by Terry Spear
To his guarded relief, Kat finally stirred. She blinked her eyes and looked up at him standing over her as a jaguar and at Maya, her expression worried. Kat closed her eyes as if she couldn’t deal with the repercussions anymore, her tail rising and slapping the forest floor.
“Kat, the mosquitoes are eating me alive. I need to shift back into a jaguar to protect myself. Will you come with us to the hut, and we’ll explain?” Maya asked, her words rushed.
Kat’s eyes opened again, and this time she tried to raise her head. Again, she blinked as if she was dizzy, then stirred a little more. When she was lying on her stomach, her head up, Maya said again, “You have to return with us. It’s too deadly out here for you alone.”
Maya couldn’t wait any longer and shifted before Kat’s eyes, stretching her muscles and appearing as a blur of golden, tanned skin as she stood as a human and then with a golden pelt with black rosettes decorating her skin in her jaguar form. Maya dropped to her four paw pads as a jaguar and waited.
Connor watched Kat, worried she would bolt or faint again. She seemed half out of it still. He nudged her with his face, and she looked up at him, her greenish-golden eyes gazing into his, her expression one of confusion. He wanted desperately to tell her everything would be all right.
She seemed to want to stay here forever, gathering her wits and trying to sort out her feelings. Then finally she slowly rose to her feet as if it took the greatest effort. He still worried that she meant to run, that she was pretending to be indisposed so she could race past him before he suspected her ploy. When she had knocked him out of the tree with a swipe of her paw, surprising him to such a degree, he couldn’t believe she had bested him.
If he hadn’t been so concerned about what she was thinking about them and the mess she was in, he would have been amused. He admired her for her strength of character, for not allowing herself to be bullied into action. But he knew the only way to get the upper hand with her was to climb back up on the tree branch and catch her off guard this time.
Wavering slightly, she appeared unsteady on her feet, and he thought she was still attempting to overcome the shock of them being shape-shifters.
He nudged her with his face again, trying to head her in the right direction. At first, she balked, but then she turned, and Maya twisted around and began to lead the way. At first, Kat just watched her while Connor studied Kat’s body language. Jaguars normally didn’t vocalize a whole lot. More of their communication was nonverbal, such as giving off scents that would clue one another to their intentions or warn other animals off. Household cats learned to vocalize more with their human companions to get what they wanted. But jaguars didn’t need to.
But Connor and Maya were also human, so they behaved somewhat differently from their big cat cousins. They were used to communicating as humans. But still, they were limited to what their jaguar vocalizations would permit. A roar, kind of a cough, grunts, meows. And though purring wasn’t usually something they did, since they were one of the roaring cats—which included lions, tigers, and jaguars—they did emit kind of a purring sound when they breathed out.
And that’s what Kat was doing now. Purring in a jaguar way. He liked the way she sounded, the way she moved, the way she reacted to him, no matter the circumstances.
Then as if she had no other choice, she ran to catch up to Maya. Connor breathed a tentative sigh of relief and followed close behind, watching her tail swish back and forth, taking in her heavenly sexy scent, and wanting her for his own. There was no doubt in his mind that this wouldn’t be easy.
And they had a long way to go before he and Maya could get Kat safely to their home in Texas.
* * *
Maya had so badly wanted Kat to be Connor’s mate that she hadn’t considered all of the potential pitfalls. She was glad her brother didn’t seem angry with her. In his usual way, he was trying to make the most of what could be a bad situation. He truly was interested in making Kat his mate, so how could he be too irritated with Maya when she had helped to make it happen? Maya hoped Kat would also want him for her own.
Except now, they really did have a problem with getting Kat home safely without her shifting at the wrong time and getting them all into a lot of hot water. But Maya was sure that she and Connor could come up with something that would get them through this situation intact.
As for Kat, Maya was sure Kat would forgive her once she learned how advantageous being a shifter was and how wonderful having Connor as her mate would be. And Maya was not forgetting how Kat would have a sister all at once, too. Kat couldn’t be unhappy about that.
Maya was delighted when Kat began to follow her. Before that, she’d figured they were going to have a real fight on their hands to get Kat to go with them. They couldn’t force her; they had to show her how much they wanted her to be part of the family. Maya was already thinking they might have to find the local shaman for some kind of tranquilizer they could use on Kat to get her to comply with their wishes until they could convince her she would be all right. If they tranquilized her, would she turn? Stay as a jaguar? Human?
Anything they did was iffy.
To Maya’s relief, Kat was sticking close for now while Connor took up the rear. Kat had gone a long distance from the hut, crossed several tributaries, and hadn’t left her scent much of anywhere, so Maya was glad she had roared for them and finally clawed the tree.
Maya had been worried Kat might have been injured, but she appeared fine, except for being shook up. Maya wanted to check out the other jaguar that had been roaring while he tried to locate Kat. What if he was a jaguar-shifter? For now, though, her loyalty was to her brother and Kat. Maya’s own needs had to come second, considering how much of a bind she had put everyone in.
When they reached the hut, Maya waited for Kat to go up the steps first, but she just stared at them. Maya looked back at Connor to see his take on the situation. He raised his brows slightly, but then looked back at Kat and continued to wait. He wasn’t going to push her.
Maya fought pacing. She wanted to sleep through what remained of the night. But suddenly Kat sat down on her rump as if she just couldn’t walk another step, climb the stairs, or move a muscle.
Connor was strong, but could he carry Kat up the stairs while she was in her jaguar form? She didn’t appear to be balking about being here, just that she was too tired…
No, not too tired. Kat began to blur in forms, first a cat and then a human.
Connor quickly shifted also and lifted Kat into his arms to carry her up the stairs. She was like a rag doll, all her energy spent. She still wasn’t herself after being sick for so many days, and all her exertion as a jaguar had taken more energy than she could afford.
Maya raced up the stairs after them, entered the screened-in porch, and stood in the doorway of the hut, her tail twitching back and forth as she waited to see what Connor wanted her to do. Connor had already placed Kat on the bed and pulled the cover over her naked body. He slipped on a pair of boxers as he watched Kat, as if he was afraid she would try to leave again. Her head resting on his pillow, she stared at Connor, not saying a word.
The night still cloaked the jungle in inky darkness, but it appeared they wouldn’t be getting much sleep.
* * *
Exhausted, Kat stared at Connor, unable to believe he was what she thought he had to be. He was gorgeous, his golden eyes filled with worry as he observed her. She couldn’t process all that had happened, no matter how much she tried to convince herself that none of this was a dream.
She didn’t say anything, waiting for him to speak first. What if she tried to talk, and she roared instead? She still had the heightened jaguar senses—sense of smell, hearing, night vision. That she might roar when she attempted human speech seemed only logical.
Connor sat down on the bed next to her, as if he was attempting to show her that he would no longer keep any socially respectable distance from her. That she was his. Naked. Covered only in a light coverlet. And she fel
t vulnerable.
He touched her hair spread out over his pillow. “Kathleen,” he said formally, his words spoken softly, “you’re one of us now.”
One of us. What did that mean?
She didn’t say anything, just stared into his beautiful eyes. She was certain Maya was watching them through the screen door, since Kat hadn’t heard it open and close.
“What are you?” she asked just as softly, so… so tired, but she had to know, she had to learn all she could before she could sleep. She wondered if they could morph into anything, like on the reruns of a sci-fi series she used to watch where some aliens could change into anything—even melding into metal or wood or water. She was glad that her voice had come out normally.
What if they could become eagles and soar over the jungle? Or porpoises and swim across the oceans? Or a snake slithering in the grass? She didn’t like the idea of being a slithering snake, but being a bird could be fun.
What were they really? Aliens from another planet? Any of it seemed too unreal to consider, but she had to know, although her head was pounding and she could barely keep her eyes open.
“We’re jaguar-shifters,” he said, his voice still quiet and reassuring, his hand still touching her hair as if it made him feel connected to her in some way or he thought she would feel comforted by his gentle touch.
She did. His touching her like this was reminiscent of the way he had taken care of her when she had been so sick. “You can only change into jaguars?”
He smiled… genuinely smiled as if he had never expected her to ask such a question. “Just jaguars, Kat. Nothing else. We were born this way.”
“Born…” she whispered. “How…?”
He gave her a half shrug. “Just like with regular people. We had a mother and dad, and our mother birthed us at the local hospital just like normal.”
“You… what… what if you had shifted in the middle of being born? Or couldn’t you have until you reached puberty, or something?” She could just imagine the poor human woman giving birth to a couple of cubs—and the looks on the doctor’s and nurses’ faces. And then when she was nursing them. Their teeth and claws… even thinking about such a thing made her breasts ache.
“Our mother could have birthed us as a jaguar, and we would have been cubs if that had happened.”
Kat closed her gaping mouth.
“When we were young, we were tied to our mother’s shifting. When she would shift, we would. When we were older, we knew enough not to shift when it was dangerous to do so.”
“You can control it?” she asked, surprised.
She sure couldn’t control it. One minute she was staring up at the steps to the hut, intending to climb them, and then in the next instant, she was dizzy and unbelievably tired and couldn’t move another inch. Couldn’t even stand. And then? She turned! And then she was sitting there as a human, naked and unable to stand or climb the stairs.
And then? Connor shifted! He was just as naked as her, sexier than any man she had ever seen nude. Then he scooped her up with tenderness—if she hadn’t been so tired and stressed, she would have felt much more than just shocked—and carried her into the hut.
God, he was gorgeous. If she hadn’t been so shook up and tired, she would have enjoyed the intimacy between them more—their bared skin heated as they touched one another, and the way he was so hard, virile, and sexy. But more than that. He was kind and protective, careful not to appear brusque or annoyed, but genuinely concerned for her well-being. He had to have been irritated with her when she wouldn’t come down from the tree deep in the jungle and he had wanted her to come home with them. He had to have been incensed when she actually knocked him off the branch. In front of his sister, too.
She was certain it couldn’t have been good for his alpha male ego.
At first, Kat thought he had been aggravated with her when he jumped so quickly back onto her branch and then shoved her off. But she realized afterward that by reacting so fast, he had caught her off guard. That time, he had gotten her out of the tree like he had wanted, not that he was irritated with her. Just concerned that they needed to get her back to the hut.
She frowned. Omigod, what if she had shifted earlier? In the tree? Without a stitch of clothing on?
This was truly a nightmare.
Chapter 13
Kat let out her breath and stared at Connor’s naked chest, contemplating just how gorgeous he was. All tanned muscle, with light golden hair trailing down to his boxers. No battle scars. No tattoos or freckles. Just unblemished golden skin. Before he had slipped into a pair of black boxers, she had gotten an eyeful of an erection she had stirred up, tan the way the rest of his skin was, and the golden curls surrounding it. Did he lie out in the Texas sun and soak it up?
For a second, she stared at his lap as he sat next to her on the bed, just studying her without saying a word. Then her eyes widened, and she looked back at his eyes. She had been eyeing his jaguar male package—just to determine which sex he was—when he had jumped into the tree to join her the first time she had seen him as a jaguar. She realized that had been him. Connor. In the jaguar flesh.
He had been checking her out when she was soaking wet, staring at her breasts as a big, old, safe cat. But he hadn’t been all cat. Or safe. He had been a man who had been intrigued with a woman alone in the jungle.
She groaned to herself, trying to remember what else had happened between them when she had thought he was only a jaguar. Nothing, she hoped.
“We were born with the genes,” he finally said.
Kat swallowed hard. “But I wasn’t.” Which meant what? Did they know many who had been changed like her? What difference would it make in her case, as compared to jaguar-shifters who were born that way? Besides the obvious, which was that she didn’t have control over her shifting like they did. “How will I be different?”
His gaze remained on hers, although she saw a shadow of concern in the darkened depths of his eyes. “Truthfully, I don’t know.”
This was so not good. “Where… where are you from?”
“Texas,” he said, offering a small smile. “Just like I said.”
“You’re not human,” she said, frowning at him.
“Not like regular humans.” He sighed and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “But we’re human when in human form and jaguar in our cat form. Although we retain our human thought processes while a cat and our cat senses when we’re human.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I ate a raw fish. I would never have eaten a raw fish if I had retained my human sensibilities.”
He smiled. “As a jaguar, you’ll want to satisfy your hunger in a feral cat’s way. It’s instinctive. You hadn’t had dinner. You were hungry. Fishing for your dinner came naturally. Eating meat raw is usually the only way we eat in our jaguar form. No need to cook. Our stomachs can handle it. We don’t need spices to make it taste better. We eat to survive.”
On some level, she could understand the concept. But she was still human and the notion that she would eat raw meat didn’t appeal. “So then Maya changed me?”
“She said she scratched you. I wouldn’t have thought that would have done it, but apparently it did.”
Kat stared at the bed for a moment, then frowned up at Connor. “She licked me afterward. I worried a little that she would get a taste of my blood and want more.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s how she did it.”
“Why? Why did she change me?” Kat couldn’t keep an upset tone out of her voice. She was something so alien to herself now that she couldn’t grasp the ramifications. She didn’t think she minded that Connor and his sister were different. They couldn’t help what they were. But she did mind that she herself had changed.
But then she wondered—if she had discovered what they were, would they have had to resort to what Maya had done anyway? Change her? Or kill her even? Surely they couldn’t let the world know what they were.
“She wanted me to have a mate,�
� Connor said, his tone matter-of-fact.
Kat’s eyes widened. Not that she was totally surprised, but still, it seemed… medieval.
Connor let out his breath. “And she wanted you to be her sister.”
Kat bit her lower lip, trying to focus on one thought as millions of questions swirled through her mind. “Why me? Besides the fact that I was stuck here with you in the jungle and made for an easy target.”
“Kat, our kind don’t easily take in strangers and develop a fondness for them. I didn’t want her to turn you, although I assumed she would try. I wanted to take you to the resort before it was too late. But you were too sick.”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to visit you in Texas. Or with Maya, rather. You were afraid she’d try again if she wasn’t successful the first time.” Now his reaction to Kat made some sense. His interest in her, yet his need to keep his distance once she was feeling better.
Despite his wanting to stay away from her, Kat recalled Maya’s words to him: “You were dying to know what had happened to her when she was wounded. You didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and we even left here early because you were so disconsolate. And as soon as we returned here, what did you do? Went straight back to the place where she’d been wounded, and then you didn’t come back for hours.”
Just like Kat had felt compelled to return to the Amazon and find Connor to thank him for rescuing her. She had often thought of him, bare-chested and barefooted, leaning over her, cutting the rope from her wrists, and then hurrying to bind her wounds. His eyes had focused on hers with so much concern and tenderness that she had often wondered what it would be like to be with a man like him.
Connor cleared his throat. “Yes, I was afraid she’d bite you to change you. Neither of us has ever tried to turn someone before. She knew I wouldn’t do it.”
Kat shifted her gaze from his muscled torso to his face. He hadn’t wanted her enough to change her himself. But then again, that made him more honorable, didn’t it? That he did indeed care for her but wouldn’t turn her against her will. “I wouldn’t have allowed it if I could have prevented it.”
