Santos had touched her bare arms all those months ago, triggering a powerful force. Only it wasn’t with a single-mindedness to take and mate that had infused them, but a slow ember of desire that had slowly grown in strength over time. It was the reason he’d been out the night Ria had arrived, unable to stop himself from watching her. Wanting her. Then, when they’d came together once again, that heat had flared to life, a living entity that would not be denied until it had what it wanted, what it craved.
Until it was satiated.
Ria’s wary rabbit act of this morning made Santos believe another was behind her scent masking trick, and that individual was about to find themselves confronted by one very pissed off jaguar. His mate, right under his very nose, and he may never have known.
Claws, sharp and deadly shot out from his fingertips. “I’ll kill him.”
Rome looked from those deadly points to the blazing fury in Santos’s eyes. “Who?”
Leveling his gaze on his brother, voice thick with emotion, Santos growled. “I don’t know. But I’ll find him and rip his heart from his chest.”
Unfazed, Rome clapped a hand on Santos’s shoulder. “If you need any help, let me know. But first you need to find out what’s what with Ria. Even if she knows about us,” Us being shifters, Santos knew, “she won’t feel easy if you approach her with claws.”
At the show of support and soft correction, Santos took several deep breaths, fighting to gain back the control that would leash the need to tear and rip. It took awhile, but with his anger finally having a target, even an unknown one, he was able to bank it until his outward appearance showed nothing of the turmoil inside. “I’m good now. Thanks.”
Rome’s lips curved. “Anytime.”
“Lock up.” Santos ordered as he headed for the door. “I need to go home, shower, change. Hunt down Ria.”
“Tell you what, bro. I’ll even take the guests out on the boat tomorrow.”
Pausing at the door, Santos looked back to see Rome standing with a smile on his face. “And what am I expected to do in return?”
“Just be happy.”
Emotion was a warm ball in his chest, but being the eldest, and the least comfortable with overt displays of sibling affection, he covered his reaction at the sappy comment with a sardonic raised brow. “Now I know you’re a pussy.”
Rome’s grin widened. “Never fear. I’ll kick your ass into dust after you’ve gotten the girl.”
Lips tugging with a reluctant smile of his own, Santos flipped his brother off and strode out the door.
He had prey to find.
Chapter Seven
As it turned out, Santos’s prey came to him. Drying off from his shower, he paused at an unfamiliar noise, the towel gripped in his hands. Padding naked from the bathroom to the darkened master bedroom, he paused again, eyes closed, ears tuned into locating the odd sound. There. A soft thud from the back of the house.
Quiet as a phantom, he crossed over to the window, reaching for the blinds to spread two slats wide enough apart to peek through. Though it was just after eight, night had descended hours ago. Stars twinkled brightly in the clear sky, the moon only a sliver. Not enough illumination for whoever it was to see without the flashlight bobbing in their hand.
Because of the jaguar’s night vision, Santos could easily tell who was digging around the debris from the pit that had been hauled and dumped in the open area behind his home. He’d grumbled at the time, considering the pile of dirt, stones and wood an unnecessary eyesore, one that should have gone straight to the dump or reclaimed for some other use, but the outline of a slender figure with a backside that made his palms itch to touch and knead as she bent over to pick something up made him glad he’d been overruled.
Feral satisfaction purred in his chest. Ria.
Wasting no time, he stalked over to the dresser and yanked on a pair of faded jeans, taking care as he tucked his semi-arousal into the button fly. Once again his body responded to Ria as if it had a mind of its own. Santos was far from a young lad with no control over his raging libido, so when his cock twitched with interest, he new something was up.
No pun intended.
Socks and boots followed, after which he entered the huge walk-in closet, mostly empty, and donned a long-sleeve shirt, topped by a soft brown, cable-knit sweater.
Back in the bathroom, he pulled his hair into a tail that reached to his shoulder blades. A quick look in the mirror showed faint stubble he would scrape off in the morning. Maybe. After all, it was the weekend, and since Rome was taking the boat out tomorrow, Santos had no reason to interact with the guests. He could hang back at the orchards and get some work done in the office. While they had a sharp assistant to handle the majority of the paperwork, it was end of the month, and there were always reports to go over. Not to mention the temperamental equipment he babied.
Santos rubbed a hand over his jaw, thinking that with the end of the month, his mom and Annie would start taking down the fall decorations and begin putting up the Christmas ones. They wouldn’t do it while the house was teeming with guests, but come Monday, when the place would be close to empty, the women would be in a flurry of motion. From experience, Santos knew all the Felix men would be drawn into the craziness, if only to keep their mom from climbing onto the roof of the three-story house to hang lights, or Annie from lifting the heavy golden urns they put on the front stoop with poinsettias so realistic looking that people had to touch them to feel if they were real.
Which was the reason they were fake.
Then of course there was the mistletoe his mom hung in various locations all over the place. It made him think of shadowed alcoves and deep, wet, hot kisses with a woman who’d infiltrated his nights and haunted his days. It also made him think of the other males that lived and worked at the orchards stealing those kisses from him.
An acute wave of possessiveness flooded his senses at the idea, his hands curling into fists. No. He couldn’t think about that. He was too on edge, the dangerous need in him eager to punish those that might – even if only in his head – take away what he believed belonged to him.
Controlling? Oh, yeah. As an alpha jaguar shifter, it was an ingrained trait. Instinctive. Without a strong woman to stand up to them – one who loved, not hated – the road to increased selfishness and arrogance spilled wide open.
Steps sure and light in the unlit house, he made his way down the stairs and to the sliding glass door in the kitchen, halting to watch Ria unobserved. He had a moment to question whether Ria was strong enough to take him on, a worry that snaked into his head and wouldn’t let go. Because if she truly was as timid as a rabbit, his cat would devour her.
Cognizant of that very possibility, Santos refrained from flicking on the outside light, not wanting her to bolt before he got closer. At the same time, he approached her with enough noise to wake the dead. Her jerk to sharp attention made him want to shake her with a frustration born out of fear, one that warned she was too skittish for his dark and demanding appetites. While it wasn’t pain he sought, he wasn’t exactly a gentle man in the bedroom, his carnal urges an aggressive sensuality that left his bed partners sweaty, exhausted and well-pleasured. Yet now it was almost a compulsion to run gentle fingers in the lightest of caresses along the curve of her cheek, a tactile desire to find out if her creamy skin was as soft as it looked.
Not trusting his voice beyond a low, “Hey,” he stepped closer, and felt that oddly tender moment replaced with the need to sink his teeth into her flesh when she took several steps away.
He wanted her to stay.
“Hi. I hope I’m not bothering you. Melinda said it would be all right to come over and check out the debris piles.”
Though there was a silent question in her tone, there was no anxiety or scent of fear. It calmed him slightly. “You’re not bothering me.” At least not in the way she thought. “I knew it would need to be inspected at some point, but didn’t expect it to be at night.”
“Ye
s. Well.” She glanced at the three piles of separated material before turning guarded gray eyes back to his. Eyes that floored him. “Since we had to leave the clearing before nightfall,” the tiniest hint of censure that almost made him smile, “we couldn’t act on what we found just as the sun began to set.”
“It’s too dangerous after dark.” He murmured, not as interested in what they discovered as what stood in front of him in ill-fitting jeans and a zipped, oversized jacket that covered her torso. Intrigued by the way she hid curves under loose or heavily-layered fabrics, he took another step toward her, breathed in only the scents Rome had informed him were false. Frustration resurfaced. “Whatever you found will still be there in the morning.”
Rather than take another step back, Ria squatted down in front of the stone pile, utilizing the beam from the flashlight to flip over some of the rocks for a closer perusal. When she spoke, her tone held a nervous tinge that rubbed his fur the wrong way. “True.”
As he stood there, a large, muscled male frowning down at a much slighter and weaker female, it suddenly dawned on him. She was a lone woman, out in the dark with a male she barely knew. Of course she would err on the side of caution. Especially if she knew just what he was capable of, and in light of what Lance had mentioned several months back, that Ria had a gift at seeing what lay under the surface, he had to hazard a guess that she did know. But how to ferret that information out?
Wanting to smack the stupidity out of himself, he crossed one foot over the other and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, attempting to appear as non-threatening as possible. If she didn’t feel safe around him – a likelihood that appalled the protective aspect of his nature – she would never be able to trust him, which meant he would never get to the root of her problems. Her secrets. Needing to do exactly that, he forced his muscles to relax, biding his time until she got used to his presence.
“Where you able to tell how old the ruin is?” Inflicting his words with the same soothing nuance he’d used this morning, he watched her reaction. The affect was unexpected. Her shoulders straightened almost immediately, as if she were offended.
Interesting.
“I don’t believe it’s very old, maybe a few hundred years. Which in itself creates a ton of questions.”
“Like?”
“Well, Gwen told us that the forest is old. As in very old. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old, but the area surrounding that particular clearing is newer.”
Santos frowned, trying to wrap his mind around her words and line of thinking rather than on the graceful lines of her neck, displayed by the short fall of her hair. Flesh he wanted to mark with his lips and teeth, regardless of how she smelled. His voice might have been a little rough when he said, “And that means...”
Ria stood, her face taking on an animated glow that fascinated both man and beast. “If the forest was already thriving, then whoever built the ruin had to first dig out a massive hole and then begin the painstaking work of creating a solid structure within that hole rather than above it.”
Santos cocked his head. “A cellar of sorts to store perishables?”
“Possible, but that’s an awfully big cellar. You could store enough food in there to feed a large village, way more people than what the clearing suggests probably lived there, which brings up my next question. What did they do with all the dirt?”
Santos blinked, caught between the enticing enigma that was Ria and the burgeoning curiosity of the ruin, her questions teasing the inquisitive nature of his cat. “I haven’t a clue.”
Turning in a slow circle, she indicated their surroundings. “The land is pretty flat, right? No hills? Caves?”
Brows tight in concentration, Santos mentally ran through the miles of land he knew like the back of his hand. “None.”
“I thought not. Whoever created the oval ruin wouldn’t have needed to create it to begin with if the pit was, in actuality, a cave. Plus the ground would be hard stone, not dirt.”
Now those dark brows rose. “The corners of the ruin are curved? Like the main house?” He flicked his thumb over his shoulder at the direction of the historical house he grew up in.
Another nod, combined with a lowering of lashes that quickly lifted to reveal eyes gleaming with vibrancy. “Exactly.”
“Do you think there’s a correlation? Is it the same stonework?” Interest peaked, not only in her findings, but in the excitement that flushed her face. He had a feeling she didn’t let her emotions loose much and he suddenly desired to see that same expression cross her features when she looked at him from a very different position. One under his own larger frame, hers soft and wet in warm welcome.
Something of his lustful nature must of shown on his face because she swallowed, looked away. “It’s possible, but the brickwork between the two are very different. It’s impossible to tell how hold the ruin is without information on who created it.”
Just her speaking made him nuts. His body became super aware, super sensitized, even as her scent messed with his jaguar’s senses. The mix of lemon, coffee and curry wasn’t exactly unpleasant, just strong enough to deter any desire for a stronger sniff.
That thought made him take a mental step back. Obviously the herbs were working, masking her scent as Rome stated, but, if the mating heat was indeed in play – which he couldn’t discount considering his body’s visceral reaction to her – the herbs weren’t altering her scent, just doing as Rome said. Masking it. But masking it how deeply? On a cellular level or just below the surface?
Taking advantage while her attention was elsewhere, he moved faster than lightening, bending to draw in a lungful of her scent from the vulnerable arch of her neck. Quick enough she only would have felt as if a delicate breeze whispered over her exposed skin, as evidenced when she turned her head sharply in his direction a second later. But Santos was already back in the same same relaxed pose, an innocent expression on his face. “So you don’t think there’s any connection between my parent’s home and what you found in the reserve?”
Though suspicion flickered in her eyes, she went on to talk about her theories. Even as he listened, he took the time to separate out and analyze the myriad of scents he’d pulled off her. Filtering out the lemon, coffee and curry, he got momentarily tangled by the sweet musk of aroused female. Ria wanted him. Male satisfaction surged, but he couldn’t linger and relish. He had to push that aside and reach deeper, concentrate until...
And suddenly there it was. Lilac blossoms under a light layer of fresh snow.
The heady fragrance was so faint as to be non-existent. He knew it wasn’t her soap or shampoo as he’d already discarded surface scents. This one though. This one caused his cat to leap to its feet with an alert swiftness that put his earlier move to shame. Razor sharp teeth gleamed as the feline opened his mouth wide in silent demand.
Son of a bitch.
“Am I boring you?”
Santos opened his eyes, having no idea when he’d closed them. Probably when the truth, and not the possibilities or the potentials, had hit him in the gut like the sledgehammer he once threatened to take to Porter. There was no longer any doubt in his mind. Ria was his mate.
Mates weren’t a one-time-only shot. There were actually hundreds of potential mates for a shifter. Women who had compatible genes, ensuring that any male offspring could take on their paternal animal form at puberty. Daughters of a mated couple didn’t have the same ability, the belief that the change was too violent on the body and thus destroy any child the woman would carry.
A true mate, however, was one that not only had the right DNA, she intrigued the cat, and the man, on multiple levels. It wasn’t much different than human pairings. Physical, mental and emotional draws, intimacy and companionship both in bed and out. Bonds that only strengthened with time, affection and a deep sense of knowing each other, inside and out.
Santos felt slightly giddy, a wide grin creasing his face at the knowledge that the woman standing before him
with the indigent expression of a ticked off female, was his. Not that he could pounce and claim her this very instant as he craved. No, he needed to put a plan into action. One that wouldn’t alarm her, and wouldn’t make him go near insane with need. Because despite her little show of temper, he couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t rabbit.
“Of course you’re not boring me. I was just thinking about pirates.”
“Pirates?” She shook her head as if his statement came out of the blue.
“Hmm. Claude Morgan was, by all accounts, a very successful pirate. Who, if the stories are to be believed, mysteriously vanished only to reappear in Florida several years later as Cort Fylin, a wealthy Frenchman. Cort built the house and created a thriving pepper plantation along with his young Calusa bride.”
A slow sweep of lashes that fleetingly hid stunning eyes the color of turbulent clouds. “Your ancestor.”
It wasn’t a question. “Yes. Could the ruin be part of a Calusa village? A structure that Claude-Colin emulated when he built the house?”
Ria was shaking her head before Santos finished. “No. Their territory was much farther south. Sarasota, Fort Myers. Basically the south central and western parts of Florida. Besides, I doubt the Calusa would leave stone carvings depicting Mayan art and Egyptian mythology.”
Stymied, Santos shifted his legs apart and crossed his arms over his chest. Her eyes dropped to follow the move, resting a long moment on the hand he had over his bicep. He couldn’t help it. He flexed that muscle. Her quick inhalation and the subsequent wave of feminine arousal had him biting the inside of his cheek, steeling his feet against the earth. Now that he’d uncovered the richness of her true scent, could pinpoint it from a thousand others with ease, along with the knowledge that she was sunk along with him deep in the pull of the mating heat, resisting her would become near impossible. “That’s random.”
Drawing Deep Page 6