Her stomach, which seemed since the accident to have begun training for the Olympic gymnastics team, performed another one of its slow flips. She'd just traveled more than two thousand miles to visit a man she'd never spoken to, whom she already knew to be half predator. Was she out of her mind?
Kitty slipped into the restroom and ordered herself to calm down as she locked the stall door behind her. Everything would be okay. She wasn't a complete idiot. In addition to turning down the plane ticket, she'd vetoed the invitation to stay at Martin Lowe's family home and booked herself a room in a respectable hotel on the Strip.
In fact, she'd decided to splurge and made reservations at the Savannah, which she'd heard was just spectacular. So if the meeting with her father went badly, at least she could enjoy a couple of days of vacation at one of the city's most famous hotels and casinos. She'd reserved a rental car, too, not that she expected her father to kidnap her and hold her hostage at his home, but because she liked her independence and the idea of being trapped somewhere, even by circumstances, rubbed her the wrong way.
Shrugging did nothing to relieve the tension in her shoulders, but she did it anyway as she dropped her bag on top of her feet and stepped up to the sink. She washed her hands automatically and checked her appearance in the enormous mirror.
Considering that she'd been traveling for the last nine and a half hours, things could have been worse. The long French braid she'd woven that morning still confined most of her strawberry blonde hair, with just a few loose wisps around her face and neck. Her makeup was long gone and she looked a little pale underneath her freckles, but at least half of that probably had to do with her nerves, so there wasn't much to be done about it. Her clothes didn't worry her. Jeans and a T-shirt could stand up to almost anything, and she'd even managed not to spill any of her complimentary beverage on herself.
"Good enough for a taxi ride," she muttered to her reflection, and bent to grab her overnight bag.
She felt the air shift, heard a rustle of movement, and almost made it back to vertical before he hit her, but as her papaw liked to saw, "almost" only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades.
The body that tackled her belonged to a shortish man of indeterminate age with dark hair, scruffy cheeks, and an unfortunate taste for cheap cologne. He reeked of it. At least, that's what Kitty's newly hyper senses told her as he pinned her to the gray tile and grabbed her head, only to slam her skull hard against the floor.
The blow wasn't enough to kill her, but the shock might have been. For heaven's sake, who expected to be attacked by a homicidal maniac in an airport restroom? A mugger, sure, but not a murderer.
Even though it seemed to Kitty that it took her hours to get her thoughts and instincts together enough to begin fighting back, in reality she had her arms around his wrists and was tearing his hands away from her head while he was still raising her up for a second slam. The only problem in that was her timing. Without the man's hands holding her head up, it fell back with a solid thunk, and she ended up giving herself a second wicked skull bumping. Apparently, the man didn't need to try to split her head open. Give her enough time and she could take care of the job all by herself.
She heard him cursing and felt his grip shifting while she was still seeing stars and little chirping bluebirds circling above her head. He scrambled and shifted and dragged her arms down, kneeling on her biceps to pin them to the floor. He managed one more blow that way and Kitty felt the itch of oozing blood beneath the tangle of hair at the back of her scalp.
Blinking against the sting of eye-watering pain, Kitty felt her surprise and fear transmute into anger with an all but audible pop. She had not just traveled two thousand miles so some psycho idiot could bash her brains out on the floor of a public toilet. Her mamaw had raised her better than that.
In her mind, she channeled all that anger into a sudden burst of strength that would allow her to buck off her attacker and free her long enough to run from the restroom. Then she planned to scream loud enough to bring a battalion's worth of armed security officers descending on the pathetic slime bag.
That's what she envisioned, anyway; instead, she jerked her arms in an attempt to free them from under the puss-bucket's knees and heard a startled, high-pitched scream of pain.
She blinked again and considered, but no, the sound hadn't come from her. Jerking against the man's weakening grip, she heard another scream and a muffled shout mingling with the pounding of footsteps. Or maybe that was just the pounding of her adrenaline-fueled heart inside her bruised rib cage. Either way, the sound got even louder when her attacker rolled off of her, leaving her clothing stained with his blood. Blood that was explained by the set of lethal-looking claws curving out of the golden-furred paws where Kitty's hands had been only three minutes earlier.
Oh shit.
At first, she just thought it, but when she turned her head and saw the psycho struggling to his knees with hate burning in his eyes and a wicked-looking knife gleaming in his hand, she decided the sentiment bore repeating aloud. Very aloud.
"OH SHIT!"
* * *
Chapter Three
A lot of things happened in the next moment, all of them seemingly simultaneous. The cretin with the knife growled something obscene, then followed that up with a garbled warning that sounded like it could have been, You shouldn't have come here, bitch!—or maybe that was, You've got this coming, bitch!—and lunged for her.
A man's voice shouted something unintelligible. Kitty twisted, dodged the knife, and then skidded into the plumbing beneath the sinks when her center of gravity—along with her shape, skin, bone, and muscles—suddenly shifted. And finally, a complete stranger came careening around the corner at the restroom's far entrance to find the space occupied by a bleeding man armed with a pristine knife. And beneath the sinks, a 350-pound African lioness sat and stared out at him with an angrily twitching, tufted tail.
The stranger did no more than blink.
The criminal, however, looked from the frying pan to the fire and bolted out the other exit as fast as his bleeding legs would carry him. Shifting her own gaze to the newcomer, Kitty found she had a hard time blaming him.
Her would-be rescuer personified the term "intimidating." Among others. The ones that immediately leapt to Kitty's mind also included "elegant."
"arresting."
"gorgeous."
"built," and possibly "yummy." His hair, a rich, dark brown shot through with strands of toffee, looked well cut but tousled, and even to her country-bred eyes, his perfectly fitted suit screamed that it came with a price tag equal to the values of her first three cars. Combined. He wore it as easily as his weathered, cleanly sculpted face wore its expression of fierce displeasure under ruthless control.
She watched, fascinated, as glittering, copper eyes swept the scene and lingered on the section of tile darkened by drops and smears of blood. He hadn't even paused at the sight of a fully grown lioness in the ladies' restroom of the Las Vegas international airport. When his gaze shifted back to her, it held no surprise and no fear, just intensity and the lingering glint of fury.
"Is any of that yours?"
She found her muscles bracing against a shiver. His deep voice stroked over her like a warm, rough tongue. It held a tone of command so obviously natural to him that Kitty had her mouth open before she remembered she couldn't talk.
"I don't think so. He didn't get a chance to do much damage."
That's what she thought. What came out of her mouth was a sound somewhere between a purr and a muffled roar, with a hint of Texas chain saw thrown in. Sitting back on her haunches—damn, she had haunches again—she shook her head impatiently and tried to will herself back into her human form.
Nothing happened.
The stranger didn't seem to notice. Some of the tension drained out of him. "Good. I'm glad you aren't hurt, but you should be careful about shifting in public places. There aren't any laws about it yet, but I figure it's only a matter of ti
me. Humans still aren't used to it, and I'm not sure most of them want to get accustomed." He reached for her abandoned overnight bag without waiting for a reply. "I'll get this if you'll shift back. You won't get through security in that outfit."
Kitty looked down. Since her current outfit consisted of fur—the kind still attached to skin and muscle, not the kind you bought from stores with complicated security systems and sign-carrying protesters out front—she thought he might have a point.
Actually, she knew he had a point. She just wasn't sure she knew what to do about it.
Scowling, she opened her mouth and heard a low rumble emerge. She had no idea what it meant, but it stopped the stranger in his tracks. He turned back to her and frowned. "What do you mean, you can't?"
What the heck did he think she meant? That she couldn't bear to part with the handbag that went with this particular ensemble?
And how the heck could he understand what she was saying? She hadn't even realized she was saying anything. Did growling count as talking in this form?
Had the universe ever created a less competent were-anything?
Frustrated, tired, and sore, she just stared at him. Her tail twitched. She beat back the urge to lift a paw and begin grooming herself like an overgrown tabby. Damn it, she was still a person inside this ill-fitting cat skin. The problem was, it got harder to believe that each time she wore it.
The man stared back, still frowning. "If you can't get out of that shape, how do you explain getting into it?"
Her whiskers twitched. Magic?
"How long ago was your first change?"
What? Was she supposed to tap the floor once for every week since the accident? Was she Mister Ed now?
She tried another growl and thought, Three weeks.
"Have you been practicing?"
Oh, sure. I always practice things that scare the patootle off of me and contradict everything I thought I knew about myself for the past two decades and more. It's a hobby.
His eyebrows arched. "Does the sarcasm make you feel better?"
Oh, my God. He could read minds?
"You can read minds?" she rumbled.
"I don't need to. I speak Leo, and you have the tendency to wear your thoughts on your face." He sighed, an exhalation that sounded almost as tired as she felt, and set her bag back on the floor. "Your father told me you were a late bloomer, but I didn't realize how late."
He stepped toward her, and Kitty reflexively rose to sidle away. "You know my father?"
"I work for him. He asked me to come pick you up." He took another step forward that she matched with one back. He rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to attack you. I'm going to guide your shift."
"You're going to what my what?"
His hand came down on top of her head, between her furry, rounded ears. "I'm going to help you get human again. Just be quiet and concentrate."
Kitty thought about protesting, but her head was still aching a bit and the warmth of his hand felt good. She had to work to resist the urge to tilt her head and guide his long fingers behind her ears where she should really use a good scratch. If she just focused on the fact that she was still human inside and that she was in a public restroom with a man she'd never met before, whose name she didn't know, having just survived a vicious, unprovoked attack, and attempting to transform herself from a lion back into a woman, she might almost have been able to relax.
"Close your eyes," he instructed, and she obeyed before she had time to wonder about why. "And try to stop thinking so loud."
Okay, Kitty decided she wasn't wild about this mind-reading thing, no matter what he called it. Blanking her thoughts now seemed like a really good idea.
She heard a low chuckle and then felt a soft, building warmth begin in the palm of his hand and sink slowly through skin and fur and bone until it melted over her like warm chocolate. It ran down over her head and neck, across her shoulders, her chest, all the way down to her tingling toes until it seemed impossible to repress the urge to purr long and low and rasping.
When she tried, she nearly choked on her own tongue.
Her human tongue.
Eyes flying open, Kitty looked up into the stranger's hard, handsome face and became acutely conscious of the touch of cold tile, frigidly antiseptic air, and a warm copper gaze on her freckled skin.
Her bare, nude, naked, exposed, gradually-turning-a-flattering-shade-of-blush-pink skin.
Yes, as if the day hadn't been enough for her so far, she now found herself naked, in a public toilet, on her hands and knees at the feet of the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen, with her face level with the crotch of his exquisitely tailored pinstripe pants.
"Just kill me."
Her voice managed to sound husky and pathetic both at the same time.
The stranger nudged her overnight bag closer and slowly removed his hand from the top of her head. She couldn't tell if her imagination was running away with her or if he really did stroke her hair gently as he withdrew. But since either way it did nothing to ease her humiliation, did it really matter?
"How about we skip the death part and you take your bag into a stall and put some clothes on?" he rumbled, his voice low and amused and something else that Kitty refused to speculate about. "Dare I hope that you packed an emergency outfit in there?"
As if afraid speaking would make her even more naked, Kitty nodded, her eyes still locked on his trousers.
"Good. Go get dressed, and then we can get out of here. I imagine that after that flight you're dying for something to eat and a comfortable place to sleep. In that order."
Kitty didn't bother to answer. That is, not unless you counted the slam of the stall door and the click of the lock sliding into place to be an answer. Leaning heavily against the door, she clutched her bag to her chest and decided that if there was any justice in the universe, she would die before she ever had to look another person in the eye for as long as she lived.
* * *
Chapter Four
WHILE MARTIN'S DAUGHTER HID IN THE BATHROOM STALL, Max found the "Closed for Cleaning" placard in the janitor's closet near the restroom entrance and set it out. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and settled back against the long bank of sinks opposite the girl's hiding place to wait.
She wasn't what he had expected. Not even remotely. For some reason—and he knew he had only his own prejudice to fault here—he'd been expecting someone older. Oh, he knew her age—Martin had told him she was twenty-four—but he'd still expected an older twenty-four. Someone harder. Someone to whom a long-lost father with an enormous fortune meant a penthouse apartment on easy street and birthday presents as diamond hard as her eyes. From what he'd seen so far, there wasn't a hard edge on this girl. She was all soft skin and round curves and sweet, wary innocence.
And she made his mouth water.
This was an unexpected complication.
Shifting in an attempt to distract his body from the images in his head, Max found the attempts were made in vain. Since those images all seemed to feature the glow of skin like cream sprinkled with cinnamon, or the plump, round weight of a softly curving breast, it would take something along the lines of a volcanic eruption to distract his body from the memory of hers.
He tried thinking about her Leo form to see if that would help, but no dice. As a lioness, she had just as much appeal, in subtly different ways. She was one of the smaller cats he'd seen, lithe and sleek in a way their kind wasn't normally known for. Leos tended to have more muscle than grace. Cheetahs and panthers had long, slim lines and rangy, feline elegance. The expensive European race cars of the shifter world. Leos had bulk and power. Less Maserati, more Mack truck.
Except for Martin's daughter. She looked almost delicate to Max, even with her sharp white fangs and lethal, curving claws. The sight of her made all of his most primitive instincts sit up and take notice. Like his animal cousins, he wanted to cut her from the pride and keep her for himself, fighting off any other male and ensuring that the c
ubs she bore would be his heirs, carriers of his genes and his legacy—
Max cut himself off abruptly. Cubs? What the hell was he thinking? He'd known the girl for all of ten minutes, if that, and he still had a lot more to learn about her before he decided if she was half as innocent as she looked. Claiming her, if it happened at all, would wait a lot longer than that, and mating with her even longer still. Better not to count his cubs before they were conceived.
He cleared his throat and forced his gaze to focus on the metal stall door and not the mouthwatering treat behind it. "Are you all right in there? Do you have everything you need?"
He heard the clatter of something dropping to the tile; then a soft, slightly unsteady voice said, "Fine. I'm fine. I'll just be another minute."
Her voice was shaky and sweet and liquidly southern. He tried to remember where Gone with the Wind had been set and thought it had been Georgia. That's what she sounded like, Scarlett O'Hara without the whine or the self-conscious manipulation. Kitty's plane had come in from Atlanta, but he thought he remembered Martin saying she lived somewhere else.
Max smiled. "No wonder I thought you sounded strange when you were growling at me earlier. I've never heard anyone speak Leo with an accent before."
Walk on the Wild Side Page 3
