Hunted by a Jaguar

by Felicity Heaton

  A crack sounded.

  Every inch of him went rigid as his senses blared a warning.

  Branches lashed at him as the one he was on gave way and he dropped. One struck him hard underneath his jaw and flipped him onto his back in time for the next to strike him there and spin him around again. He hissed and twisted in the air as he cleared all the tree limbs and landed with a huff on his paws in the leaf litter.

  Iolanthe appeared above him, her smile teasing. “Are you hurt?”

  He growled at her and shifted back into his human form, and then sighed as he rose onto his bare feet. “Just a little dented pride.”

  She slipped the pack off her shoulders and offered it to him. He unzipped it, pulled out his black combats, and dropped the pack so he could tug them on, covering his nudity.

  “What happened?” Her gaze drifted over him from head to toe and back again.

  He shrugged and jammed his feet into his boots. “I was distracted.”

  Her smile only widened. “I did say I was not going to let you win your hunting game.”

  She had, and he had been determined to show her that he could stalk her all the way to the pride village and capture her before she could reach it. He hadn’t anticipated she would use her deadliest weapon to her advantage though—her beauty.

  He crouched and tied his boots, and then zipped his pack closed and slung it over his shoulder as he rose onto his feet.

  “You win this one. I’ll get you on the way back.” He had been enjoying hunting her, and had been sure he could have got the jump on her if it hadn’t been for the weak branch.

  It had been a long time since he had taken to the trees. He had put on muscle and weight, both in his human and his jaguar form. He would be more cautious next time and would know which branches could support him.

  “Maybe I will be a jaguar too on the way back.” She said it casually but she knew what she was doing, stirring a fierce need to take her off the path and pin her to a secluded tree and have his way with her until she bit him and had enough of his blood to make that transformation.

  He tightened his grip on the straps of the pack and grunted. “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.”

  She tossed a scowl over her shoulder at him and he smiled as she huffed and stomped along the path ahead of him.

  He had figured out that she had a very limited window in which she could use his blood to shift. The ability seemed to be available to her for only a few hours, less than twelve. The last of his blood had left her system around a day ago. If she wanted to shift, she would need to bite him again.

  And she would.

  This time, he would bite her too.

  He stalked after her and then moved ahead when they reached the steep slope that surrounded the village. He crushed his nerves, took her hand and helped her up it. She made it look easy, never once losing her footing on the mud and roots. He grabbed the tree at the top of the hill and hauled himself up, pulling her up with him.

  She stopped, her gaze fixed down the other side of the slope.

  “This is your home?” she said as her eyes took in the single storey thatched wooden buildings on their stilts.

  “No.” He didn’t take his eyes off the village as her gaze drifted to him. “Maybe it was once… a very long time ago. It’s just a bad memory now. My home is in London.”

  Her hand slipped into his and she linked their fingers, pressing her palm to his. “I like your home in London… although it is a little noisy.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand, recalling how horrified she had been when they had visited it briefly to gather some fresh clothes for him and had arrived around midnight, during the club’s busiest hour. The music had been pumping. The crowd had been heaving. Iolanthe had looked as if she might teleport back to Hell.

  He had convinced her to follow him into the back of the building. Her wide eyes had taken everything in as she had passed through the busy club, including the bar staff.

  She had scowled at Sherry.

  Kyter hadn’t been able to stop himself from smiling when he had felt the jealousy in his little elf. He had been about to tease her about it when Cavanaugh had caught his eye and he had silently thanked the male instead, and fielded a very curious but dark look. One that Kyter knew had been aimed at Iolanthe. The big snow leopard shifter had looked as jealous as Iolanthe had felt on seeing Sherry, leaving Kyter feeling that Cavanaugh had left a woman behind or lost her somehow, and that the female had been his mate.

  Kyter intended to ask him about it when they returned to Underworld.

  Right now, he had other business that needed his attention.

  He led Iolanthe down the muddy slope to the village. Several of the pride males looked at her and he growled at all of them, flashing his fangs in a warning. The wise bastards instantly averted their gazes and he walked a little taller, his chin tipped up and a touch of swagger in his step as he took pleasure from seeing the males so subservient.

  Females stopped to watch them as they passed, and one male raced ahead to the main building in the centre of the village and rushed up the steps, disappearing inside.

  A second later, the grey-haired elder of the pride emerged from the building.

  Kyter strode up to the middle of the open area in front of the building and stopped a short distance from it, refusing to move any closer. If he did, he would have to tip his head back to look at the elder, and he was damned if he was going to look up at the male.

  He released Iolanthe’s hand and held his out to her as the pride gathered in a circle around him, silently asking her to give him what she held in her safekeeping. She nodded, drawing the curious gazes of the females surrounding them. They wouldn’t know what she was. Her ears were normal and her eyes were green. He had asked her to conceal herself because he hadn’t wanted the pride to stare at her the way they stared at him, as if he was a monster.

  When some of the males dared to look at her again, Kyter bared his fangs on a growl, the sound vibrating in his throat and warning them away. The elder raised an eyebrow, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes.

  Kyter wanted to smirk and tell the bastard that he had a mate, but he was above it. He had come here for three reasons, and getting back at his pride or gaining their acceptance wasn’t one of them.

  He was about to fulfil the first reason.

  Iolanthe teleported the demon’s head into her hands and placed it into his. He held it aloft for everyone to see, clutching it by one black horn, and then tossed it across the dirt courtyard. It rolled and landed facing the elder.

  “It won’t change what happened… but it will stop it from happening again. No demon will bother you anymore.” Kyter wiped his hand on his black combat trousers and didn’t wait for anyone to acknowledge what he had done. They wouldn’t thank him. He didn’t need them to either.

  He hadn’t really done it for them.

  He caught Iolanthe’s hand and pulled her towards the fringes of the village, to an area that had gone to grass, lined with thick bare wooden poles around four feet tall. Each pole bore claw marks, scented by the kin of the jaguar buried beneath.

  He had done it for his mother, and he had done it for him.

  This was the second reason he had come back to this place.

  He stopped in front of his mother’s grave with Iolanthe, his golden gaze locked on the wooden pole that bore only his marks and his scent.

  “I wish you could’ve met,” he whispered as he stared at the grave, fresh pain beginning to well up in his heart as he thought about Iolanthe meeting his mother. “She would have been happy that I had a mate… and that I was happy at last.”

  Iolanthe lifted her other hand, caught his cheek and gently pressed, bringing his head around to face her. She tiptoed and kissed him, the softest one she had ever given him, one overflowing with love and tenderness.

  She settled back beside him and smiled at the grave. “I am sure that she is with her ancestors and that she knows, and she is happy for you,
Kyter.”

  He blinked to hold back the tears threatening to fill his eyes and clutched her slender hand, sending a silent prayer of thanks to those ancestors for giving him such a wonderful mate.

  “She is happy for us,” he said and Iolanthe nodded, slipped her hand free of his and shifted beneath his arm, nestling close to his side with her right hand pressed against his bare chest and her head resting above it.

  He curled his arm around her shoulders and held her, giving himself a moment to be with his mother, etching this final memory of his village on his mind, because he would never return. There was nothing here for him now.

  When the light began to fade and the heat of day gave way to the warmth of the evening, Kyter sighed and said a silent goodbye to this place, but not to his mother and his ancestors. They would be with him wherever he went. In his heart.

  He turned with Iolanthe and slowly headed back through the village, ignoring the way everyone stopped to watch him as he passed.

  When he reached the main building, the greying elder came out again.

  “Stay,” the male said and the village fell silent, the air growing thicker.

  Kyter released Iolanthe and looked over his shoulder at the male.

  “I have no reason to be here.” Kyter looked the man in the eye as he said that, not hiding how he felt about the village or the people in it. They meant nothing to him, because they had made it clear a thousand times that he meant nothing to them.

  “We need strong warriors and you have a female to protect now. You have a duty to do.”

  Iolanthe raised a single fine black eyebrow. “What does he mean?”

  Kyter schooled his expression, hiding how amused he was by trying to guess how she would react when he explained.

  “The old man thinks you should start popping babies out for the pride.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Perhaps in another thousand years.”

  The smile that had been working its way onto his lips faded as it dawned on him that he had that span of time now, or at least he would have it soon, when their mating was complete. He looked down at Iolanthe, filled with an urge to rush to his third and final reason for being back in the rainforest.

  “I only have one duty now,” he said to the elder and took hold of Iolanthe’s hand again, already backing towards the exit of the village with her. “My duty is to my woman and apparently there’s a lost temple around four hundred kilometres north of here that she’s itching to explore. Maybe in another thousand years I’ll convince her to have kids, but when I do, I won’t raise them in a place that will make them feel there’s something wrong with them… sorry… I have a new pride now.”

  He turned and tugged Iolanthe towards the slope, his pace increasing as they closed in on it and left the village behind. She sidled closer to him and ran her free hand up and down his bare arm, her gaze burning into his body and the sweet fragrance of desire mingling with her exotic scent.

  “I have a more pressing itch and I do not need to deliver the artefact to my client for another four months.”

  Kyter smiled over his shoulder at Iolanthe. “Plenty of time to scratch that itch then… and I have just the claws to do it… and the perfect place.”

  “The perfect place?” Her eyes lit up, violet chasing away the green in them, telling him that she remembered what he had said to her before they had fought Fernandez and Barafnir.

  His smile widened and he nodded.

  “I could teleport us,” she said and her eagerness only increased his, making him want to take her up on that offer.

  But he wanted to see her face when she saw the waterfall too, and he wanted the moon to have risen when they reached it.

  He wanted it to be perfect.

  For her.

  Kyter led her through the rainforest, down secret paths that only he knew, deep into an area of steep ravines and lush nature. He looked back at her from time to time, drinking in the way her eyes sparkled as she took in all the rare flowers that only blossomed here, orchids that made the trees their homes, and the exotic birds as they swooped across her path or flitted around her.

  He could feel her delight running through him, the pleasure she took from nature, and it left him feeling as if they truly had been made for each other. Both of them gained incredible pleasure from the natural world, and his pleasure only increased now that he could share it with her and share in how happy it made her.

  He slowed as he heard the waterfall in the distance and wended his way down the steep path that looked like little more than a section of hill that had slipped in one of the storms. Ahead of him, through the trees, water glittered.

  He brushed aside each shrub that hindered him and Iolanthe, holding them for her as she passed, and released her hand as he held back the final one. His gaze tracked her as she slowly walked forwards, her head coming up and the amazement she felt rushing through their link and into him.

  She reached the edge of a large flat rock and looked back at him, a breathtaking vision against her backdrop of the four separate misty falls that leaped over the rocks and dropped into the dark pool below her. The water rippled, reflecting the moonlight and the stars that hung above them in the inky dark blue sky. Iolanthe turned on the spot, her violet eyes drinking everything in.

  It felt like forever since he had been here and had basked in the beauty of the hidden pool nestled among the leafy green trees, but he didn’t remember it looking as beautiful as it did now, with Iolanthe standing in the middle of it.

  She said something in her elf tongue and beamed at him.

  It might have been ‘race you in’ because suddenly she was naked and had leaped off the flat rock, diving into the pool around ten metres below.

  He had intended to take the path down but he could display a little male prowess for his female.

  Kyter dropped his pack and stripped off as he stood at the edge of the ledge, watching Iolanthe as she performed a perfect backstroke below him, her bare breasts breaching the water and making him hurry. He wanted to be down there already, sweeping her up into his arms and suckling those dusky peaks as she moaned his name.

  She swam directly beneath him on her front, flipped onto her back and slowly paddled away, her eyes on him the whole time.

  He tossed his combats on his boots and stood naked above her.

  She crooked her finger.

  Kyter obeyed. In style.

  He planted his hands at the edge of the flat rock, kicked his legs up into a perfect handstand, dipped his weight down on his arms and pushed off. He spun in the air, twisting and turning, before performing a forwards roll and streamlining himself for a perfect finish to his dive. He plunged deep into the cooling water, kicked off the bottom and came up directly below Iolanthe.

  Her legs kicked above him, treading water.

  Kyter grinned and came up behind her, and grabbed her around her waist.

  She shrieked and the birds in the trees took flight, startled from their roosts.

  Kyter laughed until she elbowed him in the head, making it end in a grunt. She twisted in his arms, grabbed his shoulders and shoved down hard, sending him back under the water. Her laughter rang through it as she kicked off, swimming away from him towards the falls.

  Kyter broke the surface and swam after her, driven to give chase. He easily closed in on her and grabbed her ankle, yanked her backwards through the water and turned her at the same time, pulling her into his arms with her front against his. She spluttered and wiped the water from her face.

  “Were you impressed?” he murmured as he swam with her, kicking his legs and gliding through the water with her towards the falls on the right of the four.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and toyed with his wet hair. “When you scared the life out of me or when you performed the twisty dive thing?”

  “The latter.”

  She wriggled her nose and was about to answer when the spray from the waterfall rained down on them and she looked back over her s
houlder towards it.

  “Kyter… what are you doing?” She tried to break free but he tightened his grip on her, refusing to let her escape him.

  His right arm hit the underwater ledge and he planted his right knee on it and scooped Iolanthe up into his arms as he rose onto his feet. She clung to him and gasped as he waded through the thigh-deep water with her. Her gasp became another shriek as they passed under the waterfall, the cold water pounding down on them, and then faded as they reached the other side.

  “Taking you somewhere more private.” He set her down on her feet, keeping hold of her bare hips, and slowly guided her towards the boulders that lined the back of the recess.

  Her eyes darkened.

  Kyter backed her into a large smooth boulder and bent her over it. He held on to her hips and kissed down her throat, tasting the water on her warm skin. She moaned as he reached her breasts and clutched his head, his name leaving her lips as a breathless whisper. He could feel her need. It pounded in him too, a deep beat that enslaved him, driving him to obey it.

  He moaned and suckled her nipple, tugging it into a firm peak before kissing across her chest to her other breast and doing the same to that one. Water lapped at his thighs, the sound of the waterfall drowning out the world around them, leaving only their ragged breathing and their moans as he explored her body with his mouth.

  He held her waist and pushed her higher on the rock, so he could kiss lower still, heading towards the apex of her thighs. He wanted to taste her again and feel how hot and wet she was, primed for him as he was primed for her. His cock throbbed, jerking against his stomach, hot and heavy and hungry to be inside her. His fangs itched, the need to sink them into the nape of her neck overwhelming him.

  She spread her thighs for him, an invitation he would never turn down, and clung to the rock above her as he dropped his head and speared her with his tongue. She was warm and slick, her taste making his length pulse again.

  “Kyter,” she murmured, the sweetest thing he had ever heard as he felt the emotion behind it, the need and the hunger.

  “I want you to be mine, Iolanthe,” he whispered against her flesh and stroked her with his tongue, eliciting another cry from her lips. “Will you be mine?”