other’s hair in the shower, just for the sheer pleasure of touching each other? Would we hold each other’s hands over coffee as we watched the sun rise? Eat toast from each other’s plate?
“You’re right…” I gasped, forcing myself away from him. We sat there for a minute, our foreheads pressed together, and then he nodded.
“I am. C’mon, girl, let's pack up the leftovers and get you home.”
He told me to stay in the car when we pulled up at my driveway and then walked around with a grin to open my door, standing there as I slipped out, our bodies grazing. He kissed me inside the car door, and he kissed me when he reached my front step, until Janey appeared with a startled oops.
He laughed at that. “Go inside, before I follow you in.”
His voice was low and husky, full of devilry, daring me to do just that, but I opened the screen door and closed it behind me. His fingers curled around the decorative metal bars as he stepped up to it.
“See you tomorrow?” I nodded. “Listen for me tonight.”
“Jai…”
He just laughed, stepping away and waving goodbye.
“Well, girlfriend, you look like you’re on cloud nine,” Janey said, cocking her hip. “That went well?”
“No, then yes.”
“Well, as long as you had that last bit. Wanna debrief over some double chocolate ganache ice cream? Tell Aunty Janey if he tastes as good as he looks?”
“Oh, fuck yes.”
I slept lightly that night, the sound of a storm stirring at the periphery of my dreams, until I heard him. He howled, claiming this land, me. Max jumped off the bed, trotting over to the window to take a look. I followed him, wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets, and stared down at the back paddock. There he was, limned in silver in his wolf form, sending out one more call before turning and loping away.
Chapter 11
“So we’d like to take you through a basic extraction process,” Hollingsworth said as we stood in his fancy lab. “I thought we’d use Ms Bruce to settle the animal before he’s tranquilised.”
“Shannon?” Stuart said with a frown. “The work she does is indeed miraculous, but not enough to have an effect on a pissed off Siberian tiger.” We all eyed the beast in question, pacing back and forth in a smaller holding pen that Hollingsworth’s men had corralled it into.
“I wasn’t thinking of Kazimir,” the man replied, placing a proprietary hand on the cage, only the thick layer of glass or Lucite enough to stop the animal’s claws from raking him in two. Nick and I jerked back when the animal reared up and slammed his paws into the cage wall, just behind the man. “Gaden, the snow leopard is smaller and more manageable.”
“Still, no staff of mine is going to be put at risk,” Stuart said, stepping forward and crossing his arms.
“There will be no risk,” the man replied. “From my understanding of the process, Ms Bruce doesn’t need to actually touch the animal. I’d like to see if she can have an effect on the animals from outside of their cage. We will obviously be using a tranquiliser dart, but calmer beasts are much easier to hit.”
“That OK, Shannon?” Stuart said.
No, no, it wasn’t. I looked at the animal in question. Unlike Kazimir, he shrank back against the sides of his cage, holding himself in as tight a ball as possible. His muzzle flexed regularly, showing us his viciously sharp teeth.
“I don’t know how useful I’ll be,” I said with a shrug, and then moved slowly towards him.
I avoided eye contact. Cats were not a fan of it, since they saw it as aggressive behaviour, so I assumed the same with their bigger cousins. I slunk over to the cage, trying to find the calm pool of power deep inside me I’d need to draw upon, but the tiger’s muffled roars and the sounds of the other animals in the distance were distracting. I chanced a quick look at the leopard, who watched me with big eyes, twitching with my every step. So I came to a stop just outside his cage and waited, head down, just focussing on my breathing for a moment.
It had been a tough thing to bring forth when I was a kid, and my nan spent many years training me to tap into my power, so now it welled up as soon as I paid it any attention, spreading my awareness outward.