Page 49 of Lucky or Knot
Shrugging felt odd in my tiger body, and it looked odd, too, by the puzzlement on Axel’s face. I stood up, shook myself out, and blinked once, trying to indicate acceptance.
“Is that yes, you’re okay with it, or yes, you’re going to eatme?” Axel hissed.
Christ. I stared at him, trying to telepathically communicate that he needed to ask a fucking yes or no question.
“Crap,” he said, comprehension dawning. “Um. Are you going to eat me?”
I blinked twice, and he slumped a bit, nodded, and got the collar on me with a minimum of fuss.
Raven, I repeated to myself.This is for Raven.
Stalking past the security guys without taking a limb or two required all my self-control. Two of them took point, and two more fell in behind at a respectful distance. Axel stayed close to me, looping up enough of the leash to be only a couple of feet from my head. Did he show that much trust with his actual tigers? Would anyone notice a difference? But no one challenged us as I padded into a service elevator, sat quietly at a word from Axel while the display on the panel ticked from G all the way to PH, and then padded out again into a utilitarian hallway.
We went a couple dozen yards along, the sound of a party starting to grow in volume from a faint, distant murmur to distinct chatter, clinking dishes, and music—some super pretentious-sounding jazz. Of course, all jazz ranged from pretentious to unbearable, until it got smoky vocals, and then it turned into dancing and/or sex music, but this shit was bad enough to make me flatten my ears.
“I’ll go check on how it’s going out there,” one security guy said, and pushed his way through a swinging door. “I think they’re almost ready for you.”
The other who’d been in front of us went a few more feet down the hall and ushered us through another door. That led to a green room of sorts, with a couch and some bottled water. “We installed a ring for the tiger’s leash, right there. And the sound guy’s coming to mic you,” he said, and left.
The sound guy came in and they fiddled with Axel’slapels. So as not to freak out the tech, I lay down meekly in the corner next to the metal ring they’d bolted to the wall, and I indulged in some silent panic.
They’re almost ready.
Maybe they were, but not me. My heartbeat juddered down to the tips of the pads of my toes. A tiger’s resting heart rate was about the same as a human’s, and this felt at least twice as fast as that.
More than a year of stripping in front of an audience dozens of times a week, and my paws seemed to have riveted themselves to the floor with the worst case of stage fright I’d ever imagined, let alone experienced. Stage fright, shyness, and anxiety in general had never been a problem for me.
Until now.
Fuck. I had no idea what I was doing. And if I screwed up, Raven could pay the price for my stupidity. Again. What I was supposed to do, or look like, or…
“Come on, it’s showtime,” said a pleasant voice, pitched remarkably well to be soothing to tigers when necessary, it turned out. “You’ll be awesome.”
Axel, being a bro. And then he put his hand on my shoulder for a second, and it probably looked like a pet to anyone watching, but it felt more like the type of bracing pat a buddy might give you before you went to rip your pants off for a bachelorette party.
Deep breath. I could do this.
We left our little green room and then into the same door the first guy had gone through.
As the door swung open, I could’ve sworn I caught a faint, curling tendril of Raven’s scent. It floated, delicate and haunting, over the heavier reek of alcohol and shrimp and steak and the perfumes and colognes of a whole mass of rich people sweating in their evening clothes.
It didn’t exactly calm me down, but it focused me.
Honed me. Sharpened my senses and my resolve.
First I had to see him. I had to know he was all right, present and accounted for. Then…then I’d wait for the right opportunity to grab him and get the hell out of there.
Axel adjusted his grip on the whip, holding it at a more theatrical angle, and led the way through another service area, with gawking tuxedoed waiters pressing themselves against walls as far from me as they could manage. Then we were walking through a much nicer set of doors and into a full-size freaking ballroom, of all the things to have in the penthouse of a hotel.
The near end of the huge room held round dining tables half full of guests sitting and lingering over coffee, eyes and jewelry glittering in the subtle shaded lighting in the centers of the tables and the chandeliers above. We went right through, close enough to people’s chairs that there were someoohsandaahsand discreet, ladylike shrieks of terror as I padded by. Axel bowed and smiled, working the crowd.
Up ahead, a double rank of seats ringed a large dance floor, and those were packed with Cunningham’s friends or business associates or maybe people he fucking hated, all in evening clothes holding glasses of champagne. Behind them were cocktail tables with more guests at them.
So many fucking people. Christ. So many potential witnesses, so much potential for collateral damage.
The dance floor had—oh, fuck me, a couple of those gods-damned round platform things like at circuses, and a trio of giant rings, all supervised by three guys in spandex and capes, clearly Axel’s team. Colored spotlights whirled. Someone with a microphone announced Axel and me, giving a spiel about Cunningham’s support of good causes like tiger rescues.
But none of that was important. None of it mattered.
