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“It kept him down,” Jude noted flatly. “I’d already all but ripped his throat out—and he still got up. Trust me, Tony, we needed that bullet.”
Some legends were based on a bit of truth. Some weren’t.
Jude pressed a kiss to her shoulder, then she felt the warm lap of his tongue as he licked lightly at her flesh. Shifters tended to each other this way. The way of their kind.
Her head tilted back against him and heat spread through her.
“Save it!” Antonio snapped. “Get a room later, but I don’t need this crap now!”
One more swipe of Jude’s tongue. The tending wasn’t sexual—well, okay,maybeit was. But the soft strokes meant more than just a prelude to sex. To a shifter, it was the way to express affection. Maybe even love.
Erin turned toward him. She found Jude watching her with eyes that were so very blue.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he whispered, and the others fell away to her. Disappeared.
“When I arrived and that bastard was over your throat...”
Not a moment she really wanted to relive.
“I didn’t think I’d get to you in time.”
But this was a moment that called for honesty. “Neither did I.” And her last thought had been of him. Her Jude. Her tiger. With eyes that burned so very bright. She touched his face. “You saved my life.”
“Only fair, considering you’d already done the same for me.”
And she’d do it again, any day. Because—because?—
Antonio cleared his throat. Hard.
—because she was in love with her badass, wild tiger shifter.
In love.Absolutely, freaking, crazy, I’d-kill-to-protect him—andhad—in love. For the first time in her life. Pity that it had taken almost dying to make her realize that fact.
But, better late than never.
ChapterTwenty-One
“I’m sorry,Ms. Jerome, but your mother isn’t here.”
Erin’s eyes widened as she stared at the emergency room desk clerk, sure the woman was wrong. She had to be wrong. “But she was brought in on an ambulance not even an hour ago.”
The clerk, a short, balding man with a round face, flushed. “Ah, yes, um, I rememberthat.”
This wasn’t going to be a good story.
“When the doors opened, the EMTs were there, but the patient—ah, she’d...already exited the vehicle.”
Erin blinked. “Run that by me again.”
His face a deeper red now, he said, “The EMTs said she jumped out when they slowed for a blocked intersection. She shoved right past them and managed to kick open the doors.”
A smile lifted her lips. “Really?”
Sweat beaded his brow. “I assure you, this isn’t normal routine, and the EMTs did everything they could to restrain her.”
Her smile widened. “I guess she didn’t feel like being restrained.” If her mother was back in fighting and fleeing form, then she’d be all right. And Erin knew she’d be seeing her again soon.Thank you, Theresa.
Their life was far, far from perfect, but a mother who was willing to risk her life in order to get back into her daughter’s good graces, well, that was a woman who deserved a second chance. Erin would give her one.
