A second later, Lord Balam landed in a crouch beside me. His jaguar cloak was pulled up over his head, and for the first time, I saw that it had a face on the hood. He lowered his head, a growl building in his throat.
“Shift so we can talk to you, or let us go in peace,” he said, his words slightly slurred. His tail lashed at the rain, and one of the ears of his hood twitched. His fingers gripped the surface of the road, long razor-sharp claws extending from the ends of them. I couldn’t tell where the cloak ended, and he began.
The panther snarled, baring its teeth. My heart just about stopped in my chest. Lord Balam leapt in front of me, the fur cloak rippling, pulling tighter around him as his body grew to fill it, the hood sinking over his face, his claws extending further. He growled back at the panther, and I considered whether it wouldn’t be better to be eaten by an alligator.
Balam planted his feet wide in a defensive stance, blocking me from the panther. Thunder cracked overhead, and the rain turned to a solid downpour.
With a roar, the panther leapt.
Lord Balam reared back, batting it from the air. It hit the road, and before it could right itself, the jaguar pounced. They rolled across the road, teeth and claws slashing. Balam pinned the panther, and I gasped at the picture that flashed through my mind. The tiger pinning Tadeu, his eyes raising to find mine.
“No,” I cried without thinking. “Balam, don’t kill him. He’s the Keeper.”
I didn’t know how much of Lord Balam was left when he was in jaguar form, but I prayed there was some of him. I’d already caused one death this month. I wasn’t going to cause another, even if the man had attacked us first.
“Let him go,” I said, rushing toward them, squinting to see through the sheets of water pelting us.
Balam gave him a shake by the throat before dancing back. The panther rolled to its feet and bounded off into the grass, leaping from one log to the next just like he’d done in human form.
Lord Balam turned his head, and I gasped in shock. I’d known he was a jaguar, but… Holy shit. He was a fucking jaguar. He stepped toward me, and adrenaline shot through my veins like a hit of heroin. Every instinct in my body told me to turn and run, even as my brain told me I could never outrun this beast. His movements were graceful, smooth as oil as he glided forward. I stood still, my heart hammering so hard I thought I might pass out.
When he reached me, he lifted his head, his golden eyes fixing on mine. Rain slid in rivulets down his fur, dripping off his sleek pelt. He extended his neck, pushing his nose between my thighs. Suddenly, a laugh burst from me, and I sank to the ground in front of him. I ran my hands along his face, marveling at the power that radiated from every inch of his massive form. He was at least up to my waist, his body made of solid muscle, his jaw huge and strong enough to crush my skull.
“You’re still you,” I said, not bothering to hide my awe. In all my life, I’d seen only a handful of ocelots in their animal form. I’d never seen one shift, and I’d never seen anything half as big as Balam. I ran my hands around his ears, and he lifted his head into my hand like a cat wanting to be petted. I laughed again, my hands shaking as I buried them in his fur. He nuzzled my neck, his hot breath tickling my skin as cold rain beat down on us.
I was acutely aware that a wild animal that was capable of killing me had his nose against my throat. In nature, humans were prey to his kind. My blood, my flesh, must smell like food to him. The thought filled me with fear and a strange freedom. I was utterly and completely powerless against him if he wanted to hurt me.
As if sensing my thoughts, Lord Balam snuffled against my neck, letting out a low growl from deep within his powerful chest. My fingers trembled in his fur, but I didn’t draw back. I was his to do with as he wanted, his completely. Suddenly, he lowered his head to my knee where it rested on the ground. His golden eyes rose to mine, and his long, pink tongue rasped over my wet skin from my knee to the apex of my thighs.
I gasped, an erotic charge shooting straight to my core. Lord Balam buried his nose between my thighs and took a deep breath before lifting his face to mine. My entire body felt weak as water, ready for whatever he wanted to do to me. Somehow, in the utter vulnerability of my position, I had lost all fear. I felt only peace and wonder as I gazed back at him.
Yes, he was huge and dangerous and scary, but he was fucking beautiful. His every movement was fluid grace, his body like liquid muscle poured beneath his skin. He was breathtaking.
I didn’t know how long we faced each other, but at long last, Lord Balam turned and trotted past me to where he’d tossed his clothes before jumping up from the trap where our car had sunk. After a moment, he shifted back and tugged on his wet clothes. We started down the road on foot, neither of us speaking for a time.
“How did you know that was him?” I asked at last.
Balam blew rain off his lip. “The oracle showed him to me.”
“This oracle,” I said. “Can it show you anything?”
Lord Balam thought a minute before shaking his head. “Not anything. It shows the future, but it shows it in riddles. It’s up to the reader to decipher its meanings.”
Lightning flashed nearby, and I huddled against Lord Balam as thunder shook the earth. “I really hope this swamp doesn’t flood before we’re out of here.”
“It won’t,” he said.
“Did you see that in your oracle?”
“No,” he said. “Floods can happen fast, but it takes a while for the water to build up before they do. It just started raining. We’ll walk to the nearest filling station and call the hotel, and one of the guards will come get us. It’s only a few miles.”
Only a few miles’ walk in wet clothes and shoes, freezing our asses off from the rain and wondering when the flood waters would rise up and claim us. Sounded just awesome.
“So, when I put on your cloak, I was wearing your actual skin?” I asked after a bit.
Lord Balam tensed. “A jaguar shifter doesn’t have to wear his jaguar skin, but he can’t shift without it.”
“Wow,” I said. “That seems like a liability. What if someone stole it?”
“Then I’d be stuck as a human,” he said, not a trace of humor in his voice. “And missing half of myself.”
“Could I shift into a jaguar if I put it on?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s not very fair,” I said, trying to lighten his mood.
We walked in silence a while. “Why’d you throw it on the floor,” Lord Balam asked finally. “When I gave it to you to wear?”
I remembered the feeling when he’d put it on me, like it was something meaningful. Shit. I’d known better than to toss it off. “I thought you tricked me into… Seeing, I guess. Like you thought it would be funny to fuck with me because I’m a human. You didn’t tell me about its magic, so I wasn’t prepared. You should have told me. But I shouldn’t have thrown it off like that. I’m sorry.”
Lord Balam studied me as we walked, then slid his hand around my waist and pulled me against him. “What exactly did you see when you put it on?”
I gave him some side-eye. “You don’t know?”
He shook his head.
“Huh. I figured you either planted it in there, or it shows everyone the same thing.”
“I’m the only one who’s ever worn it.”
Double shit. Double super shit. He’d put something on me that he’d never let anyone wear? I’d insulted him way more than I’d meant to or even suspected.
“What do you see when you put it on?” I asked, deciding I’d have to take him more seriously from now on. He was still the man I knew, the rough and dirty one who liked to tease me with his tail while we fucked, but he was so much more than that.
It hit me that I was sort of like those women Tadeu fucked, who just wanted him to be that sexy, rough stud. He’d been more than that to me, and Lord Balam was more than that, too. I just hadn’t been ready to deal with the other parts of him. And now…maybe I was getting
there. Maybe at first, that’s all he’d been to me, all I’d needed him to be. But he hadn’t gotten where he was with brute strength and raw sexuality. He was a powerful ally—or opponent.
“I’m a curandero,” Balam said. “I consult the oracle in this. You shouldn’t have seen anything, though.”
“Well, I did,” I said. “I saw how it was killed to get the cloak. Or hunted, anyway. I threw it off before it was killed.”
“There is something strange about you,” Lord Balam said, staring ahead through the rain. “I have known it since I first set eyes upon you.”
I snorted. “You mean when your dick was halfway down that prostitute’s throat?”
The shaman laughed quietly. “My brain was very much still intact,” he assured me. “And do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“No,” I said. “But I might prefer it if your dick wasn’t in any mouths but mine from now on.”
“That’s a promise that’s easy to make,” Lord Balam said, pulling up short and turning to face me. “And I promise that I won’t stop trying to figure you out until I know what you are.”
Twenty-Two
“You’ve been gone all day,” Camila said, jumping up from the bed when I walked in. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried, and I only had the guards to talk to, and they’re so boring.” She broke off, wrinkling her nose as she caught a whiff of the swamp smell that hadn’t quite washed away with the rain. “What happened to you?”
“Do you mind if I shower before going over the details?”
“Please do,” she said, motioning toward the bathroom.
“I’m fine, by the way,” I said, picking some clean sweats and a tank top from a stack of folded laundry on the bed. “Don’t tell me you did laundry.”
“Of course not,” Camila said, sounding vaguely scandalized. “Gabor did.”
I snorted back a laugh. “How’d you get him to do that?”
“I asked.”
“I bet you did,” I said, giving her a wink.
“Itzel, he’s a guard,” she said. “Whatever you’re implying, please stop.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “He’s an aristocrat.”
“He’s probably ten years older than me.”
“Eight,” I said. “That’s not so much. Lord Balam’s twice my age.”
“How do you know that about Gabor?” Camila asked.
We stared at each other for a second before I dropped her gaze and shrugged. “Whenever you kick me out of the room, I find him outside guarding the door.”
Gabor didn’t share personal details, but I had a feeling that was because he didn’t really have a personal life. I knew that he was ten years older than me, that he had started working for my father when he was only sixteen, one of the youngest guards. He’d worked his way up from one of the random guards around the city, to the palace grounds, and finally to the palace. He’d been one of my father’s personal guards for two years now, but he wasn’t quite the favorite yet, hence my father’s allowing him to escort Camila on her tour. I had a feeling he’d set his ambitions on becoming one of Father’s two most trusted guards, who sometimes acted as spies and advisors as well. Needless to say, I wasn’t sharing personal details with him, either.
Camila’s eyes widened. “You’re friends with him? He’s so…remote. How do you talk to him?”
“He’s fun to fuck with,” I said with a grin. Then, remembering how many of my fantasies he’d starred in, I hurried to add, “I mean that metaphorically.”
“I know that,” Camila said, looking slightly wounded. “You’ve chosen Lord Balam.”
“I have?” I blurted before I could think further. Though it made sense that she’d think so, I hadn’t considered that it meant more to anyone else than it did to me and Lord Balam. But of course in our backwards court full of shifters, sleeping with a man probably did mean I’d chosen him as my mate. Camila and Father would expect me to marry him now.
I hadn’t thought of it when I’d been still reeling from Tadeu’s death, but that was probably the only reason Father hadn’t had me flogged. Sure, he’d been pissed that I didn’t basically let him sell my virginity to the highest bidder, but he hadn’t locked me in a convent, either. He had probably thought that at least Lord Balam was someone of acceptable, even advantageous, status.
“Of course you chose Lord Balam,” Camila said. “Isn’t that where you’ve spent your time when you’re out of my room? Or were you with…?” She broke off, a frown darkening her pretty features.
“I was with Balam,” I said. “Gabor’s an ocelot, Camila. He’d be better for you.”
“We don’t even know if the amulets will choose an ocelot,” Camila said. “They usually don’t choose a mate from the same clan, and since they did for Father, there is virtually no chance they will for me. Besides that, Gabor is cold and a little scary.”
“And yet you chose him to handle your underwear.”
“Because he’s the most impersonal person I can imagine,” she said. “I knew he wouldn’t gossip to the others or do anything untoward.”
“Like what? Sniff your panties?” I asked, picking up a pair of my underwear, the rest of which were neatly folded into little squares.
Camila’s cheeks flamed, but she lifted her chin haughtily. “I don’t think you should spend so much time with Lord Balam. His sensibilities are wearing off on you.”
“You can thank Gabor for not sniffing my panties,” I called over my shoulder as I headed into the bathroom. Camila might not feel strange about Gabor handling her underwear, but I kept thinking about it as I set them down and turned on the water. Maybe under that detached persona he was a freak who held my panties to his face while he jerked off.
I found the idea strangely titillating.
Lord Balam wore his roughness on the surface like a badge of pride, and I liked that. I liked knowing what I was getting. But I couldn’t help but wonder what a man like Gabor would be like in bed. Would he be cold and methodical? Did he ever lose control? And if he did, what exactly would that look like?
I stepped under the warm water, letting my hands move over my body. I’d been having sex for only a week, and I had so much to learn, to do. Part of me felt like a whore already for the things I’d done with Lord Balam, and he was just one man. And as much as he satisfied me, I didn’t know if I wanted to be with this one man forever. But as my body heated up at the thought of his rough hands, his long tongue, his hard body against mine, I knew I wanted him for now.
A shower had never felt so good, but I couldn’t help but wish I’d invited Balam. Camila had wanted me to share a room with her now that her lady in waiting wasn’t there to sleep by her bed, though, and I didn’t think she’d appreciate Balam’s presence in her shower. In general, she didn’t appreciate anything about Lord Balam. As I got to know him, I was beginning to see a side of him that Camila hadn’t seen.
When I emerged, I slipped into the underwear with a naughty little shiver at the thought of Gabor folding them so carefully. I smoothed my hands over my round ass, looking back over my shoulder into the mirror. Had he imagined me like this as he folded them?
“Itzel,” Camila called from outside the door. “Hurry, please. We’ve been waiting for hours for dinner.”
I slipped into the tank top and sweatpants and left the bathroom, twisting my hair up as I went. I came to a halt when I saw that the room was full of guards and boxes of pizza.
“You didn’t tell me we were having dinner in here tonight,” I muttered, my cheeks warming when I met Gabor’s eyes.
“We need to fill them in, figure out a plan for Gideon’s, and eat,” Lord Balam said, patting his thigh. “Princess Camila was agreeable to doing all three things at once.”
I slid onto his lap, still aware of Gabor’s eyes on me. When we’d finished our story and gone over the plan Lord Balam and I had concocted on the long walk to the gas station, the room sat silent as everyone pondered.
Gabor spoke first. “Absolutely
not. We cannot allow a princess to deliberately walk into the path of danger. We’ve allowed far too much leeway in this matter already. You could have been killed today. It’s time to find a more sensible plan.”
“You can’t reason with a feral shifter,” Lord Balam said. “The time for sensible planning was over before we got here.”
“Then I’ll hunt this shifter down and get the amulet myself,” Gabor said. “Princess Itzel need not be involved.”
“Excuse me, but I don’t think you get to decide that,” I said, glaring up at him.
He didn’t even flinch. “Your Grace, if I may say so, you have no experience with a shifter who’s run wild.”
“He’s still a person, isn’t he?” I said. “I ran wild most of my life. Is that what you think of me?”
Gabor worked his jaw back and forth like he was gritting his teeth. “You ran wild, but it was the sort of running wild a princess does,” he said at last. “Not the kind a feral shifter does.”
“What’s a feral shifter?” I asked, remembering the panther’s predatory gaze.
“A shifter who has lost his human side in some way,” Balam said. “It could be from staying in animal form too long, living conditions, even diet in extreme cases.”
“A diet of humans?” I asked.
They exchanged a look. “We don’t know what he’s been eating or why he’s feral,” Balam said. “But he was clearly not thinking as a human today even when he took that form.”
“But he’s still human in there somewhere, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “A feral shifter can be rehabilitated very quickly. He just needs to be in contact with humans again.”
“We’re humans,” I said. “We can talk to him and remind him of his humanity.”
“You might,” Gabor said. “But it’s just as likely he’ll refuse to talk to you and attack instead.”
“So, come with us,” I said.
“I want to go, too,” Camila said.
“Your Grace,” Gabor said. “If I may speak…”
“You may not,” Camila said, standing straight and folding her hands in front of her.
Broken Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 1) Page 15
