Hunted by a Jaguar

by Felicity Heaton

  An immense and dangerous jaguar.

  Iolanthe landed in her small studio apartment, stumbled forwards a few blind steps and collapsed on the wooden floor, her knees striking it hard.

  A jaguar she had instantly recognised as her mate.

  A shiver went through her, spreading down her back and thighs, and she stared wide-eyed at her dark violet bed in front of her.

  He hadn’t been lying to her. She looked back over her shoulder, as if she could see him back at the ruins if she did so, and shook her head, her hands trembling against her knees. Her mate. Her male. It tore her in two, sending her head and her heart in circles.

  She couldn’t let it affect her. She couldn’t give in to him and the fierce attraction she felt towards him, desire that had been steadily growing since she had first set eyes on him.

  She couldn’t because he was playing her.

  She was no fool. He had been playing her from the moment they had met.

  He was out to take the artefact from her.

  He was out to take her life.

  CHAPTER 10

  Kyter prowled around the moonlit ancient city, his paws silent on the broad stones of the roads that intersected the ruined buildings. He walked with his head down, breathing in all the scents coming off the cooling stones, pinpointing one among the thousands of different smells.

  He chuffed, paused and raised his head to the starlit canvas above. He dragged the warm dusty air over his large fangs, scenting his female. A growl escaped him when her scent came back weaker than before, fading in time with the night.

  He raked his claws over the stones and moved on, anger ruling him and keeping him in his jaguar form, a prisoner of his emotions.

  A potent and sharp emotion threaded through those other feelings, riding him hard and making him want to tip his head back and roar. Guilt. It was relentless, lacing everything he felt, a feeling he couldn’t escape as he stalked through the shadows in his jaguar form.

  He had broken with tradition.

  He hadn’t been able to stop the change from coming over him though. When she had turned on him, her eyes flashing dangerously, her scent warning him that he had made a terrible mistake with her and he was about to pay the ultimate price for it, fear had swept through him with the force of a tsunami, shattering his control. His primal instincts had demanded that he stop his mate from leaving him and his body had obeyed, responding by forcing him to shift as he moved to capture her.

  That shift into his jaguar form had had zero to do with grieving his mother and everything to do with fear and anger, but it didn’t change the fact that he had shifted before his month was up.

  When Iolanthe had disappeared and he had regained a degree of control over himself, he had realised what he had done and that he was in his jaguar form, and had expected grief to fill him.

  He had experienced only despair.

  Anguish that his mate was gone and might never return.

  Her scent grew stronger and he followed it, a slave to his need to find her even when he knew that she was gone, teleported out of his territory because he had been a fool. Her words taunted him, spoken with a bitter edge and laced with fury, outrage that he had caused.

  She didn’t want a mate.

  She didn’t want a collar.

  He lowered his head again, stalking now, taking careful measured steps as his senses mapped everything around him and his ears twitched, listening hard for a sound that might signal danger.

  Or her return.

  He wanted her to return.

  To him.

  Kyter found a tree in one of the gardens of the crumbling buildings. He rose onto his hind legs and raked his claws over the trunk, peeling the bark away and leaving deep grooves in the wood. When the trunk bore patches where he had completely scratched away the bark, he settled down onto all fours and rubbed against the tree, not just his cheeks but his back too, arching onto his hind legs to ensure his scent was all over it. His territory now. He dropped to his paws again and sniffed the tree, making sure it smelled of him.

  It smelled of other cats too. Small domestic ones. Not a threat.

  He chuffed and moved on, following her scent still, aware it was leading him back to the room where she had been digging.

  He prowled down the street, heading downhill towards the building, aching with a need to smell her intoxicating fragrance again. He wasn’t satisfied with the traces of her that lingered in the warm night air. He needed to smell her.

  He needed to smell his female.

  His mate.

  He found the room she had been digging in and huffed when he saw the pick she had used laying discarded on the stone floor.

  He loped over to it and sniffed it, pulling her pleasing scent over his teeth. It was strong on the wooden handle of the tool. He breathed it in, finding comfort in her smell, and then rubbed his cheek against the handle. It wasn’t enough. He caught the slim shaft of wood in his front paws, curling them around it, and lifted it so he could rub it harder. He rolled with the tool, holding it to his face, his hind legs sticking in the air as he lost himself in the joy of rubbing her scent across his fur.

  She didn’t need a collar.

  He rolled onto his feet, dropping his toy, and made a low keening noise in his throat, a sound born of sorrow.

  She wasn’t like the females he had grown up with at the pride.

  She viewed having a mate as something equal to wearing a collar. He had acted the same way out of bitterness after he had been told that he had no mate. He had made himself believe that he didn’t want one, because the thought that he would never have one had cut him to his soul.

  He still couldn’t think about that day without wanting to rake his claws and take his fangs to something, tearing into it to unleash his fury.

  It had been the day of his rite of passage into adulthood.

  The elders had called him into their meeting house, just as they did with all male jaguar shifters when they were due to begin the rite, a period of several weeks in which they would journey from pride to pride with an elder, scenting all the females to see if their mate was among them.

  They had stared at him with cold hard eyes and had announced he wouldn’t be going through the rite, because there was no mate for him. His mixed blood made it impossible.

  He had begun to drift away from his pride after that, distancing himself at first to avoid hearing the way the other males talked about him, speaking of him as if he wasn’t a jaguar or a useful member of the pride because he wouldn’t have a mate.

  Once he had grown immune to the barbs and whispered words, he had started to distance himself to kill the constant ache in his chest, the undeniable yearning for a mate.

  He had envied the males of his pride as they had found their mates, bringing them back to the village to live there with them, but he had hidden it from everyone, including his mother. He had taken to the hills during the celebrations of new mates, watching from there, forever at a distance but never able to take that extra step, one down the other side of the hill so he didn’t have to witness the joyous occasion.

  There had been little point in paining himself by seeing something he could never have, but he had never been able to stop himself from watching.

  Now he had a mate, and she was beautiful, everything he desired, but he felt as if he was going to ruin his chance with her.

  She didn’t want a collar.

  She didn’t want the change in her life that would happen because of their mating.

  The females in his pride had always been honoured to have found their mate and their chance to bear offspring to increase their ravaged numbers.

  Kyter had the feeling that if he mentioned getting a child in Iolanthe, he would end up very familiar with her black claws and she would be using his chest as a new sheath for her blade.

  He also wasn’t sure how the kid would turn out. It was a miracle that he had turned out more jaguar than demon. Normally, demon offspring were born pure demon
, the other species obliterated from their blood.

  His mother had told him that his jaguar side was strong.

  His ancestors were some of the strongest males of their race.

  It was that legacy in his veins that had controlled the demon side of his genes and he was thankful for it. If the demon side of him had been stronger, if he had come out demon rather than jaguar, they would have killed him at birth.

  Kyter idly rubbed the shaft of the pick again, smelling Iolanthe on it still, using her scent to drive away his dark and sombre thoughts of his past, replacing them with ones of a possible future with her.

  Where was she?

  Elves could teleport between the mortal realm and their homeland in Hell. Was she down there now, thousands of miles from him, separated by a barrier that was impenetrable to his kind without assistance? The only way he could reach Hell was to hitch a ride with someone who could teleport freely to that realm or hunt down a fae or witch capable of opening one of the permanent portals between the mortal and Hell realm.

  He had been a colossal fool.

  Would she forgive him if he told her that he had realised his mistake?

  Would she forgive him if he said that he was sorry?

  He had been so caught up in the fact he had a mate that he had done everything wrong.

  He had slipped into some fucked up primal behaviour born of his upbringing at the pride village. It had overwhelmed that small sliver of himself that had remained conscious that he was messing things up with her, behaving nothing like the male he truly was and acting like a complete dick. He should have listened to that whispered voice and not allowed the stronger one belonging to the lessons of his pride and his upbringing to control him.

  It was too late now to chastise himself though. It wouldn’t change what he had done.

  He had approached her all wrong. So damn wrong. She wasn’t a female from the villages. She wasn’t meek and dependent on males. She was confident and powerful, as old as the damned ancient city around him, and she had a career and an independent streak that was as wide as the one that normally ran in his veins.

  One he had apparently forgotten existed in a fit of stupidity.

  He picked himself up and loped away from the building, heading back towards the area where they had fought and he had behaved like a royal dick.

  He needed to take a different approach with her if he was going to win her. He had been thinking with the wrong head. Hell, he shouldn’t have been listening to either head. He needed to listen to that other part of himself. His heart. As much as that made him uncomfortable, he had to do it.

  Because what was happening between them was more than a fated bond. He had felt the attraction burning between them before he had realised she was his mate, and she hadn’t been lying when she had told him she didn’t recognise him as her fated male. But she had desired him anyway, had been all over him before he had stupidly thought about biting her.

  He desired her, wanted her because she was a beautiful woman who stole his breath away, but now she thought he only wanted her because she was his mate.

  He chuffed and growled, directing the rumble of anger at himself.

  He had messed up. Badly.

  If he wanted to win her and stop her from walking out of his life forever, he was going to have to fight for her and he was going to have to be the first male of his species to compromise.

  He had a feeling she would be worth it though.

  He reached the courtyard and his black combats where they lay on the patchy grass. He focused hard and grunted as he began the transformation, his bones snapping back into their human form and his fur receding. He growled as his face returned to normal and panted as he knelt on all fours. Naked.

  Kyter waited for the pain to stop ebbing and flowing through his bones and then stood with a wobble and grabbed his combat trousers. He unbuttoned them, tugged them on and fastened them again. A breeze swept across the open area as he finished with the last button, stirring the trees that dotted the ruins around him and picking dust up into the air. It swirled across the stone flags and the grass, and curled around his bare feet.

  He reached into the left thigh pocket of his trousers, took out his phone and swiped his thumb across the screen to wake it up.

  No messages.

  At least Cavanaugh hadn’t burned Underworld down yet.

  The only big cat burning things was him. He had one huge charred bridge to repair between him and Iolanthe.

  He felt as if it was already too late for him and he had driven her away. She had been angry with him tonight because of his behaviour. She had been furious because he had killed that demon who had come after her. She had even been pissed that he had kissed her, for around five seconds, and then she had kissed him back.

  That didn’t change the fact that she was mad as hell at him because of every single thing he had done since meeting her.

  How was he supposed to overcome that?

  He hadn’t set a foot right in the whole time he had known her.

  He sat on a high stone curb and considered firing off a message to Cavanaugh. Saying what? He had found his mate, screwed things up, and now he didn’t have a damned clue how to find the item he was looking for or how to win her back?

  His right eyebrow rose.

  Maybe there was a way to turn everything around and make her see that he wasn’t a complete arsehole Neanderthal bent on owning her like a slave. He smiled. No maybe about it. There was a way to make her see that they could both get what they wanted, and this time he wasn’t talking about gaining her as his mate.

  He was talking about something important to her.

  It was important to them both. Common ground. The perfect starting place for building the foundations of a relationship.

  The artefact.

  He could have his revenge.

  She could have her pay off.

  And maybe, just maybe, they could have forever.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kyter’s fingers flexed and pressed into Iolanthe’s bottom, drawing her against him as his mouth mastered hers. She tunnelled her fingers into his sandy hair, ploughing lines in the shorter hair at the back of his head as she pushed her hands upwards. She curled her fingers as she reached the top of his head and twined them around the longer lengths of his hair, tugging them into her fist. He groaned into her mouth and kissed her harder, each sweep of his tongue and fierce press of his lips heightening her hunger and stirring her need.

  She pulled herself up his body, tightening her legs around his waist, and poured that hunger and need into kissing him. He palmed her backside and pinned her against the column, pressing every hard delicious inch of his body into hers. She shuddered and moaned, the steel length of his arousal between her thighs, rubbing against where she needed and ached for him, sending her out of her mind.

  “Iolanthe.” He murmured and broke away from her lips to feather kisses along her jaw, persuading her to tip her head back.

  She loved the way he spoke her name, lacing it with a mixture of reverence and need, speaking it in a way no male had ever spoken it before. There was such hunger in it, such violent need and desperation. It was if he was voicing her feelings, echoing them perfectly.

  She clawed at his hair, tugging him closer and pinning him to her throat as his mouth performed a wicked dance over the line of her artery, sending a thousand shivers down her spine. He raised one hand to the back of her neck and palmed it, stroking and teasing, increasing the shivers until she trembled against him, squirming in his arms.

  “Kyter,” she moaned, the desperate needful sound of her husky voice shocking her.

  He groaned and clutched the nape of her neck and brought his mouth back down on hers, kissing the breath from her, giving her a way of unleashing her need and seeking the satisfaction she desired. She kissed him fervently, desperately, clashing with him and not giving him the dominance he wanted. She couldn’t. She was a slave to her need now, too lost and wild to tame herself
or be tamed by another.

  Kyter’s grip on her backside and neck increased.

  A dog barked in the distance, reminding her that they were in the open, a dangerous place to lose sight of their surroundings as they succumbed to their carnal pleasure.

  Before she could stop herself, she focused on her bolthole and darkness engulfed them both. Kyter’s startled gasp against her lips ended on a moan as she landed on the bed in her small apartment.

  On top of him.

  He instantly rolled her, ending up between her thighs, pinning her to the dark violet covers of her double bed.

  She tipped her head back into the pillow as he devoured her throat, his lips teasing her and the gentle nip of his teeth awakening a deep need to do the same to him. She wanted to sink her teeth into him and drink her fill of his rich, strong blood.

  He moaned and pressed his blunt teeth into her skin, as if he had heard her thoughts and he liked them.

  His hands skimmed up her sides and her underarms, and he shoved her arms above her head, wrapped his hands around her wrists and pinned them to the pillows. He pushed himself up, his golden eyes hooded as he looked down at her. She wriggled and he smiled, a lopsided one that had her heart fluttering in response. His grip on her wrists tightened, causing his arms to flex on either side of her, a subtle reminder of his strength.

  She wanted to remind him that she was stronger than he was, but she liked him where he was and she was happy being at his mercy.

  For now.

  He dropped his head towards her and she raised hers, eager for another kiss. He stopped before their lips could touch and drew back. Teasing her. She frowned at him and he lowered his gaze to her black armour.

  “Why don’t you flip your armour a little mental command and make it go away?”

  She felt a passing sensation of irritation as those words sank in, as if she should be angry with him for some reason, but it drifted away, inconsequential when he was between her thighs, his delicious weight holding her immobile, exactly how she wanted things to be.

  That lopsided smile grew into a full-blown grin when she did as he wanted, commanding her armour to recede into the twin black and silver bands she wore around her wrists. He released her wrists and pushed off her, coming to kneel between her thighs as the black scales began to obey her command.