Savage Hunger

Chapter 10

Connor couldn’t deny how much he wanted Kat. He loved that although she had to know he didn’t want her to visit, Kat had stood up to him to make his sister happy. And he couldn’t deny he was glad to see that his sister and Kat really seemed to hit it off. He had been worried about how melancholy Maya had seemed lately because the two of them only had each other.

When he had nursed Kat back to health, he hadn’t been able to help how much he had desired her, but until now, he hadn’t thought he could risk giving in to the way he felt about her. As a jaguar-shifter, he knew one-night stands were the only way he could keep from falling for a woman and wanting her forever when he knew he could never have her that way. Because Kat had been in his care, he couldn’t think of her as a one-night stand. And now…

He pressed his lips against Kat’s again, while her arms wrapped around his waist as if she would collapse from his kissing her at any moment. She hesitated at first. And then she was kissing him back as if she couldn’t get enough of him, purring like a cat would and smelling like a cat—like a jaguar cat—along with the fragrant scent of oranges from the shampoo and her mouth tasting of the sweet pineapple that she’d had for breakfast. Her soft, heated body—but not from the fever this time—pressed tightly against him, against an arousal that he couldn’t have kept in check if he had wanted to. The feel of her made him want more of her than was safe.

But could he want her forever? Exclusively?

Male jaguars had larger territorial boundaries than females, overlapping more than one female’s boundaries. And a male would service each of the females, not just one. Even though he was a jaguar-shifter and his human half fought against the notion of straying, Connor had never found a woman he was the least bit interested in staying with forever. And he wasn’t sure he could keep his jaguar half in check if he did take a mate.

Now everything was different. Kat didn’t know what she was in for, and he couldn’t let her go and deal with her changed state on her own. Living alone would be too dangerous for her. If anyone were to discover the truth about her, the danger would be too great for any of them.

As Kat’s tongue stroked Connor’s, he shifted his hands to her buttocks and cupped them, pulling her even harder against his body. He wanted sex with her, and she seemed to want the same of him. Now. But he couldn’t follow through. Not until she understood what she had become and could live with it and with knowing he meant to make her his own.

If another male jaguar-shifter happened upon them, Connor sure as hell wasn’t going to give him a chance to make Kat his.

He growled with feral desire and rampant need. He wanted her. Damn it. Forget about courtship or dating rituals.

The jungle was teeming with life—from the larger kind like his own to the miniscule forms no one could see with the naked eye.

Wild and untamed, like he felt.

But he pulled away from her before he gave in to his animal instincts. Even though she seemed more than willing, he couldn’t. Not yet.

“I’d better get you back to the hut,” he said, his voice husky and ragged with need.

“My clothes…” Kat said when he scooped her up into his arms, as if he was going to haul her back through the jungle naked.

His other head might have been thinking for him, but he did remember he needed to help her dress.

“I’ll help you with your clothes and carry you back to the hut. You need to get your strength back.” He hoped now that she had some of their cat genes, she would heal more quickly, but then again, they wouldn’t help unless she ate better to regain her strength.

She was still way too weak as he assisted her into her panties and then her bra. He should have thought to bring a towel. Both of them were soaking wet. And nothing dried easily in the muggy jungle.

She clung to him as he helped her into her pants, the rock floor slippery and her own weakness hampering their efforts. By the time they were done, she looked ready to collapse.

“You need to eat more,” he said, worried about her, as he lifted her into his arms.

“At least my appetite is coming back,” she said and sounded cheery, although tired.

Here he was, working on ravishing her beside the waterfall with no thought to her physical stamina. He shook his head at himself. He wanted her. And the way she had kissed him back, he knew she wanted him. But what would happen when she learned what he truly was? And what she had become?

He wondered if Kat had turned all the way. Could she shape-shift? If she could, would she do so at the worst of times, having no control over it? Because he and Maya had been born shifters, they could change at will. No moon dictated their shifting, like in werewolf lore. Their natural instinct to hunt during dawn and dusk normally made them want to shift at that time. Still, they usually only shifted when they were visiting the jungle or when they felt the urge while swimming at night at the small lake on their property.

He hadn’t a clue what would happen to Kat regarding her need to shift. Then another thought occurred to him. What if she couldn’t shape-shift at all? What if he planted his seed in her, and it didn’t take root? That as a nonshifter turned, she would be unable to conceive a shifter child?

That would be the end of his shifter line—and although it shouldn’t have mattered to him, deep down it did. He imagined that the primal animal in him wanted to leave his legacy behind.

But what if she had a human child who didn’t have the shifter genes? And that child learned Connor was a shifter? That his mother was, too?

Hell, Maya. They didn’t have a clue what might happen next.

Maya heard her brother and Kat coming out from behind the falls, so she shifted and rushed to dress. She hoped Connor had learned that Kat was one of them now, but as soon as he spied Maya, he shook his head, his expression ultra dark.

Normally, she knew just what her brother was telling her with his nonverbal communication, but this time she wasn’t sure.

She hurried to catch up to them as Connor carried Kat back to the hut.

“Do you feel better?” Maya asked, hopeful, but she could tell by the way Kat drooped in Connor’s arms that she was worn-out.

“Hmm,” Kat said, sounding dreamy and half asleep.

Maya sighed. Kat still wasn’t well enough. “Is she okay?” she asked her brother, hoping he would clue her in.

“She needs to eat more,” was all he would say.

Maya tried to get closer to Kat to see if she smelled like a feline, but all she could make out was Connor’s scent all over her, again, along with the fragrance of the shampoo and body wash. She would have to speak privately with Connor later.

When they finally reached the hut and climbed the steps, Connor tossed over his shoulder to Maya, “Fix her something to eat, will you, Maya, before she falls asleep?”

But the idea of a meal was already too late. As soon as he laid Kat down on the bed and Maya began to cook the tapir and plantains he had brought up earlier, Kat was sound asleep.

“Is she? One of us?” Maya whispered to Connor.

“Yeah, in part,” he growled. Mostly because he was so unsure whether Kat was fully turned or only partly. And what would either mean to all of them?

“How do you know?” she asked, her voice hushed as she cooked over the stove.

“She smells like a cat. But beyond that, we haven’t a clue, Maya.”

“Are you going to keep her?” she asked, hopeful.

“We have no choice. No matter what, even if she’s only partly turned…” He let his words trail off.

“You mean if she can’t shift?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. But we might not know that for some time. And what if in a year or two, all of a sudden she does?” He shook his head as he looked back at Kat’s sleeping form enclosed by the netting around the bed. “We couldn’t risk her being on her own.”

Good. If Kat wasn’t fully turned, sometime when Connor wasn’t around, Maya would nip Kat just enough to break the skin and finish the process. Hopefully.

“When should we leave?” Maya asked, ready to pack up now.

“She’s still not ready. And we have another problem.” He gave Maya a scathing look. “What if she shifts when we’re trying to get her home?”

“On the ferry,” Maya said softly. She could just imagine the passengers scrambling to jump overboard into the Amazon River, running away from the hungry jaguar to join the piranha.

“Even if we drove across the continent, it could be a problem if she shifted. We’d be in trouble if we were caught trying to take a jaguar into the United States because of the law against the interstate and foreign trade of exotic cats.”

“Oh,” Maya said, not having thought of that. “You think she won’t have any control over shifting?”

“I have no clue, Maya. None whatsoever. But I highly suspect that might be the case.”

“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Maya said, hoping to God Kat would be, as she finished cooking their lunch. She glanced at the bed. “Should we wake her?”

Maya would do anything to get Kat ready to leave the jungle and return with them as soon as possible. Taking care of Kat at home would be easier, wouldn’t it?

Smelling the jungle and listening to the rain pattering all around her, Kat moved stealthily through the forest on four paws. Four big cat paws. Jaguar cat paws.

She wanted to hunt, wanted to climb a tree, wanted to swim. But when she heard men coming toward her, all she thought of was self-preservation. She leaped into a tree and hid in the dense foliage, her golden coat with its black rosettes making her blend into the dappled shade of her surroundings.

A monkey screeched and Kat shot up in bed. Staring into the darkness, she could see Connor asleep on Maya’s bed while his sister slept soundly in the hammock on the porch.

Kat’s stomach rumbled. She had missed the meal again. She sighed. They must have let her sleep instead. But now she was starving. Had they left anything for her to eat?

She stared through the netting at Connor, his face so peaceful in sleep and almost angelic. The way he had kissed her at the falls hadn’t been the least bit angelic. She knew then that he had been fighting his own demons regarding seeing more of her.

She sighed. He was a master of mixed messages, but she was ready to take their relationship further.

Looking for the lantern and thinking it should be turned off since everyone was asleep, she glanced around the hut. But it wasn’t lit. She frowned. Why was the hut so well lit when… it wasn’t. Really. The night was still dark. So why could she see so well? Another hallucination?

She groaned, lay back down, and closed her eyes.

She couldn’t stop having the unbelievable dreams that had haunted her throughout the night. She thought maybe she’d been affected by the strange foods she had been eating, like the white meat of the tail of a crocodile—better that she ate him than he ate her—that tasted like a combination of chicken and white fish. Or the tapir she had eaten that tasted somewhat like beef. Or the plantain that tasted like a cross between potato chips and a banana.

Maybe her strange dreams were a residue from the fevers she’d had. Or something about the atmosphere of the jungle itself—the earthy wet smells and the constant animal noises that penetrated her dreams.

Maybe she wasn’t even awake.

She closed her eyes and drifted off again. Thunder boomed overhead and the rains began again. Streaks of lightning flashed way above the tree canopy, a distant light flickering like an on-off switch that was broken.

But when the dream took hold again, the sensations were so real that she couldn’t wake herself from it, no matter how much she tried. So she quit trying and gave in to it.

One minute, she was struggling to get out of her buttoned shirt and panties, and the next, she was prowling the floor as a jaguar. Her cat claws were retracted, her paws silent as she padded along the wooden boards. Her body felt more muscled, stronger, heavier.

She yawned, curling a long pink tongue out of her mouth, and licked her lips, her mouth huge compared to her human mouth. And teeth. She ran her tongue over her pointed canines. Wicked.

And unreal.

Her stomach rumbled, which was part of what had disturbed her sleep. She was ravenous. But restless, too. She didn’t feel… right. She had to move, test her muscles, experience walking as a jaguar. To sense her surroundings in a new form. To see and hear and taste and smell.

She wanted to run free among the rest of the jungle inhabitants, just as feral and at home with the environment. To stalk and swim. To enjoy the sensation of being at the top of the food chain.

Yet some part of her resisted. She wasn’t a jaguar. She was just experiencing a very vivid dream.

She poked her nose at the screen door, opening it, and then moved onto the porch, staring for a moment at a sleeping Maya. Then she pushed through the second screen door on the covered porch and did what a jaguar might do—skipped the steps and leaped for the ground. She half expected to run into Connor’s two jaguar pets roaming around at the base of the hut. Maybe she would find them as she explored the jungle. She would like that. The three of them running and swimming together while they served as her jaguar tour guides. They would know the best eating spots, the best climbing trees, the most interesting places to explore.

At a walk, she investigated the jungle, going farther and farther from the hut, deeper and deeper into the tangled mesh of vines and tree roots. She felt strange exploring on four paws instead of walking upright on two feet. Being closer to the ground, her eye level gave her a much lower perspective. She couldn’t get used to breathing in all the smells that were so much more pronounced—the sweet scent of flowers, the earthy smell of wet ground, the fish in the nearby river. She wasn’t bothered by bugs and heard all kinds of sounds that she hadn’t heard before. And she was seeing at night, although it didn’t look like night to her exactly.

With all the moving she had done growing up and in the military, she had never felt at home. Now she felt at home in the Amazon when before she’d felt like an outsider, strictly a visitor.

She kept moving, hunger propelling her forward, making her search for something to eat. Then she found a river and waded in. She kept her chin up and listened as she swept the muddy river bottom with her large paws, listening to the fish swimming about. She spied one and dove in to get it. She seized it in her powerful jaws and pulled the struggling fish out of the water, then carried it to shore. This was so much easier than the one time she had gone fishing with a bunch of Army guys and managed to pull up everything—from old fishing lines and sinkers to a grungy sneaker—but never a fish.

Not even giving a thought to how she should prepare the fish, she ate it, no cooking, just raw. And loved it.

Shouldn’t she have been worried about not cooking it first? That was why she knew it was a dream. She would never have eaten raw fish.

Her appetite appeased, she continued to explore, sending a spider monkey screaming for cover. She would not eat a monkey, although she knew the natives did and so did jaguars. That had to mean she really wasn’t a big feral cat. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have any qualms about it. Right?

A blue-and-red macaw poked its head out of a hole in a tree, saw her, and instantly disappeared back into the tree. She wouldn’t have eaten him, either.

She took deep breaths, smelling smells all over the place, on trees and on the ground, littering leaves and vines and mud. She swam across a number of water obstacles, not afraid of anything, ready to take on a caiman or an anaconda if it dared to bother her. She had never felt so alive in her life. Fiercely independent. Attuned to nature, one with it.

But she was getting tired again. Time to return to bed, end the dream, and sleep. But when she turned around and saw the rushing river before her, she wasn’t sure how she could get back to the hut. How long had she traveled? How far? In what direction exactly? How many waterways had she crossed? Where was she now?

She was lost in the jungle… again.