by Abby Knox
As her name was called and her father walked her out onto the dance floor to hand her off to some obliging young pimpled Catholic teen boy whose name she couldn’t remember, Betsy and Lionel had made eye contact. It was like lightning to her chest, the way his eyes burned into her. He had to be in his 30s, but then, were not half of her celebrity crushes also much older than she? How old was David Cassidy, anyway? Probably also in his 30s. So, perhaps if her peaks were growing stiff and her valleys were growing damp at being seen by Lionel DuChamps, then it was completely normal.
But it was not normal that she felt the other thing—the thing that told her this man was a panther. Her panther. Her mate.
Mother of God, help me, she thought.
And then, after the cotillion, Betsy had done her best of put Lionel out of her mind. For the next two years, she’d thrown herself into her studies and excelled. The only days she fell behind in her school work were days when she felt overwhelmed by the beast. Being the smart girl she was, Betsy tracked it. On the nights of the new moon, she had the uncontrollable urge to run. Just dash out of her parents’ house and run into the wild places. The bayou, the woods. Wherever her nose led her.
Over time, she learned to hold back until her parents were asleep, and then she’d make a run for it. Anywhere there were trees, swamps, water, darkness, that’s where Betsy would go. She would run, hunt and kill until the beast was satisfied, and then she would head home and sneak back into her room before her parents woke up.
And then, the next day, she would go to confession.
It was on one of these days after confession when chatting with her aunt that she’d run into the he-panther again. Lionel. He came around the corner and nearly knocked her over with his powerful chest.
Was it really him? The scent was unmistakable. It had been two years since she’d caught his scent or laid eyes on him, and now here he was.
When he had placed his hand on her arm, she simultaneously went numb and yet felt everything. She knew she shouldn’t allow these feelings to bubble up. How could two sinners make for a good relationship?
But her body did not understand that word: relationship. The beast, and her lady bits, simply understood one thing: him.
And those were the thoughts that swam through Betsy’s head when the knock came on the door of her bedroom.
It was ridiculous to hope it was Lionel, coming to tell her it was all a mistake and he wasn’t being sent anywhere to do anything for the government.
It was not Lionel, of course. It was a woman, slightly older than she. The scent that wafted into the room with her pricked up the hairs on Betsy’s skin. This was a fellow female shifter.
Betsy stood. “Who are you?” she asked the stranger.
“Lionel sent me to look after you while he’s gone. I’m his sister, Jane.
Chapter 4
Lionel
He looked around the nearly empty clearing and tried with all his might to see into the dense jungle for any signs of human activity.
He saw nothing. He was completely alone, it seemed. He had received his terse instructions from the nameless pilot: “The leaders in this region have not declared loyalty to the Sandinistas, but neither are they on board with the Contras. We wouldn’t care, but they have fire power, good hideouts and some have…special abilities. We have one last chance to flip them to our side. The president is relying on you to broker a deal, and if necessary, use your—special condition—to persuade them. I’ll be back in one hour. If you’re alive, then you can go home.”
And that was all that was said.
So, Lionel did the only thing there was to do at the moment: He sat down, opened his pack, took out his notebook and pen, and wrote a letter.
Dear Betsy,
At the current moment I’m sipping cocktails in the back room of a swanky casino in the South of France, waiting for some diplomats to show up so we can talk shop. I don’t know why the Europeans don’t believe in air conditioning. It’s stifling in here.
I have to admit I was alarmed when you said you wanted some space to think and to pray. I know you said it did not mean we were through, but it raised some red flags for me. I hope you understand. I can’t be there to grab you by the shoulders and kiss you so hard you forget about all your anxieties when it comes to our relationship.
It won’t be long now. I believe I’m at my final destination, although they’ve been very secretive about everything. I don’t know why, but that’s what these officious types are like.
I am looking forward to coming back here someday with you by my side, Betsy, as husband and wife. It’s a beautiful place, with lots to do. Lots of places for you to shop, and I’ll buy you the slinkiest, skimpiest dress I can find, and I want you to wear it just for me, do you hear?
I know you think I’m a silly boy, but I’m only acting like a silly boy because you make me feel like I’m a teenager again.
I hope you are getting rest and not worrying about me too much. Eating well, too. Taking long walks. I want you at prime health when I return, because I miss you so bad I’m going to get you pregnant immediately. Propriety be damned.
Love,
Lionel
A rustling in the undergrowth outside the clearing made Lionel’s ears prick up. He pocketed the letter and stood, ready to face whatever it was he was here to face.
But what stepped out of the darkness of the trees was not a man or a woman, but an enormous, shining, black jaguar.
And it looked like it hadn’t eaten in days.
Lionel readied himself. He whiffed the air. This was no ordinary animal. It was a shifter.
Finally, Lionel understood why the president had chosen him for this mission. Of course.
Chapter 5
Betsy
“Jane, I just want you to leave me alone for one day!”
Betsy was growing increasingly frustrated with the presence of Lionel’s sister. It had been three weeks since she had shown up at her house, three weeks since Lionel had left her for some secret international assignment, and now his strange sister Jane’s visits were a daily thing.
She thought about asking her mother to bar Jane from the house, but Betsy didn’t want to be rude.
So much for quiet contemplation.
It was odd, though, that Lionel had not mentioned anything about Jane in his original letter. You would think he would have given her some warning that his annoying older sister would be hanging around to keep an eye on her every day.
Maybe when Lionel wrote back, she would get a better picture of what Jane was doing here, and more importantly, when she would be free of her. And most importantly of all, when she would be back with Lionel.
She knew one thing for sure. Being around Jane was not making Betsy want to be with Lionel any less. If anything, if she thought about marrying into a family that would force her to be around Jane, it made her all the more hesitant to marry Lionel.
Then one day, while she was walking home from her classes at college, Jane walked up, carrying a letter.
“This is for you,” she said, handing the letter over to Betsy.
Turning white as a sheet, Betsy grabbed the letter out of Jane’s hand and looked at the envelope. There was no return address. But the envelope had been opened.
“Hey…did you read my letter?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny it,” Jane said.
Outraged, Betsy shook the envelop at Jane. “Why is this open? And why was this delivered to you when Lionel knows exactly where I am?”
Jane puffed out her chest. “I’m his sister. Our parents are deceased. The military sends all his letters to me and I hand them out.”
Betsy’s lip began to tremble. “You mean you’ve heard from him? You’ve received letters from him before, and I haven’t?”
Jane seemed disinterested. Weirdly disinterested. “I have. And others have.”
Betsy didn’t want to ask what she was about to ask. But she had to.
“Who else? Other�
��women?”
Jane clucked at her. “Oh honey. It’s OK. You’re a sweet kid. He thinks very highly of you. But he’s the most eligible bachelor in New Orleans. Maybe in the country. He’s incredibly powerful. Rich beyond anyone can measure. You do know there is a long line of more suitable ladies ahead of you, do you not?”
Betsy was livid now. She snatched the letter out of the envelope and turned away from Jane as she read his words.
The paper was damp around the edges and seemed like it had been scribbled out in haste:
Dear Betsy,
At the current moment, I’m sipping cocktails in the back room of a swanky casino…”
She couldn’t read any more at the moment. She informed Jane that she was taking a walk and wanted to be alone. Jane got the message and left, but added she’d be back soon to check on her.
Seething, Betsy veered away from her house and went across the street to walk alone around the grounds of the convent, to calm her nerves. She could just picture Lionel hanging out in a fine suit like James Bond, sipping martinis and flirting with beautiful French women. There was probably a revolving door to his hotel room. That’s the way things are with men, aren’t they?
She would never measure up to mature, worldly women like that. What was Lionel playing at? What was this game? Did he like a little 19-year-old action on the side? Did he just like her because she was a shifter like he was?
Well, she’d done enough thinking for now. She read the letter completely this time, now that she was alone.
Something wasn’t right.
Now that she was alone and in her own head space, she knew better than to believe the things that Jane was saying to her.
Lionel was most definitely not in Europe. This much she knew. If he were, she would probably have received more than a letter; surely he would have telephoned multiple times by now. No, something else entirely was going on, and she had the feeling that Jane knew more than she was letting on.
She hurried home and dashed off a reply:
Dear Lionel,
I don’t know why you never mentioned you had a sister, Jane. She keeps coming by every day to check on me.
Today she delivered your letter, and I have to say, she’s acting much haughtier than I would think a relative of yours would act, knowing what I am to you.
Oh Lionel, I know you can’t tell me where you are or when you’ll be back. But please dispense with the nonsense about cocktails and casinos. I know this isn’t true. You would be back by now if this was a simple thing. Instead I get a letter that’s sort of dirty and damp. Where are you? Are you in the desert? Beirut? That’s my best guess. I know you can’t tell me, but at least don’t lie.
If you lie to me again, I’ll have to spank you.
Spank you hard, like the naughty, silly, dear boy you are.
Love,
Betsy
Chapter 6
Lionel
Not only did the helicopter not return to pick Lionel up, but now he was being marched through the dense forest of Nicaragua with an AK-47 pointed between his shoulder blades.
Turns out, the leader of this little region of bandits refused to shift into human form to communicate or negotiate at all. So, it was a little hard to talk some sense into him and convince him to turn his people to the side of the Contras. It was a little one-sided, until Lionel realized the man was not going to shift at all, and that he was going to have to be the one to shift.
And there are only two reasons a shifter shifts into his beast. He’s either hunting, out of control of his emotions, or going to fight. And he had never been in a physical fight with another feline shifter before.
This was not going to end well, he had thought, as the shadowy figure approached with lethal focus toward him in the clearing.
And it hadn’t. His shifter experiences had been mainly hunting related. Fighting to the death to prove some kind of masculine dominance was all new to him.
The two cats wrestled, and the black jaguar had finally shifted after Lionel was subdued with a serious bite to the shoulder.
The march that followed, along vague, overgrown trails into the jungle, took hours, maybe even days. Lionel wasn’t sure, he was so parched he was approaching dehydration and could not make sense of time.
Eventually they came to a concrete structure. Lionel could tell right away what it was. This was to be his prison. This is where they would keep him until they got what they wanted.
And as far as Lionel was concerned, he just had to keep Betsy happy. So, his focus was on befriending his guard and convincing him to mail the letter for him.
That was a clear, concise goal, and there was no stopping Lionel once he set his mind to it.
Battered and broken, Lionel lay on the floor of the prison cell, examine his surroundings. He had a cot, which he supposed was a small mercy. He had a hole in the floor which he would rather not think about at the moment.
The steel door had a slot—he supposed it was to be used to pass him food—and bars on the window.
There was sunshine coming in through a window high up on the ceiling, no way to reach it.
It was the only source of ventilation, so there was no shaft he could have used to escape.
It looked like he was going to be here for a while.
The only thing Lionel could do in here was wait, plan and think about how to get the letter to Betsy.
He had to befriend the guard. That was his only choice.
When a guard might show up, he didn’t know.
So he lay on his cot, fell into a fitful sleep as his body continued to ache from the fight with the jaguar, feverish from the infection in his shoulder that was beginning to take hold.
He dreamed of the first time he kissed Betsy.
He had taken her under his wing and helped her understand the beast within her, helped her control it, and most of all, let her know she wasn’t alone.
Not knowing any other shifters in world, she put her trust in Lionel immediately.
So when he first put his hands on her, he asked permission.
Lionel did not ask permission to do anything in his life. But Betsy was special.
He had dealings with some of the most powerful and intimidating people in the world, and Betsy could have laid him out flat with a simple “No.” But she had never used that word with him.
The first day he had picked her up for a date, her father was not as impressed with Lionel as other people. Naturally they had wanted to protect their daughter.
The father had ended the date right there, so Lionel had waited, and when he saw the lights go out, he waited long enough to estimate that Betsy’s parents had gone to sleep, and he climbed the drainpipe and tapped on her window.
When she opened the window, she was wearing a pink, gauzy nightgown with ruffles and lace, and he could see right through it in the moonlight.
Propriety told him to look away and try again some other time, but Betsy reached out and touched his face. She kissed him first.
Their lips came together and all the things that didn’t matter fell away. Their age difference. Their economic statuses. Her Catholic upbringing, his atheism. None of it mattered. Everything that had meaning to other people in the world boiled off and disappeared like steam, and what was left at the bottom was this magical electricity between them.
Lionel was the most terrifying person in the room on most days. But with Betsy, he was simply a puddle of goo on the floor.
Some time later, a noise came from the door of his prison cell woke him, and a plate was pushed in. On it there was a pile that looked like it could be rice or could be corn meal. Whatever it was, Lionel wasn’t going to eat it.
“Hey,” he asked.
No answer.
“Hey wait!” he said, switching to Spanish.
There was a pause, and then a reply in Spanish. “What?”
“My shoulder. It’s infected. I need to clean it and I need medicine. Unless you want to deal with a dead body soon.�
�
Some time passed, and eventually, the guard entered the cell, armed to the gills.
After the guard cleaned and sanitized the wound, Lionel struck up a conversation. “Thank you. I have this letter,” Lionel said. “It’s very important. It’s nothing about you or your location. It’s for my girlfriend. You can read it if you don’t trust me. Can you possibly drop this in the mailbox? I’m sorry I don’t have a stamp. Can you help me?”
The guard replied, “Does this look like the post office to you, mister?”
Lionel smiled, “Wait, I was told this was a post office!”
Another pause, and then, “You have jokes. Your sense of humor is better than your fighting,” the guard said.
It wasn’t the jaguar he had fought, but it was clearly someone who had seen the fight.
This was his mission now. He had to win over the guard.
This was it. He had nothing left but his wits.
“You’re right. I’m not a fighter. I’m a lover. This is why I need someone to send this letter for me. Please.”
More silence and staring. Lionel let the silence play out.
Eventually the guard spoke.
“I’m sorry, amigo. I can’t do that for you.”
Lionel understood. “OK. Well then, next time you check on me, why don’t you bring your lunch and eat with me. What else do you have to do out there?”
The guard replied, “Are you crazy? I’m not breaking bread with a panther who can rip my throat out the second I’m not careful.”
“That’s true, but I was only meaning when you take a break, come sit on the other side of the door and eat your meal, and I’ll eat my meal and we will break bread together, both of us safely on either side of the door. But, hey, if you’d rather just spend your time staring at trees for miles and miles and waiting for your superiors to give you instructions that may never come, be my guest.”