White Tiger (A Shifter's Unbound Novel) by Jennifer Ashley

“normal” human couple.
    I’d want it hard and fast, basic and raw. I want you on the ground, against the wall, you riding me, me on you,locked together, inseparable. I want you groaning my name while I shout yours, and I want you begging me never to stop . . .
    Kendrick started to run. Faster and faster, until his breath came in gasps, and his mouth was parched.
    He paused long enough to slide out of his human clothes, then he hit the ground on all fours as tiger.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    K endrick ran until he could run no more. Even tigers got tired, especially after they’d battled, rescued a woman in distress, and then ridden the rest of the night.
    He slowed to a walk and ambled along, breathing hard, paws barely making an indent on packed Texas earth. The run had calmed him enough that every beat of his heart didn’t make him want Addison, only every other beat. Still, he was too agitated, too charged with adrenaline. He needed to climb down from frenzy and
think
.
    He’d liked the ranch as soon as he saw it, and now, slowing to stroll its perimeters, he liked it even more. Kendrick didn’t know the exact boundaries of the property, although a barbed wire fence along the east side likely marked it from its neighbor. He scented no other Shifters out here, and not even any humans. Few would come this far from a road. A determined hiker might strike out across country but Kendrick could deal with that as it came up.
    He only cared that the ranch was hard to find and the house was out of the line of sight from the roads due to a slight rippling of the land around it. Defending such a largearea wouldn’t be easy, but Kendrick’s top trackers—Seamus, Francesca, Dimitri, Jaycee—could do it.
    He wondered momentarily whether they, his closest friends, had also turned on him, like the Shifters who’d cornered him in the diner. He hadn’t been in touch with any of them for a long time, though he knew that Seamus and Francesca were well. He hadn’t heard anything from Dimitri or Jaycee.
    Kendrick pushed those thoughts aside for now. More immediately, he’d have to deal with Addison threatening to tear his mating frenzy out of the cocoon he’d stuffed it into. He’d vowed to protect her, so she needed to stay here for now. He’d simply have to suppress his need for her until this was over.
    Right
, like that was so simple.
    Maybe he could pound his head against the ground until all thoughts of her smile, the sly look she’d given him when she’d confessed she liked the same pie he did, the feeling of her against his body on the motorcycle went away. Sure, there was a good solution.
    Kendrick huffed a breath and turned his steps for the house. He couldn’t put off facing Addison, so he had to find a way to suck it up, as Brett liked to say. He had his cubs to take care of.
    Didn’t help that the phrase
suck it up
made him think of covering Addison with whipped cream and licking it off her.
    Halfway back to the house, Kendrick halted. Addison filling his thoughts had distracted him from a faint scent on the edge of his senses. Not human, not Shifter. Not Fae either—he’d encountered a few of those in his day, and their smell was nose-curlingly distinctive.
    The scent faded. Whatever, whoever, it had been, was gone. Kendrick let out the breath he’d been holding and moved silently through the dark to where he’d left his clothes.
    *   *   *
    A ddie woke shortly before six in the morning—according to the luminous digital clock next to the bed. She took a moment to realize where she was, and another to realize the electricity must have been restored if the clock worked.
    The room was cold, no air flowing. Charlie had probably turned off any fans, heat, or AC once the generator was down. All the lights were off too—nothing shone under the door.
    Addison groped for the lamp she’d seen on the table by the bed, groped some more for a switch, and flicked it on.
    She blinked at the glare, then swallowed a