All the while, the woman continued to watch them as she sat in the tree and didn’t appear to have any plans to come down soon. Which meant?
Connor was going to have to do something drastic to change her mind.
Chapter 2
If she didn’t know any better, Kathleen would have sworn the male cat wanted her to pull the thorn out of the female cat’s paw. And then?
They would eat her. As soon as she pulled on the thorn, the pain would cause the female to growl, swing her head around, and bite Kathleen. The male, thinking that Kathleen was injuring his mate, would finish her off.
So she sat in the tree.
And they sat on the ground. No one moved.
Then it began to pour. The rain came down lightly at first, but then more heavily, dripping off smooth leaves with most of the drops never reaching the forest floor. Kathleen was already soaking wet after stepping on ground that wasn’t solid and sinking into water nearly up to her collarbone, which had almost given her a stroke. All she could imagine was that a crocodile would come to investigate what delightful edible creature had dropped in to see it. After struggling to get back on relatively dry land without meeting up with a croc or two, she had thanked her guardian angel for watching over her again.
The air was muggy and as wet as she was. She figured she would never dry, just mold instead.
Feeling dizzy from the heat and realizing she hadn’t drunk any water in some time, she tried to get her pack off her back to reach a bottle of water. But a twisted branch behind her caught on the bag, and she couldn’t free it. She leaned forward to get it loose and immediately realized her mistake. She was too far forward with nothing to grasp on to, and she lost her balance. With her heart in her throat and unable to stop her fall, she plummeted from the tree to the spongy ground some fifteen feet below, landing hard on one knee. Pain shot through it. She didn’t think she had broken anything, but she had hurt it for sure.
The jarring impact sent a shard of pain rippling through the old bullet wound in her thigh, adding insult to injury.
Now on her side, she stifled a groan and fought against cradling her knee, whimpering, cursing, or doing anything that would alert the cats that she was down-and-out for the moment. She briefly thought about how the jaguars would think she was like a wounded creature, falling from the tree and perfect for a predinner snack.
Despite not wanting to look in their direction, fearing they might approach to take a lick and a bite, she did glance at them. The female was still lying on her side. But the male was standing, watching Kathleen. She swore he took a deep breath as if he was concerned about her, surprised maybe, but then he headed toward her. That couldn’t be a good sign.
She scrambled to a sitting position, groaning as the pain shot through her leg to her kneecap and short-circuited her plan to make for the tree again. This time she did cradle her injured knee, cursing herself for her folly.
As if he knew she might try to take refuge in the tree, the male jaguar loped toward her, no longer moving cautiously. When he reached her, he opened his mouth and gave her a way-too-close-up view of his saber-tooth wicked canines, which looked remarkably white and polished for a wild beast. She gaped at them but couldn’t even get a scream out.
Then he licked her cheek.
His huge, wet tongue was like rough sandpaper against her skin. She knew it. He was tasting her before he ate her.
But then he pushed under her arm with his nose as if he was trying to get her to stand. She couldn’t stand, damn it. If she could, she would have climbed back in the tree as fast as she was able.
When she wouldn’t cooperate, he went around the back side of her and bit into her backpack. In a strangled cry, she yelled, “No!”
He stopped what he was doing for a second as if startled by her reaction, almost as though he would obey her word.
Glad her backpack had protected her from his fearsome bite, she still figured that was only the beginning. Once he found out the bag didn’t taste all that good, he would take another bite, somewhere a lot more tasty.
He ignored her scream and didn’t take another bite. Instead, he held on tight to her bag and dragged it. Since the bag was attached to her back, that effectively pulled her along with it. She briefly thought of his teeth making mincemeat of everything in her bag—the canines puncturing her water bottles, sinking into her granola bars, destroying and desanitizing her medical kit. Then she realized how much more serious this was. He was taking her closer to the injured female so she could eat Kathleen at her leisure!
She struggled with the backpack but couldn’t get her arms out of the straps to save her life.
How sweet for his mate. If Kathleen managed to live through this, she could write about how caring a jaguar male could be toward his mate. Of course, after the cubs were born and only a couple of weeks old, the mother would chase the male off so he didn’t eat her offspring.
To her surprise, the male jaguar left Kathleen next to the female’s hind foot. Then he came around and put his nose close to the thorn. She could see now there were two, but he didn’t touch either of them. She thought he really was telling her to remove them.
She couldn’t believe it. She wondered if the two jaguars were like wolves that had been raised by families in the States who then grew tired of them and released them into the wild. She had heard that sometimes people in the jungle raised jaguars. Manuel, her guide now long gone, had told her about a male jaguar cub discovered on a road, his mother nowhere to be found. The people in his village took the cub in because he would never have survived otherwise. Another was kept at a reserve for injured wild animals.
Maybe these two had been raised by natives and…
She shook her head. They still were wild beasts of prey. But what if one had been Connor’s pet and the jaguar had picked up a mate? What if Connor was nearby?
Kathleen didn’t believe she could get that lucky.
Her hand shaking, she reached for the two thorns wedged between the pads of the jaguar’s foot. As soon as Kathleen grasped the first, the female cat growled low at her.
Kathleen’s heart stuttered, but she had done it now. She yanked out the thorn, then reached for the other and heard male voices. The male jaguar growled low this time.
Kathleen yanked out the other thorn, and to her astonishment, the male jaguar grabbed her bag and dragged her back to the tree. The female quickly raced to the tree and climbed into the higher branches. Kathleen couldn’t climb. She couldn’t even stand, but before she knew what the male was up to, he’d jumped into the tree, carrying her by the backpack and nearly giving her a seizure. Now she was in the tree again.
His action reminded her that big cats often carried their catch—even one as large as a dead deer—into a tree to eat it later, protecting the snack from predators below.
***
Connor assumed the woman thought he and his sister would eat her. At least if he was in her predicament, that’s what he would have thought. But for now, they would sleep, hidden in the canopy in the rain forest, away from the human predators who were moving noisily through the jungle, cutting a swath through the tangle of vines and plants and cursing as they went. He didn’t trust handing the woman over to them, not after he had found her alone in the jungle and not knowing who they were.
He assumed she was alone because something had gone wrong and that the man he had heard earlier was part of this group of maybe three or four men. They wouldn’t stay out here for long because it would grow too dark for the men to see, and Connor was sure they didn’t have a camp nearby. That made him wonder just what they were doing out here this late in the day.
When they could safely do so, he and his sister would escort the woman to the resort and leave her there. But the woman had hurt herself, and they couldn’t easily get her to the resort anytime soon.
The woman was sitting stiffly on the branch next to him, looking tired and uneasy. She alternated between watching for the men, who were moving awa
y from them, and looking at Connor as he quietly observed her. He was afraid she would accidentally slip off the branch if she managed to fall asleep, as tired and drawn as she looked. He put a leg over her lap and looked up at her to see her reaction. Her eyes widening, she stared at him in disbelief. She had the most beautiful green eyes, the irises flecked with gold and encircled by a ring of gold. He envisioned that she would be one beautiful jaguar.
She whispered, “You were someone’s pet?”
If he could have smiled in amusement at the thought, he would have. But he was afraid smiling would show off his big predator’s teeth and wouldn’t put her at ease.
Her voice was sweet, in awe, and appealed to him on some deeper level. She was American like he and his sister were, but he couldn’t place the region she was from. He nudged her arm with his nose to show he meant her no ill will, pretending he had been someone’s pet. It would work well for all concerned if she believed it.
She put her hand on his paw, as if accepting his friendship, and he grunted in his jaguar way. But her touch was doing things to his body that he shouldn’t be thinking of as a jaguar.
His sister looked down at him from a higher branch. She appeared contemplative as she turned her attention to the woman. The woman’s hair was very dark brown and long and curly, the ends dripping with water. Again, he wondered how she had gotten so wet.
She was drenched, her lightweight, tan-colored clothes clinging provocatively to her figure, which he could enjoy without fear of censure because she thought he was only a cat. Dark pebbled nipples were visible under her wet shirt and bra, and he studied them with fascination. Mainly because the bra was some kind of leopard print yet sheer enough that he could see her rigid nipples.
Hell, he hadn’t been with a woman in months. And right now observing this woman was taking a toll on his body.
He rested his head on her lap to make sure she wasn’t still afraid of the two jaguars protecting her and would try to slip away into the jungle if he should fall asleep, or that she would accidentally fall from the tree and injure herself further.
Unable to ignore that carnal, feral side of his jaguar nature that wanted to learn just how ripe she was to have his offspring, he breathed in her musky feminine scent. Not that he normally sniffed at a woman in that way—mainly because he had never been in a situation like this before—but with his head resting in her lap, he couldn’t help himself. And didn’t want to, either. Yeah, she was ready. If she had been a jaguar and he hadn’t been a shifter, he would definitely have been enticed to see just how receptive she would be to his advances. But he was a shifter and she was strictly human, which should have meant paws off.
She frowned at him. “Connor Anderson?” she whispered.
He stared at her. Her voice. That’s what had sounded so familiar. It… it couldn’t be Captain Kathleen McKnight. For a second, he thought she knew he was the jaguar, then he realized she couldn’t. So how had she known he “ran” with a jaguar out here? But she had been a blonde before and had blue eyes.
She stroked his head as if he was her pet. It was her. She was safe, healed from her injuries from that firefight a year ago. So what was she doing in the jungle again? Another undercover mission?
But then her hand rubbed his head some more, and she stole his thoughts.
If she only knew the lascivious notions he was having about her, thinking of what he would attempt if they had both been jaguar-shifters.
She finally relaxed, leaning one shoulder against the tree trunk, which helped him to relax a little. He liked the feel of her caressing his broad head, the gentleness of her touch, the way she sighed deeply. He couldn’t close his eyes, though, not with the way he kept breathing in her feminine scent and enjoying the softness of her lap, even after her hand stilled and her breathing slowed until he assumed she had fallen asleep.
He couldn’t believe how different she looked, but he had recognized her scent and her voice.
Why was she here?
When the dark finally came, he raised his head and saw that she was indeed sleeping. He looked up at Maya. She was watching him curiously, a speculative gleam in her golden eyes, and she knew just what he intended to do. He leaped from the branch to the ground, and she jumped down to the one Kat was sleeping on, then followed his example and rested her head in the woman’s lap to make sure she didn’t fall. With one last look at the two hidden in the canopy, feeling sure they would be safe, Connor loped off to his and Maya’s home in the jungle.
Running as a jaguar, he didn’t take long to reach the hut. He quickly shifted, dressed, and raced back to where he had left his sister and the woman. Maneuvering along the narrow path and running as a human, he hated how much time was passing, much longer than when he had run as a powerful jaguar. Even though they normally didn’t chase anything down, jaguars could run up to twenty-five miles per hour if necessary. They just couldn’t run for extended periods of time.
All the while on his trek back to where he had left the women, he was considering how he was going to get Kat out of the tree without injuring her knee further.
When he finally arrived and looked up at his sister, spread out on the branch as if she owned it, with the human sleeping next to her, he still hadn’t reached a decision as to how to easily get Kat down. Maya stretched. Then to his surprise, she bit into the woman’s backpack, pulled her with a jerk from her seat on the branch, and released her into midair. Kat screamed as she felt herself fall.
Connor quickly maneuvered to catch her and easily swept her up in his arms and cast Maya an annoyed look. That was one way to get Kat down from the tree. He would have tried something less frightening for the poor woman.
In panic, she struggled to get free from him, pushing at his shoulders with her fists and yelling, “Let me go!”
A shadowy darkness surrounded them and she couldn’t see him well, although he could see her with his cat’s night vision, so he could understand her fear. One minute she was in the tree, sleeping with two jaguars that were protecting her. The next minute, she was free-falling from the tree and now secure in the arms of a man she didn’t know.
“I raised the cats,” he quickly assured her while cradling her in his arms, his voice as soothing as he could make it, although it sounded way too gruff to his ears. He tightened his hold on her so she wouldn’t get loose, land on her feet, and put pressure on her injured knee. Although as much as she was struggling, he figured she would end up on her ass if she managed to wriggle free.
“Connor?” she inquired, her voice steady and hopeful.
“Corand came to get me, letting me know that I needed to rescue a beautiful woman in the jungle. But yeah, I’m Connor Anderson,” he added, giving himself a fake name for when he was in his jaguar form.
She stilled as if she realized he was with the jaguars, that he was the man who had stopped her bleeding when Gonzales’s men had shot her, and that Connor wasn’t the enemy. She stared up into his face. “You’re… you’re American.”
“Texan,” he said smiling, as if that meant he was a special category of American.
“From Texas.”
“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t recognize you at first. Different color hair, eyes.” He waited for an explanation.
She took a deep breath. “This is my natural look. That was for the mission.”
Connor raised his brows.
She smiled a little at the astonished look he gave her. “I was supposed to look like a cute, clueless college-age girl who was too stupid to live, but who had loads of money. Blue contacts made my eyes look like the Caribbean. I kind of liked the blue eyes.”
Connor shook his head. “You’re beautiful as a brunette. And your green eyes remind me of the jungle.”
Appreciating his comments, she gave him a rueful smile, then sighed. “Thank you. Believe me, as a blonde, I did not have more fun. The guys I worked with ribbed me by repeating every dumb-blonde joke known to mankind.” She swallowed hard, and he wondered if she was reme
mbering her fallen comrades.
Not wanting her to relive what had to be nightmarish memories, he glanced up at Maya. “Come on. Time to return to the hut.” Then he said to the wet, curvaceous woman in his arms, “You’ll meet my twin sister, Maya, soon.”
His sister dropped easily to the ground and led the way down the path to the hut, her long tail swishing back and forth.
“Your sister? Oh.” Kathleen sounded relieved that his sister was here with him. She probably assumed he couldn’t be all that dangerous then. Little did she know.
“Anderson? Is that English?” she asked.
“On our father’s side. But he married a Scotswoman, so we’re also Scottish. The Scots moved into Texas and settled a lot of the areas.”
He didn’t know how far back his jaguar roots went. Neither their mother nor their father would talk about it much. Just something about their father’s great grandfather having been a Sir Lionel Anderson who had taken an expedition into the Amazon searching for medicinal properties in the plant life. Rumors abounded that he had been searching for gold. They suspected he had tangled with a jaguar-shifter. And somehow he’d managed to live. Return trips to Edinburgh had been far and few between until he stopped returning to Scotland altogether. But a son took his father’s place. A son who had been born in the jungle.
The woman nodded at Connor, breaking into his thoughts. “I’m Kathleen McKnight.”
“Kat,” he mused. “The captain.” He wondered why she was alone in the jungle, but if she was doing an undercover operation, he suspected she wouldn’t tell him the truth anyway.
She frowned up at him. “I… I can’t see a thing any longer. How can you find your way in the dark?”
Chapter 3
As he made his way over twisted vines and kept his footing in muddier areas, Connor hadn’t considered that Kat would realize he shouldn’t be able to see anything in the dark, just like she couldn’t. As cats, jaguar-shifters could see well at dusk and dawn. And that ability carried over to their human half once they had shifted back. Just as their sense of smell was enhanced, so was their hearing.