The jaguar snuffled at him, staring with unblinking golden eyes—flecks of green, amber and brown dotted the irises.
Dallas quickly assimilated his surroundings. His fear became manageable as he did so. “You aren’t going to kill me.”
The jaguar blinked then, slowly.
“Why don’t you shift?” Dallas asked. Surely the jaguar was a shifter. Otherwise, why would it have dragged him off? And who would have made the—he glanced down—mossy bed he was lying on? That wasn’t something that could be done without opposable thumbs.
Strangely enough, the chill left Dallas in small increments as he looked at the jaguar. Some parts of him grew warmer than others.
Which was when he realized he was completely naked. “Hey! Where are my clothes?” He gave a thumbs up to the jaguar. “You dirty, dirty boy.”
That got him a growl or yowl. He wasn’t sure how to categorize it.
The jaguar stood up and Dallas gulped. It really was huge.
Not only did it rise onto all four feet, it kept going and in less than a second, the jaguar was a man.
Dallas’ mouth and throat went dry as his dick grew erect. “Oh. Damn.” He swallowed and reminded himself not to let his tongue hang out as he lusted over the gorgeous man. “You are…”
Long, black hair hung to the man’s hips. He was tall, with a very broad chest and wide shoulders, and a slender, tapered waist. There wasn’t a single hair anywhere on his body besides his armpits. Not his chest, belly, or his groin.
Dallas’ eyes might have bugged as he took in the thick, veiny cock curving up to the man’s navel. Ruddy brown with a darker purple crown, it would stretch a man so wide he’d barely be able to stand it.
Dallas clenched his ass. “Um. That’s… Who are you?” he got out, even as he stared at that cock and the plump, hairless balls beneath it.
Those were some really nice thighs, too. The man didn’t have skinny legs like Dallas did. They were all muscular and defined.
“Tiago.”
Dallas’ gaze shot up to the man’s. “Huh?”
He huffed and spread a hand over his chest. “I am Tiago. You are Dallas. Now we can fuck.”
Dallas was easy, that was a fact. He liked making people happy and a lot of time that meant sexually too because hey, there were lonely guys who were so glad to get some. If Dallas could make them feel better by bending over or sucking cock, what was the harm in it? Most of the time he enjoyed it. If not the sex itself, the knowledge that he’d made someone else happy, at least.
But this was different.
“How did I get here?” Dallas asked suspiciously.
Tiago loosely gripped his own dick and began to stroke. “I brought you. For this.”
Dallas clenched his butt again. He was harder than he’d ever been, his cock aching, even, yet he didn’t like the idea that he’d been kidnapped. At all. “How?”
Tiago’s skin darkened on his cheeks. He narrowed his eyes at Dallas. “I— You started to wake up. I didn’t want you to shout. There is only one of me and many of you.”
“Answer my question,” Dallas demanded. He pinched the tip of his cock. Be-fucking-have, you stupid stump! The last thing we need is to be getting turned on like this by a guy who’s abusive and psychotic. I can’t even have Stockholm Syndrome yet! I just woke up.
Tiago narrowed his eyes even more. “I would prefer not to.”
“I bet you would prefer that,” Dallas muttered. “Did you hit me?”
Tiago blanched. His poor face was running a gamut of colors. “I—I didn’t mean to—I was in my jaguar form and I don’t even know why I—You were—” He sputtered and finally groaned. “Gods!”
Dallas touched his temple. There was a small bump right where his first injury had been. “You smacked me in the head, you asshole.” He wasn’t feeling so much like a people pleaser right then.
“I didn’t mean to!” Tiago growled and began to pace. He couldn’t go far, which made watching him kind of uncomfortable.
Dallas was going to get dizzy all over again. “Explain to me how you accidentally hit me in the head then. Did you accidentally drag me here, too?” He winced when he looked at his knees. “I’m all scraped up. You want to fuck me after hitting me, kidnapping me, dragging me who knows where, stripping me naked—”
“The clothes tore!” Tiago said, pointing at him. “I did not remove them for voyeuristic purposes. After I pulled you from the river, the clothes were useless. We hit some rocks, the thin material was shredded. It hid nothing. I tried not to hurt you.” Tiago ran his hands partway through his hair, stopped, and gave both handfuls a tug. “I don’t even know why I had to have you! None of this makes sense. I should be tracking the drug dealer and planning to rid my homeland of—” Tiago snapped his mouth shut, his teeth clacking together audibly.
Dallas started to ask him what he’d been about to say, but a startling idea occurred to him. He didn’t have Stockholm Syndrome. He was attracted to Tiago very much, despite not knowing him, despite being abducted and walloped upside the head. There was a possibility this was more than just a sex thing.
Feeling like he’d swallowed a net full of butterflies, Dallas said, “Explain to me what happened. Everything. Why I’m here, especially.”
“I don’t know,” Tiago said after a long moment during which he glared at Dallas. “I want you. I…wanted to get closer to you. You were sleeping. I knew there were many wolf shifters in the house, so I was very careful. I only wanted to see you, but you opened your eyes—”
Dallas remembered that now.
“And you were going to scream.” Tiago shook his head. “I could not fight them all and survive. I meant to run. I started to. Stumbled, lurched forward. I had to stop you from alerting them.”
“By kidnapping me?” Dallas pressed. His cock was still as hard as the highest quality steel.
Tiago’s panicked expression was fleeting before he slipped into a neutral one. “I don’t know what to tell you. It was impulse. I have never carried off a lover before.”
“I’m not your lover,” Dallas said, needing to push Tiago. “I still have a major issue with you hitting me. How many of your exes have you hit?”
“None,” Tiago snarled. “I do not abuse my lovers! I wouldn’t do such a thing. It was an accident, I tell you.”
Dallas touched his temple and raised an eyebrow at that.
Tiago sighed and finally quit pacing. He sat down on the ground as if the hardness of it didn’t bother him at all. “It wasn’t intentional. I suppose, somewhere deep inside, it could have been a survival instinct. Stop the prey from alerting others to my presence. I was disoriented. I have never been so drawn to someone.” He pushed two chunks of hair behind his ears and looked at Dallas. “I saw you, yesterday, and before. I could not stop watching you. You are beautiful, in this form and the other, and I hate that I like your wolf. I don’t want to. Your kind doesn’t belong here.”
Dallas had been feeling flattered and leaning more than a little to putting out for Tiago—until that last bit. “My kind doesn’t belong here? Then maybe I should get out of this damned cave and leave you alone. You, honey, are one fucked up, hot mess.” Dallas pushed to his feet. “Figures the sexiest man I’ve ever seen would be a total head case. Bigotry comes in all flavors,” he added to himself. “My kind. Whatever.”
“Wolves aren’t native to this area,” Tiago said, and that might have been desperation making his voice sound higher-pitched than the deep rumble it had been before. “They are an invasive species, and the rainforest is being destroyed by such things! Our ecosystem—”
Dallas held up a hand. “Stop. I am leaving. So help me, if you try to hit me, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll do something!” Probably scream so loud he burst both of their eardrums.
Tiago frowned, his thin lips thinning to a narrow line. “No, I wouldn’t hit you again, but you can’t just leave. I— What is wrong with me? This….keeps happening!” He waved his erection at Dallas. “And y
ou! You, too. You protest that I am all these horrible things, yet your body is calling to me.”
“Well, my body doesn’t rule my mind, dude. Bodies are just things, and they react,” Dallas continued. He didn’t even know what he was saying at this point. Logical arguments weren’t cutting it. “Whatever! So my dick is hard, so what? I can control myself. You aren’t a nice man at all, which is too bad because you’re really hot, but I guess it’s no surprise. A lot of the hottest guys are total jerks. Stalk me, hit me, drag me to some beautiful cave with a waterfall and think I should let you fuck me because you… You what? You what?” he shouted, completely befuddled and angry and so horny he didn’t know if he could walk away. “I don’t understand what you want from me or why you want me in the first damn place!”
Tiago, instead of getting angry, smiled and looked every bit as confused as Dallas felt. “You have a strength I didn’t suspect.”
Well, that was the wrong thing to say. Dallas planted a fisted hand on one hip and glared. “What the hell does that mean? You know what? Don’t even answer. I’ve been the runt all my life. I was the picked on one not only from my litter, but from my pack because of it. My mom coddled me and my dad didn’t know what to do with the weak little gay boy he had for a son. All he probably ever wanted was a good ol’ butch boy he could hunt and run with, but he ended up with me and my sisters. Though, okay, Agatha is really muscular and—” He reined himself back on track. “And it doesn’t matter. You’re just another one. Another one who thinks I’m the runt and weak. I’m not weak just because I’m skinny and short and like to make people happy, you asshole!”
Dallas pressed his other hand over his mouth. He hated calling people bad names. He hated being angry. He hated feeling hurt, especially when he didn’t know why he felt that way.
He spun around to leave, determined to ignore his raging hormones and let his temper guide him.
“Please don’t leave.”
Three words. They shouldn’t have had any power at all, yet they stopped him in his tracks. Dallas stood six feet away from possible freedom. “I am not having sex with you. Not after what you said about my kind. I would have maybe, before that, but I can’t stand bigotry.”
Tiago sighed loudly. “The rainforest is being destroyed, Dallas—by men like the one your pack is hunting, Robert Butler, and by companies, corporations, seeking to profit off of it. They don’t care about the damage they cause, the wildlife they force into extinction, the plants that will never be found anywhere else. It is only money and greed that drives them. This place is getting smaller, and to bring in a species that doesn’t belong will take a toll on it.”
“You’re still arguing about ‘my kind’ not belonging here.” Dallas took another step toward the waterfall. His heart slammed against his ribs. Pain that wasn’t exactly physical spread throughout his body. He took a second step and it got worse. “Oh. Shit.” This could not be happening to him. No way, no how. He scrambled for something to say. “Ryder’s pack has been here for decades, maybe longer.”
“Not many decades in this rainforest,” Tiago responded. “Oh shit what?”
“All of this, everything.” Dallas meant to sound angry, but he was tired, confused and scared. “The wolf shifters aren’t hurting anything. They hunt, yes, but they don’t exceed their needs, and there aren’t a lot of them anyway. They aren’t hurting anything. You’re being a jerk. And you hit me—and kidnapped me, and made the worst proposition to me ever, and I am easy, Tiago, so if you insulted me enough that I won’t fuck you, that should tell you something.”
Tiago made a very loud, grumbling noise that might have been a snarl. “There is nothing easy about you that I have seen. You argue and you think, and you do not just bend over for me. You have gotten angry and what do you mean, ‘easy’?”
“I mean I have sex with lots of men,” Dallas replied. He managed another step, then another. He stretched his arm out and stuck the tips of his fingers in the waterfall. “They want me. They feel bad, sad, depressed or just horny, even curious. I’m down with it. I get off on making them feel good. Sometimes I don’t even come, and the guy doesn’t even notice.” Gods, why was he telling Tiago any of this?
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why I want to find these men and hurt them all,” Tiago mumbled. “I do not. Get. It.”
Dallas hung his head and let his arm drop to his side. His wolf was howling at him, and it wasn’t in agreement with his head. It was all for what his dick wanted.
Because the fact was, Fate had royally screwed up. Dallas closed his eyes. “Damn it. Damn it all, Tiago. I can’t be your mate.”
Never had he experienced so many tumultuous emotions. Tiago sat watching Dallas, admiring his slender form, even while he tried to rationalize why he shouldn’t want the man.
Being called a bigot was a slap in the face Tiago had never expected. Then there was the hitting accusation. “It was an accident. I don’t even know why it knocked you out.”
Dallas peered over his shoulder at him.
Tiago nodded. “I was startled when you opened your eyes. I jerked back, stumbled, I don’t know how. We hit heads. My skull is pretty hard in either form. I shook it off. You didn’t, and I couldn’t leave you there.”
“Why not?” Dallas asked.
That was the question Tiago had been asking himself all along. “I don’t know. I couldn’t understand why I approached you in the first place. Why I feel like if you leave now, you’ll rip out a part of me. That, especially, I don’t understand. We are strangers. We—”
“We are mates,” he heard in his head. In Dallas’ voice.
Tiago blinked, then blinked again. Dallas was still looking at him, so Tiago knew the man’s mouth hadn’t moved.
“What?” Tiago managed to scrape out.
Dallas groaned and turned to face him. “Mates. Mates mates mates mates, damn it! What the hell, Fate? You give me a mate who hates me and my kind?”
Tiago had never swooned in his life. He wasn’t about to do so then, even if he did suddenly feel swimmy. “Explain what you mean, please.”
“Oh my gawd, really?” Dallas huffed and rolled his eyes, then promptly whimpered and cupped his temple. “You had to hit me right where that psychotic hijacker did. My head hurts. Don’t you have destined mates?” He covered his face with his hands.
Destined mates sounded very serious. Very serious. “Ah. No?”
Dallas peeked at him through his fingers. “Don’t do this to me.”
“I haven’t done—” Tiago caught himself. “I mean, I did. Obviously. This mate business, though, I didn’t do it. We don’t have mates. Jaguars are solitary creatures. We fuck and move on.”
“Think to me,” Dallas demanded. “Do it. I reached you through the mental bond destined mates have. Fated mates. Call it what you like, we were apparently made for each other.”
Tiago was suddenly afraid to try. He knew he’d heard Dallas in his head. Even so, it didn’t seem nearly as scary or prophetic to hear him as it would if Tiago could speak to Dallas the same way.
But he’d never been a coward. “My full name is Tiago Henrique Silva de Souza. I was born in nineteen eighty-three. I am still considered a young one. Jaguar shifters can live for a very long time.”
“So can we. If we aren’t shot, hit by a car, killed by another wolf or shifter, things like that. There aren’t many diseases that get us. And we are conversing, telepathically. Shit. We really are mates.” Dallas burst out laughing. “Ah, dude. You’re stuck with one of them and I’m stuck with someone who is a great big, bigot! Someone messed up. This can’t be right.”
“I am not a bigot,” Tiago tried again. The mate part he would have to deal with later. And he wasn’t even going to think about the whole telepathy thing. “I am not. What I have said, any ecologist will tell you—any environmental specialist. I am not objecting to the existence of wolf shifters or humans, but of the introduction of them to this area.”
“Wolf sh
ifters aren’t newly introduced,” Dallas argued. “That pack has been here for a long time.”
“Not in rainforest years.” Tiago shook his head. “I have seen them build homes and install electronic equipment, traipse through and destroy plants without thought or care. For everything brought in, something is lost. I am afraid, Dallas. I am afraid that my home will be taken from me.”
It was his biggest fear, and he’d admitted it to a virtual stranger. Tiago would have been astounded, but after Dallas’ revelations, he was just tired—and still horny.
There were other emotions he would have to deal with later. Dallas’ story about his upbringing was going to haunt Tiago. Dallas might not think much of him, but Tiago believed Dallas to be a fine man.
“My full name is Dallas Edmond Tearman,” Dallas said. He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling of the cavern. “I’m twenty-nine. Not old in wolf shifter years. I think maybe instead of trying to run Ryder’s pack out or whatever you might be planning, you should try talking to them. Educating them. Forming an alliance, maybe. I’m not sure if you’re a nice person, and I have a problem with that. I can’t stand bigotry of any type. I don’t see how we fit together.”
Tiago felt Dallas’ anguish and confusion. It was the oddest thing. Every molecule in him wanted to sooth Dallas and ease his troubles. Again, nothing Tiago had ever felt before.
And he didn’t want Dallas to leave. If he did, Tiago would have to follow him.
Gods, Dallas was right about them. Jaguars didn’t have destined mates, but wolves did, and apparently, that trumped Tiago’s shifter nature. All of his bitching about invasive species, and Tiago was affected in a manner he never would have suspected possible.
He was well and truly involved in something he had no control over.
Chapter Five
They found Maarten’s car fifteen miles from the beach house. The small beater vehicle smelled of humans and of Maarten.
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