Page 29 of Ignited

“You officially picked the worst person in the world to latch onto,” he told her. “You know that, right?”

She looked up at him with a sad kitty face, and made a little mrrow sound. Just looking at her, all dirty and pathetic, made him feel squeezed inside his chest.

Okay, well, he’d start by trying to get her cleaned up. How hard could that be? Any idiot zookeeper could wash a tiger, right?

He knew she wouldn’t fit in the bathtub, so he grabbed a large galvanized metal tub from the workroom and used a hose attachment to fill it with warm water and dish soap from the kitchen sink. Then he grabbed a mess of rags and old towels and hauled the now-full tub nearer to the tiger.

This was idiotic. But still, here he fucking was.

The tiger sniffed at the bubbles, then looked at him dubiously.

“Don’t give me that look,” Boomer said. “I looked up Siberian Tigers on the internet, back when I was a kid and had time on my hands. You all like water. You’re weird that way.”

As if in agreement, she dipped one paw in the tub. She blinked at him, then put it all the way in. Then she stood there, one paw in and one paw out, looking at him like, “What now?”

“Yeah. Here.”

He took off his shirt so it wouldn’t get soaked, dragged over the cracked vinyl ottoman, and then sat down and started wiping down her leg with a rag. After he got the worst of the dirt off, he spread a towel on the floor so she could take her paw out of the tub and put it down without making a puddle.

She’d stopped shivering and growling. So that was a plus.

“Other paw,” he said, gesturing. She let him wash that one too. He was careful when he came to the dart wound, dabbing it gently. She flinched a little. It hadn’t healed over yet the way it should, and the skin around it was still puffy, with tiny flickers of magic that he tried not to touch.

The room seemed weirdly silent, so he started talking, which was what he did when things got too quiet. Or when he was uncomfortable. Or anytime, really. People were always telling him to shut up. “You really need an entire bath,” he told her. “In a bigger bathroom than mine. I hear Sanchez and Madison are getting one of those huge orgy showers in their new cabin. Too bad it’s not built yet. It might fit a tiger. And it would piss Sanchez off so bad to find a tiger in his sex shower.”

He rinsed the second paw and put it down. “Or, there’s always the motor pool car wash.”

Karisma growled softly. “Jeez,” he said. Did she actually understand that? “Just kidding.”

He grabbed a new rag and started on her head and neck, which were also caked in mud. “You have pretty eyes,” he murmured. “You know, that night at the carnival, when you pulled me out of the fire? That’s what I remember. The heat and not being able to breathe, and all that smoke and people screaming. And in the middle of it all, your eyes. Like these incredible jewels. Everything else is hazy, but your eyes were so clear. I never forgot them.”

He finished washing her ears and started rubbing them with one of the towels. Her eyes squinched shut, and she made a deep growly sound. He stopped. Was she getting pissed off?

Then he realized. She was purring.

The sound somehow made that squeezed place in the middle of his chest go all warm sunny, and a smile tugged at his mouth.

He started rubbing down her neck. “I looked for you, you know. After the fire, my brother and I, we went out into the mountains every day. Did you know you turned into a legend? The Ghost Tiger of the Rockies.”

Her ears twitched. Was she understanding him? Maybe if he said the right thing, hit the right memory, she’d come back.

“We never found you, though,” he said. “Well, you know that. But I kept looking, even after we moved away. On the internet. My brother said I’d never find you. And what if I did? You probably wouldn’t even talk to me. Or you’d beat the crap out of me.”

He stopped, considering. “Well, you did beat the crap out of me—a little—and now you’re not talking, so I guess he was right. Which sucks—I hate having to tell him he was right. He’s one of those people who doesn’t say I told you so, but he just gives you that little headshake, you know? It means the same, and it’s even more annoying.”

He began washing down her chest, noticing that jewel she wore between her collarbones was still there, buried in her fur. She was leaning into him now, still purring, and he was feeling all full of himself because for once he’d done good with this taking care of people shit.

And then her skin shimmered and rippled, and she Changed all at once, her bones crackling and re-forming in the blink of an eye, leaving her crouched on the wet towels.

With her boob in his hand.

Well. This was awkward.

He stared at the boob, transfixed. He knew he was supposed to put it down, but she was still purring, and it was really pretty. Soft and warm, with a puckered pink nipple that would fit right in his mouth.

Her skin felt even warmer than her fur, and so fucking soft. Heat flashed through him and seemed to crackle between them, like a flashover explosion.

The purring stopped. He dragged his gaze away from her boob to her eyes. They were locked on him, wide and blue like a mountain lake.