I found my own rhythm, grinding myself between them, helping caress myself over and around him, and helping her rub herself against the front of me, and again she found her happy before anyone else did. Her body shivered underneath me, and I held her in place while Domino’s rhythm grew faster, harder. I felt that warm weight building inside my body.
The vampire on the floor in the room tried one last time to take back the woman. I felt him gathering his power, and my tiger and I didn’t like him. He’d offered the cat underneath us nothing but pain. We felt his power coming one last time. The woman’s eyes went wide, face afraid, like she felt the blow coming. I meant to thrust the black tiger down that metaphysical link and beat him with his own game, but Domino made that one last stroke and I was suddenly bucking against his body, against hers, where I still held her against me, and it was enough for her to join us, so that we all screamed our orgasm at once in one long, warm spill of pleasure. I shoved all that pleasure at the vampire, and I felt the connection between her and him break. She was suddenly mine, so much mine. The three of us collapsed to the floor with her trapped underneath our double weight. Her mind floated in a wash of nearly liquid happiness. Her body, like mine, was limp and almost boneless with pleasure. I could feel our three heartbeats inside my head like three drums beating in unison. And from one moment to the next, her mind opened to me. She wanted me to know.
Her master was one of the Harlequin, and he would kill her before he let her go. She’d been sent to spy on us, because the Harlequin had broken with the Vampire Council. They were running from the Mother of All Darkness. The warm edge of pleasure began to fade under that revelation, and then came another.
One of the other tiger survivors was a golden tiger, and the animal to call of one of the other Harlequin. His master was kinder than hers. They’d been sent to see if Jean-Claude could really stand against the Darkness, and if I could really be Master of Tigers. She let me see his face in her mind. She betrayed him to me, because he and his master had done nothing to help her in all those long centuries. They’d respected the bond between servant and master, even knowing that her master had abused her for over a thousand years.
I whispered, “Bastards.”
“Yes,” she said.
I didn’t have to say a word; I thought, “Jean-Claude.” I just let him see what I knew. I felt his fear at the word Harlequin, but he directed Wicked and Truth and some of the wererats toward the huddled survivors. He knew which man they wanted, because she had given me the face, and I’d given it to him. I also knew her name. Yiyú. It meant Jade, Black Jade.
47
MINUTES LATER I was standing staring down at our other spy. His straight hair was cut short and was a pale, nondescript color. I was betting the hair was dyed. The eyes were a pale brown, almost lion amber. I remembered the eyes of the golden weretiger who had cut me up. Her eyes had been brown in human form, too. But in tiger form she’d had yellow and orange eyes like most tigers. Did only some goldens’ eyes change with their shift, like humans’? The eyes were uptilted and there was something exotic to the bone structure, but he couldn’t have passed for Chinese like Jade could.
I shook my head. “You’re not as old as she is.”
“How do you know?” he asked, and his voice, like the rest of him, seemed delicate. He was like most of the older weretigers, not very big. Taller than me, but then most men were.
“You feel younger,” I said.
He shifted in the metal bindings. They were a new type of cuff that was being tried by law enforcement for the preternaturally strong. We’d had some of our people try them and so far, they’d held. Wicked touched the weretiger’s shoulder with one hand; the other hand had a gun naked in it. The weretiger had given up, just let them capture him, but he was one of the Harlequin and that was supposed to mean something.
Truth had a short sword bare in his hand. The brothers were prepared. I felt pretty safe with them holding him. I knew his name was Topaz. I knew it matched the deep, golden yellow of his tiger color. Through Jade I knew a lot of things.
“He isn’t a gold tiger,” a woman’s voice said. I stepped back from the kneeling man, and turned so I could see who the voice belonged to. It was one of the two female red tigers. This one had red hair cut just above her shoulders, so that the end edges of the hair framed her face. Her hair was a red so dark it was almost a kind of black. Humans didn’t come with hair like that outside a dye bottle.
The woman’s skin and hair were darker than any of the other tigers, including my memories of Alex’s body, the first red tiger I’d met and accidently rolled. Whatever I did tonight, there’d be nothing accidental about it. Her eyebrows were black and blended with the dark red of her hair. Her eyes were the orange and yellow of fire, even at this distance. The white tigers could pass for human eyes if you didn’t know what you were looking at, but nothing would make those fire eyes human.
“He is not a gold tiger,” she repeated.
“Why not?” I asked.
She made a derisive sound, crossing her arms across the shining cloth of her own designer dress. I thought the dark red was an unfortunate choice for her coloring, but she hadn’t asked me. “Because gold is supposed to control us all. If there were a true gold tiger in this room, we would all be bound to his will. I feel nothing. He’s just a survivor with delusions.”
She had a point. I didn’t feel much of any energy from the kneeling weretiger. I believed Jade’s memories, but I’d seen no proof beyond that. “If he’s supposed to control all the tigers, are you really sure you want him flexing metaphysical muscle?” I asked.
“I enjoyed the floor show, though I thought the women were sent here for Jean-Claude, not you. I don’t do women.” She made it sound like doing them was somehow bad.
I caught movement and found Jade standing with Domino off to one side. She was looking away, down, her posture as if someone had struck her. Women weren’t my normal cup of tea, but I couldn’t regret anything I’d done with Jade. Even now I wanted to touch her, and I didn’t fight the urge. I just held out my hand and thought of the smell of her skin.
She smiled at me, and that one shy, pleased smile made it worth noticing her pain. She came to my hand and tucked herself in against me. In the heels I was enough taller that she was able to cuddle in against my shoulder the way I did to some men.
The look of disgust on the red tigress’s face made me smile. She didn’t like that I smiled at her. “I felt your power over the other tigers, but the red clan is made of sterner stuff.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“She’s Reba,” Victor said, “daughter of the Red Queen.”
“I expected your brother,” I said.
“Alex is out of the country on some journalist assignment. He’s catching a plane and disrupting all his plans because you and your master put out the call.” She made it sound ridiculous.
I looked at the men with her. One of them had long red hair spilling over his shoulders. It wasn’t as dark as Reba’s, though there was a touch of black to its edge. Hunter, that was his name, had hair the color they tell you is red in school. Again, humans didn’t have hair like that. His eyes were pure yellow and caught the candlelight as he looked at me. He raised his hand and gave a little wave and smile. I smiled back. I’d have rather had Alex, but I’d already slept with Hunter. He was one of the few in the room I could say that about.
“Don’t flirt with her,” Reba said, voice cutting like an angry whip across his smile. He stopped looking at me but said, “I thought that’s why we were here.”