Savage Hunger (38 page)

He pulled her tight against him, his erection sliding in, deep, thrusting, and rubbing her, the friction sending her over the edge.

She cried out with complete surrender and dug her heels against him, cherishing the way his cock thrust deeper. He pushed harder, seeking his own release and finding it moments later, fierce primal satisfaction filling his expression.

“Next time, we take it slower,” he promised, rolling over and capturing her, then pulling her against his body.

“Next time,” she murmured against his chest, sliding her hand over his nipple.

“Yeah, after we take a nap.”

***

Early the next morning, after a day and night spent in bed making love to Kat, Connor poured a second cup of coffee while Kat had joined Maya in the greenhouse. That was when Connor saw a black sedan pull up the drive. Something made him think that the new arrival wasn’t a customer looking for plants to use in landscaping or interior decorating.

He sipped some of his coffee while he watched through the kitchen window as the man got out of his car, shut the door, locked it, and then headed for the front door of the house. He was in excellent shape, wearing neatly pressed khakis, a pin-striped, button-down-collared shirt, and a pair of expensive-looking leather loafers—dressy, but casual. His hair was cropped short, and Connor guessed he was a military man. He strode toward the porch with purpose in his long stride, like he was ready to storm the castle, his face stern, his whole manner starched.

Connor placed his empty coffee cup on the counter and headed for the front door, ready to nip this in the bud and ensure that Kat didn’t have to deal with the man.

Connor yanked open the door, startling the man, whose raised fist had never contacted the wood.

“Who the hell are you?” Connor asked, knowing damn well he had to be one of the men involved in Kat’s Army mission of trying to take down Gonzales.

“Major Roger Singleterry.” He reached out his hand to shake Connor’s, but Connor didn’t offer his hand in return.

Acknowledging the slight, Roger gave him a small smile, but it quickly faded. He stiffened and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I understand Kathleen’s staying with you and… your sister… for a little while.”

The inference was that his sister was a girlfriend, too? Threesomes do it better?

“Kat’s busy,” Connor said, folding his arms across his chest. He wasn’t about to let this jerk see her or intimidate her or anything else. Besides, she was working with Maya in the greenhouse, so he wasn’t really out-and-out lying. Work always needed to be done, and she
would
be busy.

This time the man’s brows arched. “Really. Well, I need to talk with her.” His icy matter-of-fact tone bugged the hell out of Connor. “Is there a better time to call?”

“No.”

Again, the raised brows. Roger was probably used to giving orders in the military, and Connor assumed Roger didn’t like having a civilian obstacle block him from seeing anything further of Kat.

Connor thought to ask if he could give her a message, just to get the officer to leave, but he didn’t even want to offer that much.

“It’s important,” Roger insisted, not budging from the front porch.

“You and your people can go to hell.”

Roger narrowed his eyes. “You want a battle on your hands? You don’t want to go there, Anderson. I’ve got the resources—”

“Maybe you do, but you’ve got shit where I’m concerned. Kat’s worth more than any damn mountain of resources available to you. You leave her alone. She’s made a home with us and doesn’t need anything further from your kind.”

Roger’s jaw dropped. Connor eyed him with new suspicion. What had the man thought? That she was just staying with Connor and Maya for a few days? And then she would be back to being the Army’s pawn? No way in hell.

“I’m not going until I speak with Kat,” Roger insisted.

Connor heard movement behind him before he saw her, smelled her delightful scent, and knew it was Kat. She had probably heard the car pull up, but when the “customer” hadn’t entered the greenhouse or the outdoor gardens looking for plants, she must have gotten curious.

She slipped in beside Connor, wrapped her arm around his waist, and snuggled close. He quickly encircled her shoulders with his arm. She lifted her face to smile at him, and he took her smile as an invitation to a kiss. So he obliged her, long and hard and thoroughly. Just to prove he wasn’t letting anyone hurt her again.

Looking a little flushed and breathing a little heavier, she finally took her gaze off Connor and turned to face Roger. “What are you doing here, Roger?”

Connor finally realized this Roger was Kat’s former fiancé. Connor should have decked the son of a bitch before she arrived on the scene.

But when he looked at the man who had given her up because she was no longer suitable as a wife and Army careerist, he noticed just how red-faced and angry the man had become. Connor smiled, glad he had kissed Kat and proved just what she meant to him.

“I need to talk to you… alone,” he said, trying for dark and persuasive.

Kat raised her chin a notch in her usual stubborn fashion. “Say what you have to say. I don’t have any secrets from Connor.”

“It’s classified.”

“I’m no longer in the Army, so sharing sensitive information with me could hurt your career, Roger. I’m really not interested in anything you have to say. So if you have nothing else to speak with me about, I’ve got work to do.”

He looked down at her dirty fingers stained green, then met her gaze again and waved his hand at the gardens. “
This
is what you choose to do instead of protecting Americans from the drug trade?”

She laughed without humor. “You have
got
to be kidding. I’m out of the service, medically discharged, remember?”

“It…” He glanced at Connor, then said to Kat, “This isn’t for a civilian’s consumption.”

“
I’m
a civilian, if you don’t recall,” she said, her voice hard.

“They want you back.”

She laughed again. “No. I’m happy saving plants from voracious bugs and strangling weeds. You go save the world from the drug lords.”

“Kat… let me explain what happened between us.”

“No, I know exactly what happened between us. As long as I was useful to your career, I was perfect to be your wife. But once I had been captured and—”

“It was all a ploy. Don’t you see, darling?”

Connor snorted.

Roger gave him a scathing look, then said to Kat, “None of it was real. It was part of your continued covert operations.”

“Even ditching me?”

Looking chagrined, he shook his head. “You ditched me, threw your engagement ring at me, and told me to go to hell.” He suddenly seemed to remember that Connor was listening to the conversation, saw him smiling, and gave him a dirty look.

“You used me and so did the Army. At least you could have been there for me. But you wouldn’t even speak with me when I left the hospital! You were too busy. Always. I knew then it was over for us.”

“That was part of the plan. If the doctor could convince you to relive the experience, and Wade Patterson gave you a plan to do it—”

Kat’s jaw dropped. “Wade was part of your operation?”

“No, he just conveniently convinced you to go to the jungle in search of the tourist who had saved your life, and it couldn’t have been more to our advantage. I backed out of the equation so you had to fight to get through this on your own, knowing you’d do it. You’d overcome the trauma and help us to take the bastard down. And you did do it. Although we’re still not sure how. But what did you think? We’d just let you go without watching your back?”

She snapped her gaping mouth closed, narrowed her eyes, and shook her head. “You weren’t watching my back! Connor was. And as far as you are concerned, Roger, you’re so full of it. I don’t care what you say. It would never be the same between us.

“So what part of
no
don’t you understand? I’m done. Through with the military. Through with you and glad I learned the truth about you before it was too late. I’m happy to be with Connor and his sister.”

“You can’t want
him
,” Roger said derisively. “Hell, he’s nothing more than a glorified gardener. What the hell do you see in him?”

Kat whispered conspiratorially, “But haven’t you heard he’s special ops? He has killer moves you’ve never even contemplated.” Her gaze took in all of Connor, and then she smiled wickedly at him.

“We’re getting married, if you didn’t know.” She stroked Connor’s stomach through his cotton shirt. “What’s his is mine and what’s mine is his.”

His face hard, Roger said, “You’ll be begging to come back to me when you get tired of digging in the dirt, Kat. But don’t wait too long.”

He turned on his heel and stormed toward his car.

That’s when Connor saw Maya watching from the gardens. He waved at her, then said for her benefit and Roger’s, “Kat will join you in a bit. We’ve got something to do in the house first.”

One military man wasn’t going to win against a jaguar who had claimed his mate.

Roger’s car scattered gravel as he sped out of there.

“You could have waited to tell me you wanted to have sex with me again,” Kat said, smiling up at Connor.

He grinned down at her. “No, I couldn’t. I had to let him know just where you and I stood with each other. And tonight when the moon is full, I’m taking you to swim in our lake.”

***

That night, Connor had intended to go alone with Kat to the lake, but Maya wouldn’t be left out. And damn if Kat didn’t side with her. He did appreciate that Kat didn’t want Maya’s feelings hurt.

Maya did at least wander off to another part of the lake to swim. Connor and Kat slipped into the warm silky water and embraced. “I thought I was going to have to fight Roger off if he didn’t go willingly.”

Kat smiled up at him. “You wouldn’t have needed to. You were the bigger man, and he knew it.” She kissed Connor’s lips. “Thanks for letting Maya come along.”

He grunted.

“She needs a mate now.”

“We’re not using Facebook networking-type sites to locate one,” Connor reiterated for the hundredth time. “I’ll go along with a picture of a jaguar in the greenhouse amongst the tropical plants to show an exotic touch for now, as long as it’s done right.”

She pulled away from him and swam into the deeper waters.

He swam after her. “I mean it, Kat.” He knew when he used those words that he had already lost the battle. Before he could grab her foot to play with her in the water, she screeched.

“What is it?” Maya hollered from much farther away.

But Connor dove after the culprit, ready to rescue Kat from the alligator snapping turtle. Damn thing better not have injured Kat the way the one had cut up Maya so many years ago.

Kat was already headed into shore when Connor grabbed the huge turtle and hauled it to the beach after her.

She was sitting on the grassy area and examining the bite to her big toe, the beak-like injury bleeding.

Maya raced along the shore to join them, then folded her arms and gave Connor an annoyed look. “Ha! He rescues
you
from the turtle, but he saved himself when the one attacked me.”

Kat made a face, grimacing with pain. “He’s exonerated, back to hero status, as far as I’m concerned.” Then she frowned. “What are you going to do with it?”

“Turtle soup,” both Maya and Connor said at once.

Kat looked dismayed, but Connor said, “Really, we’ll take him to a river nearby where he can live in peace, away from our lake.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to carry that thing?” Kat asked, still looking bothered about the injury and the turtle that had done the biting.

“Yeah,” Maya said, “they can actually swing their necks around to reach their tails, but with Connor holding it by the shell behind the neck and before the tail, it should be fairly safe. Their jaws are so powerful that the darn things can amputate fingers.”

But not as powerful as a jaguar’s. The big cats often bit right through the turtle’s shell in the Amazon when they were hungry.

Kat smiled. “Good. While Connor’s taking the turtle to the river, you and I can set up our jaguar site on the Internet.”

Maya grinned and nodded, giving Connor a sly sideways glance.

Connor knew then being a jaguar god with a harem of jaguar goddesses was bound to keep him in trouble.

“Don’t publish anything to go live until I’ve seen it,” Connor warned them, then headed for the river not far from the lake and hoped the turtle stayed there. He had to show Kat and Maya that he had some control over his life and theirs.

The women both laughed as Maya helped Kat back to the house while Connor carried the huge turtle to the river and a second chance at life.

Just like he had with Kat in it now. He sighed. So maybe they could put out some feelers to locate a jaguar-shifter that might suit Maya.