Page 10 of Protective Tiger's Curvy Girl Crush

She looks almost ashamed. “I don’t… I don’t not… Hell, I’m stumbling all over this. No. I guess I don’t. I mean, it was such a big deal but where are all the things that were going to happen? Where are the super shifter soldiers? Where are the police forces where shifters use their abilities to solve crime?”

I smile. It’s funny because she has no idea she’s talking to a shifter. She sighs and says, “I mean, I can’t say for certain they don’t exist but when all that happened what, twenty-five years ago? When all that happened, there were people talking about what would happen. Where are the super soldiers, super firefighters, super mountain rescue squads, super SWAT teams and all that?”

She sees my expression and misinterprets it. I’m smiling because she’s fucking beautiful. She thinks I’m smiling in a sad, I knew you wouldn’t believe me way. “I’m sorry,” she says softly.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I say. I’m not being dishonest. The truth is, there’s not an appreciable difference now in the number of humans who believe shifters exist compared to twenty-five years ago before we announced ourselves to the world. We are a very tiny fraction of the world population.

Every shifter on Earth could fit in a relatively small city. Every single shifter of any type, I mean. The estimates are between four-hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred thousand. That’s total. In a word filled with seven billion people, that means one person out of every fifteen thousand or so. We wouldn’t even make up an eighth of the population of Los Angeles or a tenth of the population of New York.

We’re not even half of the population of Austin.

So, it’s not surprising to me at all. And it’s understandable that she doesn’t believe in us. Almost nobody does. Nobody at all. “Well, do me a favor,” I say, “and accept that he believes he’s a wolf shifter and he’s with an organization that believes in them.”

“So, they still kidnap women.” I nod and she asks, “Well, why haven’t the authorities dealt with them?”

He says, “You didn’t believe me.” She looks ashamed again, “but the real reason is that if they deal with them, they’ll have to admit that some shifters aren’t good people at all. Unfortunately, there are people unwilling to trust the ability of the general population to accept that shifters are different from each other the same way that straight humans are.”

I think for the first time, her belief or, rather, her unbelief wavers a little. She looks at me for a short while and then finally says, “But you’ll protect me.” Then, she just gets back to eating. I don’t know exactly what to do. I want to keep talking to her but I think she’s reached her limit with this particular subject.

“With my life,” I say and get back to the food.

I can tell that she’s trying to believe me. I can tell that she’s trying but failing. I suppose that’s to be expected, actually. I decide right then that after my shift at the firehouse is done, I’ll take her somewhere and show her.

Well, after my shift and after the destruction of the Clan. Fifteen of the Grey will arrive over the next four days. Many will be angry because we’re not involving tiger leadership but that’s the great thing about being a small subset. When we want to, we can consider ourselves separate and our own leadership. That’s why only the Grey will be involved although four other tiger shifters wanted to be.

This clan should have been destroyed years ago.

We make love again after dinner and I’m happy to see her recalcitrance when it comes to believing in shifters isn’t impacting her feelings for me. At least, it’s not impacting her sexual desire for me. She’s as sweet and wonderful as she always is. In the morning as well. When the time comes for me to head to my shift, I feel good about our relationship.

And since we’re going to destroy the Glenn Forth Clan, I feel damned good about her safety.

Chapter Eight

Toni

You would imagine given the strange conversation I would be more rather than less careful. You’d imagine I’d be on high alert and always aware of myself. You’d certainly imagine I would think twice before working well into the night at an office in a commercial area of the city which is essentially empty by seven-thirty at night.

You would think that but I’m still tapping at my keyboard when Maxwell says, “And now I can finally take you where you belong.” I lift my head, and he stands there with a self-satisfied grin on his face. The room is perhaps forty feet by a hundred feet. There are ten cubicles and eight desks here. I have one of the desks.

I stare at him in shock and I can’t think clearly. I want to scream. I want to run. I want desperately to be anywhere other than where I am. I stare at him in shock and then finally say, “I’m not going with you, you sick son of a bitch.”

And Maxwell smiles.

It’s probably all in my head but I swear it seems to me that the man’s face is wolfish. I mean, it actually and truly looks like a wolf’s face. People always talk about wolfish smiles, wolfish grins, wolfish gazes, and all that.

The man looks like a wolf.

And he looks evil.

“You’re going to be a lot more polite. The sooner the better. For you, I mean. You’ll be in the pen with the others, and we make sure to make examples of the ones who aren’t behaving like they should. You don’t want to be one of those examples.”

“Fuck you,” I say bitterly.

“That’s my point,” he says. “You’re going to have a baby for us but my guess is you’d like to know which of us is the father.” He grins again. “And that’s easier when only one of us fucks you like the whore you are.”

I really ought to be afraid, I know.

Fear is the appropriate response right now. I get that.

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