Jungle Freakn' Bride (22 page)

What a mess
,
a
mess he’d deal with later. Right now, he had a talkative mate to reel back in. He arrived in time to hear Ruth, the sister he’d fetched
,
say, “Carlie. You can’t stay here. You don’t belong here.”

“I disagree,”
Acat rumbled
,
fighting an
urge to grab his woman and run.
Surely he didn’t fear this sister could actually steal his bride?

Although, given his mate’s next words, he realized it wasn’t Ruth he needed to fear but Carlie herself.

*

Smelling
,
and worse, recognizing someone by their scent before she saw them seemed both natural and alien at the same time. Carlie reveled in the ability, while at the same time cringing. Just another indicator, as if the cat weren’t enough, showing how far from herself she’d already gone.
Shifting back to her human self, she quickly donned her jungle bikini
– in a balancing act she would have never tried just a week ago
–
before dropping from the tree to land with crouched knees in front of her sister. With a flick of her neck,
Carlie
flipped her golden hair behind her and took in her sister’s shocked face.

Ruth
, her hair tousled, clothing stained and worn, her features leaner than she recalled,
gaped. “Carlie?”

“Ruth!”
A fierce joy and relief imbued her as she flung her arms around her younger yet taller sister. She held on tight as Ruth
sobbed.
Flustered by the sound and emotion, she could practically touch the
cat
,
which
paced in her mind with a growl.
Anger heated her blood.
If anyone had harmed one hair on her little sister’s head…

“Ohmy
G
odithoughtyouweredead,”
Ruth
babbled
through her tears
, the words running together as she clutched Carlie in a death grip.

“Not dead. Far from it. What on earth possessed you to come after me, though?”
Carlie couldn’t help
chid
ing as she
releas
ed
Ruth to hold her at arm’s-length.
She took better stock of her appearance
,
this time noting that while dirty and travel worn, she appeared unharmed
,
if covered in odd scents
–
some not her own. Carlie gave an unobtrusive sniff.
Male. Two males. Sex.
What has my little sister been up to?
The Ruth she knew didn’t engage in casual
encounters, m
ostly because she never seemed to recognize when guys were trying to get in her pants.
No doubt
about it, t
hough,
Ruthie recently engaged in a
naughty bit of fun.

With a s
niffl
e
, Ruth
also gave Carlie a once
-
over
. “What happened to you? You look…different.”

“What do you mean?” Carlie asked with a nervous laugh.
Could Ruth see how much she’d changed? Sense the wild creature within her?
Maybe if she swung a hand and meowed she could give her a clue.

“Well
,
for starters, your hair.”

She’d forgotten about her mane. Since their youth, Carlie and Ruth
sported wavy blonde locks, Carlie’s even more so than Ruth’s, or had. Carlie’s hair now hung
sleekly
halfway down her back, the gold of it darker than before.
“Do you like it?” Carlie swung her hair in a silken wave.

“I do, but how did you get it to go straight?”

Drank some poison that now enables me to turn into a massive cat.
“Nothing. Weird, huh? I guess the jungle didn’t like my curls.” Carlie made a face
, eager to change the subject
. “But who cares, you still haven’t told me why you’re out here. It’s dangerous.”

“No kidding. As to why… Hello? Looking at her.” A crushing hug had Ruth tearing up again.

Her sister had come to save her? Carlie wanted to shake Ruth for the lapse in judgment even as she hugged her
,
because she loved her so much for caring.
“Crazy fool. I am glad to see you
,
though, even if you’re nuts.”

“I had to come,” Ruth said
in a voice choked with tears
. “No one knew where you were or what happened. And the local police wouldn’t tell me anything.”

What an abrupt reminder that while she dealt with her catwoman status
,
and the incredible sex she couldn’t resist, people worried about her.
But in her defense, she’d not spotted a phone
and she’d forgotten her carrier pigeons at home. Not that they would have helped. Her new se
lf
would have probably eaten them.

Despite the fact Ruth thought her a victim,
Carlie
apologized.
“Yeah. Sorry about that. With everything that happened
,
I didn’t have a chance to send you a proper message and tell you everything was fine.”
But exactly how and what did you tell people who used to know you?
Hi, I got kidnapped by
primitive warriors
who made me into their jungle freakn’ bride. Oh
,
and by the way, I can shape
-
shift into a giant kitty cat. Surprise!
Yeah, bad of her or not, contacting her family with everything else going on hadn’t rated high on her list of things to do.
N
ow she paid the price with her irate sister who recovered from her tears to launch a tira
d
e.

“Fine? Fine? How is everything fine? You disappeared without a trace. You and those other girls. We didn’t know if you were dead, or a sex slave, or some kind of sacrifice to King Kong.”

“It’s worse than that. I’m ma
rried.” Carlie smiled brightly as she tried to lighten the mood and at least give her sister some of the truth.

It backfired.
Ruth snapped at her flippant reply.
“Married? Married! To who? You were kidnapped from your damned bed, what, two weeks ago?”

“Has it been that long?”

“It has. Two weeks of Mom crying. Me freaking out. Everyone wondering. We’ve been worried sick about you, and you tell me you’re married. What the hell happened?”

Carlie winced. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m listening.”
Ruth’s lips tightened into a straight line as she crossed her arms and tapped an impatient foot
.
What happened to her meek little sister? Who the hell was this assertive and angry lady confronting her?
Carlie would have applauded Ruth’s acquisition of a backbone at any other time. Right now, the recipient of a glare that wouldn’t let her squirm away, she wondered if she should have done as Acat ordered and waited for him to return.

Maybe if she told Ruth a little more of the truth?
“Well
,
you see, Acat and Choub, my, um, husbands, spotted me in the jungle and fell in love with me. Kind of.”
Not so much love as smel
led
her
,
and because of some weird tradition thing
,
kidnapped her and seduced her. The jerks.

“So they kidnapped you?”

“Er. Um. It’s complicated.”
Because how to explain they abducted her but never harmed her, and she’d enjoyed it up to the point they forced her to become something different
?
Someone not completely human.
I guess it could be wors
e
. They could have made me into a vampire and I could be fighting an urge to eat my sister right now.
A sister who wasn’t letting her off the hook.

“I walked for ten days in the
G
oddamn jungle. I think I can handle an explanation.”

Funny how it seemed an eternity, and yet
,
like no time had passed at all.
Carlie realized she could barely recall her
life
before her capture
. I
t seemed so dull, so far away
. But the moments since she’d met Acat and Chaob? She recalled every
single touch
in Technicolor
,
a
nd could see the signs now that she should have noted before
such as h
ow he
r
men understood her
and
c
atered to her. Did small things to seduce her, leading her on.
They totally manipulated her. She didn’t know if that turned her on or pissed her off.
She could use a second opinion and who better than Ruth
?
But for
her to talk about her conflicting emotions and the dilemma she deal
t
with,
she’d have to reveal more
, reveal s
tuff Acat wouldn’t like leaking
,
she’d bet. Too bad.
“Now, I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Been there. Done that.”

Geez, had Ruth ever found her balls. If only she’d owned them when that creep Zach was bugging her at work.
Given the dark look she received on two fronts – Acat a few yards away as he huddled with Chaob
–
who probably tattled
–
and her sister
–
who was receiving way more interested glances than Carlie
approved of
from the warriors at her back –
she
realized she’d have to tell Ruth something more if she wanted to get
her
to listen.
“My mates are special.”

“I’ll betcha they are. So special they can’t just ask a girl out on a date, but steal her and worry her family sick.”

A ghost of a smile tilted Carlie’s lips.
“They had their reasons.”
And their damned
gods
.

“Good ones
,
I hope.”

“In their minds they are. It’s because of their traditions, you see.”
Traditions she’d scoffed at, but now could understand maybe just a tad better given Ruth’s skeptical face. Perhaps she should have stuck to claiming
Stockholm
syndrome?

“Whose tradition?”

Carlie could practically smell the impatience roll
in
g off her sister as
s
he
kept lapsing into
short, cryptic answers.
How much could she tell Ruth before she got in
big
trouble
with Acat and Chaob
?
Nothing like diving in to find out.
“The Moon Ghost Jaguars.”

A smile brightened Ruth’s countenance
–
good on the one hand, because perhaps now she could get her to listen and realize the danger she was in. Bad because it increased the danger
,
Carlie noted
,
as some of the warriors surrounding them moved closer
,
inhaling Ruth’s scent. Her jaguar growled, a sound she quickly masked behind a small cou
g
h.

Her sister
seemed so excited at the thought.
Ruth always did have a romantic streak
, the dreamer
of the two
, always wanting and wishing for a knight, or in this case, a jungle warrior, to sweep her off her feet. “Aha. I was right. You were kidnapped by them.
”

Carlie nodded
, trying not to laugh as Ruth leaned in to listen eagerly
.
“Although
,
at first
,
I didn’t know. I’ve only really gotten answers to most of my questions recently. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot we don’t know about them.”

“You think?” Ruth retort
ed in a sarcastic voice that went well with her rolled eyes
.

Oh
,
how she wished she had more time to talk about it. However, time wa
s wasting
. Carlie could see Acat tense and ready
himself
to move her way, and she doubted she’d like what he had to say about her disobedience of his orders.
“Yeah, and unless you’d like to discover more of it first hand, you should leave right now.”
Maybe she still had time.