Tempted by the Jaguar #2: Revelation (Riverford Shifters) (2 page)

Kylie was damned near tears by the time
she heard a couple of hard knocks on the front door, followed by her friend,
Molly’s, voice announcing her arrival.

“I’m in the bedroom!” she called hoarsely,
curling up even tighter as she lay shivering in a fetal position with both
fever and lust beneath the comforter.

At this point, her arousal had become
dreadfully painful, and she had already gone so far as to bring up Hunter’s
number on her phone before forcing herself to shut it off. It was currently
lying across the room where she had thrown it in frustration. She prayed that
she hadn’t broken it.

“God, your dad wasn’t kidding when he
said you sounded pretty bad when you called him,” Molly said with a worried
huff as she hurried over to the bed. “Your face is all sweaty and redder than a
tomato!”

Kylie lifted her head a bit to focus on
her friend. She was relieved to see nothing but plain old worry and a bit of
admonishment in Molly’s eyes and not the obsessive, hungry gazes she had
witnessed in the club.

“You know I would’ve never called him
otherwise,” Kylie said with a grimace.

Molly frowned. “He’s your
father
,
Kylie. I think it’s high time you got over this ‘I’m a burden’ complex you
have. If you would have gone in to see him earlier, you probably wouldn’t be
feeling as shitty as you look right now. And
why
is your hair wet? Were
you trying to give yourself pneumonia too?”

Kylie made a face. “The nausea hit me so
suddenly, I didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. Some of it got on my
clothes and in my hair.”

Molly set down a blue gym bag and a
small white paper bag onto the bed before sitting down next to them. “I
wondered why your dad wanted me bring you a change of clothes, too.”

Because he’s a genius
. Kylie hadn’t even thought to ask for clothes.

“Wait, you can tell me later,” Molly
said as Kylie started to explain her complete lack of clothing. “You’re
shivering so badly that I’m surprised I can’t hear your teeth chattering. Let’s
get you changed and then you can take the medicine your dad sent.”

Even in her misery, Kylie couldn’t help
but chuckle. “You really do sound like my mom right now.”

Molly snorted then gasped when she
realized that Kylie was naked beneath the comforter. “You should’ve at least
put your underwear back on!” she fussed.

Kylie shut her eyes tightly and
struggled not to groan as the thought of her torn bra made her remember
Hunter’s mouth and hands on her breasts, sending a new wave of heat and arousal
to her already aching sex.

“Never mind the clothes for now,” Kylie
moaned. “I’m about two seconds away from puking again. Can you please go get me
a glass of water for the meds?”

The redhead nodded and dashed out of the
bedroom. Kylie wasted no time in tearing open the white paper bag and dumping
its contents onto the bed. A silver charm bracelet with several oval-shaped
charms the size of a dime, a caramel-colored pill bottle, and a small
toothbrush tumbled out.

She reached for the toothbrush with a
badly trembling hand, praying that it would indeed be her salvation. She
squeezed the bristles tightly in her fist, unsure of what to expect.

A few seconds passed with no noticeable
affect, and panic began to slowly creep into her mind no matter how much she
told herself she was just being impatient. Then from one heartbeat to the next,
like blood seeping from a sudden wound, the terrible heat in her body began to
rapidly dissipate, and the throbbing between her legs slowly began to ease.

Kylie drew in a deep breath and couldn’t
help the sob that burst from deep within her when she realized that she could
no longer smell anything other than a faint ghost of Molly’s perfume lingering
in the air. It had really worked!

Cautiously, she set down the toothbrush
onto the bed and held her breath. When the painful arousal or the strong smell
of human did not return after another few seconds, Kylie finally allowed
herself to breathe a sigh of relief.

Before Molly could come back, she used a
corner of the comforter as an added precaution to shove the charm bracelet and
toothbrush beneath her pillow, careful not to touch the bracelet with her bare
skin. She then reached for the gym bag and began rummaging though the clothes.

She had just finished putting on a pair
of underwear and was in the process of pulling a long, pale-blue oversized
t-shirt over her head when Molly returned with a glass of water. Kylie was
surprised that she had actually found a glass.

“You don’t have
anything
in your
fridge,” Molly announced as she handed Kylie the glass.

Kylie went through the motions of taking
a couple of the white “nausea pills” that Paul had sent her, recognizing them
as just sugar pills as soon as they hit her tongue.

“The smell from the busted sewage line
was just awful,” she replied as she settled herself back down onto the bed and
curled up beneath the comforters with a fake groan. “This apartment building
belongs to the son of an old friend of Paul’s, so I was lucky just to get in
tonight. The movers won’t be bringing my stuff until tomorrow. I was here
checking the place out when the nausea hit.”

Hopefully Molly hadn’t noticed that her
car was nowhere to be found in the building’s parking lot.

Molly let out a long-suffering sigh. “I
really don’t see why you insist on making things so hard on yourself. You
should’ve just went back home instead of worrying about finding another
apartment.”

“I promised myself I wouldn’t, so I
won’t,” Kylie said wearily. True enough, but at least here, her past stubbornness
and guilt of accepting too much of Paul’s kindness was a convenient cover for
what was really going on. “Thanks tons for bringing me the meds, but you should
probably head out before you catch my germs. Trust me, you
don’t
wanna
catch this.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, your dad
lectured me about staying too long. Apparently, this bug’s been going around
for the last few days. He said a few people have even ended up in the ER badly
dehydrated from it. More reason for me
not
to leave you alone.”

Crap! She needed to get Molly out of the
apartment so she could try to use her mother’s bracelet before the female
jaguar Hunter promised to send arrived. That was a disaster that she absolutely
had to prevent. Her future and Paul’s safety depended upon it.

Plus, she didn’t want to have to lie
about the shifter’s identity. She was feeling guilty enough as it was about all
the lies she had already told her friends.

“Sorry, but I don’t want you missing
class on midterms week on my conscious,” Kylie said firmly. “Please, just do
this for me. I promise I’ll call you or Paul if I think I might need to go to
the ER. I don’t want to miss finals either, you know.”

Molly sighed noisily. “Fine,” she agreed
reluctantly, “but I swear if I find you here half-dead in the morning, I’ll never
trust your word again.”

“Deal,” Kylie agreed readily. “Besides,
I’m sure Paul will come check on me once his shift ends at midnight.”

“That does make me feel better. See you
in the morning.”

“But not too early,” Kylie warned,
waving a hand weakly at her.

With one final worried look, Molly
turned and barely managed to walk a couple of steps before a series of loud
knocks sounded at the door. The redhead froze and turned towards Kylie.

“Were you expecting someone else?” she
asked curiously.

Kylie made a big show of frowning
towards the direction of the front door while inside she was beginning to freak
out. Shit! She wasn’t ready for the shifter yet! She still hadn’t…

Her right hand inched beneath her
pillow. “No,” she lied, “just you.”

“Well, you’ve only just moved in here
today,” Molly said. “Maybe it’s someone looking for the previous tenants.”

Before Kylie could reply, a female voice
she didn’t recognize yelled through the door loudly, “Kylie! My name is
Jennifer Graham. Hunter sent me to see if I couldn’t help you get sorted out.
Can you come let me in, or is the door unlocked?”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Who the heck
is Hunter?” she asked with way too much interest.

Kylie groaned. So much for keeping Molly
in the dark about her shifter acquaintances. Could anything else go wrong?

“The person who lent me this apartment,”
Kylie replied, deciding that the partial truth was best here and not only
because she wanted to appease her guilty conscious. Thinking quickly, she
added, “I suppose he was just trying to be helpful. Go ahead and let her in on
your way out. I should at least thank her for coming face-to-face before
sending her on her way.”

“Are you sure? You’re still looking
pretty red in the face. I can just tell her you’re too sick to see anyone…”

“They’re doing me a huge favor, so I
don’t want to be rude. I’ll survive.”

Kylie slowly sat up again, her eyes
flicking anxiously from Molly to the door beyond, afraid that Jennifer would
come in without invitation, a disaster to avoid at all costs. She had to stall
her, even if only for a few minutes.

“Just let her know I’m sick before you
send her back,” she instructed as calmly as she could.

Kylie only prayed having Molly speak
with Jennifer would give her enough time to do what needed to be done.

As Hunter drove back to Southern Glacier
after borrowing Jennifer’s car, he couldn’t help but feel more than a little
guilty about leaving Kylie with another—no matter how capable—while she and the
situation were still so unstable. However, not only did he need to help his friend
with any remaining damage control, for all of their sakes, he also needed to
find out whether or not the wolves in Maxim’s security believed he was right
about the piece of fabric he had found in his section of the forest.

The wolves had taken the fabric to
another room in order to examine it without Hunter and Maxim’s scents getting
in the way. However, Kylie’s explosion of pheromones had reached them before
the wolves could return with their verdict.

Hunter scowled as his mind drifted back
to what Maxim and he had been discussing right before they’d had to dash back
among the club patrons in order to diffuse the brawl Kylie had accidentally
incited. Sniffers—they couldn’t have breached the city at a worse time.

As Gaither had said, there was no doubt
that word of what Kylie had done in the club had already spread among the
shifter clans as well as the news that she was a Returner. It would only be a
matter of time before both tidbits reached the ears of the lions and they
realized both incidents concerned the same person.

Kylie was going to hate it, but there
was no way that his clan could let her out of their sight for even a minute now
that the Sniffers sent by the lion shifter clan currently trying to invade the
region had managed to infiltrate the city. There was no telling how long they
had been lurking within the city or what they had been doing,
who
if
anyone they had been meeting.

Even if the Elders didn’t quite believe
his suspicions about the lions’ involvement with all the recent disappearances
of various shifters in the last couple of years from not only Riverford but
also a few nearby towns, the fact remained that the lion clans
were
known to snatch or hunt the Returners of other clans.

The usual large crowd stood waiting
outside Southern Glacier’s entrance, and Hunter felt some of the tension from
his shoulders ebb at such a familiar sight. Apparently, Maxim had not been
forced to completely close the club for the night as he’d feared.

As soon as the young valet opened his
door, Hunter scented the air warily, but only the strong scent of the tiger
shifter before him and a weaker combination of the club patrons’ various scents
flooded his nose. Not even a trace of Kylie’s pheromones remained.

“Didn’t expect to see you back here so
soon,” the valet said with a smirk as he took the keys from Hunter.

Hunter sighed and flashed the young
tiger a half-hearted glare. “Don’t go spreading rumors, now. There’s been more
than enough trouble tonight without that trouble bleeding into tomorrow, too.”

The valet nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, the
boss already lectured us about wagging our tongues, so don’t worry. He hasn’t
opened the club back up yet, but it’s okay to go in now. Mr. Clarke should be
back in his office.”

“Thanks.”

The sharp smells of ozone and vinegar
assaulted him the moment he opened the door to enter the club, though neither
was enough to make his eyes or nose burn. He quickly made his way through the
empty VIP lounge to one of the employee exits leading to the offices in the
back.

The door to Maxim’s office abruptly
swung open before Hunter could even reach for the knob. He had probably spotted
him through the security cameras.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you back here
tonight,” Maxim said, beckoning him into the office.

Hunter grimaced. “You and everyone else,
apparently.” He sank into one of the thick, comfortable chairs in front of his
friend’s desk and rubbed his nose irritably. “I see you used the ozone
generator.”

Maxim perched on the edge of his desk.
“I had to. My boys had a hell of a time getting everyone separated and then
evacuated even after you dragged your little hellcat out of here. It was like a
hundred females had suddenly blasted the place with their mating pheromones. No
one could come in at all to start wiping down the place with vinegar without
wanting to either rip each other to shreds or run out front to hump the nearest
female in the waiting crowd. It was still pretty early, so the sibs and I
figured we could salvage tonight by pumping in the ozone for an hour and then
running the air through the filters for another. We were finally able to send
the staff in for the vinegar wipe down twenty minutes ago.”

“I would say send Gaither the bill, but
this one is completely on me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Maxim said with
a shrug. “The gods of mischief were probably just bored today. Sasha thought it
was hilarious.”

“She would,” Hunter grumbled.

If anyone was a hellcat, it was Maxim’s
little sister. He still couldn’t quite believe Sasha had mated so young. She
had seemed such a free spirit.

“Dare I even ask what happened after you
left?”

“Almost the worst possible thing,”
Hunter admitted.

“You slept with her,” Maxim said with a
nod.

The fact that Maxim had accepted him
mating a practical stranger as if it weren’t a really big deal really irked
him. “I said
almost
,” Hunter growled.

“Really? Don’t tell me you locked her up
in your bathroom or something. She’ll have your whole building’s tenants
murdering each other in no time with that type of pheromone output! Although—I
have to say you have some pretty impressive control if you managed to walk away
from that brutal amount of ‘come fuck me’ scent screwing with your brain.”

Hunter ran a hand through his hair in
agitation. “I don’t call rolling around with her on the carpet within two
seconds of stumbling into my guest apartment, both of us half naked with one of
her tits in my mouth, ‘impressive control,” he growled.

Maxim’s shook his head and smirked.
“Well, maybe not control, but being able to still tear yourself away with such
a delicious, eager meal in your hands shows quite the iron will, my friend. But
would it have been so terrible if the two of you had ended up mating?”

“Not you too,” Hunter groaned, letting
his head fall back onto the back of the chair momentarily in dismay before
lifting it in order to fix the tiger shifter with a hard gaze. “You know why it
would have…”

Maxim smiled at him sadly. “I have my
siblings at least. I would wish that you weren’t so alone.”

“Right now Kylie is as fragile and naïve
as a newborn kitten. What kind of asshole would I be to drag someone that’s
already been traumatized plenty enough into my problems? She’s better off with
Jennifer Graham.”

“Is that who you left her with?”

“Yeah. I figured the best thing I could
do for her was get as far away from that building as possible. Hopefully
Jennifer can help her. At least here I can do something useful.”

Maxim waved him off. “Don’t worry about
helping with the cleanup. My staff’s probably almost done, anyway.”

“I owe you big time.”

Maxim reached over and picked something
up from his desk. “I think you have that backwards,” he said softly as he held
out his hand.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. It was the piece
of fabric that he had left with the wolves earlier.

He reached over and plucked it from
Maxim’s hand. “So was I right?”

“Only Jake has actually smelled one of
the bastards before when they’ve been in their most natural state. He says that
while the scent isn’t an exact match, it’s close enough that he can’t think of
what else it could be.”

“Fuck. I found it deep within my
territory. It just seems—I don’t know—sloppy? Do you think they know we’re on
to them? Are they just toying with us now?”

“Depends on who that scrap of cloth
belongs to—or, if deliberate, who left it there for you to find.”

Hunter blew out a frustrated breath. “It
could be anyone. Hell, it could even be Gaither.”

“I’m sure he’d be thrilled if you truly thought
so,” Maxim said, “but I’d honestly be shocked if he was the one. He just draws
too much attention to himself, has his hand in too many pies. There’s no way he
wouldn’t have slipped up by now if it were him. For now, just keep an eye on
that patch of forest. If that piece of cloth wasn’t deliberately left there,
then I sure as hell want to know what the hell they were doing out there. If
they’ve somehow managed to find a way to breech our perimeter…”

“I usually only patrol that portion of
my territory once a day. I’ll up it to at least three times that for the next
month or so.”

“You know,” Maxim said hesitantly, “it
might be better if someone other than you patrols the other two times, or
better yet, get your neighboring jaguars to follow the same routine. It would
look less suspicious.”

“That might be a little tricky. Most in
my clan are still convinced that I’m grasping at straws, seeing shadows, out of
grief. Some of them might humor me for a day or two and then it would be back
to business as usual. No one’s really going to bust their ass without hard
proof.”

“True, but a couple of days is better
than nothing. Although—maybe just adding the occasional companion on your runs
might work just as well. You do, after all, have the perfect excuse for it
now.”

“You’re talking about Kylie, aren’t
you?” Hunter questioned flatly.

“She won’t be in heat forever,” Maxim said
pointedly. “By then everyone in the city will know that she’s a Returner. No
one will look sideways at you helping her adjust to her newly awakened jaguar
nature, especially when it was Donald Gaither, himself, who asked you to help
her integrate into the clan.”

“I did offer to take her on a run
through the forest,” he admitted, “but…”

“For now, just think about it. Spread
the word about the extra patrols and see how much mileage you can get out of
that. After all, a lot can happen in a week and a half. That piece of cloth
could become another dead end before you two can speak without wanting to rip
each other’s clothes off.”

“Thank you very much for that mental
image,” Hunter groused. “You do realize that I still have a shit-ton of Kylie’s
scent coating my nose? Hell, I can still
taste
her! I’m starting to
wonder if it’ll
ever
go away.”

“Maybe I should have one of my men bring
in a bucket of the vinegar solution they’re using for cleanup to dunk your head
in,” Maxim offered with a laugh.

Hunter merely glared and resisted the
urge to flip him the bird. It would just make the teasing worse.

“All joking aside, it really might
help,” Maxim insisted.

“I’ll pass,” Hunter replied dryly. “At
this point, it’s not worth the headache I’d be sure to get. I’ll just go stay
at my old place, and hopefully my head and nose will be clear in the morning. I
should probably get an early start on those extra patrols.”

Suddenly all the humor left Maxim’s
eyes. “Speaking of patrols, I never did get to finish telling you about the probable
Sniffers a couple of my young clan brothers saw walking into Riverford Regional
around lunchtime today. Both were cougars, early twenties, and utter strangers.
I sent over one of my wolves from my security detail to get a whiff of them as
usual, and she confirmed that neither scent belonged to any of Riverford’s
cougars. Lana managed to get a fairly good picture of them as they left the
hospital, and I had Sasha show it to some of her cougar friends. Nobody
recognized them. Her friends are trying to find out whether or not anyone from
the cougar clan is currently hosting visitors.”

Hunter stiffened. “Do you think they
were scoping out the hospitals, looking for the bastard that attacked Kylie
maybe?”

“Either that or they were sent there to
speak with the hospital brass, both of which a potential disaster in the
making. Right now I have a few wolves and young tigers tailing them. We should
know within a few days whether or not our suspicions are confirmed.”

“Maybe then the Elders will take our
warnings more seriously. I can also ask the bobcat twins to keep an eye out for
them. Do you have a copy of that picture I can give to—”

Hunter’s cell phone abruptly rang,
causing him to break off mid-sentence as he fished it out of his pocket. His heart
sank when he saw Jennifer’s name on the screen.

“Hunter, I need you to come back to
Kylie’s apartment,” Jennifer said before he could even completely lift the
phone to his ear. “Something—well,
interesting
has happened.”