Read Tiger Bound for Free Online

bringing her so close, so fast—close enough to see the startled expression on the man’s face, to see the gun as he brought it to bear on her. She froze, staring back, forgetting to breathe entirely—seeing his body tense, seeing his intent, his finger on the trigger.
    But the man didn’t shoot her. He cursed, looking from her to Maks, and then he snarled in frustration—right before he bolted for the woods, his gait hampered by a new and definite limp.
    He didn’t shoot me.
    He didn’t—
    Katie shook herself free from the shock of it and ran to Maks’s twisted form. She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder—feeling instant relief at the life throbbing beneath her healer’s hand. The Core working hadn’t been profound—the lingering stench of its energies told her that much—and the bullet hadn’t been instantly mortal. And that meant, given a Sentinel’s amazing constitution, it likely wouldn’t be.
    Or so she thought, until she saw the steady pulse of arterial blood soaking the flannel shirt above his elbow. It shouldn’t be this way. Not with a Sentinel’s body, normally so fast to address such critical injuries.
    But when she reached to stanch the wound, Maks snatched her hand in mid-reach. He rumbled deeply in a tiger’s warning, the snarl turning handsome features harsh, his gaze never focusing on her at all—nothing but wounded instinct, defensive and striking out. Her hand twisted back most cruelly in his grip; she bit her lip on a cry of pain.
    Prey knew better than to make a sound of the wounded while in a predator’s grip.
    After a frozen moment still punctuated by that tiger’s warning, she used the warm slickness of his own blood against him, twisting within his grip until her hand popped free.
    He rolled over, hands clutching at his head, the rumble turned to nothing more than a man’s low groan.
    “Ohh, no,” she breathed. “Get back here.” Even a Sentinel would fail to recover from bleeding out. But the amulet injury, no matter how mild, came first. Had to, with this man who was still recovering from the last ambush, or she could lose him before she even started. To judge by his vague and distant gaze, she had little time indeed.
    Katie pulled his hands away from his head—oh, his blood everywhere—and replaced them with her own, fingers threading into the hair above his ears. “Maks,” she said, her voice low and barely quavering at all, her resentments and disappointments forgotten. “Look at me.”
    Not that he could, with his focus dazed and shifting, a wrenching panic creeping in behind the wild green. The flutter of it bloomed to life between them, a stab in Katie’s own chest—his confusion, his instinctive urge to fling himself into the tiger and run from this threat. And then his fear when that, too, slipped away from him.
    But Katie held him tightly. She slipped into the lightest of trances, grounding herself with his gaze—sliding into the same state from which she worked every day and then further, drawing on the healing potential that lived mostly untapped within her. Beyond the comfort for easing muscle, for generating the subtle knit of flesh that a vet might mistake for an exceptionally successful rehab. A deeper connection, reaching beyond body to soul.
    The energy of it came through her in gentle waves, insinuating itself into the rhythm of her breathing.
    Maks jerked away from her—or tried. He twisted uneasily; he closed his eyes and turned his head aside—or tried. But she held onto him with a strength well beyond the physical.
    Breathing. Touching. Connecting...
    His rumbled warnings faded, his breathing quite suddenly synched to hers.
    Touching. Connecting. Understanding...
    Wanting.
    He blinked a few times, hard and fast, his eyes widening—and then he was looking at her again. Looking back at her.
    The lingering buzz of connection should have faded instantly away; it didn’t. She floundered, decided to fake it...and when she smiled at him, he