Wish Upon a Tiger: A BBW Weretiger Shifter Romance (Fountain of Love) Read Online Free Page A

about the stolen jewelry than I did.
    Apparently not. He revealed nothing.
    “ Go
on,” he urged.
    “ I
never knew I was about to be abducted when I walked into his office a
day ago. No, a little more than that now. How long does it take to
get up here from Atlanta?”
    Erik shook his head. He didn't seem like the kind who'd
ever traveled very far. When I said Atlanta, I might as well have
been talking about Shangri-La or Troy, or any mythical city.
    Very slowly, I was starting to realize I'd entered a
very different world from the one I'd left.
    “ Anyway,
I was meeting him at his university office, just like we always did.
The place was deserted. It must've been a holiday, a break between
classes, or something. As soon as I stepped in his office, three men
held me down, threw a rag soaked in something awful against my
face...I blacked out and woke up on the plane.”
    Erik suppressed a growl. His lips peeled back, hinting
at his fury.
    “ Humans.
We learned long ago not to trust them. Tiger Tree has been under
treaty for generations. As long as we keep to ourselves, the
government goons don't bother us. It isn't hard when their world is
so different, so despicable.”
    “ My
mother was human,” I blurted out. Sadness throbbed behind my
eyes.
    “ Ah,
you're a half-blood.” Erik's eyes showed surprise when he saw
my defiant stare. “It's nothing to be ashamed of. We've had
them in our village before, in older times, though it's been awhile
since our last half-blood brother passed.”
    “ Sorry.
I thought you were judging me.” I lowered my eyes.
    Everyone always has. If it isn't what I eat or how I
look, then it's my unlady-like strength. If I had a dollar for every
time somebody's watched me haul in five bags of groceries in my arms
like they're nothing...
    Fitting in anywhere hadn't been easy. Mom made me hide
what I was from the time I was able to shift.
    She hid me for a good reason. Until Tarken came along,
her wisdom protected me. But I could only be who I really was when
she took me out hunting.
    The human world made me bury my tiger side, and my tiger
resisted the whole time. Probably the reason I hadn't done anything
useful for twenty-two years except work at dead end retail jobs and
go on blind dates.
    Mom tried to find me a man before the cancer claimed
her, but I wasn't buying what the weak, unfocused boys I dated were
selling. Every friend of a friend's son she introduced me to was
boring, second rate, and always expecting someone skinnier to show up
for coffee.
    “ We
don't judge based on blood here in Tiger Tree. It's not our way,”
Erik said. “Listen, what did this Tarken have planned for us?
Something about a treasure?”
    “ He
used me as bait trying to get to you guys. He wanted to hit you with
tranquilizers as soon as you appeared and put trackers on you.
Tarken's convinced there's some kind of treasure here. He shot me up
with something that put me into heat...I didn't even know it could
happen until I felt it.” I flushed.
    Beneath the table, I pinched my chubby thighs together,
hiding the wet heat that answered whenever I gave the urge any
attention.
    Erik growled. I knew the sharp expression on his face
wanted something, the feral look of a tiger pacing behind his human
flesh, hungry to get out and taste blood. Or else throw me to the
floor and mate me like an animal.
    But his human control held.
    “ I
thought so. No female offers herself up like that in the wild. This
stupid professor must've never met a real tiger before.” Erik
shook his head.
    “ Pretty
sure he hasn't. Not until me.”
    “ Then...you've
been all alone in your city? Are you telling me you'd never met
another tiger until we found you in the forest?”
    I shook my head, feeling more lost than ever before. All
the craziness of the past thirty hours went off in my head like a
nuclear blast. I folded in on myself, hating the single tear that
came trickling down my cheek.
    In a flash, Erik was at my side. He pulled me