Page 9 of Tiger Betrayal

She looked really cute in the uniform. She would never be in the shop changing tires, but she was wearing the same dark blue coveralls with a little nametag pinned right over her left tit.

Her waist was sinched and showed off her hourglass figure, and God, he hungered for her.

Not like a Rabbit though. Not like when he’d hunted Misty. Stellan hungered for her like Mars had craved Ren last year.

He knew he was in trouble. The tiger did too, which was probably why he was pitching a fit.

Someone like Stellan should never be anchored to a woman.

He would ruin her life.

That’s what he did. He ruined peoples’ lives.

He’d ruined his mother’s, he’d made a mess of his entire youth, and then after he’d been Turned, he’d ruined his brother’s lives. But most of all…very most of all…he’d ruined his own.

Everything he touched turned to mud, so he had to find a way to be less interested in Laramie, for her own good.

Craig returned from his lunch break, and Stellan shoved the tire onto the truck and bolted it into place at lightning speed. He didn’t even care if the guys saw him right now. He needed out of here.

Stellan strode right for the door and made a beeline for the break room, grabbed his lunch from the fridge and made his way past the front desk in a quest to go straight outside.

He couldn’t though.

He couldn’t.

Not with Laramie offering that pretty smile and the little wave, like she’d been waiting for him to come in. He backed up a few steps, ripped his brown sack lunch open and slapped a sandwich onto the counter in front of her. She jumped.

“I made this for you,” he gritted out, and then he left without looking back at her or saying another word.

Why were his palms clammy?

Stellan shook his head hard and closed his eyes tightly for three steps as he rounded the building. He nearly ran into a customer who had been smoking a cigarette back there. “Watch it,” he muttered, brushing past him.

The picnic table had been placed far enough away from the shop that most of the guys were too lazy to walk to it. For a man like Stellan though, this spot was a lifesaver. Honestly, it had probably saved the lives of half the assholes he worked with too. This was his reset button.

He walked through the shallow layer of trees and wiped off the bench seat of the table, facing away from the shop so he didn’t get distracted with annoying people.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, but he didn’t even bother to look at it. Either Mars or Dame were probably calling. They did it almost every day right now. Get a life.

He swallowed down a growl and pulled two sandwiches from the bag and muttered a curse when he realized he hadn’t bought a Coke from the vending machine before he came out here.

He turned to head back, but froze, half-standing, half-sitting.

Laramie was headed this way with the sandwich in her hand, and two Cokes wedged between her ribs and her forearm. She stuttered to a stop when she locked eyes with him and hesitated there.

“Um, is it okay if I eat with you?” she called across the empty lot.

Talk, he told himself after thirty seconds. “Fine.”

He sat back down and waited for her to reach him.

“Murph said he was surprised you didn’t get your daily Coke from the machine in there, so I figured I would bring you one,” she explained softly as she came around the table and sat on the opposite side, diagonal from him like she was trying to sit as far away as possible.

She scooted one of the soft drinks into the middle of the table and averted her gaze. Her cheeks were bright red as she unwrapped the sandwich he’d given her.

“I don’t like to talk on my lunch breaks,” he ground out.

“That’s okay with me.” She mimed zipping up her lips. But then she unzipped them again to take a bite of the BLT he’d made her.