“You know, I like humans,” Ellison said as he drove. “My mate is human—you’d like her, Carly. Maria’s fiery and sweet, kind of like you. But that human Ethan is a piece of work.”

“I know.” Carly sounded sad under her anger. “It’s humiliating. I was going to marry him.”

“That’s the advantage of being Shifter,” Ellison said. “You can smell if someone is a shithead right off the bat. And that guy really stinks.”

“No kidding. Where were you when I needed your sniffer two years ago?”

“Right here in Austin, sweetie.” Ellison winked at her in the mirror. “You should have come to Shiftertown more often.”

“I didn’t know anything about Shifters before yesterday. Never thought about them much.” Carly grimaced. “Sorry, no offense.”

Tiger saw Ellison’s grin in the rearview mirror. “None taken.”

Carly smiled back at him, and her wide, red-lipped mouth made Tiger’s need bite him. He reached for her and scooped her around to face him, positioning her knees alongside his thighs on the seat. Carly looked surprised but didn’t pull away, and rested her hands on his shoulders.

“Quit,” she said. “This is dangerous.”

“I’ll drive carefully,” Ellison said, stepping on the gas.

Tiger wound his arms around Carly’s waist. “I’ll keep you safe. You can forget about the human. You’re my mate now.”

He saw Ellison glance in the rearview at them again, but his smile was gone. Carly looked puzzled.

“I’m happy to forget about Ethan. But you . . . You need to learn how to romance a girl.”

Ellison barked a laugh. “Good luck with that.”

“You don’t even know how to kiss.” Carly leaned close, bathing Tiger in her good scent.

Tiger knew that if he could lose himself in this woman—this strange woman with her laughter when he didn’t understand what was funny; her long, luscious legs; her smile that lit fires in his heart—then he’d never be afraid again. The nightmares, the frustration when other Shifters expected him to make the right response, the ever-present fear that he’d be plucked out of this relative peace and put back into a cage, all of that would vanish. The fears ate at him every day, except yesterday, and today—all the times he’d been with Carly.

Her presence soothed everything feral in him, the wild instincts that the researchers had bred into Tiger and that Liam was trying to ease out of him. Tiger had never been soothed in his life. But his body relaxed when he was around Carly, as though he’d never realized his muscles had been pulled tight until the tightness was gone.

Tiger touched Carly’s lips, liking the amazing softness of them. “In that room, that wasn’t kissing?”

“Well, it was.” Her face went pink, so pretty. “But not sweet kissing.”

“You have different kinds of kissing?”

Ellison made a noise up front. “I am so enjoying this conversation.”

“Like this.”

Carly pursed her lips and touched them to Tiger’s mouth. Tiger liked that, her lips soft and warm, the press light, yet it made his body heat with need.

Carly pulled away. “See, you’re supposed to kiss back. When you don’t move your lips, I think you’re not enjoying it.”

How the hell could she think that? Tiger wanted her, wanted to strip off the shorts and open his jeans and have her right here. Who cared about the cars around them, and Ellison in the driver’s seat? Tiger should be inside Carly, where he belonged.

He hadn’t understood why she hadn’t wanted to take what they were doing to its natural completeness back in the house. She’d said it would be about Ethan, even though Ellison had the man contained downstairs. Carly seemed to think the place they did it was important. Another thing Tiger didn’t understand.

Ethan was nothing. The man was a liar and a fraud, weak and ineffectual. If he’d been a Shifter in the wild, he’d have been dead a long time ago. His existence inside the house or out of it made no difference to Tiger being with Carly.

But it was important to Carly, and so he’d stopped.

Females could be fussy, both Liam and Connor had explained, and the male who wanted one had to learn how to please her. Women could afford to be choosy because males were prevalent in Shifter societies and females were scarce. Males competed with each other for the females, and females sat back and picked the best ones.

Of course, in the old days, before Collars and Shiftertowns, Liam had said, a Shifter male could choose his female by locking her away and having sex with her until she agreed she was his mate and filled his house with cubs.

Either way made no sense to Tiger. Mates were bonded to each other, no need for enticing each other or trapping each other. They were already one.

“I’ll show you.” Carly formed her lips into a pucker again, waiting for Tiger to imitate her.

He pulled his lips into the round shape Carly made, but instead of kissing him, she burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “But you look so funny.”

Tiger relaxed his mouth, liking her laughter so much that her words didn’t sting. He put his hand behind her neck and pulled her down to him.

“Kiss me,” he said.

Her laughter died, her eyes went soft, and Carly touched her lips to his mouth. This time, Tiger shaped his lips to match hers, meeting hers pressure for pressure.