Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 by Vivi Andrews

“Guys, he kissed me! Help me figure out what it means .”
    Yeah. That would go over well.
    She just didn’t have any girlfriends.
    She was friendly with Moira—though the bear shifter had such a mild temperament Grace sometimes worried she would offend her with her more colorful opinions. Moira’s dominant characteristic was kindness—a statement which could never be made about Grace.
    She liked Patch well enough, but she’d only begun getting to know the cougar shifter. The age gap was wide enough—and Patch had been far enough outside the pride hierarchy for most of her life—that they’d never really talked before she and Roman had mated. Now their interactions, while friendly, were defined by their connections to the Alpha. Grace would always be first-and-foremost Roman’s lieutenant, which wasn’t exactly conducive to girl talk with his mate.
    And while Whiskey might be a world-class listener—and probably the closest thing to a confidante Grace had—it didn’t feel right to tell her. It didn’t feel right to tell any of them.
    Unfortunately, that didn’t help her figure out what the hell had happened—or escape the fact that it had. Dominec CrazyAss had kissed her. And not just a peck.
    Could he be her new fuck buddy? The idea was insane. Yes, she’d frequently been tempted to throw herself against him to see which one of them would end up on top, but she hadn’t meant it like that . Though the thought was entirely too hot.
    Suddenly the flush on her cheeks had to do with far more than the fact that she’d jogged halfway across the pride lands.
    Okay. So there was an attraction there. Fine. That didn’t mean she had to act on it. Getting involved with Freddy Krueger wasn’t high on her list of life goals.
    Though if he tried to kiss her again… Well. It wasn’t her fault if she let him.
    Grace shoved through the back door of the infirmary and moved quickly to the tiny locker room next to the office they all shared—though Brandt tried to claim it as his own. She tossed her backpack into her locker and closed it before following the sound of voices toward the large front room. Adrian and Rachel were already there, chatting with Dr. Brandt amid the patient beds and exam tables.
    Moira was nowhere in sight—though she had to be in the building. When Grace had called Brandt this morning to let him know Rachel was coming in, she’d been able to hear Moira’s yelp of excitement in the background. The midwife wouldn’t miss a shot at picking Dr. Russell’s brain.
    Rachel had the beginnings of a black eye—which Grace fully intended to investigate as soon as Adrian left, though the good doctor wasn’t acting afraid of the Hawk. It had better have been an accident. Grace liked the Hawk. She’d hate to have to kick his ass into next week if she found out he’d been knocking around his girl.
    As soon as she shooed Adrian off to his shift on the perimeter and Brandt went back into the bowels of the infirmary to find Moira, Grace made a point of putting the stiffly formal doctor at ease and then bringing up the shiner.
    The good doctor was comfortingly irate that Grace would even imply that Adrian might hurt her—insisting with gratifying indignation that she’d gotten in the way of one of Adrian’s Organization nightmares the previous night—but Grace made a note to keep an eye on the couple, just in case. Lieutenants looked out for their pride mates, and Rachel was pride now, even if she was human.
    Grace let the subject drop, Moira appeared—full of enthusiasm for the day—and they all got down to the business of showing Rachel Russell the pride’s medical facilities and digging into her knowledge of shifter DNA.
    Time flew when you were talking about hormone therapies and cross-breed fertility. It felt like no time at all, but must have been hours later when the four of them wound up crammed into Brandt’s office and the conversation turned to her work at the Organization.
    When she