fuck this heart problem, I thought as I took a few deep calming breaths, focusing on the way the air rushed into my lungs, then back out again.

  “Since I made that call. And, as the most recent hire, your continued employment sort of depends on doing your damn job.” All the sugary overtones had melted out of Harvey’s voice, leaving only the sleazebag I’d come to despise. “Now get your ass out of bed and make sure this goes off without a hitch, got it?”

  I didn’t even dignify him with a response, instead sliding my thumb over the “End Call” button on my touchscreen. I flopped back into bed and screamed at the ceiling in frustration. I’d only worked at the zoo for a few months, and already I hated it with a fiery passion.

  The fact that we were getting a new animal with absolutely no warning was strange enough, but to not even know what kind of animal it was? There were so many questions we didn’t have any answers to. What kind of habitat did it need? Was it an animal we already had? If it’s so dangerous, why not send it to a much larger zoo with the facilities to take care of it? Most of our animals weren’t even in the greatest of shape, thanks to our lack of funding and Harvey’s refusal to find space in the budget to hire a full-time veterinarian to work on-site. Another reason to hate the scumbag.

  It took me only a few minutes to get myself out of bed and get dressed in my work uniform, a set of unflattering khaki shorts and a green polo shirt that was a size too big. Apparently, fashion sense was too much trouble to hope for, either.

  I grabbed my ID badge and a newly-brewed cup of coffee from my kitchen and sped off to the overcrowded shelter I was being paid to call a zoo.

  “What a waste of a degree,” I grumbled to myself as I pulled into the employee parking lot. “I could have been an accountant and actually making some damn money like my mother said.”

  I got out and slammed the door, beginning the long trek up toward the delivery loading area where I could only assume I’d be meeting the “big critter” Harvey had been talking about. Knowing my luck, it’d already be running amok and have killed the delivery crew.

  At least that would get me out of going to work, I thought, a sardonic smile creeping onto my face as I pushed open the door to the main building and the loading area for our deliveries.

  Sadly, when I got to the loading dock, everyone was still very much alive and the crate was intact. I silently cursed as I approached the men who were transferring the rather large container from the truck and onto the loading dock proper. A frown creased my face as I looked at them. They were all wearing a strange, military-style uniform with a distinct look of not at all what you’d expect from a bunch of truck drivers.

  “So, do I get to know what’s inside?” I asked, but immediately wished I hadn’t. No sooner had the words left my mouth when the crate gave a huge lurch accompanied by a breathtakingly loud roar. Immediately I could tell it was one of the big cats I was dealing with, but the only question now was which one?

  “Tiger,” came the curt reply from the man who I could only assume was the supervisor of this fiasco. “A very dangerous tiger.”

  “And why the hell are we getting it?” I asked, my voice rising in anger. This was a new low, even for this place. Bringing an aggressive tiger into a woefully underprepared facility was just asking for trouble.

  “You have an opening, do you not? A—how do you say—empty enclosure?” he asked, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. His accent was so thick, but what kind it was, I had no idea. I didn’t like the look of this one bit.

  “We have one open, yeah, but we still have—” I began, but before I could explain, he held up his hand.

  “This is good,” he interrupted, the smile on his face growing wider. I wanted to smack it right off of him. “You will take the tiger and we will be going on our way, yes? That is what your employers agreed to—free tiger for no questions. A fair deal, I think.”

  I stared into the man’s dark eyes, my hands clenching into tight fists. I had known something strange was going on, but this sounded altogether illegal. But what could I do? I had no proof that the tiger was obtained illegally. Even if no money had actually been exchanged, there was no guarantee that it had been moved into the country without the proper paperwork, none of which I was versed in.

  I let out a helpless sigh, rubbing my temples as I felt the makings of a stress headache boiling up into my skull. I watched as the men moved th
e ventilated crate deeper into the building to the quarantine area where the tiger would be housed before being set into its enclosure. The strangers slid the crate up to the small gate used for releasing the animals into the moderately-sized temporary enclosure, lifting the thick, metal barrier up before opening the crate’s own metal door.

  I heard a low growl emanate from inside of the crate before the sound of slow, methodical footfalls signaled that the cat was moving quickly out of its confines and into the more spacious prison it would be held in.

  I moved to the observation window, holding my breath as I caught my first glimpse of the magnificent creature. The hulking cat padded silently into the plain, white room, making everything inside of it seem so small by comparison. I had never seen a tiger that big, its muscles rippling like a flowing river beneath the luscious orange and black-striped fur. My mouth fell open as its luminous green eyes turned with its head, locking straight onto my own.

  I saw so much sadness in those eyes, a deep well of what I almost thought might have been regret swimming before me. I told myself that couldn’t be what I was seeing. What animal feels regret? But I knew the sadness had to be real. It was around that time that I noticed the collar.

  “What is that?” I asked, turning to the supervisor. “Was this tiger kept as a pet?”

  “No, no,” the man said, his smile widening slightly. “That beast was no man’s pet, but I have instructed your employers that this collar should never be removed. It is very dangerous, and I promise that so long as that collar stays around its neck, then you will have no troubles.”

  “We can’t keep a collar on its neck,” I protested, turning away from the tiger to stare at the foreign man. “It has to come off.”

  “That would not be a good—how do you say—career move, on your part,” the man said, that greasy smile stretching enough to show one golden tooth poking out from beneath his lip. My heart began to pound again.

  Calm down, Amber. Calm down…

  “Now, we must be leaving you,” the man said, clapping his hands once and saying something in a language I couldn’t recognize for all his rapid-fire commands. All of the men who had accompanied him vanished in only a minute, moving double-time into the van they had arrived in and driving off into the night.

  I watched their van disappear into the looming darkness, nothing left of their visit save for their cargo and a set of deep tire tracks made in the gravel path leading back to the zoo’s main access road.

  “This is such bullshit,” I muttered, turning back to my new charge and shutting the heavy metal door to the loading dock with a resounding clang.

  I stood at the observation window, staring into the eyes of the enormous cat that had waltzed unwillingly into my life. Something told me that Harvey would make this tiger my personal responsibility, and something about that seemed right. I had been here for him—and he was definitely a boy—when he first arrived. I was the first member of the staff he’d seen. It only made sense that I took care of him, I supposed.

  I made my way to the metal gate that he had been loaded from, his eyes following me the entire way as he paced restlessly in a constant circle. Every time I stared into those eyes, something plucked at the chords of my heart, and I knew that this poor creature had been through things I couldn’t even imagine.

  I set the back of my hand against the slats in the metal gate, prompting the tiger to slowly and cautiously make its way toward me, the muscles of his body moving in such harmony that it almost left me mesmerized.

  “I’m going to take care of you,” I whispered to him. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

  If you had asked me at that moment, I would have sworn that that tiger had understood me, had listened to every word that I had said and taken them to heart. If only I’d known how true that was.

  After I had made my promise, something incredible happened: the tiger made a low huffing noise deep in his throat before roughly rubbing its head against the spot in the gate where my hand was resting. I couldn’t help but smile, letting my fingers slip through the gaps in the metal to scratch at its thick fur.

  A few days passed and I was—as expected—kept on call to deal with anything to do with the tiger. Not that I was complaining.

  Over those couple of days, I’d begun to develop a kind of bond with him, a deep connection that I never thought I’d feel while working in a dump like that. When the other keepers had left for the night, I would sit next to the gate with him and talk, those eyes staring deeply into mine whenever I spoke, listening, and dare I say it—understanding—every word I said. That tiger had become the friend I had never been able to find while working at that horrible zoo.

  “You don’t seem too dangerous to me, I said with a smile one night, my fingers diligently scratching behind his ear as he rubbed his head against my hand. The truth was I’d never met a more affectionate animal my entire time working as a zookeeper, and every time I saw him, I couldn’t help but feel happy—content in knowing that at least I could make someone feel good.

  My eyes fell to the collar that I had been instructed by the strange man and Harvey to leave alone on the threat of losing my job. But the longer I had watched the tiger, the more I saw how much the heavy metal thing pained him to wear it. He would scratch and pull at it when he thought the keepers weren’t looking, but no matter how often I tried, I couldn’t convince Harvey to let me remove it.

  “Fuck Harvey,” I muttered, standing up suddenly and catching the mad look I’d gotten in my eyes as they were reflected in the thick Plexiglas. “This is horseshit, and I’m not going to let you suffer just for the sake of my own shitty job.”

  Pulling up the thin metal gate, I ducked into the enclosure, my eyes constantly locked onto the tiger as he backed away slowly, almost if he knew how crazy this all was. I knelt down, holding my hand out to him as an offer of affection, which he readily accepted as he padded forward once again, nearly knocking me over as he rubbed his head against my body.

  “I’m going to get that thing off of you, okay?” I said, sliding my hands underneath the heavy collar and looking for the clasp to undo the binding. It wasn’t overly difficult to find, but the markings on the collar were strange; a menagerie of symbols lining every inch of the metal, culminating in a picture of a tiger’s head, its mouth opened in a terrifying roar.

  As I slid my finger along one of the ornamental tiger’s teeth, I let out a yelp of pain, drawing my hand back as a drop of blood ran down the side of the collar.

  The collar’s multitude of symbols flared suddenly, then faded, leaving only the burnished metal of the collar behind before it unceremoniously fell from around the tiger’s neck and hit the floor with a clatter.

  The tiger backed away from the collar as though it might strike him, a roar escaping from his fanged mouth as he edged himself into a corner. His body thrashed and he hunched over, a pained yowl resounding from his throat. Before my eyes, his body shrank and contracted, his skin rippling like flowing water.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Slowly, the fur that had once covered the tiger’s body vanished, its paws shrinking and the pads of its feet elongating into thin, dexterous fingers.

  I stared, mouth agape as what had once been an enormous tiger instead became a man, hunched over and naked before me. I could feel my heart fluttering, my mind trying to wrap itself around what it had just seen, unable to choose between screaming in panic or comforting the man who had been an animal moments before.

  Slowly, I made my way over to the man, kneeling down and laying my hand on his now-hairless shoulder. He felt so warm, and I could feel his pulse pounding throughout every inch of his body. At the my touch, he seemed to relax, the tension in his muscles leaving him as he lifted his head to look at me with those familiar green eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “Please.”

  “Who are you?” I asked after a moment of stunned silence. His skin was tanned, kissed by the sun in all the best ways,
and beneath that, I could feel the rippling muscles of a man who was no stranger to using his raw, instinctual power. I couldn’t help but find myself instantly attracted to him—who wouldn’t be, with those gorgeous, high cheekbones?

  “My name is Prince Jacob,” he said, and I began to realize that his accent sounded similar to the men who had brought him here.

  “No fucking way,” I muttered, looking him up and down once again. I couldn’t deny that if there was ever a prince in my life, I’d hoped he had a body like that.

  “I assure you, I am telling the truth,” he said, a blush crossing his cheeks as he noticed the way my eyes had wandered over his very naked body. “I was transformed into that animal by a rival to nullify my claim to the throne. A man who would tear down my family’s monarchy and make himself a dictator of my people.”

  “He made you a tiger?” I asked, still unable to understand how the hell any of this was possible. “How?”

  “An old brand of magic from a dark time before my family ruled our country. He cursed me with that collar to keep me from taking my place as ruler, and used the resulting chaos to take control himself. He is an evil man.”