Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance

  TRUSTING THE TIGER

  BY ZOE CHANT

  © Zoe Chant 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  CHAPTER ONE

  TONI

  Toni hauled the last suitcase out of the trunk of her car and closed the lid with a satisfying bang. Behind her, the wooden cabin she had rented for the weekend cast a cool shadow over her battered Toyota Corolla. The rest of the campsite was bathed in brilliant sunlight. Beyond the cabins, mossy paths broke through the trees of the forest, leading who-knows-where.

  Toni stretched and felt a smile begin to spread across her face. She’d been looking forward to this vacation for months, and she planned to make the most of it. A summer weekend in the great outdoors was just what she needed to de-stress from the endless grind of her life in the city. Toni’s feet were already itching to start exploring the forest. She knew there was a river nearby, and an abandoned mine, as well as miles of hiking trails. Countless options for her to enjoy herself on her own.

  Even if the original plan had been to enjoy it with her niece and nephew. Toni looked down at the pile of luggage by her feet and bit back a sigh. The twins had hopped out of the car the moment Toni had parked, and in the time it had taken her to test the key in the cabin door and pop the trunk, they had discovered that as well as a river, and an old mine, and all those hiking trails, Silver Forest also featured a BMX track, and was running a sports camp for kids over the weekend.

  Toni had considered telling the twins they would have just as much fun hanging out with their aunt as they would racing around on bikes with a bunch of kids their own age. That thought had lasted all of half a second. She’d signed the permission slip and gotten started telling herself that she could have just as much fun hanging out on her own as she would have had spending the whole weekend with two ten-year-olds in tow.

  First super fun solo activity? Unpacking the car!

  And next up – drumroll please, Toni thought wryly – shoving everything in a corner of the cabin!

  She sighed. There was no point trying to fool herself. Sure, it was a beautiful day, and she had a rare weekend of freedom ahead of her … but she just couldn’t shake off the feeling that every other person in Silver Forest had hightailed it the moment she arrived.

  It sounded ridiculous, but it was … kind of true. And one glance around the empty campsite only added fuel to the fire of her insecurities. The camp manager – Karen, her name was – had told Toni that all the other parents who had brought their kids to the camp had already headed out on their own adventure for the day, a bike ride into the foothills of the nearby mountains.

  Karen had very kindly offered to loan Toni a bike if she wanted to join them. Toni had an immediate vision of a pack of lean, spandex-clad men and women skimming through the forest as light as leaves on the breeze ... and then of herself, lumbering up behind them. She didn’t need to see Karen’s stealthy up-and-down glance at her body to know she probably wasn’t going to fit the mold for this group.

  Toni was no stranger to feeling the odd one out. As the only full-time human in a family of cat shifters, she was used to feeling big and clumsy. Growing up with siblings who could naturally twist themselves into pretzels, or jump over her head, had left her feeling left out more than once.

  Maybe that was why she was feeling so gloomy now. Being made to feel like she wasn’t good enough, like her body wasn’t powerful or flexible or fast enough, brought back those old feelings of loneliness.

  She knew her family loved her, even if they left her in the dust athletics-wise. Just like she knew Lexi and Felix loved her, even if they sometimes found her less compelling than the possibility of crashing a BMX bike into a big pile of dirt. All the love in the world couldn’t hide the fact that she would never be as gifted as the rest of her family.

  Everyone else in the Oglietti clan had heightened senses, even in human form. They could identify different species of bird just by smell. Toni could barely identify most birds by sight.

  Everyone else in her family could hold whole conversations in telepathic shifter-speak, sending their speech out to as many or as few people as they liked. Toni didn’t have anywhere near that skill. The most she could manage was a sort of psychic shout – one that every shifter around her would hear, not just whoever she was talking to.

  Everyone else in her family was a shifter. Toni was, essentially, human.

  She would never measure up.

  A bird whistled cheerfully above her head. Caught off-guard in the middle of her gloomy thoughts, Toni laughed. What was she thinking, worrying over things she could never change when the sun was shining and there was a whole forest to explore?

  Toni heaved the last of the bags into the cabin and dusted off her hands. The paths at the edge of the campsite looked invitingly cool and shaded, full of the promise of adventure.

  The sound of children whooping and yelling drifted through the trees. Toni grabbed a light sweater and water bottle and followed the noise. She would check what time the BMX activities finished for the day, and let the twins know she was going for a walk, before she headed off on her own.

  She began to feel better the moment she stepped under the trees. Toni had always loved the outdoors, and now, the natural beauty of the forest seemed to wash her unhappy thoughts and insecurities away. Tall trees with leaves all shades of green swayed in the breeze, sending rippling sunlight across the ground. All around, summer flowers were peeking out, carpeting the woods with bright bursts of color.

  This is what a real vacation should be like, she thought to herself. Not worrying about what other people think, or stressing over whether the kids are enjoying themselves – just relaxing and taking some time for myself.

  Although it would be nice to have someone to share this with…

  The path led out into a wide clearing, and Toni raised one hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked across it. Then she jumped quickly backwards. Something shrieked past her at waist-height.

  Toni blinked as the flash of movement resolved itself into a small child on an even smaller bike. Just as she was breathing a sigh of relief that she had avoided crashing straight into the kid, the bike tumbled off the side of the track into a bush.

  “Hey! Are you all right?” Toni rushed forward. Before she made it halfway to the crash scene, the kid got to their feet, jumped back on the bike and rocketed off down the trail. Toni hadn’t even had time to see whether the kid was a girl or a boy – just that they seemed to be mostly made out of mud. She winced slightly as she thought of what Lexi and Felix were going to look like by the end of the day.

  “Don’t worry about her. The smaller ones are pretty bouncy,” called out a male voice. Toni turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered man walking toward her. With the sun behind him, she couldn’t make out his features. “You, on the other hand, should probably get out of here.”

  Toni felt herself go red. Right. She knew she didn’t belong here. She didn’t need some rude stranger to pound the point home.

  She was about to reply angrily when the man stepped forward.

  “I mean – get out of the way!”

  He reached out and grabbed Toni around the waist, swinging her to the side of the track just as two more cyclists raced around the corner. Then another two, and then lots more.

  Toni didn’t want to think what would have happened if she had still been standing in the middle of the trail when the cyclists swarmed past. Nothing good, she imagined. She would definitely be sporting some new tire-track bruises at least.

  Instead … the man was definitely still holding onto her.

  As soon
as she realized this, he let go, as though she’d spoken out loud. Toni mentally re-ran the last thirty seconds in her head. She was sure she hadn’t said anything. Well, maybe squeaked a bit when the BMXers rushed past…

  When you felt his strong arms around you, more like, a voice in her head teased. She ignored it.

  “I’m sorry about that,” the man was saying. “The trail from the cabins doesn’t usually come out this close to the bike path, but they had to re-route after some trees fell down last winter. It’s not a problem most of the time, but with this many kids…” He shrugged. “I think they get tunnel vision, and don’t even think about whether someone might step out in front of them.”

  “Right,” said Toni breathlessly. “People … or bushes.” She nodded at the bush the first cyclist had crashed into. Another pair of legs was sticking out of it, waving energetically. The man made a noise that was half-groan, half-laugh, and bounded over to help.

  Making sure the man’s attention was on the kid, not on her, Toni ran her hands down her shirt, smoothing the wrinkles from where he had grabbed her. She could still feel the heat of his arms around her. She had to force herself not to check if he’d left muscly-man-arm prints on her blouse.

  And she could feel herself blushing. Not the angry red of a moment ago, either.

  Her normal response to some strange guy grabbing her would be to slap him away, but even if this man hadn’t just saved her from a tsunami of tiny BMXers…

  Toni watched as her mysterious savior plucked the child and bike from the bush, one in each arm, and set both upright on the path without breaking a sweat. She lingered over the view of his back and butt as he leaned down to check the kid wasn’t hurt. His t-shirt had strained over his muscles, and she couldn’t help but notice that his trousers were, well, well-fitted.

  Toni realized her blush was going to stick around a while yet.

  The young boy jumped on his bike again and disappeared around the corner. The man watched him go and then turned to Toni with a slight frown on his face.

  “I should talk to Karen about this corner,” he said. “That bush is only going to last so long as a buffer.”

  From this angle, instead of haloing his body, the sunlight lit him up, as though someone had set up a spotlight purely for Toni to enjoy the view. He must have been well over six feet tall, with dark russet hair curling over deep brown eyes. A thin, forest-green t-shirt stretched over a sculpted chest, and its sleeves rode up over his thick biceps. No wonder he had picked her up so easily – he looked like he was made of pure muscle, the sort you get from working hard with your hands all day, not popping steroids and veins in the gym.

  Toni wasn’t sure whether she wanted to thank him for pulling her out of the way, or rip him a new one for grabbing her instead of warning her about the danger. Instead, she huffed a small word best described as, Umph.

  The man grinned at her and stepped back across the bike path. He was squinting slightly, and she realized that the sun was in his eyes when he tried to look at her. Just like it had gotten in hers before, when she was looking at him.

  “I’m Jack Silver. Are you here for the BMX camp?”

  “Sort of,” Toni said. She tensed, waiting for the inevitable up-down glance and are-you-sure-you-belong-here? look. Then she frowned. “Wait – Silver … as in Silver Forest?”

  Jack laughed and ran his fingers through his dark red hair, looking away. Toni thought she saw a hint of pink appear on his cheeks and immediately regretted her question. The shock that had almost made her snap at him had drained away as fast as it had appeared. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass the man who had saved her. But Jack didn’t seem upset.

  “Silver, as in … oh, the forest, this camp, the old mine down the way, and I’m pretty sure Karen’s got plans to name this BMX camp after me, as well. Seems like the sort of thing she would find funny.”

  He turned to walk further into the clearing, and Toni joined him.

  Clearing was possibly too generous a word for the area. It was less thickly wooded than the forest itself, but there were still enough bushes and smaller trees around to keep Toni from being able to get a good bearing on where they were, or where any cyclists might pop out from.

  No wildflowers would survive long under bike wheels, but the clearing, criss-crossed with bike paths, had a different sort of life to it. This part of the forest was full of the various sounds of small children enjoying themselves – laughter, whoops, and blood-curdling screeches. Toni tried to keep her eyes peeled for Lexi and Felix, but under their helmets and protective gear it was difficult to tell any of the kids apart.

  “Watch out!”

  Jack put out an arm to stop her from walking into two spinning wheels hurtling toward the ground. They had just rounded a patch of brush and come out next to a dirt-pile jump. Toni swore under her breath in a way that had become second nature after many adventures with the copy-cat twins: fiercely, but quietly enough not to be comprehensive to tiny ears.

  She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or just depressed that human children could be as nerve-wracking as the shifter variety.

  “You must have some sort of radar to know where they’re going to jump out from,” she joked. “I’m Toni, by the way. Toni Oglietti. I brought my niece and nephew out here for a weekend camping trip, but then they saw the sign for the BMX activities, and, well…” She waved abstractedly. “Here we are. Well, here I am, and there they are … somewhere.”

  She clamped her mouth shut before she could babble anymore. What was wrong with her?

  That was a silly question. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. The hottest guy she had ever seen had just saved her life. Well, saved her skin from a bunch of embarrassing bruises, at least.

  She sneaked a look sideways and caught his eyes flickering away from her. Had she thought his eyes were brown? Maybe it was a trick of the light but they seemed gold-colored now.

  She blinked, and his eyes were brown again.

  It must have been a trick of the light. Toni had been amazed all day by how clear and bright the light was this far from the city. No exhaust fumes here, just the sweet smell of flowers and green growth.

  I wish I could stay here forever, she thought wistfully, looking up at the wide blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in it—just endless blue, with the sun blazing white-gold in the middle.

  “Oh, it might look nice now, but wait until winter and all of this will be frozen under six feet of snow and ice,” Jack said absently.

  Toni stiffened. Had she—? No, she was sure she hadn’t said that out loud.

  Jack must have caught the edge of her thoughts. That could happen with non-shifters sometimes, Toni knew. Toni had been the same before she had trained herself to hear and speak with her family in that way.

  She needed to be more careful. It had been so long since she used mind-speak that she had gotten rusty at sharing and protecting her thoughts. It had taken her almost half the car ride here to re-learn how to think her thoughts at Lexi and Felix, rather than just let them bounce around her own brain. Clearly she had now gone too far in the other direction.

  Toni sighed. Trust her to screw things up. After spending the whole drive out to the campground practicing mind-speak with the twins, she probably now needed to practice not mind-speaking.

  “Do you live around here, then?” she asked lightly. No point drawing attention to anything strange.

  Jack raised his eyebrows expressively. “That’s right, the Silver man in the Silver house in the Silver Forest. That’s me. It’s a bit House-that-Jack-built, I know.”

  “Oh, come on,” Toni teased. “You can’t go and live in a house called Silver and then complain that everything’s named after you. That’s got to be on purpose.”

  He spread his hands innocently. “Oh, I suppose next you’re going to say I could change my own name, too? Or just never have moved here?”

  Toni laughed out loud. “What? You moved here? I thought it must be an old fami
ly thing – come on, if you chose to be the Silver man in the Silver everything, that’s all on you. What, did you move here just so you could complain about it?”

  “You’ve got me!” Jack threw his head back and grinned up at the sky, his eyes shining. “My life is so terribly perfect, I have to seek out these embarrassments where I can. Every week, I order in a new set of silver cutlery just so I can complain when I unwrap it.”

  Toni’s laughter escalated into an unladylike gurgle, which she hurriedly stifled.

  They paused on the edge of another path to let another battalion of BMXers past. Toni tried to see if Lexi or Felix were among the group, but they all passed by so quickly she couldn’t tell if they were there or not.

  Like all the paths in the grounds, so many wheels had grooved the dirt that the track itself was almost a foot lower than the surrounding brush and walking trails. Jack held out his hand to help Toni across once the last of the bikers had sped away. Blushing – again! – she took it. His hand was warm, and large, the slight roughness of calluses brushing against her skin.

  Toni licked her lips, trying to find something to say to distract herself from the feeling of his skin against her own.

  “Is that what you do, then?” she joked. “Professional silverware-appraiser and gnasher of teeth?”

  She closed her hand over itself as he let it go, holding on to the feeling of his fingers pressed against hers.

  “Nothing so exciting, sorry. I’m – I guess you could say I’m in management. My company looks after a number of wildlife preserves around the world. Places that might otherwise be leveled for construction, no matter what sort of natural beauty would be destroyed.”

  “That sounds exciting to me,” Toni said. “You must see so many amazing places. I’d love to see more of the world.” Her mouth ran on ahead of her brain, which was still occupied by how hot the man walking beside her was. “This vacation is the farthest I’ve been from home in years, and it’s only a half a day’s drive from the city!”