by Laura Wylde
“Would he even be able to do that?” I asked inquisitively. “Live out in the human world with no experience?”
“I don’t think he would. I’m sure he’d remain a panther for as long as he could, barely being human at all.”
That sounded lonely. I felt bad for the guy. “Do you think maybe I should leave to make him more comfortable?”
“Oh no, no, I wasn’t suggesting that at all. That isn’t what I mean.” Jakar shook his head fervently. “No, I was actually wondering if you might go and speak with him. Help him to relax more that way. I’m sure if you approach him and he gets to know you that way, it will be so much better for everyone.”
That made a lot of sense, and it wouldn’t be too hard. I’d spent all my time here talking to people I didn’t know and getting to know them. A lot of my New York job involved speaking to people I didn’t know. So, why did the idea of speaking to Dean fill me with such terror? He was just a little shy, that was all.
“Yes, I will talk to him. I will look for him in the morning…”
“Actually, I know where he is right now if you want to get this over and done with. I find him more amiable in the evenings.” I nodded, unsure of any way I could get out of it without looking completely unreasonable. “Okay great.” Jakar’s smile spoke volumes. He had a lot riding on this. “I will take you there now.”
As we walked, my mind spun. I was going to have to speak to the one shifter who probably did hate me, no matter what Jakar said. What if he started yelling at me? Demanding me to leave? What if it ended up causing a row between him and the other shifters? I didn’t want that! This was going to be freaking awful.
Reese
“Here we are.” Jakar gave me a wide smile as he dropped me off at my meeting point with Dean. He sat in the distance with his head bent over a book, clearly blocking out the rest of the world. This seemed to me to be a clear sign that he didn’t want to be disturbed…particularly not by me, the woman he hated. “Good luck.”
“Good luck, right.” I nodded rapidly, not even trying to hide my nerves. “I’m going to need it.”
Jakar touched the bottom of my back gently, giving me encouragement. This was a nice gesture, but it didn’t help me much when I really felt like I was on my own here, in the middle of a truly messy situation. Especially when Jakar left, leaving a cold, hollow space behind him, making me feel the most by myself than I had since being here.
I was always alone in New York, I didn’t mind it, I was used to it, but here I’d gotten accustomed to company.
“Come on, Reese,” I muttered to myself. “You can do this. There isn’t anything to worry about at all. He’s just a person…just another panther. I’m not the worst person in the world, I can make him like me…”
But each step I took towards him felt forced. It was like shoving lead through thick mud to get to him. Dean sat oblivious where he was, completely ignoring me. I could tell from his body language that he had no clue I was around. He would have stiffened and probably make an excuse to get the hell away from me.
Eventually. I stopped. I rocked back and forth on my heels trying to swallow down the throbbing pulse in my throat. Nerves darted everywhere, infecting every single one of my organs, sizzling through my veins.
“D…Dean?” I stuttered quietly. “Dean, sorry to interrupt you, could I have a moment of your time?”
His eyes snapped up from his book and he stared at me with horror. I wasn’t expecting the best reaction in the world, but I didn’t think he’d look at me like I was the worst thing he’d seen. I felt uncomfortable in my skin as he stared me up and down, hating every inch of me. Was it just me, or did I represent something? Did he despise Kayla in the same way? If I could find my voice, then I would have asked him…
“I’m busy,” he snapped, slamming his book shut. “I don’t have any time to talk with you.”
As he rose to his feet, I reached out to him desperately. I didn’t want to think about Jakar’s disappointed face when I let him down by failing to even have the shortest conversation with Dean.
“Dean, please, just give me a moment, I just want to get to know you, that’s all. I feel like I know everyone but you, and I want to rectify that. I want to…I don’t know, just talk to you, that’s all.”
For a moment, he froze and stared at me. I thought I could see him cracking just a little, seeing through me, and I relaxed just a tiny bit. He was going to allow me to chat to him, which meant I had at least tried…
“No, I have somewhere that I need to be.” He shook me off and moved away from me. “I can’t talk to you.”
“Please, Dean, why won’t you talk to me? Just for a moment.”
“You…no.” He shook his head at me. “No, it isn’t right. None of this is right. There are better ways.”
“Better ways for what?” I shrugged. “What are you talking about? Give me a chance…”
“No, I need to go. I need to go now. I have to do this. There isn’t anything holding me back now.”
As I watched him walk away from me without even glancing back, sadness crushed me. I slipped down to the floor, tears rolling down my cheeks as I did. I was having such a good time here, and everyone was going out of their way to make me feel special and welcome, but the cold look that Dean just gave me wrecked it all.
I wasn’t welcome here, I wasn’t wanted. It wasn’t the best thing for me to stay in Panthera after all.
I gripped my head hard, trying to keep the scream inside. I hadn’t fully accepted it yet, but there was a big part of me that loved it here so much that I wanted to stay, to have a bit of what Kayla did. Panthera made New York feel like an empty shell to me. I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied there anymore. But if Dean wasn’t happy with me, then I needed to get out of here. Having him so unhappy wasn’t right. The blame rested firmly on my shoulders.
I darted my eyes everywhere, but of course, there wasn’t anyone else around here. That was why Dean liked it. The silence, the peace, and the space away from the woman who ‘wasn’t right’, whatever that meant.
“What’s that?” I gasped as I saw a piece of paper fluttering to the ground ahead of me. It had to be Dean’s, it probably came from his book. It didn’t matter that he didn’t like me, if he was doing scientific research then it was likely to be very important, so I didn’t want him to lose it. I raced and picked it up before the wind took it.
I stared at the page, just to see if it was something important, but I couldn’t understand what was written. If it was science, then it wasn’t the sort of science that I understood. I decided to keep it just in case.
With sadness trudging in each step, I made my way back to my home for bed. I already knew that sleep wasn’t going to come easy for me, not with all these thoughts circling around my brain, but I had to try.
“Hey, Reese!” Garret’s happy tone felt out of place in the black cloud of my mood. “What’s going on?”
“You’re out late.” I forced a smile on my face. “Everything alright with you?”
He bounded over to me excitedly and threw an arm around my shoulder, acting just like he always did. “What’s the long face for, missy? You seem really sad. Has something happened? Can I help you?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if anyone can help me at this point.”
Garret used his arm to guide me to his place. As he took me inside, I barely noticed his home, I was all consumed by him. His large, fun-loving personality managed to do that to me, always. As he sat me down and made me a drink, I fixed my eyes on the page in front of me, wishing I could make sense of it. Perhaps if I could, then I could also unlock whatever it was that made Dean despise me so much…a pipe dream, maybe, but it was something.
“What’s that?” Garret asked as he handed me one of those delicious herbal concoctions. “Looks complicated.”
“I don’t know. It belongs to Dean, not me. He dropped it as he was running away from me.”
“Ah,” Garret rep
lied knowingly. “He’s still being an ass then, is he?”
“You’ve noticed?” That left me even glummer. “Yeah, he hates my guts. Jakar tried to get me to speak to him. He said that he’s just shy and I should make the first move. I tried and he was just rude to me.”
Garret’s eyes fell downwards. I could see that he was disappointed. “I just don’t know why he’s acting this way. It isn’t right. I get that he would prefer us to mate with jaguars rather than humans…”
“Jaguar?” I snapped, panicked. “There are jaguar shifters as well? What is this world?”
“This world is much bigger and more complicated than you know…but it’s good.”
“So, why don’t you mate with jaguars?” I asked curiously. “Or is that some cross species thing?”
It did make more sense in a way because jaguars would also want to keep their presence a secret. Sure, they got lucky with Kayla and I had no intention of telling the world about them, but not everyone would be the same.
“The jaguars don’t like us,” Garret admittedly guardedly. “They basically think that we’re an anomaly and they are the only shifters that anyone should give a damn about…just because there are more of them than us.”
I narrowed my eyes confused. This seemed like a really long story that was obviously inbuilt in the history of the shifters. I wondered why it hadn’t featured in any of Trevor’s stories at all. I suppose it could have been more like myths and legends, a bit like the fairy tales humans told their children. Still, I wanted to know more.
“Look, don’t worry about Dean,” Garret finally announced. “He just is how he is. None of us worry about him too much because he’s hard to understand. But I can assure you that it isn’t personal. You’re adorable, there isn’t anything that anyone could dislike about you. It’s definitely more about him.”
I had to laugh at that one. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me adorable before. That’s new!”
His arm snuck around my shoulder again, sending a spark of excitement racing through me. Combined with the compliment and the comfort, he had me not only forgetting all about the way that Dean treated me, but focusing on the way Garret had me feeling instead. It was really nice in his arms. I felt incredibly special.
I turned my eyes to look up at him, getting sucked in by the piercing green eyes looking back at me. My lips tingled, my heart raced, my brain turned to a jellified mush. All my smarts vanished, and I became a slave to the deep-seated sensations in my body instead. They were intoxicating, like a powerful drug swallowing me up whole.
“You are adorable,” he murmured quietly, causing a shudder to race down my spine.
“Well, I think you’re very cute yourself.” I pinched his side playfully. As I touched him, I could see the same electricity tearing through me on his face. “I like you, Garret. I might like you a little too much.”
He brushed his thumb over my lip, sending me spinning into heaven. If he could make me feel this alive with just a mere touch, what the hell would it be like if I allowed him into my panties? Freaking incredible probably.
No, not probably. Definitely. His fingers were magic. The rest of him had to be the same way.
“I can’t even tell you how much I like you,” Garret rasped back, sounding nothing like the joker he usually was. He was allowing me to see a raw, vulnerable side of him that the rest of the world didn’t know.
I rolled towards him, my hips angling in his direction. I was communicating just how turned on I was with my body. I wanted Garret to know that he had flames licking up and down my skin, setting me alight. My heart pounded, I was breathless and dizzy, all over the place, desperately needing this man more than anything in the world.
The closer his lips got to me, the crazier I felt. The wilder, the more animalistic, the freer. The anticipation coursed through my veins, I nearly screamed under the weight of it. Any minute now we would be kissing. Any minute now.
Oh, holy hell. The moment Garret’s lips connected with mine, the world shifted and changed completely. Everything that I knew was true before vanished, all I knew about myself disappeared, and I became a new person. The best version of myself. As the fireworks exploded in my stomach and every fiber of me lit up, I knew for certain that this was where I needed to be. With this man, in this unexpected place, living this wild life.
Garret’s fingers clutched at my waist. I wanted them to pull at me, to strip me right down. I wanted him to spread me across this table and to do whatever he wanted to my body, to make me feel brand new once more.
“Knock, knock…” A voice coming from Garret’s door brought me back to reality. I leaped away from Garret like I’d been caught doing something naughty. Like I was a teenager who’d been found out kissing behind the bike sheds. “Oh, sorry, Garret. I didn’t know that you weren’t alone here. Hi, Reese, how are you?”
I nodded, unable to speak as a heat crept through my body. I was so embarrassed, all I wanted to do was run. It barely mattered that I was a grown ass woman, almost thirty years old who could do what I damn well pleased.
Trevor stepped closer to me and Garret, barely acknowledging that I was humiliated and would prefer to be alone. I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, I stared at my feet, wondering when they were finally going to move.
“Come here,” Trevor whispered seductively to me. It made me jump, it felt weird to have him clearly flirting with me in front of the man he’d just seen me kissing. “Reese, it’s okay. Come here with me for a moment.”
He took my arm and Garret’s as well and pulled us into the middle of the room. I forced my gaze to meet his as he tugged me and Garret into an embrace. It probably should have felt weird, being in a hug with two men, but I’d spent enough time in Panthera now to know that it was natural. And actually, it felt natural. Nice too. We were all together, but I was the center of the focus, and the guys were making me feel sexy as all hell.
Trevor dipped his mouth down to mine, causing me to rise up on to my tiptoes. I was acutely aware of Garret’s hungry eyes upon us as I met Trevor’s lips and I got lost in his kiss too. With Garret rubbing my hip, Trevor darted his tongue in my mouth, and I welcomed his loving caress willingly. He set off those fireworks too.
Once Trevor pulled away, I wasn’t alone for long because he turned my head and angled me back towards Garret who now kissed me with a more intense, fiery passion. I almost fell apart, my legs turned to jelly, I was a mess. My core throbbed needily, it ached to be touched. I wasn’t sure which of these amazing men I wanted to massage me first. Garret, with his eager hunger, or Trevor with his careful precision. Both of them would be phenomenal.
“Everything is good,” Trevor reassured me while stroking my hair lovingly. “You don’t need to worry about anything while you’re here. Just remember that, okay? Panthera is a welcoming home for you.”
As I nodded, Garret blurted out angrily, “yeah, welcoming aside from Dean. He’s being an asshole.”
Even the mention of the man who hated me wasn’t enough to cool me down. He barely even existed anymore, I was all over the place, wondering why these men were pulling away from me rather than taking me here and now. I suppose they were being smart about it, trying to be careful with me, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted that. They had me all riled up, completely on fire. I wanted to carry on with that before my rationality kicked in.
“What’s going on?” Trevor asked coldly. “I thought he’d been talked to…”
“I don’t know, he was just horrible to Reese when she went to speak to him. It isn’t right, he doesn’t have any right to treat her like that, does he? We need to do something about it…”
As Trevor and Garret discussed what had happened between me and Dean as if I wasn’t even in the room, I took my seat again and squeezed my thighs together tightly. The subject had been changed now, and I guess we were done kissing, but the imprint of their lips was still all over me. I didn’t think that would ever leave me.
“Hey, Reese.” Trev
or grabbed my focus once more. I needed to shake off the intense sensations for just a moment. “What’s this? Is that what Dean dropped as he ran off? Is this his research or something?”
“I don’t know. He did drop it, but I have no idea what it is.”
Trevor narrowed his eyes and studied the paper carefully. “Oh no,” he muttered as he digested it, clearly seeing more into it than I understood. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all.”
“What is it?” Garret demanded. “I haven’t really looked at it, but it looks too complicated for me.”
“It’s about the jaguars.” I flinched as they mentioned the other animal shifters once more. I wasn’t sure why, but the thought of the jaguars seemed far more frightening than the panthers. It had to be because I didn’t know them, that was all. I couldn’t judge them before I ever met them. “This isn’t good at all.”
The two panthers shared a look. I might not have known exactly what it meant, but I was well aware enough to know that it spelled danger. There was a storm cloud coming, I could just feel it.
“I’m going to go to Jakar about this,” Trevor finally announced. “He needs to know about this. He will know what to do. We can’t let this carry on as it is or who knows what will happen.”
I stared at each man, in turn, fearing for my life as I did. Perhaps I was reading too much into this, but I was scared for the fight that I felt like was coming. The jaguars were clearly a threat, and they could be coming…
Jakar
“What do you mean?” I demanded, staring Trevor down. It wasn’t his fault this news pissed me off so much, but the real target wasn’t anywhere to be seen and someone had to take the brunt of my anger. “Dean knows we don’t want to involve the jaguars in our mating rituals. We’ve told him enough times it won’t work…”
“But that hasn’t stopped him from working on it. He really believes this is the answer.”
