Page 94 of Tiger Queen

Jake rose from the bed. He was a beautiful sight while nude, all muscles and tattoos and shadows.

“No cuddling?” I asked as he gathered his clothes.

“No room.” He pointed at us: me resting on Anthony’s chest and David cuddling with me on the other side. “I draw the line at snuggling with my brothers. And I definitely ain’t sleeping at the foot of the bed like a dog.”

“Aww,” I said. “I’ll pet you like a dog.”

Jake came over and cupped my cheek, then gave me a slow, passionate kiss. “You’re sexy when you pout.”

I stuck out my lower lip even further. “Not sexy enough for you to stay.”

“Dibs on cuddling with you next time. And next time you guys had better respect it.”

He left the room, and I sighed against my other two men.

“This is nice.”

“It is,” Anthony said. “We should stay in bed forever.”

“If only.”

I don’t remember drifting off. I was too comfortable to think about it. One moment I was snuggling with Anthony and David, and the next moment a phone alarm was going off.

David jumped out of bed. “Shit. What time is it?” He reached his phone and turned the alarm off. “Thought I slept in at first. I was out.”

I rolled out of bed with him and left Anthony to sleep by himself. “I thought you said you were a light sleeper.”

David grinned in the darkness. “I usually am.”

We were extra lovey-dovey as we did our work that day. Kissing randomly whenever we passed each other, and sharing several sexy looks. Anthony had decided that he was a winker, and gave me a wink every time we passed. It was cute how he kept doing it, and got all smiley when he was around me. One time while I was taking photographs of Chloe the tiger for documentation, David came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

“Haven’t gotten enough of my ass, have you?”

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.”

Being with the three of them last night was liberating. The three of them had shared me. Now they were all on even footing. It even seemed like Jake was getting along with his brothers more than usual.

There was a lot of work to do to prepare the animals for transportation. We had to give extremely-thorough documentation to the transportation company, which would be driving them to Charlotte, flying them to Nairobi, quarantining them for fourteen days upon arrival, and then driving them to the new national park. Not only that, but officials from the Kenyan Wildlife Service would be supervising the entire transfer—and they had their own set of forms and documents that needed to be filled out for every single animal. It would take me at least a week to prepare everything. Which was fine, since we had just gotten a tentative moving date that afternoon: June 28.

In four weeks, if nothing went wrong, we would be sending all of these animals to real homes.

As I walked through the zoo one evening, I took stock of everything. It was happening. The reason I came to work here was actually coming true. Deep down, part of me didn’t think it would ever happen. It filled me with both relief and sadness. I was going to miss the animals. I had grown fond of them.

“Especially you, Caesar,” I said as I reached his enclosure. We had been keeping him in the temporary cage while his stitches healed, but we had moved him back to the big enclosure this morning and he was a happy boy to have room to roam around. I opened the outer gate and approached the fence, and he stood up on his hind legs to reach through the bars and hug me the way he had the first day I tried to feed him. I was as comfortable around him as if he was a very large dog, and he made happy little grunts as I scratched his fur around his neck.

“You’re going to a good home,” I reassured him. “You’re older than most tigers, so they’re going to keep a close eye on you as you reintegrate. Make sure you can handle it. But you’ll have thousands and thousands of acres to roam…”

I felt myself tearing up. We were still weeks away and already the thought of saying goodbye was making me emotional. I scratched Caesar one final time and went back to the house for dinner.

“There you are,” David said when I came through the front door. “I thought you finished up half an hour ago.”

“I was taking my time, doing a final sweep of everything,” I said. “I’m not late for dinner, am I?”

He took my hand and led me into the office. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Does this surprise involve doing things to my body? Because I definitely need a shower first.”

“Nothing like that. Although now you’ve got my imagination running wild…”