“Where am I?” she whispered without opening her eyes.
“Aspen. How did you get here? Is someone chasing you?”
The female voice was unfamiliar so she forced her eyes to open. Light stabbed into her brain, making her shudder and moan.
“Get the light. She’s trying to open her eyes.”
The light seeping in through Heather’s eyelids dimmed, so she slowly tried again. She was lying in a bathtub and a woman knelt on the floor beside her. The woman moved her hands to the edge of the tub, silently waiting for Heather to speak. With the light off, she could keep her eyes open, but now the woman’s face was shadowed.
“Are you injured or just exhausted?” The woman finally spoke again after a long, tense silence.
Terrified and desperate to avoid the hunters, Heather had run until her legs gave out and she’d had no choice but to rest. “I feel much better now. Thank you for the energy.”
The woman chuckled. “She’s all yours. I have no use for wolves.” She pushed to her feet and walked out of the bathroom, brushing past a man Heather hadn’t noticed before.
Light from the hall illuminated one side of his face and outlined his muscular body. Jake Parlain. Holy shit, she’d run to Jake for help? She must have been out of her mind. There was no way he would stick his neck out for a wolf. No cat would.
“Why don’t you finish cleaning up then put on this robe? Now that you’re feeling better, you can explain what brought you here.” He placed the bathrobe beside the tub and slipped from the room, leaving the door ajar so she wasn’t in complete darkness.
The details of her situation came crashing down on her. She was naked and in the bathtub of a tiger-shifter. Her father had encouraged the hunters to run her down and rape her. Several of the bastards had spent the past seven or eight hours trying to do exactly that. After utter desperation triggered her shift, she’d run and run until she was too exhausted to move then she’d hid until she recovered enough to run some more. When or why she’d decided to come to Aspen she honestly couldn’t say, but Jake was no stranger, so somewhere along the line this had become her destination.
Pulling open the drain, she maneuvered her legs beneath her and carefully stood. She pulled the shower curtain closed then looked at the faucet assembly. It took a moment of fiddling to figure out how to trigger the sprayer but she soon had warm water streaming out. She slipped the sprayer back into the wall bracket and soaped her body with renewed determination. Dirt, sweat and manure coated her skin. The hunters had effortlessly followed her scent. She’d managed to stay ahead of them but she hadn’t been able to lose them. Until she spotted the fertilizer truck.
She shampooed her hair twice then stood beneath the spray, enjoying the warm water as it flowed across her aching limbs. She couldn’t believe she was still alive. When she shifted the first time, the transformation had been spontaneous. Though she wasn’t sure how she’d done it this time, it hadn’t just happened. She’d searched within herself and found the strength to escape an impossible situation.
What in the world should she tell Jake? How could she explain something she didn’t understand herself? She’d been trying to survive, desperate to avoid capture and the degradation of being raped. Somehow her body had just cooperated with her frantic determination.
Someone tapped on the door.
“You okay in there?” Jake asked.
“Almost done.”
“No hurry. I just wanted to make sure you were still with us.”
She wasn’t fooled by his easy manner. Once he realized she’d brought danger to his door, he’d shove her back out into the night. And how could she convince him otherwise when the hunters were out there searching for her?
Finally feeling clean again, she turned off the water and slid the curtain open. After drying her body, she wrapped the towel around her hair and slipped on the bathrobe. She pushed the bathroom door open and squinted into the light. Jake stood in the narrow hallway, arms folded across his broad chest. His knee was cocked, one boot heel resting against the wall.
He was every bit as attractive as she remembered and just as dangerous. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, accenting his high cheekbones. Silky black lashes framed his eyes, making the color hard to determine. At times she’d thought his eyes were brown. Right now they looked dark-green. His hair was night-black, thick and shiny, ready for her fingers. And his mouth could only be termed sensual, with the distinctly arched upper and generously full lower lip.
Standing here gawking at him like a lovesick schoolgirl was not going to help her case. “Do you have a comb or brush? I’ll never get the tangles out unless I do it while my hair’s still wet.”