Claimed by the Tiger Read online

  Claimed by the Tiger

  A Woodland Creek Novella

  A E Gatta

  Contents

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Thanks for reading

  About the Author

  Interested in sexy, contemporary romance, too?

  Claimed by the Tiger © 2015 Allison Bell

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

  In the forests of the night;

  What immortal hand or eye,

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  In what distant deeps or skies.

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand, dare seize the fire?

  And what shoulder, & what art,

  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

  And when thy heart began to beat,

  What dread hand? & what dread feet?

  What the hammer? what the chain,

  In what furnace was thy brain?

  What the anvil? what dread grasp,

  Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

  When the stars threw down their spears

  And water'd heaven with their tears:

  Did he smile his work to see?

  Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

  Tyger Tyger burning bright,

  In the forests of the night:

  What immortal hand or eye,

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  William Blake

  Chapter 1

  Silas Navaro had hit the jackpot.

  When he'd walked into the brick-covered collegiate lecture hall today, he'd expected any number of things—a beastly woman, a dull, humorless book nerd, or worst of all, someone completely unremarkable in every way. Not that it would have mattered. He was here to do his duty to the pack, and he wouldn't let them down, even if he'd been assigned to a woman who felt that darning socks was the most fascinating hobby in the world.

  Hell, that's what he'd been prepared for. His pack mates had told him just about every horror story in the book, including one mate who'd insisted on calling out her own name during sex. Silas still shivered just thinking about that one.

  "Does anyone have a guess as to what Blake is referring to in the final stanza?" Her voice called him back to the present, and he studied her again.

  Ellie Ashford, adjunct professor of English Literature and his arranged mate.

  Maybe she'd have some kind of weird kink. Like she had to recite Shakespeare's sixteenth before she came or something. Somehow, with her, he didn’t think he’d mind that much.

  Not for a woman this fucking gorgeous.

  Most of the tiger shifter women he'd met looked like a female version of himself. Thick, jet black hair that fanned out in waves, sharp cheek bones that led to bright, almost cat-like green eyes.

  But that wasn't Ellie Ashford.

  Sure, she paced the classroom with a gracefulness that was almost otherworldly, making her long, gauzy peasant skirt billow around her ankles. But everything about her was just as graceful and feminine as her walk. Her cheekbones were high, but they didn't give her the cut of a heroin chic model. Instead, they rounded out with nearly cherub-like sweetness. Her eyes were bright and interested, but they were a clear, crystalline blue.

  Her hair was dark, but when she moved, he caught the faintest glint of red in her strands. It was intriguing...

  Almost as intriguing as why a woman this beautiful had been assigned to him in the first place.

  His phone buzzed, so he dug it from his pocket, and then glanced at the message as surreptitiously as he could manage.

  So? Good news?

  It was from his pack mate, Jessie. He'd gotten his assignment last year and was all-too-thrilled to see if Silas had gotten someone interesting to mate with.

  He typed back a hasty "gorgeous", but before he hit send, someone plucked the phone from his hand.

  He glanced up to find Ellie glowering at him, his phone pinched between her thumb and forefinger. "Are you sharing your love of the romantic poets with someone?" She raised her eyebrows. "Because at the moment, that's what we're talking about."

  "Right," he grumbled.

  She tilted her mouth to the side, then said, "You can pick this up when class is over and you return to the outside world. In this classroom, we're only discussing the genius of William Blake. Now." She stalked past him, opened a drawer of her tiny metal desk, and tossed his phone inside.

  With a little click of the drawer, she continued, "Let's look at the connotation of the verbs, shall we? In the first stanza, Blake writes 'could frame thy fearful symmetry' and in the last, he writes 'dare frame thy fearful symmetry.' What do you make of it? How about you, phone boy?" She raised her eyebrows at Silas, a slight smile tilting her full, luscious lips.

  Ha. She thought she had him caught between her talons.

  He cleared his throat in an effort to hide his answering grin.

  If there was one poem on earth for him to be familiar with, this one was it. "I think Blake is discussing the strangeness of the tiger and how, though it's beautiful, it's also deadly and terrible." He paused, wondering if she heard the double meaning in his words. If maybe, even now, she could guess why he'd suddenly appeared in her class.

  Unable to help himself, he allowed his eyes to glow slightly, only for a second, before continuing, "Blake is saying it's not so much that an almighty creator could or couldn't create the tiger, he just wonders why you'd frame something so gorgeous in something so ferocious."

  She studied him, a question buried deep in her narrowed eyes, and for the briefest of moments, he thought he saw a pink glow cover her cheeks. Just as quickly, it fled, and she was all sternness and academia again. "Very good."

  Her attention snapped from him, and she carried on with her lecture as if he'd never spoken at all.

  The rest of the class passed the way he remembered it from when he'd been a student and not an undercover operative of sorts. Though, even in his years at university, he couldn't remember any of his professors sounding as devoted to their subject as Ellie Ashford was.

  The way she read the prose was like she tasted every word, savored it, and let it slide down her throat slowly. Like no detail could afford to be wasted. Like everything was deeply, drastically important.

  Silently, he watched her pacing the aisles of desks, pausing here and there as she listened, enraptured, to one student or another's interpretation.

  The more he saw, the more he wanted to raise his hand and press his luck with her again, if only to watch the way her thoughtful eyes softened and focused on him, the way her mouth crooked to the side.

  Did she treat every aspect of her life this way? So seriously? So intently?

  No doubt a habit like that would make her one hell of a shifter. She probably ran seamlessly through the trees, having memorized every little pebble and stream in the nearby reserve. He could practically picture her already, her shiny orange and white coat glinting in the moonlight as he chased her.

  And then when she changed back...

  He swallo
wed hard, willing himself to focus on the class at hand rather than the images rolling through his mind. Ellie's curvy, lithe body transforming from feline to female, naked in that same moonlight. He bet her creamy white skin would look even better in the dim glow than her fur. And her breasts...

  He caught himself staring at the swell beneath the hem of her plain cotton top just in time to find her gaze locked on him, her expression caught somewhere between disapproval and, if he didn't know better, he might have said intrigue.

  Then, she turned sharply and made for the dry erase board behind her. "All right, guys, good discussion today. Now, for next time, I want you to read pages 394, 275, and 853. Wordsworth. Won't that be fun?" She shot the class a wide, flashing grin over her shoulder in answer to their groans.

  The pupils around him stuffed their books into bags and satchels, then shuffled from the room, a low murmur starting the rise as they made for the door.

  "Don't complain yet." Ellie called over them. "We haven't even given gotten to Yeats. Just you wait."

  She started scribbling in the little notebook in front of her, looking up as one student or the other stopped nearby to ask a question. All the while, Silas stayed put, waiting until they were completely alone.

  When the last of the stragglers shuffled from the room, he approached her desk.

  She was aware of him. He knew as much by the peach flush that crept over her cheeks, the way her pen moved more jerkily with every step he took. Still, she didn't look up.

  "Excuse me, Professor," he said when he'd reached the very edge of her desk.

  "Ah, Mr...." She glanced at him a little too casually, then squinted, her lips quirked to the side. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure I remember seeing you in here before."

  Ah. Right. She's going to act like she doesn't know why I'm here.

  Maybe it was some kind of roleplaying fantasy she was hoping to fulfill. Either way, he was more than happy to oblige, so he answered, "Mr. Nivaro. Silas."

  "I'll stick with Mr. Nivaro if you don't mind."

  "Of course." He shoved his hand in his pockets and waited, but she only stared up at him while shuffling papers in her hands.

  The air was still between them, and after one long moment, she asked, "Can I...?"

  "My phone?" he asked.

  "Yes. Right." She pulled it from her drawer, and set it on the desk in front of him. When he moved to retrieve it, their fingers brushed for a moment, and now there was no mistaking it, her cheeks turned a bright, rosy pink.

  The blush made her blue eyes even more beautiful, and he was on the edge of telling her as much when he remembered himself. They'd have to lay out some ground rules before he got too familiar. At least emotionally familiar.

  He cleared his throat. "Listen, are you available during your office hours this afternoon?"

  "Yes, I think so." Her answer came a little too quickly, and she seemed to catch herself mid-way through. "Of course, my appointment book is in my office. You'll have to stop by to find out for sure."

  "Right. See you then."

  "See you." She nodded, then focused so hard on the papers in front of her that he was shocked her gaze didn't burn a hole on them.

  So, he flustered her. That was okay. Good, even.

  It'd be that much easier to get the job done.

  * * *

  Ellie Ashford stared blankly at her computer screen and hated herself a little more with every passing second.

  What was there to do, though?

  She was caught up on her grading, every class was up-to-date on their syllabus, and her doctoral thesis had already been handed in for preliminary review. Her work life was exactly like the rest of her life, regulated, organized, and incredibly frustrating.

  Besides, if she was honest with herself, the only reason she was bothered in the first place was because she desperately needed something to focus on. Something to distract her, possibly until she'd forgotten about her office hours entirely.

  Or the man who was supposed to see her.

  Not that he was anyone in particular. It would be beyond wrong to express her attraction toward a student. No, correction, it was wrong to even feel attraction toward a student.

  Which was good. Because she didn't.

  Have feelings for him, that is.

  She sighed, and then twisted her fingers in the strands of her thick, unruly hair.

  There was no denying the man, Silas, he'd said, held her attention, but it wasn't his exotic features or his predatory green eyes. No, it was the fact that she knew she'd never seen him in that class. It was past drop and add, so there was no point in attending unless he'd been there before.

  He wasn't though. She would have remembered seeing his name on the top of a paper, the sound of his voice, so much deeper than his fellow students, and, of course, the way he looked stuffed into that too-small lecture hall seat.

  Like the Incredible Hulk in a Barbie classroom.

  She shook her head, clearing the image of his broad shoulders and thick muscles from her mind. So, he was more developed than his fellow twenty year olds. And his voice was deeper. What did that matter to her?

  The real question was why anyone would sit through an introductory course on English Lit when they didn't have to. It was possible he'd been sitting there for the hell of it, or maybe he was a friend of one of her pupils, but she didn't think so.

  He had been there for some other reason, she just had to figure out what it was.

  She wrinkled her nose, glanced at the now-cold cup of tea on the corner of her desk, and took a sip from it anyway.

  She did have a way to solve the mystery. It wasn't one she'd used often, but it was within her rights. And it wasn't like she was using it to spy on anyone, she just needed to get to the bottom of things.

  Perfectly innocent.

  With a twinge of something that felt faintly like guilt, she logged in to the school database and pulled up the student history center.

  It's not like I'll even learn anything...

  The school only kept a record of academic notes for each student. She couldn't even find out his birthday on this thing, but it might give her some clues about why he'd been in class or had scheduled to meet with her during office hours.

  She clicked on the search bar and typed "Silas Navaro".

  No match found.

  She tried a few other spellings, but nothing came up then either. She even tried the last name, just in case he went by a middle name, but there wasn't even a person with that surname in the whole of the college.

  Weird. She opened her email, wondering if the office sent an updated class list along, but there were only a few frantic emails from students who'd overslept or failed one thing or another.

  The mystery continues.

  She could check Facebook... But that would be crossing a line, wouldn't it?

  "El." A male voice jolted her upright and she spilled her cold tea down the front of her blouse.

  "Shit." she murmured, then glanced up to find her ex, Dan Redmond, standing in the doorframe.

  "Didn't mean to interrupt your daydream," he said, then took another step into the room. He looked the same as ever, which was to say perfectly regular. He was the sort of man who was nice enough, well-kept enough, and well-off enough, but who'd never turned a head in his life.

  He had regular brown hair and unimportant brown eyes. A normal, oval face.

  The kind of guy people wouldn't notice if they were standing right next to him.

  Not like Silas...

  Ugh, where had that thought come from?

  "Not daydreaming," she rushed out. "Just, um..."

  She blanked on an excuse and shook her head. "Anyway, I thought we had an agreement. You weren't supposed to come into my office anymore?"

  "Right, well, I just wanted to let you know that the email system is down, and the department chair called a staff meeting for tonight.”

  Double Shit.

  He stepped deeper into the room, lifted her disca
rded teacup, and stuck it under the little Keurig on the nearby bookshelf.

  She wanted to argue, but decided to focus on the news instead. "Tonight? Isn't that sort of, you know, short notice of a mandatory meeting?"

  Dan popped a tea filter into the machine and made her a fresh cup. Again, she opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

  "Why? Does it matter? Have some place to be?" He lifted his boring eyebrows, and Ellie frowned.

  Maybe their break-up hadn't been harsh and bitter, but she still wasn't about to admit to someone she used to date that she had no foreseeable plans on a Friday night.

  "I'll move some things around. Thanks." She glanced down at her keyboard and waited for him to take the cue and leave. Unfortunately, the only thing not completely typical of Dan was his understanding of social graces.

  She cleared her throat, mumbled something about grading, and then he finally set her tea in front of her and took off, only to be quickly replaced by the face she'd been thinking about all afternoon.

  No, not face, the body. No, no, no, not that either.

  Silas. The person. The student, she reminded herself.

  "Mr. Navaro." She sat straighter in her seat, then gestured to the overstuffed floral chair across from her desk.

  Of all the offices in the English building, hers was the most eclectic, and considering the modern gothic professors tended to deck out their places with coffins and fangs, that was saying something.

  For Ellie, there was no one theme to her work space, so she collected fragments of all the things she taught—dolls with corsets sat in the corner and displays of British currency hung on the walls alongside elaborate tapestries of Jane Austen novels and Shakespearian plays.

  Silas glanced at these for a moment, then at the chair in front of her, and finally said. "Do you want me to grab you a paper towel? You seem to have..."

  He gestured to her breasts and she glanced down, suddenly feeling the chill of the wet cloth against her.