by Nara Malone
Blind Heat
Nara Malone
Book two in the Pantherian Passions series.
Allie is determined to build an ordinary life. To survive, she needs to be the sort of woman no one notices. She has a generic job, lives in a generic apartment, and thinks maybe one day she’ll find an ordinary Joe who wants an average Jane sort of woman.
Marcus is anything but an ordinary Joe. Even if humans don’t know he’s a shifter and millennial being, he’s the sort of man women notice. A night of passion spent with Marcus is a night any female, human or Pantherian, won’t forget.
But Allie does forget. She repeatedly fails to recognize him even after an intense sexual encounter. Marcus discovers the source of her problem—face blindness, a genetic disorder with no cure. And he decides to use erotic rituals to teach her to see with more than her eyes. What he doesn’t count on is Allie seeing past the man—and recognizing the beast within.
Blind Heat
Nara Malone
Dedication
Thank you, Carol, CJ, Pam, Madeline, Kate the Great and my wonderfully patient family for whispering the names of people I don’t recognize in my ear, for telling me for the ten millionth time to make a left here or a right there to get home, and for always forgiving me when I don’t recognize you.
Author’s Note
In the beginning, all of the Mother’s children could move between the mortal plane of the earth’s body and all of the bodiless dimensions above. In the beginning, all beings were therianthropes, both human and beast. In the beginning, all creatures could shift between both forms at will. In the beginning, all the Mother’s children lived in harmony, feeding not on each other but from the fruits of her garden.
And it wasn’t long, a millennium or two, before the true ones lost their way. Their dual natures fought for dominance.
Some decided the beast body was superior to the human and refused to spend time nurturing a naked, finless, wingless, furless form. Lost in the pursuits of physical excellence, they neglected their creative gifts.
Some decided the human form was superior and preferred spending time creating alphabets, numbers, music, art, stories. Lost in the pursuits of mind, they neglected the power of the beasts within.
Many of the True Children were lost, forgot the way into the shifting dimension. And in subsequent generations the unused side of their nature atrophied and vanished. Soon the earth garden included humans with no beast nature and beasts with no human nature.
Humans and beasts turned to cannibalism, killing and consuming each other for food, killing and consuming Therians as well. Human numbers grew until they outnumbered Therians, until humankind overran habitats, leveled forests, ravaged the earth, driving many species of beasts and Therians into extinction.
At the dawn of the industrial age, a high council convened. Elders from the eight remaining Therian tribes (Canidae, Felidae, Ursidea, Ungulae, Cetacea, Hominidae, Aves and Reptilia) determined survival required separation from humans. The elders called for an exodus to the Dragon’s Triangle of the Pacific Rim.
The True Children took the name Pantherian as a symbol of a new, unified nation and called their new homeland Pantheria. Shielded from human eyes and human invasion by magnetic forces so disruptive to navigational instruments that humans couldn’t explore with their boats and later with their planes and satellites, the population flourished.
Then came the years of the wasting sickness, a disease that killed three of every four female babies. Just when Pantherians resigned themselves to looming extinction, the first Wildlings were discovered by males who migrated back to human-controlled regions of the world when there were no longer enough mates to go around. Wildling Therians, raised in a human world that had forgotten Therians existed. Wildlings who didn’t know their true nature, but carried unique genetic traits that could reverse the Pantherian slide toward extinction.
That is the history, as recorded by the elders, of all that came before the Wildlings, before the great struggle to determine if the welfare of the few should be sacrificed to ensure the survival of the species.
You can learn more about Pantherians and visit the virtual island of Pantheria at http://therianverse.com/naras-worlds/
Prologue
A perfect blend of shadow and light rendered the snow leopard invisible as he crept sleek and silent through frosted woods. Where woods broke away to a ball field, he broke into a run, sending powdery snow up in plumes, his lean belly skimming just a feather’s breadth above the ground. Wind ruffled his fur, sang in his ears.
The forest thickened on the other side, but it was like welcoming arms closing around him, inviting a companion. He craved the comfort of a mate’s body, feminine heat and a welcoming purr. He had to settle for the feathery fingers of a fir tree sliding over his back, the cold kiss of snow on his nose and lashes.
There could never be a mate for him, no female to race under the stars at his side. He ran from his solitude, from the unique combination of gifts that set him above and apart from his own kind. Even among the males, ritual protocols of respect kept him isolated, friendless.
Closer to the water he burst through the skeletons of blackberry vines. Thorns raked his fur and pricked his skin—sent the thought of a female’s claws and teeth, the feral abandon of mating, skimming through his mind. He ran faster, as if he could outrun fate.
Solitude was a life sentence no one could change.
He splashed into the ice-fringed creek and ran downstream, letting nature’s version of a cold shower numb his hunger. As the stream bed curved sharply and opened on a woodland pool, he slowed. Something faint, desperate, nudged his attention away from himself and opened his mind to the soft stirrings and secretive rustles of life around him.
At the edge of the pool he paused, drawing cold air deep into his lungs, savoring the rush of energy that came with anticipation, using it like a drug to shove cravings that threatened to shred him into the background. His keen hearing tuned to the sound of thousands of tiny flakes touching the earth, the combined voices amplified, shifting pitch to impart a whispered warning, loud enough to prick his awareness, too soft to interpret.
He leapt to a broad rock near the pool’s center, used the steadying power of water and stone as a conduit, opened his mind further, searching for the source of anguish that nipped at his attention. Like lightning finding ground, the connection hit in a flash of white-hot pain, forcing him back to his haunches to absorb the force before he recovered and closed his mind like a curtain. He drew a cold breath and then another, tasting the first flavors of spring mingled with the late-winter snow. He should go back, keep his mind shut and walk away. There could be only one source for that kind of quick, complete connection here in the human-controlled regions of the world. A hybrid, only a research animal genetically modified with human neurons implanted in its brain, could make this sort of telepathic connection. She—the energy was unmistakably feminine—was in agony.
His hold on the mental shield weakened. He couldn’t let her in. Hard as it was to ignore the cry for help, he couldn’t stop parahuman research and rescuing hybrids from research facilities put Pantherians living among humans at risk. He’d promised to stop. Why did promises always attract a need to break them?
Stop. Think, some saner part of his mind said. But he was calculating. She couldn’t be far away. The water amplified their connection, which meant to follow it was to find her. There was a research lab in the industrial center on the other side of the park. A hybrid in the human world would be someone’s experiment. The majority of his race refused to acknowledge any sense of duty or kinship to the human-manufactured hybrids, but agony wasn’t something he could walk away from.
The stream ran in that direction. Predawn, the lab would li
kely be empty.
Again he turned to the water to regain focus, stared into his reflection, the leopard’s eyes—a feral gleam startled him. Something wild and untamed stared back at him from the depths, dared him to take up the challenge, reach for and protect the female.
Her pain pulsed in the air around him, sent ripples ringing outward through his reflection, breaking the features apart until the leopard vanished. In the time it might take any observer to blink and rub his eyes, Pantherian Marcus St. Germain reappeared in his human form. He remained still, head tipped to the sky, allowing his mind to adjust to the change in form. Snowflakes went liquid against his cheeks, gathered in his lashes, dusted his naked body.
He forced his mind to the now, to the danger ahead, into the peace and calm required to take on the task. He welcomed the numbing cold, the clarity that came with it. His night vision just as strong in his human form, his gaze returned the reflection, his mind to that between state, both inside and outside his body. Snow curled in a spiral around his human form, his body still young and vibrating with primal energy, despite the fact he’d roamed this earth for more centuries than he could say. Snow dusted thick, dark hair. Predawn light had filtered in just enough to paint his body in silver and black shadows. He studied his frame against the surrounding, black-and-white leopard fading into the backdrop of snow and the dense shadow of woodlands.
Something else shimmered in the air, lighter, fainter than the hybrid’s pull. Something that felt like a promise, hope.
A grim smile tugged his lips. He wouldn’t invest any hope in promises.
He needed all his energies tuned to the task at hand. Using water rather than a mirror portal to travel from one place to the next was a skill few Pantherians achieved. It required more concentration than most had the patience for.
The water gleamed in the pool surrounding him, and he refocused, his mind imprinting an image of the place he intended to go on the surface. When the vision was fully formed he stepped out onto the water, hovering for a moment before melting away below the surface like the snowflakes that swirled and vanished behind him.
He rematerialized just below a manhole cover in the basement of the lab. He’d meant to resurface at the edge of the wood that bordered the parking lot. Inaccuracy was especially problematic through a source in constant motion, like water. The stream was channeled under the building through a concrete culvert. He hadn’t landed where he planned, but he’d probably landed at the easiest place to gain entry unnoticed.
He pressed his palms to the cover, greasy moisture beaded on the surface made him want to pull his hands back, wash them clean. Darkness concealed whatever might be floating in the inky liquid lapping at his chest. Nothing could conceal the odors of mold and rot so intense he could feel them seep into his pores.
Resisting the urge to hurl himself upward out of this tight space with its slimy walls, his senses tuned to the security guard in an office near the front door. Dipping into the man’s mind was like walking into a bedroom unannounced. That was no security report he was working on at his computer. Marcus could see through the man’s eyes, black letters taking shape in a tiny box on the computer display. Come on, sugar, turn that webcam on and let me see your pretty smile. You can trust me.
The guard was thinking—Am I rushing her? Will she think I’m a jerk?
There was no other human presence in the vicinity. Marcus tuned him out and worried about security cameras as he pushed up. The cover gave under pressure and slid back, the ring of metal grating over concrete reverberated softly in the open space above him. Marcus chinned up and did a quick survey. Concrete floors, pallets stacked with cardboard boxes, steel drums and sacks of what smelled like animal feed. No security cameras in evidence here, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be electronic eyes beyond the warehouse area.
Cold set his teeth chattering. Enough worrying. He had to do it or go. He pushed up and stood dripping on the concrete, raking water from his hair with numb fingers, stamping his feet to regain feeling in his legs. When he looked down he went still, startled by the long, narrow print of bare foot, a damp stain on concrete. Squatting, he slid the manhole back in place and considered the options he should have considered before he came leaping to the rescue.
Security cameras recording images of a human produced an identifiable intruder to track down. Human bodies were poorly equipped to handle wet and cold at once. A dripping, naked man would leave tracks all over the place. Odds were the guard would know these scientists did animal research, but not necessarily what types of animals were in residence. If he discovered Marcus and thought him an escaped experiment, he’d hesitate to harm a leopard as long as he didn’t feel directly threatened.
Shifting was the only option.
He was close enough now for his keen ears to hear the hybrid’s cry with more than his mind. Above him, just two stories up, her keening set the other furred inmates to restless stirring and scuffling. The sounds faded with his body as Marcus went transparent and moved to the next dimension to gather his energy as a leopard and return.
Could he count on cybersex to hold the guard’s attention for the ten minutes or so he needed to get in and out?
Another quick round of mental peeping Tom defined his options. The webcam was on and they’d moved to voice chat. “Oh ain’t you a pretty thing? I could just eat you right up.”
And while it was true, eating, or licking to be exact, fit with a few of the fantasies flickering through the guard’s thoughts, the one that kept replaying was the idea of taking charge. He wanted to demand she strip for him. He was trying to decide how far he could push without scaring her off.
While looking into thoughts was useful, he couldn’t influence whatever was to happen between the pair, that would require face-to-face interaction with the subjects. All Marcus needed was for the guard to get aggressive and end things before they got going. All the more reason to work fast.
The hybrid’s presence nudged at his mind, but he turned his energy to blocking her. Distress was a distraction he didn’t need as he contemplated how best to reach her. Coming into a hybrid research facility blind, with no plan or backup, put all Pantherians at risk of discovery if he was caught. Certainly, the high council would never sanction his rescue missions. All the more reason to leave them unaware.
Now he just needed to choose his path. None of the available routes to her were ideal. Marcus padded through the warehouse, assessing options, mentally mapping details as he went. The main hallways would have security cameras. That left the elevator or the stairs.
A glance through the narrow window revealed no security camera in the stairwell. The staircase was louvered metal of the type catwalks were made from, the walls mottled concrete. He’d monitor the guard’s attention and know if it shifted, if something drew him to inspect the stairwell. If Marcus were to crouch motionless, his coloring would render him invisible to all but the keenest eye. Certainly a distracted guard wouldn’t notice, and the guard was distracted nearly to oblivion, not that Marcus could blame him. The guard’s words distracted him too.
“Unbutton your blouse for me,” the guard said, using a tone that was neither demand nor plea. Soft and heated. Good choice.
The female responded with a soft sigh that resonated submission. Marcus knew he shouldn’t watch, but the sight of slender fingers slowly unbuttoning a creamy lace blouse was hard to tune out. Her painted nails were just the shade of rose Marcus imagined her nipples would be. The edges of her blouse parted to reveal the spot where a charm on the end of a gold chain dipped between her breasts and disappeared behind the lace edge of a black bra. Marcus and the guard swallowed in unison.
Marcus was close enough to hear the quickening of the guard’s heartbeat, the shift from sighs to pants. The hiss of a zipper sliding down. His own body responded with a tightening in the groin. His tongue twitched with a craving to lick.
The faint, keening cry of the hybrid upstairs worked like a slap to bring Marcus back to
task. While the guard leaned in for a closer look, stubby fingers tightening around his cock, intent on his own mission, Marcus concentrated on the options available.
On the eastern wall was the loading dock door that opened on the back parking lot and the woods that bordered the park. At the northwest corner of the warehouse area, an exit light glowed above the door to an emergency stairwell. Stairs weren’t easy to navigate in a leopard body. Elevators were faster but claustrophobic. He took the stairs.
The sections were narrow but short. He could easily leap the distance between each set. Grated steel dug into his paws with each landing. The smell of damp, mold and death clung to the pores in the cinderblock.
On the top floor he pushed through the door and flattened himself against the gray-speckled tiles in the hallway while he regained his bearings. He held his tail tightly curled against his body, clamping down on the urge to let it twitch with his agitation. The containment lab was a few feet away, across the corridor from the stairs. A small chrome box was mounted above the door latch—a red light glowed behind a translucent black rectangle in the center. Recognition landed in his middle like a well-aimed kick, forcing the air from his lungs.
Biometrics. He wasn’t getting in and she wasn’t getting out.
He’d come so far only to be defeated at the final stage. Usually security was all at the front end, and there weren’t special safeguards placed around animal holding pens. Unless, he realized, what went on in those experiments was so controversial, not even all the researchers could be trusted with full access.
The hybrid wailed, a childlike sound, so human and devoid of hope that if Marcus could have clawed his way in he would have. This door, again unlike the others, had a thin sheet of metal over the wood base. Her cries magnified his frustration. How could he defeat a fingerprint reader? He needed more time. He needed someplace where he could think, someplace out from under the gleaming eye of the security camera at the end of the hall.