Jaguar Fever

Chapter 28

Wade and Maya turned to see what George was viewing, although the rain was hitting the windshield so hard that it was difficult to see what was going on. A dripping-wet naked woman was walking toward the car, dark hair hanging over her shoulders, her eyes amber and staring straight at the car. When George didn’t move, Wade kissed Maya and released her. “Be right back,” he promised.

He quickly got out of the car and hurried toward the woman, smelling her cat scent. She was a shifter. The jaguar he’d seen in the tree on Gunther’s property?

Hell, she hadn’t been the zoo cat.

“Are you okay?” he asked, making sure she was uninjured as he placed his arm around her shoulders to comfort her, afraid she might be in shock because of all that had happened to her.

“Yes, thank you. I… didn’t want to wait for the men to find me and make it harder for them to explain me if the humans learned I was the female jaguar.”

“I understand.” He opened the front passenger door for her and had her sit there. “Give her your shirt, George,” he said when George just gaped at her. Wade shook his head, reminding himself that not all shifters were hero material.

“Yeah, of course. Sure.” George fumbled to remove his shirt, his cheeks turning crimson.

Wade got a call from Martin as he climbed back into the car and Maya slid into his arms again, settling against him like she was his, and he was hers. His heart stuttered with the notion. She finally had decided she wouldn’t look elsewhere for a shifter mate.

He lifted the phone to his ear as he rubbed Maya’s arm, holding her close and sharing his body heat.

“We can’t locate the jaguar,” Martin said. “Where did you say you saw her last?”

Wade smiled and put the phone on speaker as he looked at the woman sitting in the front seat of George’s car and wearing his T-shirt. “She just joined us. She’s a shifter.”

“My name is Caryn Breming. From Houston. I was running as a jaguar in the woods near here when a human hunter saw me and shot me with a tranquilizer dart. He sold me to Gunther. I’ve been in that cat run ever since then. I couldn’t let them know the truth, not when Gunther was always around. I didn’t know that the rest of you were shifters, too. Thanks for rescuing me,” she said.

“Got all that?” Wade asked Martin.

“Hell, yeah.”

“What about Candy?” Wade asked his boss.

“Police collected her and several hunters at the ranch house. The two hunters that tried to kill the jaguars have been arrested. One of them appears to have several broken ribs due to the tree falling on him and a concussion and a pretty bad gash in his head from the ATV crashing into the tree. Pays to wear a helmet. The other one is more open to speculation. My guess? One of the jaguars hit him pretty hard.”

“Served him right,” Wade said.

Caryn gave Wade a thumbs-up.

“Gunther’s body was fished out of the lake. We’ve already taken care of Bettinger’s body to avoid anyone seeing him. Good job,” Martin said.

“Even if you had to come here yourself?” Wade asked.

“On one of the biggest problem cases we’ve had in years? My being here means I can take all the credit.”

Wade smiled. One thing they always said about the director of the Special Forces unit was that he gave credit to the men and women who deserved it.

“I’ve informed the police detective that Maya had been kidnapped by Gunther. We’ll have to come up with a viable cover story for that, and she’ll need to talk to him. David also said you needed some time off. It’s granted.”

“Thanks, boss.” Wade rubbed his hand over Maya’s arm as she snuggled against him. He knew just what he’d do with that time off. “I’ve got to make a call to Thompson. Talk to you later,” he told Martin.

At a run as he headed for George’s car, David waved to them. He was about to open the front passenger door when he saw the woman sitting in the front seat. He quickly pulled open the door to the back. “Sorry, Wade,” he said to his brother as he climbed in. “Hate to have to ride back here with you… considering you probably wanted a little privacy.”

“No problem,” Wade said.

David eyed the new woman in the front seat. “I’m David Patterson.”

She gave him a small smile. “Caryn Breming.”

“George Tucker,” George said, as if he was so tongue-tied around the woman that he was having a time saying anything. But with another shifter sounding interested, he jumped right in. “How come I’ve never seen you around?”

“I never do the club scene,” Caryn said, “if you frequent those kinds of places.”

“Me either,” David said. “Not all the time. Hardly ever. Four times now, actually. But two of the times I was just on a job.”

She smiled and nodded at David.

Score one point for David, Wade thought, amused.

“Are you wild?” George asked. He knew that David was because he was in the Service.

“Not me. I’ve never been to the jungle. No interest.” Caryn glanced at George to see his take on it.

“Me either,” George said.

Score one point for George. She cast a look over the seat back at David to hear his response.

He folded his arms and gave a half smile. “Wild all the way.”

Wade was trying his damnedest not to laugh. He had to give his brother points for being an original.

Caryn smiled back at David as if she was intrigued.

Score a point for David? Maybe?

Maya said to David, “And here you called me a wild cat.”

“Yeah, you are, Maya. But I’d rather be in the jungle with you protecting my back than not.”

“Um, what happens after I drop you off at your car?” George asked Wade, sounding as though he wanted to get the topic off wild cats.

“Caryn needs a ride home,” Wade said, then punched in a number on his phone. “So we need to decide how she gets home.” The call he was trying to make went through, and Wade said, “Thompson, how are you doing?

Thompson said, his voice strained, “Hell, they got Maya.”

“We got her back. She’s okay. How about you?”

“Headache the size of Alaska. My wife will be here any minute now. I’m okay, but they wanted to keep me overnight for observation.”

“Good.”

More silence. Wade looked at David and raised his brows. Wade had to know if Thompson had seen Maya shift, but he couldn’t very well just come out and ask him.

Thompson cleared his throat. “Is Maya with you?”

“Right here.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Sure.” Wade handed the phone to her.

“Maya?” Thompson said.

“Are you okay? I was afraid after the truck crashed and you didn’t move that you were dead.”

“I’m fine. I have a hard head, or so my wife always tells me. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better.”

“Ha! The crash knocked you out. You couldn’t have done anything differently.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Thompson said.

“Thanks, Thompson. You don’t know how important that is. I think Wade was planning to mention to you that the female jaguar wasn’t from your zoo.”

Thompson didn’t say anything for a moment, and Wade was afraid he’d ask to see the jaguar to prove to himself the cat wasn’t her.

“It… wasn’t?” he finally asked, cautiously.

“No. Believe me when I say she wasn’t.”

“Okay, I do.” Thompson sighed. “I have to find her.”

“People who Wade and I know are looking for her as we speak. They won’t let you down, Thompson.”

Thompson paused. “I believe you. Will I see you again?”

Maya smiled up at Wade as she told Thompson, “Maybe at the club sometime. We could dance.”

“I’d like that. My wife just arrived, and she’s taking me home. The last time I got knocked out when I was searching for clues about a wolf, she wouldn’t let me go anywhere for days.” Thompson paused. “Wolves. Hell.” Another long pause. “Werewolves,” he said under his breath.

Maya laughed. “No way.”

Thompson said good-bye to Maya, then spoke to Wade, thanking him for his continued help in trying to locate the Oregon Zoo jaguar.

After he hung up, Wade kissed Maya’s forehead, loving her but not sure what he should do about the fact she had shifted in front of a human. He should report this to Martin. They couldn’t allow a human to know what they were. Yet he couldn’t do it. He sincerely believed that Thompson was one of the good guys. And he didn’t want Maya to be in trouble, either. Besides, if Thompson started telling the world that werewolves and jaguar shifters were real, he’d be laughed out of existence.

“You won’t say a word,” Maya whispered against Wade’s ear as if she could read his thoughts. “You don’t want to be in the doghouse.”

Wade chuckled and squeezed her in a hugging embrace. “No, I don’t.” He was thinking of getting one of those suites at the classy hotel where George and Candy had taken a room.

Maya had other plans.

Before they reached the hotel where the Pattersons’ car was packed, George said, “I’m sorry for… my involvement in this, Maya. I didn’t have all the facts when I helped Jim Bettinger. I… know… Martin has to review the case, but maybe you can put in a good word for me?” He looked terrified and hopeful at the same time.

As angry as she was that George had helped hand her over to Bettinger, she had to admit that he’d risked his life to help Wade protect her from the hunters. She nodded. Maybe next time he’d know better.

Before dropping Caryn off at her home, Maya vowed to get together with her for lunch in Houston sometime, while Caryn said she’d come out to see their nursery. Then, after making arrangements to secure Maya’s car and dropping David off at the hotel where he and Wade were staying, Wade drove Maya back to the Anderson Garden Nursery. She couldn’t wait to see her brother and Kat.

When they finally arrived home, Kat and Connor greeted her, and Maya felt overjoyed to see them. Though she’d had a swim in the lake and been thoroughly rained on during the storm and was still wearing only Wade’s shirt, she wanted to take a hot shower and slip into bed with him.

What she didn’t expect was to see a strawberry-blond-haired woman crossing the living-room floor, ready to greet her, blue eyes smiling. “I’m Tammy,” she said, “your other cousin.” And then she pulled Maya into a hug as if they were the best of friends and always had been.

“What are you doing here?” Maya asked, loving her already. “I’m so glad you came, but no one said anything about it.”

“You know men. My brothers were too intent on rescuing you. Minor details like my being here wouldn’t have been important enough to share with you. I’m trying to get a lead on Thompson’s missing zoo jaguar, but I wanted to come down and meet you all, too, since you’re my only known cousins.”

Tammy glanced at Wade. “I take it you’re the man of the hour?”

“If you mean I helped free Maya, I’d say she was doing a great job on her own,” Wade said, shaking Tammy’s hand. “I’m only one of the men who came to rescue her.”

“I understand you are practically family now. Don’t be shy.” Tammy pulled him into a hug, and Maya had to really curb the urge to hiss. The only reason she didn’t was that Wade looked nearly as uncomfortable with the woman hugging him as Maya felt.

When Tammy released him, Wade swept Maya up in his arms, and she gave a small cry of surprise. “You think too much,” he whispered against her ear. “We’ll see you all later. I think we might be flying out to Belize real soon.”

“Um, we’re going to go out for lunch and a double feature with Tammy and dinner after that,” Kat said as she grabbed Connor’s arm and headed for the door.

Connor looked surprised, but then getting the point, he nodded. “See you later.”

“And maybe check out that shifter club,” Kat teased.

“Not on your life,” Connor said.

Tammy smiled, waved, and followed them out of the house.

Maya couldn’t have loved Kat more for the suggestion. She breathed in Wade’s musky, sexy cat smell. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Wade was one happy male jaguar shifter.

When he entered her bedroom, he shut the door with his hip. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to join you here the first night I stayed in your home.”

“Yeah, I do. If my cousins and your brother hadn’t been here…”

He laughed. “Yeah. I knew you wanted me in here.” His mouth curved up, his eyes heating with fire.

“Whirlpool bath first,” she said.

He stalked with her into her bathroom, set her down on the floor, then considered the whirlpool tub, and smiled.

“What took you so long to come for me?” she asked, leaning over the bathtub to turn on the faucets.

He took hold of her hips and pressed his growing arousal against her ass. She wriggled a little against his groin and smiled when he groaned. That would teach him to play with fire.

“If I waited long enough,” he said, slipping his hands under the shirt and cupping her breasts, “I knew you’d really appreciate the rescue.”

She moaned with delight. “I thought you were a hot-shot Golden Claw,” she said, turning around as the water filled the tub, her hands sliding up his bare chest over rock-hard abs, her nails softly raking his skin. “And would have come sooner.”

He slid his hands up her shirt—well, technically his shirt—again to fill his large hands with her breasts and rubbed his thumbs over the taut and sensitive nipples. “I am a hot-shot Golden Claw.” He kissed her mouth, his tongue tangling with hers as he tightened his grip on her breasts.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling, just waiting to hear what he would say next. His eyes were sparkling with good humor.

“Some wild cats are just a lot harder to get a handle on.”

His voice had grown husky and his eyes had darkened with lust. She rubbed up against him, sliding a leg over his hip and caressing the back of his thigh with the heel of her foot. He took advantage of her posture to slip his hand between her legs and insert two fingers deep inside her. “But I’m getting a handle on it,” he whispered against her mouth as her lips parted on a sigh, and she felt she was dissolving in a puddle.

With their mouths fused and their breathing labored, she was ready to skip the bath and take him to her bed. But he quickly remedied that and stopped the water from filling the tub.

“It’ll take too long,” he said brusquely. When she looked up into his gorgeous blue-green eyes, he smiled. “I can’t wait.”

Then he flipped on the water in the glassed-in shower stall, carried her into it, clothes and all, and shut the door before he began kissing her all over again.

She was trying not to laugh, thinking he must have some kind of fetish for feeling her up when she was wearing clothes in a shower, when she was soaking wet with the fabric clinging to her like a slippery second skin.

The first time had been when she was wearing her nightie on the cottage deck, and he’d pulled her into the shower with him. And now again, his hands were stroking her breasts through the wet shirt, his smile saying how much he enjoyed being with her like this.

She smiled back, loving the hot Special Forces cat and all he meant to her. She grabbed a bottle of body wash, poured some of it out, and began soaping his chest, his muscular arms, and his jeans, focusing primarily on the rigid arousal begging to be freed.

He groaned as she stroked him through his jeans, and he began to struggle to unbuckle his belt. She wasn’t giving up and continued to run her hand over his swollen cock.

He fumbled with his zipper like a man being exquisitely tortured. That’d teach him to wear his pants in the shower if he was going to get her all worked up.

He jerked his pants off and tossed them on the shower floor.

She slipped her hand inside the opening of his wet boxers clinging to his erection and felt his hard flesh jump at her touch. He leaned down and kissed her again, his mouth claiming hers as he slid his hand between her legs and began to stroke her hard and fast, making her melt under the warm water. His stroking was drawing her to the zenith of pleasure, her eyes closing as she absorbed the sensual onslaught.

She gave a strangled cry of pleasure as he took her over the top, released her, and then pulled off the sopping wet boxers that had molded to the most delectable parts of him.

In one smooth movement, he lifted her, centered himself, and impaled her eager body. She straddled him, his steel-hard erection embedded inside her. With her back against the smooth porcelain wall, he rocked into her, thrusting deeper, harder, faster. His sexy male cat smell and the vanilla body wash mixed in a tantalizingly delicious fragrance.

She combed her fingers through his wet hair as her legs wrapped tightly about his lean hips. He kissed her again, his tongue plundering her. Ready for him, she sucked on his tongue hard, arching against him. And he lost the battle.

Groaning her name in a wickedly lust-drenched voice as he climaxed, he leaned his forehead against hers and laughed.

She furrowed her brows at him.

“You’re still wearing my shirt,” he said, grinning.

“And whose fault is that?” she asked as she slid down his length and rested her feet on the shower floor.

“As long as you don’t wear my pants.” He started unbuttoning the shirt and dropped it on the shower floor to rest with the other garments. Then he rinsed off and turned off the water. “What’s next on the schedule?” He grabbed a towel and began drying her hair.

“You have to ask?” she said, cupping him.

He grinned down at her. He might think he was one hot Special Forces Golden Claw, but she had some pretty nifty moves of her own.

The bed was next. The lake after that. Maya had to smile at Wade’s request. He had wanted her to wear a black lace bra and panties like she’d worn in the Amazon River. Then it was back home to the whirlpool bath to clean up. And then to bed again.

Later that night, lying against Wade’s naked chest on the soft mattress, she thought she heard Kat and Connor sneaking in through the front door and making a quiet retreat to their bedroom. She wasn’t sure. Jaguars and their shifter cousins could be as quiet as shadows.

She snuggled against Wade and wondered again about her dad and if he was or wasn’t her father. And where Thompson’s jaguar had gone off to. She wanted to ask Wade what he thought. She wanted to have resolution.

“Wade?” she said softly.

“Yeah?” He sounded like one worn-out cat.

“I love you.”

He smiled at her, then wrapped his arms around her tightly, kissing her on the forehead. “Good, because there is no doubt in my mind that you’re the only one for me.”

She kissed his chest and looked up at him. “Want to prove it to me? Again?”

“Insatiable,” he murmured, rolling her onto her back.

She was. She hadn’t realized it… not until she met the cat of her dreams.