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As we’d struggled, the urge to get me under him to mate with me had become so strong that his tyger had taken over to force it to happen. Only his extreme strength of will had allowed him to wrest control back away from the tyger. I was never in any danger of physical harm at all—he thought of me as his mate, so he would literally die before hurting me. I had simply enflamed him beyond all reason. He’d been trying to get me under control and basically fuck me until I was compliant with his demands.
It was such a bestial and old-fashioned and totally Tygerian thing to do. It was a throwback to the old days when the species stayed in their tygers about half the time. The Tygerians had evolved past that, mostly, but even today, most people felt strong mating urges when they were bonded to someone.
The only question was when had we bonded? How?
His reaction to me had just proven we absolutely had, and now that the passion that had suddenly blazed up between us was dying down, I was feeling drained and exhausted too. Though I couldn’t shift, I’d still been deeply affected. I’d experienced a sudden adrenaline rush and the same surge of overwhelming passion. I should have tried to stop it as soon as I knew what was happening. Not for myself—I wanted every second of what had happened between us—but for him.
He was an Imperial, and he prided himself on his honor and morality. Not only that, but my father had put him in charge of my safety and well-being and he must be thinking he’d betrayed the king’s trust in the worst possible way. He was obviously really unhappy and so deeply troubled and ashamed he couldn’t even look at me. I tried to think of some way I could help, but I couldn’t come up with a thing.
I had to, though, because if there was one thing I knew, it was the way a Tygerian thought. I had grown up with them and lived with them all my life, and I knew a Tygerian’s sense of honor was everything to him. I didn’t know much about what was happening right then, but I knew this. If I couldn’t talk Tariq out of it, he would fall on his sword quite literally. He could do something stupid like resign his commission in the Imperials or leave Tygeria at the first opportunity, or take some other big, irrevocable, stupid step as a display of penance. The sky was the limit for a Tygerian, and Tariq’s big crime was what amounted to a consensual kiss or two between us, and that brief tussle on the bed, with me practically forcing his typpid inside me. I’d done most of it. Yet I knew he was ready to do the gods knew what to atone.
“Please come over here and sit down. I-I promise I won’t touch you, but we need to talk about this.”
He didn’t answer, and he didn’t move away from the wall either. This was my fault and I had to fix it. It would take drastic measures, so despite having just covered myself up, I decided to change tactics. If and when he calmed down, he would leave this room quickly and do something extreme to atone. I had to stop him from leaving, and I was going to use his own jealousy against him.
I got up, still naked and stood in front of the door, my hand hovering above the panel that would open it. “Either you agree to talk to me right now, or I swear I’ll go out just like this and parade myself around the ship.”
His head whipped up, and I saw that I’d only thought he was back to normal. His eyes were still that odd shade, and his mouth was all wrong. He snarled at what I told him, and I could see those lethal teeth. He made a sudden move toward me, and I quickly hit the button to open the door. Thank the gods no one was passing by.
“No. Stop!” he said growling at me and jerking me away from the door.
“Will you sit and talk to me?”
“Hai,” he replied after a moment—the Tygerian word for yes.
“Do I have your word?”
He hesitated an even longer time on that question, and I wondered if he’d only been humoring me to get me away from the door. An Imperial’s word was sacred, though, and if he gave it to me, he wouldn’t go back on it. After a long, tense moment, he gave his head a sharp up and down nod.
I went back over to sit on the bed. I knew he was watching, and I couldn’t resist putting a little twist in my hips. Like my omak, I liked to live dangerously. I sat down on the end of my bed and patted the mattress next to me.
“Come and sit beside me then. We don’t have to do a thing until you feel more like yourself, but we are going to talk. You’ve promised.”
He turned to look at me, but he wasn’t happy. “Cover up.”
“Not until you’re right here beside me. Come on.” I patted the mattress again. “You gave me your word.”
Slowly, he came toward me, frowning at my body. To appease him and get him to concentrate, I pulled the sheet back over my lower half. He sat down beside me, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. I waited a few more minutes, letting him come back a little more. Finally, his face was mostly back to normal and his breathing not so rough. I turned toward him and asked the question I’d been dying to ask.
“Can you explain what just happened? I mean, I know that was the mating frenzy. Don’t lie. It was, wasn’t it?”
“No!” he cried out and stood up again, looking around wildly as if for an escape route.
“Colonel,” I said, making my tone sharp. “You gave me your word to tell the truth, and I have questions. I can assure you that anything we say to each other will be kept between us. But you need to help me out here and talk to me. Explain to me how this happened.”
He shook his head. “Your Highness, there’s no need for this. The situation is impossible, and I have no expectations of any kind. I should never have agreed with your father to guard you. I should have made an excuse.” He stuck his leg with his fist in frustration, and I winced because that had to have been painful. I reached for his hand and pulled it into my lap, and he looked up at me in surprise. When I pulled his fist to my lips and kissed his hand tenderly, he pulled it quickly away.
“Your Highness, no. I can only imagine how angry your fathers would both be, and they’d have every right. This is a betrayal of their trust.”
“No, it isn’t. At least I don’t think it is, but you won’t tell me how this happened, so I can’t make a judgment. Before last night in the palace, I hadn’t seen you in close to five cycles. And nothing happened between us last night, so I’m confused. I have a proposition for you. No, don’t look at me like that. It’s not that kind of proposition, and I’m going to try and not take your distinct lack of enthusiasm personally either. Let me order a pot of tea and some sandwiches. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten, and I didn’t want what they brought me, so I haven’t either. We’ll relax here in the privacy of my room, and you can tell me how this happened. Please be honest. You’ve bonded with me, haven’t you?”
He wouldn’t look at me, but he nodded again. Just that one quick, miserable up and down of his head.
“Good. Well, apparently, some of it went both ways.”
That surprised him. He looked up at me in horror—good thing I said I wasn’t taking this personally. I shrugged.
“No, Your Highness, you’re wrong. That couldn’t have happened.”
