Savage Hunger (6 page)

Except for the marks on the ground where a tent had been secured, blood splatters, and spent bullet casings, they found nothing and no one—no dead men, no one alive either. The jungle had reclaimed the territory as its own as if humans had never existed there. She had returned before Connor had seen her spying on him, but she had never seen him so… distracted, so bothered by human affairs.

They had even cut short their visit to the Amazon, something they never did. He hadn’t been himself, totally disconsolate, and they finally had flown home. For weeks, she had found him searching on the Internet for something, but he wouldn’t say what. When she caught him at it, he would shut the computer off, act irritated, and head back outside to the nursery to dig some more holes, whether they needed to plant a tree or shrub or not.

Had he been looking for Kat all that time? For word about her well-being?

Maya smiled in her jaguar way. She wasn’t about to let Kat get away from her brother this time. At least her brother could have someone in his life if Maya could make this work.

Kathleen seemed the perfect woman to be his mate. She climbed trees well, even as a human. She was good at keeping her fear in check. Although she had nearly died in the jungle only a year ago, she had returned to the Amazon. Maya believed that being a shifter like them would suit Kat.

Most of all, her brother was intrigued with Kat. More than intrigued. There was no mistaking that he had the hots for the woman. Kat didn’t wear any rings or have the telltale sign of a white line on her finger indicating she had worn one recently. So she couldn’t already be married.

Maya paced across the floor some more. So why couldn’t he have her? He wouldn’t take her in a million years. He wouldn’t take any woman like that in a million years.

Well, not only that, but they weren’t sure how it all worked. They had been born as shifters; could they change someone who wasn’t one? They suspected that their ancestors had been changed in such a way, but no one had shared the information, so they really didn’t know for sure. There was only one way to find out.

Maya turned and studied Kat. She had her back to Maya, dressing modestly even though for all Kat knew, Maya was only a jaguar. Kathleen had already pulled her pants off and was buttoning a long shirt. She leaned against a table for support, keeping her weight off her injured knee. She was in great shape. Probably due to being in the military. Well-toned legs, like she was used to running, and trim everywhere else, too.

Maya already liked her. Anyone who would tackle guerrillas in the Amazon to make the place safer for decent folk and who wasn’t afraid to return to the same area after nearly dying would make a great jaguar-shifter. And Kat would make a good sister, Maya thought. At least the woman seemed to like jaguars—even if she believed Connor and she were only semiwild pets when in their jaguar form.

Maya paced some more. It was now or never. She had to make her play before her brother came back. She would never have a chance like this again.

With her nails retracted, she ran up to Kat silently on her large cat paws. Then she extended her claws and raked them down the back of Kat’s left thigh. Kat cried out and nearly crumpled when she stepped with all her weight on her injured leg. Maya quickly licked the wound and mixed her shifter saliva with Kat’s blood, before Kat jerked around and bumped her backside against the table, her eyes wide and her mouth dropped in horror.

In a hurry, Maya flopped down on the floor, then rolled onto her back and played the docile, happy kitty. Despite wanting Kat to be one of them, Maya did feel remorse for what she’d done. She hadn’t wanted to injure the woman, but Maya hadn’t been able to think of another way to try to change her.

Kat stared at the jaguar, and then, as if realizing Maya was like a really big kitten that would scratch at its human companion in greeting and then lick her, she visibly relaxed.

“You need to be declawed,” she said, glancing back at the injury on her leg. She didn’t say it in an annoyed way, more matter-of-fact.

What a horrible idea, Maya thought. Her teeth and claws were essential for hunting prey and protecting herself and climbing and marking her scent on trees. But then without even consciously thinking about it, she swished her tail around and caught it between her hind legs with her front paws, and Kat laughed.

Kat’s sweet laughter lightened the ominous mood, and Maya was glad she had amused the woman. One day, hopefully really soon, Kat would play with her own tail.

Maya didn’t know how long it would take for Kat to shift. All they had to go by was werewolf lore—but none of that werewolf stuff was real. Maybe biting or scratching someone wouldn’t work at all.

Her gaze shifted to a puckering of skin on Kat’s left thigh, and she wondered if that’s where she had been shot a year ago. Connor had really been closemouthed about what he had found at the encampment, no matter how many times Maya asked him what had happened. He had tried hard not to allow her to see how torn up he had been over the woman. She had finally given up asking, but now she was determined to know what all had gone down.

The sound of someone running through the jungle toward the hut caught Maya’s attention, and she feared her brother had heard Kat crying out. Kat still hadn’t pulled her pants on. What if he saw the scratches on the back of Kat’s leg and knew what Maya had done? He would be furious with her. But if she had turned Kat and it was already a done deal, he would have a mate. And she knew that he would love Kat. But they had to have time to reach their own conclusions.

Then it would be Maya’s turn to find a mate.

Kat pulled an antibiotic cream out of her backpack and began to apply it to the bloody claw marks on her leg. Any wound could be dangerous in the jungle. Although, if the shape-shifter antibodies slipped into Kat’s blood and began to work, Kat would heal quickly—a day or so at the most.

Kat slipped the tube of Neosporin into her backpack and turned just as Connor rushed into the hut, his face anxious, his breathing hard. He stared at Kat, his gaze raking over her naked legs, then he quickly shifted his focus to her face.

“Are you all right? I heard you cry out. You’re not dressed,” he said, sounding surprised and worried at the same time.

“I’m… I’m fine. My… my knee. I just put all my weight on it by accident.” She gave Maya a look as though she was about to tell on her, then took a deep breath and instead said, “I’ll just wear this long cotton shirt to bed. It’s too hot otherwise.” She glanced at the two beds.

Maya quickly shoved the screen door open with her nose and slunk onto the screened-in porch to avoid sleeping in the other bed so her brother could stay with Kat. She had to keep them together, let them get to know each other. Let them bond.

“Sleep in mine. I’ll use the hammock,” he offered gallantly, but Maya would have none of it.

The woman was his now, and Maya had every intention of making sure they stayed together. Even if this first attempt at turning Kat didn’t work, Maya wasn’t letting go of the idea. Kat hadn’t even told on her! She knew then that if this worked, they were going to be sisters and the best of friends.

“Are you sure?” Kat asked Connor. “I could sleep on the covered porch.”

He looked back at her bare legs. “No, with your injured knee, it would be easier to sleep on one of the beds. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Where’s your sister?” Kat asked, and Maya got the distinct impression Kat was questioning whether Connor had lied about having one. After all, she had to think it fairly unusual that he would have a sister roaming about in the jungle by herself at night.

“She’ll be here soon. She’s with the other cat.”

“Oh.”

Good save, Maya thought.

Kat sighed heavily. “Thanks, Connor, for helping me out. Again. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come for me when you did before. Well…” She gave a small bitter laugh. “I would have bled out. So… thanks. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.
Thank
you
, I mean. And thanks to your jaguars, too. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along this time, either.”

“You’re welcome. We’ll get you back to civilization within the next couple of days,” he assured her, then cast a look in Maya’s direction as if he was uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going.

Maya couldn’t allow Connor to take Kat back to civilization. She had to ensure that Kat stayed with them. That he got to know her. That Kat had time to turn so that he couldn’t let her go.

Maya shifted into her human form and quickly climbed onto the hammock, surrounded by fine mesh netting, and pulled a light cover over her naked body. In the dark, she watched her brother speaking with Kat.

His interest in Kat was his fault, not Maya’s. But he hadn’t a clue how determined she could be when she set her mind to it. And matchmaking in a human-to-shifter way wasn’t all she wanted out of the deal.

She was going to have a jaguar-shifter sister.

Chapter 4

Connor pulled off his shirt and watched Kat getting into bed, her movement cautious as she tried not to hurt her knee further. Seeing her half naked didn’t make him feel gentlemanly in the least.

He sat on Maya’s bed and untied his boots. “Do you have some Wellingtons in your backpack?”

“Yes.” Kat pulled the cover over herself, and he eyed her through the mesh as if she were a princess in another land, her dark hair spilling across his pillow, the bed surrounded by a gauzy film.

He thought about how after she left them, he would still be breathing in her delectable scent on his pillow and his bedsheets. Neither of which would be conducive to sleep.

“Good. Because of the recent rainfall, we’ll be walking in mud up to our calves in some areas. Progress will really be slow at times,” he said.

She was already closing her eyes, opening them, and then shutting them again as if she was having the most difficult time keeping them open.

“Sleep,” he said quietly, pulling off his boots, then his trousers. He figured she had already had quite an ordeal—getting lost alone in the jungle, coming across two jaguars that had scared the pants off her, and more than likely getting very little rest for however long she had been lost. “We’ll talk again in the morning.” He crossed the floor to the sole table in the hut, saw his sister watching him through the screen door, and shook his head.

He knew what she hoped for, but he wanted to make sure Maya understood that he and Kat couldn’t go there. Then he turned off the lamp and retired to his sister’s bed. The rain began again, making a lulling sound as it hit the tree canopy above them and their own thatched roof. He thought the sounds and scents would help him sleep—the fresh smell of rain and the steady downpour, the ceaseless sounds of cicadas and other insects offering a cacophony of various pitched songs, a frog in a nearby fig tree making a knocking sound, and the scurrying of some rodent through the leaf litter on the forest floor. But he couldn’t quit worrying about the woman resting in the bed across from him and wondering how he could safely get her to civilization sooner rather than later.

Much later that night, Kat’s soft moans awoke him from a light sleep, and he quickly sat up and stared in her direction. A nightmare? Dreaming of jaguars attacking her? Her guide abandoning her? Fear of snakes? The threat of the men who had been slashing through the jungle? Or of Gonzales’s men shooting her?

He took a deep breath, listening to her ragged breathing, and stared at her through the mesh.

Or had something else caused her to moan in her sleep?

Something much worse?

***

Kathleen was used to Florida heat and humidity and the feel of semitropical weather, but the Amazon was much more tropical than that. Hotter, muggier, buggier.

Being in the rain forest was like living in the primordial soup where life began. Even scientists studying Amazon plant life had to admit they had not discovered all the varieties growing in the canopy. She felt saddened at the thought that they might never have the chance if the trees were cut down and the rain forest destroyed, along with the animals that lived there.

Millions of cicadas sang through the night, reminding her of Florida. But the black howler monkeys—screeching in alarm way up in the treetops when something, maybe an anaconda, had come a’calling—brought her back to the South American Amazon far, far from home.

She tossed and turned, feeling the heat boiling her blood, the jaguar’s scratches burning down the back side of her thigh, her knee throbbing with pressure—the tissue bruised and swollen—and her cheeks and hands sizzling from the sunburn she had gotten while traveling up one of the rivers by canoe. Even her old bullet wounds seemed as hot as fire all over again, scorching her from the inside out.

She moaned, miserable, soaking in sweat, and so sleepy she could barely stay awake but in so much pain that she couldn’t drift off all the way.

A masculine voice intruded in her world, worried, deep, baritone, soothing. She couldn’t see the figure in the inky blackness because her eyes were blurry with hot tears.

“Kat,” he said again, then a cold hand pressed against her forehead, leaving an icy imprint as he cursed aloud. His soothing voice was incongruous with his angry words.