Primal Heat--A Paranormal Shapeshifter Werejaguar Romance

by A. C. Arthur

  Then he was there, his fingers parting her swollen folds, slipping slowly into the wetness and sending shivers up and down her body. With one arm she held firmly to Eli’s shoulders, hoping it helped her stay upright but almost certain it was more his strong hold that kept her from falling onto the floor. With her other hand she cupped her bare breast, loving the feel of the weight of it in her palm. There was something slickly erotic about her own hands on her body and the immediate pleasure spikes that came from the motion. While Eli continued his exploration of her tender folds, moving up to toy with her clit, then back, so far back he rimmed her with a quick, damp digit, she squeezed her breast harder, letting the turgid nipple roll between the tips of her fingers just as Eli had done before.

  Her tongue licked along her bottom lip, and Eli slipped two thick fingers into her dripping center. Nivea tried to open her legs wider to take him in deeper, but her pants hindered that movement.

  “I got you,” she heard him say. “I know what you need, baby, I know.”

  If he did he wouldn’t be taking so damned long to give it to her. But Nivea was soon silenced when Eli’s fingers moved quicker, pressing deeper, drawing her essence out to drip over her folds, creating a slapping sound that echoed in her ears. She pumped into his hand fervently, grasping her breast with vigor as the climb to bliss had begun. She could see the end, could envision herself slipping right over that cliff of satiated relief. She wanted to run there, to not miss a step to getting there and grabbing every ounce of what promised to be a pleasurable release. Eli said he understood but she was almost sure he couldn’t possibly know, when his fingers slipped quickly from her center, back to her anus where he pressed certainly until her sphincter was breached and she gasped with relief.

  The moment was now.

  Her vision was blurry, her breaths racing to break free. The cat inside had long since roared its way to submission and now there was only this. The feel of him filling her there, so tight and yet so deliciously sweet. She wanted more, needed … needed …

  He pulled out, pressed back in, spreading his two fingers as wide as he could inside her passageway and Nivea couldn’t stand it a moment longer. She screamed out his name, or was that a roar that sounded like his name? She had no idea, all she knew was that her body was being transformed, all that she’d known and ever experienced was in the past. This, right here, this deep-seated pleasure was the here and now and she was loving every minute of it!

  * * *

  The cat would not be ignored. The urge to take her, to own her, so far unheeded was now inevitable. Eli moved off the bed, carrying Nivea with him before letting her feet touch the floor. She looked spent, her cat’s eyes slanted and slightly blurry. Her chest heaved and for a moment his mouth watered with the thought of tasting her delicious breasts once more. But he was determined not to be distracted, not this time. The shreds of her shirt slipped from her arms as she moved them, her bra doing the same. Her pants and panties were partly down and Eli made quick work of pulling them completely off, getting stuck on her boots but yanking them free as well.

  When she looked up at him, her lips wet from her licking them, eyes hooded from the release that had just overtaken her, he thought about tossing her onto the bed and slipping inside her wet pussy as soon as possible. But the cat wouldn’t let that be. It pawed at him, pressing insistently against every part of him, including his mind, that he’d been trying to keep the animal clear of.

  It was too late.

  That realization had him moving, yanking his shirt over his head, toeing off his own boots, hating when they were stuck because of the tight laces. Once they were off, his pants and boxers were finally freed and he was once again in front of her.

  Nivea Cannon.

  The guard that had taunted him with her compact body and resilience. She was smart and pretty and vicious on the battlefield—everything, he thought with a start. Nivea Cannon was everything to him.

  With a growl that started deep in his gut, rumbling forward until it ripped right past his vocal cords, Eli grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her away from him.

  “Eli?” She’d whispered his name but he didn’t reply.

  He couldn’t.

  Words would not do. They would not explain all that was soaring through his system at the moment. And most importantly, they wouldn’t change a damned thing.

  His dick was so hard it hurt. The incessant throbbing, the burning need had him sliding his hand down Nivea’s spine, pushing her gently until her palms flattened on the bed.

  He leaned forward, one hand gripping his thick length, and kissed her vertebrae, moving up one at a time, letting his tongue swirl in moist circles, coming back down again until he was dropping heated kisses over her upturned ass.

  “On your knees,” he whispered over her smooth flesh. “I want you on your knees.”

  Never in his life would Eli have described Nivea as obedient, but she moved without a word, planting both her knees on his bed, spreading her legs so wide the plumpness of her folds and every drop of moistness between her legs was visible. His mouth watered, his nostrils flaring as the cat enjoyed the scent of their mating.

  Closing his eyes, Eli stepped forward. He held the tip of his dick to her, moved up and down, coating himself with her essence. She wiggled back against him and he purred. Her ass was perfect, the way she was arching her back and extending it out to him, offering him the world. The entire fucking world, he thought, right here before him.

  He couldn’t resist. How could he have ever considered resisting?

  His fingers had spread her wide for him, the remnants of her release having dripped all over until it was as wet on the tight pucker of her anus as on her pussy. He wanted her here, wanted to claim, to conquer, and for once in his life, to just be.

  Eli pressed forward, the tip of his dick moving past her rim. He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and let his head lull back. He gave her a moment to adjust to the feel of him back there, the promise of what was to come. Then he pressed forward, loving the tight sheathing around his length. He felt like she was squeezing the life out of him, taking him for every last drop of breath he had.

  Wait, wasn’t he supposed to be claiming her?

  With a vicious shake of his head, Eli pulled out slightly, then thrust in with more pressure than before. She hissed, he saw her fingers clenching in the comforter, and then she backed up on him. He licked his lips, his hands going to her hips where he held firm. His hips began to move then, thrusting in, pulling out, matching her speed and velocity.

  All the dark Eli had seen when he’d closed his eyes up until this point dissipated. Now, there was only light, and in that light was a cat. Nivea’s cat. She was waiting for him as if she’d always expected he would come.

  Come.

  Come.

  The word echoed in his mind even as he stroked her harder and harder. She was so freakin’ wet, her excitement building all over again, her ass cheeks smacking back against his groin, his strokes went deep and long and made him feel like he was being milked of every hidden emotion he possessed. When his entire body had begun to shake, the cat’s shift running along the base of his spine, Eli couldn’t hold on any longer. His fingers dug into her skin the moment she whispered, “Come for me, companheiro. Vena para mi, por favor. Por favor.”

  He hadn’t needed her words, but damn, they sounded good. With her voice, as her ass pressed back against him, her walls so tight around him, the release was sucked straight from his cock, along with the breath from his lungs.

  * * *

  Later that night Eli lay with Nivea stretched out so that half her body was across his, the other on the bed. They’d been sweaty from their last round of lovemaking but now the air had chilled his skin. But he didn’t dare move. His eyes closed even though the last thing he wanted to do was sleep. His body was acutely aware of hers and Eli wanted her again and again. He had no idea what the morning would bring for either of them so he’d wanted the night to l
ast … forever.

  But his eyes did finally close and the dream did eventually suck him in again.

  He was back in the Sierra Leone rain forest, standing in front of Acacia’s hut once again. Ezra hadn’t wanted to come and on the outside, Eli had acted as if he agreed with his twin. But on the inside, this had been exactly where he wanted to be. Dagar’s potion was supposed to curb this hunger, to make them need her less so that they could finish the training they’d come here for and not embarrass their grandfather any further. Acacia had betrayed them. She’d taken them in and fucked both of them senseless, making them believe that the pleasure was mutual, when in actuality all she had been doing was using the jaguar twins to get back at her father for taking the other jaguar she’d loved, her true mate, from her.

  Ezra was livid. Eli was too, but for an entirely different reason. He still wanted her, a part of him believing he could still claim her. So he and Ezra had followed Acacia’s minions when they’d come to collect them. They’d entered her hut knowing what they would find. Acacia was naked, her beautifully tanned skin glowing in the candles’ illumination. She’d wanted them and hell, Eli had wanted her. He was sure she’d read his mind. Ezra had immediately lashed out and she’d had him bound to the wall. But Eli, he’d remained calm, ready. She’d had him lie on the marble slab that he was used to. She loved having him there and he enjoyed it immensely. So when she climbed on top of him, lowering herself down onto his dick, Eli had almost instantaneously come. Yet, there was something different. The way she looked down at him, the scent in the air, the sound of the crickets chirping loudly from outside the hut … something that even to this day he wasn’t entirely sure of.

  Acacia had just rotated her hips on his dick, sucking him deep into her pussy. Then she’d reached back and the next thing Eli saw was her arm arching over him, the glint of the knife she held in her hand clear as day.

  Ezra roared, ripped free of his shackles, and grabbed Acacia by the back of her neck. At Eli’s angry growl his twin dropped Acacia to the floor. But in seconds her minions were on them and the next thing Eli knew, he’d shifted and he was killing them. Murdering them all, including Acacia. Only minutes ago, he and Ezra had walked into the hut with three other shifters. Now, the two cats paced around the dead carcasses of three shifters, blood and flesh littering the ground, the acrid stench rising quickly in the air.

  Ezra’s cat had looked at Eli’s. Silence, but communication, as it always had been between the twins. They each regretted, each hated, each felt the boiling dark anger taking its rightful place inside them.

  It was the same, this haunting memory. Each time it came, it left Eli breathless and sad from the continued streak it had created in his life. And yet, she had entered and taken her place in his destiny without him noticing, without him being able to stop her.

  Nivea’s cat stood outside the hut when Eli’s cat exited in the dream this time, as if she’d been waiting for him all along. Again. Only this time when Eli went to her, when he let down his guard and gave in to the mating he felt inexplicably drawn to, Nivea turned to run away and before she could get far, she was captured. Grabbed at the base of her skull by a bigger, deadlier jaguar that was hell-bent on revenge.

  Chapter 14

  Richard Cannon sat with his dress shirt rumpled, his face fixed in a scowl, across a short table from Rome. They were in a section at the far end of Havenway that had been blocked off from the rest of the facility.

  They’d taken to calling it lockdown even though up until a day ago, they’d had no one to house in it. But with tensions rising for the shifters, Rome had decided that they definitely needed a location such as this. There were four rooms with steel-reinforced doors with automatic locks on either side of a narrow hallway that also had its own bolted and electronically secure access. X and Nick had been sure to design this part of the facility as if it were the humans’ Fort Knox. There were even magnetized beams that, once activated, would prevent anyone from moving throughout this part of the facility without being detected.

  Today they were interrogating one of their own. Richard was not a rogue but he wasn’t aligned with the Shadows either. He’d never taken a stance on either side for as long as Rome had been working with the Stateside Assembly. In fact, Richard had been one of the few rich and influential shifters that had ignored all of Rome’s invitations to join him at the Assembly. For the past couple of years Rome hadn’t thought much of it, as he figured there would always be those shifters that had a greater desire to be considered more for their human attributes than those of their cats. He’d respected that choice. Until now.

  “You’re sending money to the Comastaz Labs. Why?” Rome asked without preamble.

  Richard’s response was rude but factual. “This is a free country. I can do whatever I want with my money.”

  Rome had only nodded. Nick, on the other hand, had moved quicker than either Rome or Richard had anticipated, grabbing the man by the back of his neck and slamming his face down on the steel table. Blood oozed instantly from Richard’s nose and Rome casually reached into his inside jacket pocket, extending his arm slowly to offer the man a tissue.

  Richard snatched the tissue as Rome said, “I’m not going to repeat the question, but I am still expecting an answer.”

  He used the tissue to blot the blood, an angry glare aimed at Nick as he pulled from the obviously bigger and stronger shifter’s grasp. Nick allowed that little action, but he didn’t move from standing right behind Cannon, just in case he had to do more convincing.

  “Tax credits,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “I get a certain amount of tax credits for my donations to government agencies.”

  “Bullshit!” Nick replied immediately.

  “You run a marketing agency but that’s not where the checks originated from. Your nonprofit—the one that’s already qualified for certain tax credits—is the one cutting the checks. There’s no legal gain to that donation unless it’s somehow connected to the work the nonprofit is doing. Is that the case?” Rome inquired.

  “I guess you wouldn’t know anything about business since you’re so hell-bent on acting like savages. The more I write off of the nonprofit, the bigger my tax breaks are,” Richard replied with distaste.

  Nick grabbed his neck once more.

  “Hey!” he yelled, trying to slip from Nick’s grasp. “You can’t do this! We’re not in the jungle, you filthy animals. In case you didn’t notice, this is civilization. We walk upright and behave like we have some decency in America.”

  The man might have continued with his rant but Nick lifted him out of the chair and slammed him front first into the cement wall, angling his forearm on the man’s neck to keep the side of his face pressed against the dark blue paint.

  “You sure you want to keep calling us names, asshole?” Nick asked, his face close to Cannon’s.

  Rome remained seated.

  “We cleared our schedules for the day just so we could spend this time with you, Mr. Cannon. Now, this can take another few minutes or it can take much, much longer. It’s up to you.”

  It took Nick ramming his fist into the guy’s back to get a gasping, “All right, all right, get this Neanderthal off me!”

  “Neanderthals couldn’t crack your skull with their teeth,” Nick said before dropping Cannon’s limp body onto the floor. “I can, you sorry sonofabitch.”

  In the time they’d had Richard Cannon in their custody they’d learned a few more disturbing things about him, one of which started with the pictures he’d had on his office computer of Nivea posed in a way a father should never see his child. They’d also found receipts from Comastaz and invoices that they hadn’t quite figured out yet. All of that, coupled with Cannon’s apparent distaste of the Shadows, had Nick a little on edge and a lot repulsed. Rome didn’t blame him, and so he hadn’t bothered to stop him or to help Cannon get up off the floor.

  “I’m still waiting,” he said after the man had attempted to get up only to land f
lat on his face again.

  Finally, he simply rolled over onto his back, his hands flapping like a fish out of water over his chest as he continued to heave for his breath.

  “It’s research,” Richard finally coughed out. “Research to help the humans catch up to where we are. I’m only helping them to even the playing field when this shit finally hits the fan!”

  Nick had been about to kick him when Rome stood abruptly, blocking Richard from his friend’s reach. Leaning down, he grabbed the front of Cannon’s shirt, lifting his top half off the floor.

  “How exactly were you helping them, you piece of shit? What else did you give them besides money?”

  Rome hadn’t thought about it until just a few seconds ago, the moment Richard said he’d been helping to level the playing field. He thought about those invoices they’d found in Cannon’s office. The papers that documented hundreds of units shipped directly to the labs. Rome frowned. If Cannon was saying what Rome thought he was, so help the sick bastard. If Nick didn’t rip his head off, Rome was very likely to.

  “The unwanteds,” Cannon said, looking Rome directly in the eye. “I gave him what your people in the rain forest didn’t want. They cast them aside, said they were born of the wrong class of shifter and could not stand with them. So I brought them over here. I found somewhere for them to be useful since, because of their unfortunate lineage, they had no place on this earth.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Nick asked.

  Rome let Richard’s body drop to the floor, standing and backing away from him as he felt his cat rising up inside, ready to shift, ready to pounce. To restrain himself, he turned away from the man, rubbing a hand down his face as Nick repeated, “What the hell are the unwanteds?”