by Terry Spear
Stopping, he listened, his restless tail twitching. He lifted his head and smelled the aromatic fragrance of orchids and the ripe richness of the jungle—from rotting vegetation to the sweet smell of the giant lilies and the sap from a tree that cleared the sinuses in a hurry. He heard the sound of insects buzzing, toucans and macaws singing, a howler monkey howling, thunder in the distance that warned of an approaching rain shower, and water trickling nearby.
Feeling unsettled, not only about Maya, he couldn’t return to their home in the jungle without thinking about Captain Kathleen McKnight and wondering what had become of her. Had she survived? Was she still traipsing around in the jungle, fighting the bad guys? He snorted. One little whiff of her scent a year ago had sent his testosterone into a raging battle of need. Even now as he explored the jungle, he thought he smelled her fragrance several times, but he knew how ridiculous that notion was. Even without that irrational spike of lust, he had been fascinated by her for some reason and had thought about her—even dreamed about her—many times in the past year.
He gave a low rumbling growl, attempting to get his sister’s response so he could locate her.
The ancients revered jaguars as warriors, royalty, having strength and bravery in any kind of warfare. Connor wondered if any of the ancients had ever come across a jaguar-shifter. Maybe that’s why they had revered them so much.
He suddenly heard a different kind of movement in the forest. Human movement, he thought. Jaguars moved silently through the jungle on quiet padded feet, so he knew it wasn’t Maya. The hunter-gatherers in the area also were known to move soundlessly through the jungle, so he didn’t think he was hearing any member of the local indigenous tribes.
Members of Gonzales’s drug cartel hadn’t returned here since the Americans hit so many of his men. But the rumor was that Gonzales had gotten away unscathed and was now living in Bolivia. As for the woman? Connor couldn’t stop thinking about her, the way her blue eyes had tried to stay focused on him while he had bound her wounds, the way she had tried to reach out to touch him, and how he had wanted to feel her hand on his skin. But she had been too weak, unable to make contact.
A year had passed, and he couldn’t believe how often he still thought of the woman. Annoyed with himself for being so distracted, he turned his attention back to the possible threat nearby.
Despite the noise of the surrounding jungle, the person was making a racket whacking through the bamboo, balsa wood, and tangles of vines, trying to clear a path and panting heavily.
Connor turned his head to determine which way the person was moving. Away from him, or toward him? If toward him, Connor suspected the person had heard his jaguar growl and would be armed and ready to kill.
Fine. Connor would rather have the man head in his direction and stay away from his sister, wherever she was.
Then she growled again. Of all the damn times to alert Connor where she was!
The human turned and headed in his sister’s direction, and Connor bounded after him—determined to change the man’s mind.
***
Taking a deep breath in the heavily oxygen-laden and moisture-burdened air, Kathleen McKnight stopped in the Amazon jungle, unsure which way to go. She was hoping to find a waterway that she could follow and maybe come to a village or, better yet, the resort where she had a reservation. An almost invisible cloud of fog seemed to cloak the breezeless rain forest, every square inch filled with living, breathing organisms that belonged here. All except for her—an intruder in their world.
She thought she had headed away from the sounds of a wild cat roaring in the woods. At first she had wanted desperately to see the jaguar because he might lead her to Connor Anderson. She wasn’t so sure now. Not after she had heard the cat roar. He sounded angry… and hungry. For some reason, she associated him with that long-ago jaguar roaming with Connor, but she couldn’t give a rational explanation for the feeling. What if he wasn’t Connor’s jaguar companion? Yet, she just had this gut feeling that the two were together.
First, his cry came from one direction, then another. From everything she had read about jaguars and from the way this one had roared, he was one big cat. But she knew they lived alone, so two of them probably weren’t roaming out here; the roars were just echoing off the jungle foliage or rocky cliffs or something. But she still was in big trouble.
Well, more so than she already had been. She surveyed the greenery surrounding her in every shade and hue of green imaginable to an artist and reminded herself that she was hopelessly lost.
As she maneuvered through the thick vegetation, the broad leaves and tangled vines brushing against and grasping at her, she hoped she was moving away from where the big cat had been roaring. She hadn’t thought she would be all alone in the jungle, listening to a big cat growl while maybe next on his dinner menu. So much for seeing a jaguar up close and personal. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind.
According to her research on jaguars, research she’d felt compelled to do though she couldn’t say why, they normally slept during the day and hunted during dusk and dawn. If necessary, they would hunt during the day. This one sounded too hungry to wait until nightfall.
Heart pounding, she stopped moving, trying to recall what she had read. Stand still and make noise. Whatever you do, don’t run. Jaguars rarely attacked humans. Unless maybe it was a very old jaguar and he needed something really easy to catch and eat. It could be old. She couldn’t tell. Its roar was deep and low and, well, grouchy, like an old jaguar, she thought. They didn’t roar like lions or tigers, but more of a deep, throaty cough repeated five or six times that sounded like, “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.”
She was afraid that if she ran, she would be just too tempting for a jaguar of any age to ignore.
She heard something moving toward her from behind. The hair at the nape of her neck instantly stood at attention. Her heart was already tripping. She was afraid it was him—the cat with the deep, angry, growly voice. She knew the big cats moved silently through the jungle. She imagined the cat would appear before she would even be prepared to face him. And then what?
Turning slowly, she looked to see who or what it was. An armed man? Or a toothy jaguar?
She saw the most beautiful creature she had ever chanced to see up close—way too close. A huge jaguar. No fence or moat to keep him from her, like at a zoo. Her skin chilled, and her heart thumped erratically.
As much as she’d wanted to see one, she hadn’t quite thought to observe one like this. If he did belong to Connor, she didn’t see any sign of the man. Which meant this one could be a real danger.
In the back of her mind, she wanted to pull her camera out of her bag and take a picture, take a hundred pictures. That was just plain crazy. She stayed porcelain-statue still, afraid any sudden movement would trigger him to pounce. She had envisioned watching one swimming in a river or maybe drinking water at a riverbank. She’d thought she might catch sight of one lounging in a tree while she watched from a nice, safe distance, but not on the prowl like this while she was standing in its path.
Her heart still pounding out-of-bounds, she stared at the jaguar, which had the most beautiful golden eyes and matching golden body covered in large black rosettes. His belly was white and covered with more rosettes. His long whiskers bristled. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air, taking a whiff of her scent, she was certain, although there wasn’t a whisper of a breeze with all the vegetation surrounding them. Was he trying to smell just how tasty she might be? Despite the muggy heat, a chill raced down her spine.
His eyes were round, fully watching her as he stood frozen in place. His tail twitched, jerking back and forth in a tight motion, just like her cat’s would when she watched a bird on a tree branch near the living room window. Her cat’s eyes would be just as huge as the jaguar’s and her body just as tense, ready to pounce on her prey if she could have gotten beyond the glass windowpane.
Don’t move, Kathleen screamed silently to herself. He is curious. Jus
t curious. You are not dinner.
Who was she kidding? All she could think of was the Indian word for jaguar, yaguar, meaning “he who kills at one leap.” Looking at the way he was standing so still, she wondered if he was thinking about it. He wasn’t in pouncing form, crouched, ready to leap, but maybe he was waiting for her to run, offering more sport that way.
They would eat deer and tapirs. Why not a tasty woman?
Then to her shock, she heard another growl. This one came from behind her. Yet the jaguar was still standing in front of her, and he hadn’t made a sound. Her skin grew a fresh rash of goose bumps.
Maybe he wasn’t a he, but a she, and her nearly full-grown cub was behind Kathleen, coming for dinner. Or maybe this one was a he—he looked awfully big not to be, around six feet in length and weighing, she guessed, around two hundred and fifty pounds—and the other was his mate. How big was the other, then?
If they were mating, maybe Kathleen was needed to keep them well fed for another bout of tying it on. That didn’t improve her outlook on the situation in the least. The only thing she could hope for was that they had the hots for each other, and one human wouldn’t distract them that thoroughly. Maybe that’s why they had been roaring. As a love call. Or maybe he would think Kathleen was a threat to his mate.
She hoped both cats had recently eaten and that she wasn’t about to be on the menu.
He slowly walked toward her. She had to tell herself that was because the other jaguar was somewhere behind her with Kathleen inconveniently in between the two of them.
She wanted desperately to dash off. But she couldn’t outrun a big cat that could take her down with one leap. Not to mention that if she turned and bolted, she would probably run straight into the other jaguar.
She meant to glance behind her for a tree that she could reach and quickly climb, but when she looked over her shoulder, she saw the other cat. And her heart nearly stopped. Her breathing definitely did.
Smaller, though not by much, the second jaguar observed her with the same golden eyes and had the same golden coat with black rosettes and the same hungry look. This was so not good.
She angled herself away from the cat behind her, returned her attention to the bigger cat in front of her, and backed toward the tree she’d spotted. If she didn’t move, the big guy in front of her was going to walk right into her. She planned to climb the tree and stay up there until the cats went away, certain they had come to see each other and weren’t interested in her.
If she just got out of their way, everything would be fine. That was what she hoped, anyway. She even had the dumb notion that she could take some great shots of the two cats once she was safely in the tree and they were still on the ground in perfect view for picture taking. What if she could even capture the jaguars mating on video?
She bumped into something and nearly had a seizure—thinking she had run into the other cat. She turned to find it was the massive tree instead, its roots sprawling all over the ground and nearly tripping her. Vines wrapped around the trunk, coiling upward while plants nestled in its embrace. But she didn’t have time to enjoy the bit of relief she felt that she’d only bumped into the tree and not the cat.
She grabbed a vine and with a lot more difficulty than she thought she would have—the heat, the lack of sleep, her wet, slippery hands, the panic flooding her bloodstream—she finally managed to scramble up the tree into one of the lower branches. She was glad the vine hadn’t ripped loose because of her weight. Then she tried to climb a little higher to put more distance between her and the jaguars. Thank God, the Army had taught her how to rappel off brick buildings and wooden towers and to climb mountains, although swinging from trees was something that might come in handy now. Come to think of it, she had swung on a rope across a very deep trench on the officers’ obstacle course.
If her luck was anything like it had been running recently, she could just imagine grabbing a vine here as she tried to swing from tree to tree like one of the spider monkeys she had seen doing so, and accidentally getting hold of a nice meaty snake instead.
She hadn’t made it very far up the tree’s massive trunk, which was so tall that it shot up toward the sun like a skyscraper, when a huge golden body went sailing past her shoulder and landed on a sturdy branch to the left of her head. His sudden action startled her so that she let out a strangled scream, her skin heating with a sudden prickle of fear, and she nearly fell out of the tree.
As evidenced by his large male package, she noticed right away that he was a he.
She glanced down to see if the other jaguar planned to join him. But all she did was stretch her body up toward Kathleen, her claws fully extended like long, curved miniature daggers, and then she raked the tree trunk.
Marking the territory. Her territory. And one human who wasn’t supposed to be here.
Now what was Kathleen to do?
***
His pheromones were kicking up a firestorm again as Connor stared down at the drenched woman dressed in sturdy hiking books, wide-brimmed hat, long-sleeved tan shirt, and lightweight trousers, a field pack strapped to her back. She was pretty, petite, and petrified—as evidenced by the smell of fear on her. But even so, he could smell a hint of the sweet fragrance she wore and a sweet feminine scent that he swore was Kathleen McKnight’s. The captain he’d saved in the jungle a year ago. But this woman had the biggest sage-green eyes he had ever seen—green, not blue like the captain’s had been. And her hair had been blond and cut ultrashort, not long, dark brown, and in curls, like this woman’s.
Was she a botanist or wildlife biologist? Even if she was, what in the world was she doing in the rain forest without a guide or protection? Sure, he had witnessed an American biologist doing research in the Amazon on his own, but a woman normally worked with either a husband or a team of researchers. Women didn’t usually venture into the jungle alone.
That made him believe she had become separated from her party and was lost. Despite the difficulties this would cause for him and his sister, he had to get the woman to safety. He wished in the worst way he could convince her she had nothing to fear from them, but as a jaguar, even if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t expose his wicked canines, he was a predator to fear.
Loose tendrils of dark, damp hair framed her small face. The bridge of her nose was sprinkled with freckles, her cheeks rosy—maybe from heat and exertion in the jungle, or maybe from a little too much sun. Her wet clothes clung to every curve just up to her breastbone, but the very top part of her shirt and her hat were still dry.
He hoped she had drinking water in her backpack and wasn’t dehydrated. That was all they would need. A sick woman on their hands, far from any medical facility.
He took another deep breath of her tantalizing woman’s fragrance, unable to comprehend why the woman smelled so much like Kat, and wondered what to do with her.
She was miles from the nearest human resort. And miles in dense jungle made for a very long, difficult trip for anyone who was unaccustomed to the heat and humidity.
He couldn’t nudge her toward the tourist lodge in the middle of the Amazon rain forest while trying to keep the staff at the resort from seeing him and his sister in jaguar form. Seeing jaguars prodding a human into the camp would surely give the tourists and staff heart attacks. Not to mention that he didn’t think this woman could easily be herded mile after mile to safety by a couple of jaguars.
His sister also studied the woman for a moment, then looked to him to decide what to do next. As jaguars, he and his sister had no natural predators in the jungle, save man and the anaconda. And even then he had tackled an anaconda and won.
The woman would have plenty to worry about, though.
Neither he nor Maya could run through the jungle as humans, not without clothes to protect them from the mosquitoes, scorpions, snakes, ticks, and chiggers, to name a few of the problems with exposing human flesh to the elements in Amazonia. But he needed to reassure the woman that the two of them weren�
�t going to eat her. Neither he nor Maya could shift in front of her to speak with her, though.
He grunted. They would have to herd her to their own hut deep in the jungle where they kept provisions and clothes when they came here to shift and run like the predators they were.
Night would fall soon. Jaguars normally slept in the trees during the day and hunted at dawn and dusk. The woman probably would be horrified to see what he drummed up for dinner and how they ate it raw.
But how was he going to get her back out of the tree? He had to get her down, then nudge her along to their hut, which was about two miles away in the opposite direction from the Amazon lodge for tourists.
Once at the hut, he and his sister could shift out of view in the jungle and return to speak with the woman. A couple of days of rigorous hiking would get her to the tourist lodging.
He jumped down from the tree branch, landing beside his sister, and nudged her away from the tree. She limped away from it, which must have been why she had been roaring before. He glanced at her hind leg, encouraged her to sit, and saw two thorns sticking into her paw. He glanced up at the woman, who was watching their actions with intrigue.
Not wanting her to think they had human thought processes but unable to do anything else, he poked at his sister’s foot with his nose, hoping he wouldn’t touch a thorn accidentally, make her growl in pain, and scare the woman any more than she already was. Hoping, too, that the woman would come down from the tree to pull out the thorns. He couldn’t get them with his teeth, or if he managed to get one, he would more than likely chomp it off and make it too difficult to pull out later. And Maya couldn’t walk on the thorns for any distance without suffering pain.
They both glanced at the woman, Maya lying on her side, looking as docile as she could, and Connor sitting beside his sister, most likely appearing perfectly lethal.