Seven
Itzel
Princess, Ocelot Nation
Pain and confusion warred in my mind. Each time I would think that I needed to remember—something, I didn’t know what—the pain would wash away all conscious thought. It seemed to have no end, only a razor continuously sawing through my throat and the knowledge of some invasion I was helpless against.
At last, I felt something besides pain. I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was a curtain of long, black hair hanging over a man’s face. I sucked in a breath, and his head shot up, his gemstone green eyes fixed on me with such intensity it nearly knocked the breath right back out of me. I opened my mouth, wanting to say his name, but my throat screamed in protest at the very thought.
“Itzel,” he said, staring at me like… Well, like I’d just come back from the dead.
I nodded, and Shadow slid from the stool where he’d sat, leaning over me. His fingertips whispered over my cheek, and I closed my eyes and drew another breath, this one trembling through me.
“You’re alive,” he said. I wanted to ask how, how it was possible that my body could support my life, but then a strange thought invaded my mind. Was I in someone else’s body? I felt like myself, but not like myself. There was something different, some uneasiness at the edges of my mind, as if someone unseen were breathing over my shoulder.
My lids fluttered open, and I stared up into Shadow’s unfathomable gaze. His eyes burned into mine, a tumult of emotion swirling there. For a long minute, neither of us moved.
“Thank you,” he whispered, the raspiness of his voice smoothing out. He leaned in and gently swept his lips across my forehead.
“What for?” I whispered, even that sending a bolt of pain through me.
“For coming back,” Shadow said, crouching so his face was level with mine, his chin resting on the edge of the bed.
I smiled, a warmth filling my chest until I thought it would overflow.
“I’ll get you medicine,” Shadow whispered, gently stroking a hair off my cheek. “Then you’ll rest and heal.”
I wanted to tell him I loved him, to thank him, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I was too tired.
I slept again. When I woke again, I had the presence of mind to look around. I was in a bed with thick pillows and a soft mattress. Rich, jewel colored velvet curtains covered the windows, and an intricately designed rug shot through with gold threads covered the floor.
“Here, drink,” rumbled a deep, rich voice. I turned to see Lord Balam lying propped on the pillows next to me, a book in one hand and his head resting on his other palm. He reached behind him and produced a glass of water, which I quickly drank.
I lay back on the bed after downing the chilled liquid. Lord Balam studied me expectantly.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He smiled and leaned down, pressing his full lips firmly against mine.
When he pulled away, he sat up. “I should get the others. They’ll want to know you’re up and about.”
“What’d I miss?”
“Not much,” he said. “Your death hit us all pretty hard.”
“Is Kwame back?” I asked, an irrational dart of fear shooting through me. What if he’d tried to drag me back here, and I’d somehow trapped him back in the spirit world?
Lord Balam nodded, pressing a kiss against my lips again before speaking. “He’s here. We’re at the palace in the Tiger Empire. We thought maybe they’d orchestrated the attack, but after seeing your attacker, we realized it had nothing to do with Shah Tiger.”
“Tadeu,” I said, my chest tightening. I pressed a fist to my heart and closed my eyes.
“When I saw him emerge from the tiger, I realized who he was, though I only saw the last minutes of his human life. I realized then that the attack had been… personal.”
I nodded, my throat aching from more than the wound he’d caused.
“How did I heal?” I asked. “How can my body have recovered from that?”
“Sir Kenosi,” he murmured, covering my hand with his. “He gave you his cheetah.”
“How?” I whispered, realizing that was the presence I felt, the restless feeling that something foreign hovered around me. It wasn’t around me, though. It was inside me.
“He used his amulet,” Lord Balam said soberly, his eyes full of concern as he watched my reaction.
“He… Fucked my body?”
Balam nodded.
A shiver went through me, and I gripped Lord Balam’s hand. “Is he okay?”
Some part of me knew the answer to that question, though. Because I still had his cheetah. He wouldn’t have simply left it with me. I didn’t know if that was even possible.
“There’s something you should know about the curse on the panther amulet,” he said.
But I already knew. There was so much about the curse that they should know, and the first thing was that no one could fuck me.
“But… He’s not my mate,” I said. “He said he didn’t have one. That he didn’t see anyone when he opened the Panther Amulet.”
“He lied.”
“But… Why?”
He shrugged one hulking, tattooed shoulder. “That’s something only he knew.”
“Did he know about the curse?” I asked, staring at the jaguar with stricken eyes.
He nodded again. “He knew.”
“He knew I was his mate? And that he’d die if he gave me his cheetah?” Even though part of me had known it all along, another part of me couldn’t believe it. Sir Kenosi was nothing if not hedonistic and selfish in his pursuit of pleasure. He was certainly not the kind of man who gave part of himself to a girl he’d fucked, even if she was his mate. He hadn’t even accepted me as his mate. He’d denied it.
Lord Balam nodded again. “There’s something else.”
“What?” I asked, my mind skipping from one of them to the next. Shadow was okay. Lord Balam was okay. Prince Kwame was okay.
Sir Kenosi was dead.
Lord Balam wet his lips with his tongue, almost as if he were having trouble speaking. Which was not something he did.
“Is it Camila?” I asked, flooded with guilt at what I’d done to her, and the guilt at knowing her accusations about me were right. I would be queen. I didn’t know how, but I prayed it didn’t mean that she wouldn’t make it home from her tour. Death was the only thing that could keep her from the throne. Had I hurt her when I pushed her from the helicopter?
But no. We hadn’t been in the air yet. If something had happened, though, if she died because I’d left her stranded in the Lion Kingdom…
“No,” Lord Balam said, shaking his head. “But I hear she’s arriving today.”
I sat up, amazed at the solid feeling of my own body. In the spirit world, I had been myself, and I’d seemed to have substance. But the weight of my human body here was different somehow. It felt comforting and secure, like wearing a heavy blanket on a cold night.
“Camila’s here?” I blurted. “She’s going to kill me.”
“Is there any chance… That she already tried?”
I started to protest, to say of course not, she would never do such a thing. We were sisters. We loved each other. We looked out for each other.
But I’d pushed her from a helicopter. I’d stolen her Amulet Tour.
And she’d… Well, she hadn’t done anything but accuse me of a few things that turned out to be true. That was the thing, though. She hadn’t done anything. She’d been more than happy to let me do the hard things on her Amulet Tour, only appearing to collect each clan’s amulet.
She had tried to stop me from going to Africa on that leg of the tour, though. She’d been prepared to do it alone. I couldn’t blame her for what had happened to me at Sir Kenosi’s. She hadn’t bitten me, hadn’t given me an infection. She hadn’t forced him to hold me hostage. If I hadn’t inserted myself into her business, she would have been there on her own, without me.
And maybe she’d have gotten it ju
st the same if I had stayed home when she’d told me to.
“I don’t know,” I admitted after a long silence. Saying those words, admitting that truth, hurt worse than her worst betrayal. Because now I was the betrayer.
The truth was, I didn’t know Camila as well as I’d always thought. I’d seen a side of her on the tour that I’d never seen before, a side that I wouldn’t have believed existed before I’d seen it with my own eyes. Camila could be conniving. She could be as cold and heartless as our father.
Maybe I could, too, but that wouldn’t have surprised most people. I had always been prone to losing my temper, to passionate outbursts. People knew what they were getting with me. I’d always thought the same about Camila, but now… Now I knew she was more than I’d given her credit for. She’d make an excellent queen. I’d just never realized that she would be an opponent, not an ally.
“We better get ready,” I said, throwing off the blankets. I was naked under them, and I remembered again what had been done to me before I woke. Part of me was horrified by the violation, but I couldn’t exactly be angry at a man who had sacrificed his life so that I could live.
“I still don’t understand,” I said as I searched for clothes. “Why would Sir Kenosi die for me? He didn’t even like me.”
“He doesn’t have to like you. You’re his mate.” Lord Balam paused, watching me wrap a patterned skirt around my hips. “Our mate.”
My hands stilled, and I looked up from what I was doing. Lord Balam sat on the bed, his hands folded in his lap, his steady gaze fixed on me.
“Your mate?” I asked, my voice catching. Lord Balam was the man who had been with me from the start—or what felt like the start. He’d freed a part of me that I’d never explored before. He’d shown me the heights of pleasure, and some pain along with it. He’d been exactly what I asked for every step of the way while never compromising the truth of who he was. But he wasn’t my mate. He’d told me as much.
He nodded, pushing back his jaguar cloak to show me a tattoo among all his others, this one glowing like moonlight.
“You lied to me?” I asked, hurt digging its claws into me like the tattoo.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I wasn’t your mate then. At least, I didn’t know I was. Not until you opened the amulet. It marked me, too, Itzel.”
“I thought that was supposed to happen when you had sex with someone?”
“It is,” he said. “Maybe it’s the curse. It held the mark off any of us until you opened it. Then it marked all of us.”
“It marked me, too,” I admitted, sinking onto the edge of the bed. I turned and showed Lord Balam my upper arm, the four cat paws climbing my skin to my shoulder. One of them had turned the inky black of a midnight sky.
I raised my eyes to Lord Balam, running my finger across the print. “Kenosi?” I whispered.
He nodded.
Pain and regret twisted in my belly. I hadn’t known Kenosi well, but I knew why he was the way he was. I knew that despite what he’d done to me, he’d been the one willing to give his life for me. And now his mark was on me, black as the loss it represented.
I knew I was lucky—unbelievably lucky. I didn’t have to live with one black mark and nothing else for the rest of my life. I had life. And I had three other marks, where other shifters had only one. But even knowing that, I couldn’t help but ache for the loss of my cheetah mate. I’d barely scratched the surface of the famous Sir Kenosi, and now I’d never know him further than that.
Or maybe I would. I wasn’t going to say never. Not after what had happened to me. If I could bring Kwame back, I’d find some way to bring Kenosi back. It felt wrong to go on with life as if he’d never existed, to be happy with my other mates at his expense. Because he wouldn’t be happy. He wouldn’t get a lifetime to bond and get to know his mate, to make love to her, make children with her. How could I do all that knowing that a man had sacrificed his life to give me those things?
I would find a way to bring him back, to give him all those things just as he’d given me the chance to do. I wouldn’t give up until he was beside my other mates, just as he should be.
“Come here,” Lord Balam said, taking my arm and pulling me down on the bed with him. “Let me look at you before you cover up. I can’t quite believe you’re healed.”
“I can’t either,” I said, skimming my knuckles over my bare belly.
Lord Balam’s eyes followed the movement, and his lids became hooded. Warmth flooded my limbs as my body remembered how to live again, how to love. I slid my hand lower, undoing the tie in the wrap I’d secured around my waist.
Lord Balam drew a breath, and a deep, satisfied rumble started somewhere deep inside him. Keeping my eyes locked on his, I slid my hand lower, cupping my bare mound.
He growled and slid a warm, rough hand across my belly and up to my breast, palming one and squeezing gently. Leaning down, he captured my nipple between his thick, hot lips. I gasped as his tongue rasped across the bud, and my other nipple became instantly hard. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard enough to make me yelp. My clit throbbed, and my knees opened instinctively, aching for him. My own fingers felt small and cold compared to his thick, skilled ones.
Lord Balam tugged a mouthful of my breast into his mouth, twisting my other nipple until I whimpered and squirmed against my hand. I spread my pussy lips and felt the cool of the air hit my hot wetness. After what I’d been through, nothing could make me feel more alive than being claimed by this rough, primal man. I needed him, needed his torturous girth to rip me open, his powerful body to pound me until I exploded, reminding me that I was alive, solid, and real.
I rolled over onto him, straddling his hips even as he adjusted his position to keep my nipple in his mouth. He teased it with his teeth, sending another throb straight to my core. I rolled my hips on his, relishing the hard ridge of his cock swollen inside his pants.
“Lord Balam,” I gasped. “I need you to throw me down and really fuck me.”
He groaned and wrapped his arm around me, flipping us over in one motion and grinding me down into the mattress. “God, I want to,” he growled. “I want to fuck you so hard I tear you in two. I want to hear you crying for mercy while your cum squirts all over my cock because you like it when I really plough that pussy and leave you wrecked.”
“I don’t like it,” I breathed. “I love it. Now fuck me. I’m so wet.”
He reached between us and sank a finger deep inside me. “No, Princess,” he said. “You’re not wet. You’re dripping.”
I spread my thighs and arched up, clutching his shoulders so hard my nails dug into his skin.
“I’d kill to fuck you like that,” he said into my ear. “But you know the curse. I can never fuck you again.”
Eight
Tadeu
Shifter, Tiger Nation
“I killed the woman who killed me,” I said to the interviewer, some cheetah chick working for one of the reality shows about felines. When they found out back home that I’d killed Itzel, it would blow up in my face. Everyone in the Ocelot Nation loved her. I wanted a chance to share my side of the story before they called for my head. Not that I’d be in danger here. What could the Ocelot Nation do to me now?
Nothing, that’s what.
“Are you sorry?” asked Ebele, a thin cheetah lady with medium brown skin and lemon-yellow curls cut close around her head. I’d agreed to an exclusive interview for her show, something that famous cheetah Sir Kenosi owned, in exchange for a chunk of money that I could use to buy my own house here. One day, maybe I’d have a few horses and a stable of my own, just like I’d dreamed about back home—with Itzel.
“No,” I said. “No, I’m not sorry. She deserved it.”
“She deserved to die,” Ebele said. “Because she killed you?”
“She didn’t just kill me,” I said. “I didn’t get to die like a regular guy, pass on to the spirit world, and make peace with it. I woke up in this body the next
day, this body that started growing like I was fucking twelve instead of twenty-five.”
“You don’t want to be big?” Ebele asked, her small eyes widening.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “Tigers are undead. We’re the fucking vampires of the feline world.”
“But the Tiger Empire is the biggest of all the Feline Nations,” Ebele said. “The most powerful and prosperous of all.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said. “But I never asked to be a shifter. I’d rather have died. I hate shifters.”
“A shifter who hates shifters,” she said with a grin for her cameraman. “This is a first.”
“Because I’m not a shifter,” I said. “I don’t have that mentality. I don’t have that entitlement. I was born human, and I should have died human. Itzel knew that. That’s why she chose such a fucked up way for me to die.”
“She chose the tiger?” Ebele asked.
“Yeah, but first she had me convinced she was going to give herself to me. That little cock-tease strung me along for years, promising me more than a taste of her pussy. And I followed along like the pussy-whipped idiot I was,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “Am I allowed to say cock on your show?”
“Just be yourself,” Ebele said. “We’ll edit.”
“Thanks,” I said, shifting my huge, foreign body in my seat. “Anyway, I don’t know what I did to make her hate me so much. The fucked up part is, I don’t think she did hate me. She just didn’t give a single fuck what happened to me. It was all a game to her, to see what I’d do. And I guess she got tired of her little game and fed me to a fucking tiger. If that wasn’t bad enough, I became the thing I hated most. And she knew it. She knew how I felt about shifters.”
“What happened once you woke up?”
“The Ocelot Nation didn’t want me,” he said. “They offered me to Shah Tiger. Itzel was done with me, so she had me shipped to this place, clear across the world to a nation I don’t know, a culture I don’t know. I didn’t understand this society. And unlike her, I wasn’t tutored in the customs and languages of the world. But there’s one thing I do know. One thing I understand. Revenge.”
Hunted Princess: A Paranormal Dark Romance (Feline Royals Book 3) Page 6
