I jumped up and approached the side of the cage. I was still naked, as he’d found me, but I didn’t feel any grogginess, so I could only assume he hadn’t drugged me or done anything to me while I slept. I pounded on the glass, yelling to be let out. A minute later, a man appeared from a side door off the lab area. My cage was comfortably sized, at least ten feet across in either direction, like a small bedroom with nothing but a mat to sleep on.
The lab was much bigger, easily the size of a house with an open floor plan. I couldn’t even see into the shadowy recesses off to my right. To the left, it opened up, with higher ceilings, a large empty area, and the door through which my captor had just appeared. The door was my goal.
“Let me out,” I called, banging on the glass.
The man approached slowly, giving me plenty of time to take him in. And I took in every inch of him, drinking the sight of him with incredulous hunger. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life, and I didn’t think it was just the lust pulsing under my skin like something alive.
He was a tall, lean Asian man who looked to be in his mid-thirties. He wore dusty-orange trousers and a matching tunic that reached the top of his thighs, along with a coarse wool robe over it. If that was supposed to make him look unappealing, plain, or asexual as a monk, it failed. His tall frame only hinted at his strength, the muscles I’d felt when he carried me in here the day before. Or… Whenever it was. We were underground, so I had no idea whether it was day or night.
My captor paused about ten feet from the glass and stood watching me. His eyes in human form were the same color as they’d been in feline form, a pale seafoam color that was equally blue and green and reminded me of an icy glacier. But he didn’t look cruel. Only watchful. The rest of his face was alert, too, the candlelight highlighting his beautiful bone structure, his high cheekbones, sculpted jawline, and full lips. His lashes were dark and thick, as were his brows, giving him a brooding, edgy look despite his pale eyes.
He spoke to me in a language I didn’t recognize, but when I shook my head and told him as much, he nodded and tried again. This time, I recognized the language as the one we used to communicate with the Lion Clan.
“Let me go,” I said, fumbling my way through the foreign words.
One corner of the man’s mouth twitched in the slightest smile before he spoke, this time in my language. “What are you?” he asked, the words flowing off his tongue more slowly than a native speaker, but fluent and precise.
“I’m trapped, that’s what,” I said, pressing my palm to the glass.
“Get dressed,” he said, nodding to something behind me. “Then we talk.”
I turned and scanned my dim enclosure, finding a pile of folded clothes next to my bedroll, along with a box and a bucket in the corner that I could only hope wasn’t for what I suspected it was.
I pulled on the clothes, which were obviously his. They were clean but worn, and I found myself hoping I looked half as good as him in a pair of oversized orange pants and a shapeless orange tunic. Then I scolded myself, because I shouldn’t want to look good for my kidnapper. I yanked the shirt over my head, then gasped aloud at the erotic charge that shot through me when the garment brushed my nipples. I had not been prepared for the way the shirt touched me, the way my body reacted.
Fuck. This was not good. Clenching my teeth, I drew the pants on, ignoring the thrill of sensuality when the fabric caressed my thighs. I had to suppress a moan as I slid them over my mound, which was… Swollen. It was bigger than it should be, than it had ever been, and aching to be touched. I could feel the heat and slickness between my folds, throbbing in my pussy lips, singing in my clit. Had he seen that when I stood talking to him? Shit. He must have. He must know exactly how horny I was right now.
Gingerly, I let the waistband of the pants settle into place, nearly moaning again when the seam at the front brushed my swelling. I took a moment to compose myself before returning to my captor. He stood watching me as if transfixed, his eyes a shade darker than they had been, a burning lust in them that I could read from ten feet and a wall of glass away. The fabric on the front of his pants was pulled tight, straining against his erection.
A hot tremor shimmered through my entire body, nearly making me swoon in place. My mouth watered, and my juices flowed thickly along my slit, wetting me for his entry.
He wanted me, and I was just about panting for someone—anyone—to touch me. God, I needed to be touched. I wanted to rub myself all over everything in the room. Kwame had warned me this would happen, and though it had been a bit more sudden than expected, I could make the best of it. It was one guy. I could have been begging the entire Snow Leopard Nation to fuck me.
Oh, god. The thought filled me with a thrill that made slick fill my swollen lips. I wished he’d let them all pile on me, one after another plundering me with their cocks. I had enough slick for all of them. I was so wet I could feel it soaking the pants already.
I shook my head to clear it. I had been in this situation before. Sir Kenosi had taught me well. I would please this guy, and he’d let me go, hopefully before the heat wore off. I could still get the amulet. I just had to play my cards right, wear him out before he wore me out. From the fire raging inside me and the wetness coating my thighs, I didn’t think that would be a problem.
“Are you sure you want me to keep this on?” I asked, toying with the hem of the shirt as I stepped to the glass wall separating us.
The man swallowed before nodding. “What are you?” he asked again. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because you brought me here,” I said with a coy smile. “Which I assume means you want to have me to yourself.”
Honestly, the thought wasn’t as abhorrent as it should have been. I was dying to touch him, my fingers twitching with the urge. He was so beautiful. It could have been worse. I could have bene lusting after some crusty old man in my desperation. If I was going to ride out the heat with someone, this guy didn’t look like a bad choice. Of course, for all I knew he was some sick murderous freak like King Ocelot, one who might eat me alive in my heat. Why else had he locked me up in his dungeon, which was complete with a lot of equipment that clearly had torture potential?
“I brought you here because it was unsafe for you there,” he said. “You were calling my entire clan to you. You would have been gang raped.” He swallowed again, his eyes widening as if he’d just realized what he said. His cheeks pinkened, and heat swelled between my thighs. God, he was adorable. And if the mention of a woman’s heat could make him blush, I sincerely doubted he was some kind of serial killer. Well, at least not a serial rapist. Maybe he hadn’t brought me here for torturous purposes after all.
I stared at him through the glass, my palm pressed to the smooth, cool surface. His pale eyes stared back into mine, unblinking and intent. My heart stammered in my chest, and this time, the thing happening to my body was north of what I’d felt before. A fluttering in my belly that made me dizzy and giddy at once.
“Am I safe here?” I whispered.
The man swallowed and looked away. “I want to promise you are,” he said slowly. “But I’ve never… Your scent is… Unusually alluring.”
He choked out the last word, color rising to his cheeks again. He was still hard. He was also a monk. A celibate monk in an isolated area in an isolationist clan. Which meant he might even be a virgin.
The thought was strangely erotic, and more slick oozed into my swollen pussy. I clamped my knees together so hard my thighs trembled, pressing my forehead to the cool glass to relieve some of the heat raging in my own cheeks.
“Are you a virgin?” I whispered, my eyes still closed. “Because if that’s why you brought me here… I can show you things. I don’t mind. I… I want to.
“No,” he said sharply. I yanked my head back from the glass, my eyes flying wide. Fuck. This heat was clouding my mind, making me do things, say things.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve never been in hea
t before. It’s… More intense than expected.” I squeezed my eyes shut, willing away the yearning inside me.
The monk stepped closer to the glass, his eyes bright with curiosity. “How is this your first one? You must be well past… The usual age.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just became a shifter.”
“You became a shifter?”
“Long story,” I said with a sigh, my shoulders slumping at the memory of what my mate had given to make me a shifter.
The monk swallowed again, watching me with those intense, alert eyes. “We have days,” he said at last. “If we don’t talk, we might be tempted to do something more.”
I snorted with laughter. I was already tempted. I’d given in to the temptation without even fighting. Camila’s cruel words came back to me, cutting deeper each time I remembered them. She’d called me a whore, and maybe that’s what I’d become. I’d started this tour as a virgin, and now I was thinking it wasn’t that bad to be captured by a guy to be used as a sex slave for a week because at least he was good looking.
“You’d better start talking,” he said. “How did a cheetah end up in the mountains of Snow Leopard Territory? How did you become a shifter? Why are you here?”
I sighed. “I’m here because my sister is the heir to the Ocelot Throne, and I’m collecting the mating amulets. We didn’t know how to lure out the snow leopard who has the amulet, Gao Jetsun. So, we thought if I went into a heat, it might draw him out. Which means you have to let me out of here so I can find him before the heat wears off.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “I can’t let you out,” he said. “Every snow leopard in our nation is outside the door of this place. The moment you walked out, they’d attack you.”
“If he’s one of them, then at least I’ll be able to get the amulet.”
“He’s not,” the man said sharply, turning away. He bowed his head and took a breath.
My heart thudded in my ears, and my breath shook as I whispered my realization aloud. “Because you’re Gao Jetsun.”
He didn’t say anything.
Fuck. I waited to be disgusted by him, to feel revulsion that I’d been lusting after him. But I only felt disgusted by myself. When I looked at him, my breath still caught in my throat at his beauty. When I let my eyes roam over his broad shoulders, his lean build, his long legs, and the very obvious erection straining against his pants, a throb clenched between my thighs again.
What the fuck was wrong with me? This was bad. This was really fucking bad.
Or maybe not. He wasn’t in heat. He had morals. He was a monk, for fuck’s sake.
He doesn’t have to know, a sultry voice whispered inside me. You can pretend you don’t know that’s your brother. He didn’t say he was Jetsun.
“I’m your sister,” I blurted out, desperate to have him look at me with the disgust I couldn’t feel for him. “I… Wow. That was the shittiest way I could have done that. Oh my god. I can’t believe I said that.”
He looked up, his eyes wary now, his face blanched of color.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me start over. Can we? Can we start over?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, staring at me with a stricken expression. “There’s something unholy about you.”
“That’s an understatement,” I muttered.
Jetsun backed away a step. “I’ll go. This cage is for the purpose of protecting our females when they are in your situation. There’s medicine to suppress your heat in the trunk behind you. No one can get in without a key.”
“Don’t leave me,” I blurted, suddenly terrified. More terrified to be alone in the dark with this fire raging inside me than to be trapped looking at a man who looked like sex itself, but whom I could never even touch. More terrified to be alone than to be thrown outside for all the men in the clan to take turns with. There was something inside me, raging and clawing and writhing to get out. It wasn’t Sir Kenosi’s cheetah. It was something that had always been there, though I’d never dared to look too closely at it.
Lord Balam had known. He’d told me from the start I wasn’t human, but I hadn’t pressed him for answers. Maybe I’d always known, but I’d been too scared to find out. I’d laughed it off, denied it, ignored it. I hadn’t wanted anyone to know, not even my sister and best friend. Because some part of me had always known there was something trapped in there, something more terrifying than a man-eating ocelot. I knew without taking a single drop of medicine that it couldn’t put out this fire.
I flattened my hands against the glass as if I could grasp the surface somehow, pull it to me, reach through it and grasp him and beg him to stay. “I—I can’t be alone,” I said. “Please stay. Just talk to me. Talk me through this. It might be safe, like you say, but I can’t do this. I don’t know how. Those girls you’re talking about, they’ve done this. They’ve prepared, Jetsun. Up until a month ago, I was human. I lived my whole life as a human. Don’t leave me with this feeling. I’m not lying, not trying to get you to let me out. I’ll stay right here, where you can’t get to me. Because I really am your sister. Nothing can happen between us. I just… I don’t want to be alone. The things inside my head—I can’t be alone with them.”
“I can’t be alone with you,” Jetsun said, his voice so low I could barely hear it.
“We’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ll talk each other through it. We’ll talk about… About family! I’ll tell you about your dad. My dad. You can tell me about him. Safe things. We have this wall between us.”
Jetsun swallowed and stared back at me with those beautiful, somber eyes. “I have the key.”
The ache inside me, the heat, flared with longing. It whispered in my ears, in my mind, telling me I could lure the key from him later. I could get him talking, and turn the subject, convince him to open the door. He was innocent, good. I was not. I was the temptress. I would lure him to the door, lure the key into the keyhole.
No. What was I thinking? Jetsun was my brother. My half-brother, at least.
Oh, god. I couldn’t stop.
“Okay,” I whispered, closing my eyes and resting my forehead against the glass. “Go.”
After a pause, I heard the soft pad of his footsteps across the room. I opened my eyes to see him cross the large space until he reached the tall stone wall at the far left side of the room. He pressed his hand to a circle in the stone without looking back. Anguish gripped my blazing body, holding me frozen with horror and loss over a man I’d never known and would never know.
The scraping, grinding sound I’d heard when the giant stone moved the day before now echoed through the huge chamber. A slice of light cut through the room, making me stumble back, blinking against the brightness. Beyond the stone, I heard the clamor of a dozen voices shouting at my captor. They wanted in. They wanted me out.
And even though I’d imagined it in some sexy way, now that the reality hit me, I shrank back, terror gripping me. He was going out there with the key. If they attacked him, they could get it. They’d come back for me, the entire mate-thirsty mob.
Jetsun reared back, drawing his arm behind him. For one second, I didn’t understand. And then a cry tore from my throat as he hurled the key through the crack into the bloodthirsty mob outside.
Twenty-Five
Tadeu
Shifter, Tiger Nation
The Crown Princess of the Ocelot Nation was losing her shit, and I was loving it. Sure, I’d joined her posse, but that didn’t mean there was any love between us. I’d needed a job, it was nice to be in demand, and yeah, I’d wanted to see Itzel’s face. But Camila had always been a frosty bitch, not to mention manipulative as fuck, and I had zero shits to give about the shifter princess. She’d been yanking her sister’s strings for as long as I’d known her, and even if I didn’t love Itzel anymore, I hadn’t forgotten what kind of person our princess was. Gabor wasn’t the only reason I slept with one eye open nowadays.
“Who took my comb?” Camila screamed, standing outs
ide her tent with her hair in a frizzled mess. This alone was worth being her lackey. Watching the princess fall to pieces on camera, looking like shit and sounding like the unhinged psycho she was.
“Your Grace,” Gabor said, stepping between her and the camera and laying gentle hands on her shoulders.
Ebele deftly stepped to one side behind Gabor’s back, aiming her cameraman at the scene.
“I’m sure the comb is in your tent,” Gabor murmured, giving Camila a meaningful look before cutting his eyes sideways in the direction the camera had moved. “Let me find it for you. That’s not a job for a princess.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not. It’s her job.” She pointed one trembling finger at the human concubine she’d chosen from the shah’s harem to serve as her maidservant on the journey.
“Why would I take your comb?” the concubine protested, giving Camila some serious stink-eye.
“You’re jealous,” Camila hissed. “I’m a princess, and you’re just a whore.”
“Your Grace,” Gabor said, his voice harder now.
Camila jerked away from his hands, shoving them off her shoulders. “You’re going to take her side?”
“Let me look for the comb before you make accusations.”
“She took it,” Camila shrieked, tossing her matted hair. I’d seen Camila in her natural state only recently, when she’d run out of her room to make sure I was still guarding Itzel’s door, ranting her suspicions that I was going to run off with Itzel and betray her. Her hair had always been thin and straight, colorless and lifeless. But I’d never imagined she made it that way on purpose. Apparently before her ladies fixed it each day, it was a frizzy mane that tried to be as wild as Itzel’s but lacked the volume to do so. Basically, it looked like shit, and she’d gone to great lengths to hide it her entire life. Which made it even funnier to see her freak out about it in front of the entire world.
“I had it yesterday, and now it’s gone,” she was screeching. “I’ll have her executed!”
Hunted Princess: A Paranormal Dark Romance (Feline Royals Book 3) Page 17
