Savage Hunger

Chapter 13

Kat let out her breath and stared at Connor’s naked chest, contemplating just how gorgeous he was. All tanned muscle, with light golden hair trailing down to his boxers. No battle scars. No tattoos or freckles. Just unblemished golden skin. Before he had slipped into a pair of black boxers, she had gotten an eyeful of an erection she had stirred up, tan the way the rest of his skin was, and the golden curls surrounding it. Did he lie out in the Texas sun and soak it up?

For a second, she stared at his lap as he sat next to her on the bed, just studying her without saying a word. Then her eyes widened, and she looked back at his eyes. She had been eyeing his jaguar male package—just to determine which sex he was—when he had jumped into the tree to join her the first time she had seen him as a jaguar. She realized that had been him. Connor. In the jaguar flesh.

He had been checking her out when she was soaking wet, staring at her breasts as a big, old, safe cat. But he hadn’t been all cat. Or safe. He had been a man who had been intrigued with a woman alone in the jungle.

She groaned to herself, trying to remember what else had happened between them when she had thought he was only a jaguar. Nothing, she hoped.

“We were born with the genes,” he finally said.

Kat swallowed hard. “But I wasn’t.” Which meant what? Did they know many who had been changed like her? What difference would it make in her case, as compared to jaguar-shifters who were born that way? Besides the obvious, which was that she didn’t have control over her shifting like they did. “How will I be different?”

His gaze remained on hers, although she saw a shadow of concern in the darkened depths of his eyes. “Truthfully, I don’t know.”

This was so not good. “Where… where are you from?”

“Texas,” he said, offering a small smile. “Just like I said.”

“You’re not human,” she said, frowning at him.

“Not like regular humans.” He sighed and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “But we’re human when in human form and jaguar in our cat form. Although we retain our human thought processes while a cat and our cat senses when we’re human.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I ate a raw fish. I would never have eaten a raw fish if I had retained my human sensibilities.”

He smiled. “As a jaguar, you’ll want to satisfy your hunger in a feral cat’s way. It’s instinctive. You hadn’t had dinner. You were hungry. Fishing for your dinner came naturally. Eating meat raw is usually the only way we eat in our jaguar form. No need to cook. Our stomachs can handle it. We don’t need spices to make it taste better. We eat to survive.”

On some level, she could understand the concept. But she was still human and the notion that she would eat raw meat didn’t appeal. “So then Maya changed me?”

“She said she scratched you. I wouldn’t have thought that would have done it, but apparently it did.”

Kat stared at the bed for a moment, then frowned up at Connor. “She licked me afterward. I worried a little that she would get a taste of my blood and want more.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s how she did it.”

“Why? Why did she change me?” Kat couldn’t keep an upset tone out of her voice. She was something so alien to herself now that she couldn’t grasp the ramifications. She didn’t think she minded that Connor and his sister were different. They couldn’t help what they were. But she did mind that she herself had changed.

But then she wondered—if she had discovered what they were, would they have had to resort to what Maya had done anyway? Change her? Or kill her even? Surely they couldn’t let the world know what they were.

“She wanted me to have a mate,” Connor said, his tone matter-of-fact.

Kat’s eyes widened. Not that she was totally surprised, but still, it seemed… medieval.

Connor let out his breath. “And she wanted you to be her sister.”

Kat bit her lower lip, trying to focus on one thought as millions of questions swirled through her mind. “Why me? Besides the fact that I was stuck here with you in the jungle and made for an easy target.”

“Kat, our kind don’t easily take in strangers and develop a fondness for them. I didn’t want her to turn you, although I assumed she would try. I wanted to take you to the resort before it was too late. But you were too sick.”

“That’s why you didn’t want me to visit you in Texas. Or with Maya, rather. You were afraid she’d try again if she wasn’t successful the first time.” Now his reaction to Kat made some sense. His interest in her, yet his need to keep his distance once she was feeling better.

Despite his wanting to stay away from her, Kat recalled Maya’s words to him: “You were dying to know what had happened to her when she was wounded. You didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and we even left here early because you were so disconsolate. And as soon as we returned here, what did you do? Went straight back to the place where she’d been wounded, and then you didn’t come back for hours.”

Just like Kat had felt compelled to return to the Amazon and find Connor to thank him for rescuing her. She had often thought of him, bare-chested and barefooted, leaning over her, cutting the rope from her wrists, and then hurrying to bind her wounds. His eyes had focused on hers with so much concern and tenderness that she had often wondered what it would be like to be with a man like him.

Connor cleared his throat. “Yes, I was afraid she’d bite you to change you. Neither of us has ever tried to turn someone before. She knew I wouldn’t do it.”

Kat shifted her gaze from his muscled torso to his face. He hadn’t wanted her enough to change her himself. But then again, that made him more honorable, didn’t it? That he did indeed care for her but wouldn’t turn her against her will. “I wouldn’t have allowed it if I could have prevented it.”

“So now… you’re stuck with me?” That was a disagreeable notion.

His mouth curved in a predatory way. “Hell, Kat, I wouldn’t have turned you, but you’ve got to sense the chemistry between us. If I’d met you somewhere in Texas, you still would have garnered all my attention.”

“And?” She was dying to know what he would have done about it.

He shrugged. “I might have taken you out for a drink, maybe dinner, but I never would have gotten too close. Developing feelings for a human would be risky business, and I couldn’t afford it.”

“You would have wanted more than a drink.”

He gave her a dark smile. “With you, I couldn’t want less.”

“But you had vowed never to turn someone.”

“Yes. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of living a double life—as strictly a human in front of a woman I loved and, behind her back, as a jaguar-shifter with a sister cut from the same spotted cloth.”

She still couldn’t believe any of it, yet what had just happened had happened. She couldn’t deny it any longer. Used to dealing with matters that didn’t exactly go her way—the loss of her men on the mission, Roger leaving her, foster homes that hadn’t worked out—she’d make the most of this new change in her life. Somehow.

Kat took a deep breath and exhaled. “Now what?”

“Now we need to get you to Texas and hope to God you don’t shift somewhere along the way and create a real situation.”

She groaned, not having considered that new wrinkle in her life.

“Sorry, Kat.”

This nightmare was growing. “If we get to Texas, what then?”

“Then? We’re a family. You’ll live with us.”

“And I have no say?” All of a sudden, she felt as though she had lost total control over her life, and at a time when she thought she had just gotten it back!

“You can’t… live on your own, Kat. It’s too dangerous. If anyone learned what you were, they’d lock you up, study you, believe you were some alien race. No jaguar would be safe once you were discovered. There aren’t that many jaguars left in the wild. Can you imagine what kind of a sensation you’d be? They’d eventually find Maya and me. Although we’re careful, some have seen us with our jaguar pets—Maya with a jaguar, or me with Maya when she’s shifted into her jaguar coat.”

Kat hadn’t thought of that. In the back of her mind, she just thought they wanted to keep her because she would be like them. Not that she would need to be with those of her kind—for protection and companionship.

Yet she had read a lot about jaguars and their behavior, and they didn’t live as a family—at least not for long. The male stayed with the female during courtship and mating, but after the mother birthed her cubs, he was out of there, by her choice. Each male serviced a number of females, their territories overlapping his bigger one. Would she be considered part of a harem? No way, José.

“But jaguars don’t take a mate permanently. Any old jaguar will do. Just like a domesticated cat. Just like dogs,” she said. She had always figured that when she settled down and married a man, like she had planned with Roger, it would be forever.

“We’re human, too, and I promise if you decide to be my mate, I won’t stray.”

“What about others? You can’t be the only ones.”

That was a horrible idea. What if they were the only ones of their kind? Then Maya would have to turn a man, too, if she could. But what if he turned out to be dangerous?

What was Kat thinking? What if she became dangerous? What if she couldn’t control what she was, got hungry, and went after the neighbor’s dogs—or kids, even? Although she reminded herself that she had vowed she wouldn’t eat a monkey or colorful parrot, so she must have some control over being a feral beast.

“No, we aren’t the only ones. But with jaguars as elusive as they are, finding others of our kind is close to impossible.”

“That’s why Maya asked if I had a brother.”

Connor glanced back in the direction of the screen door. “She’d better not contemplate it.”

Kat harrumphed under her breath. “Yeah, one of us is bad enough.”

Connor turned back to study her, compassion in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Kat. I wouldn’t have done this to you, but I intend to make it up to you any way that I can.”

Frowning, Kat chewed on her lower lip. “What about the other jaguar? Roaring in the jungle. It was a male, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I hadn’t been marking our territory well enough since we came back here this time.”

“Because of taking care of me—because I was so sick.”

“You were our first priority.”

“So… is he a regular cat or a shifter, do you think?”

Maya called out from the hammock. “It doesn’t matter, Kat. Taking care of you is what’s important to us now.”

Kat could barely keep her eyes open, but she had to take care of one little thing. “Can I brush my teeth?”

Shaking his head, he smiled. “You’ll get used to the transition of eating raw meat as a jaguar, then shifting into your human form.”

He helped her to the washstand where she brushed her teeth with the spare toothbrush and a generous amount of minty toothpaste.

Then he carried her back to bed where Kat closed her eyes, unable to keep them open any longer. “Maya needs a mate, doesn’t she?” she whispered to Connor.

“We don’t have to worry about that now. Sleep and we’ll talk more in the morning.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “’Night, Kat. If you get the urge to shift, wake me. Please. You can’t roam through the jungle alone. The rain forest is too dangerous for you.”

She took a deep breath, nodded her head ever so slightly, and then, unable to stay awake, she slipped back into the world of dreams.

Connor stared at her for what seemed an eternity, unwilling to leave her side. He kept worrying she would shift again and take off, unable to help herself. But now she knew something about them and what she was. If she shifted and needed to stretch her legs as a jaguar, he hoped she would wake him and wait for him to go with her.

Glancing back at the screen door, he couldn’t help admiring his sister for wanting only to take care of Kat, ignoring her own needs to investigate the male jaguar and see if he might also be a shifter. He knew Maya would want to check him out.

He caressed Kat’s arm. She shouldn’t have run like she did. She still wasn’t well enough to expend that much energy.

He looked at Maya’s bed but couldn’t force himself to retire to it. Not without worrying that Kat might shift and leave again, and he couldn’t help being concerned about the other male jaguar. What if he was a shifter and he found Kat alone in the jungle? Their mother had said their father would never stay with her. It didn’t matter that she was the only shifter he had ever found. He couldn’t stay with one woman, period. Kat didn’t deserve a man like that.

Connor snorted and folded his arms. Hell, he wouldn’t be like his old man.

Maya slipped into the hut and rubbed Connor’s back. “She’s sleeping. Go to bed. I’m sure one or both of us will wake if she tries to leave again.”

She hugged him, then returned to her hammock on the porch.

Connor wasn’t taking any chances. He climbed into the small bed with Kat, pulling the wispy curtains around them as though they were a prince and princess in an Arabian Nights tale. Intent on making sure she wasn’t going anywhere without waking him first, he covered them with the light bed linen, closed his eyes, and tried to think of anything except how sexy she felt snuggled against his body.