Primal Heat--A Paranormal Shapeshifter Werejaguar Romance

by A. C. Arthur

  “I just want to be with my mate, my husband, and have a regular day, just like any other couple.”

  Rome reached across the table then, signaling for her to give him her hand. She did, and he rubbed a finger over the diamond ring that he’d given her for their joining. “There’s nothing in this world more important to me than you, Kalina. Absolutely nothing,” he told her solemnly. “With that said, I do have a responsibility. And you’ve been more than accommodating in that regard. You’ve actually been a tremendous help in developing the Assembly and the plans for our future. But at the same time, I hear what you’re saying. Tell me what I can do to make this better for you.”

  Kalina had just opened her mouth to speak when a wisp of cool air floated over their table. She looked up because a scent had traveled with the breeze, a soft, yet still undeniable smell that had both her and her cat going on instant alert.

  Her dress was red, like a siren’s song in silk. The halter-top dress hugged her breasts, wrapped around her waist, and lay on her toned legs until midthigh. Alabaster skin was highlighted by shiny black hair, crystalline ice-blue eyes, and a smile that went straight for the gut … or the dick, Kalina wasn’t sure. Yet, she didn’t spare her mate a glance, keeping her gaze on the female interrupting their lunch date.

  “Assembly Leader,” the female said with a slow nod to Rome. “First Female,” came next when she finally spared Kalina a glance.

  “Rogue,” was Kalina’s quick response.

  Rome remained still, his palms flattening on the table. Eli and Jax, who had been sitting at a table across from them, nursing a glass of water, stood immediately, but were slowed by the almost imperceptible shake of Rome’s head. The guards did not sit, but they did not approach either.

  “They said you were smart,” the rogue continued. “I didn’t believe them.” She shrugged. “Still don’t.”

  Kalina didn’t even blink. “Not smart would be walking into a room full of Shadows alone and believing that you’ll walk out unscathed.”

  “What do you want, Bianca?” Rome asked, interrupting the stare-down between the females.

  She’d heard that name before, Kalina thought with interest. Rome and the other FLs had mentioned it during one of their phone conferences. Afterward, there hadn’t been a lot of talk about her, but Kalina was certain now that she’d heard Jace Maybon, the Pacific Zone FL, bring her up because she’d been on his radar as a potential client in his talent agency. Looking her up and down again, Kalina was certain what Bianca Adani’s first and most prized talent would be.

  The tramp leaned over then, flattening her palms on the table so that her cleavage was perfectly aligned with Rome’s line of sight. He kept his gaze on her eyes and Kalina’s chest swelled with pride.

  “I have a message for you, Assembly Leader,” she said, her voice going to a hushed tone.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kalina saw Jax and Eli step closer, until they were directly behind Bianca. Their gazes locked on her but not in the sexual way the rogue may have intended.

  “A message from whom?” Rome asked.

  He would remain calm and play this entire scenario out. Rome was a leader through and through, so his actions would be carefully considered and as discreet as possible since they were sitting in a public restaurant.

  Bianca chuckled, a deep, rich sound that was followed by a toss of her head, the sheet of her dark hair flipping over one shoulder with the motion. “The leader you never anticipated would return,” she replied cryptically.

  Rome shrugged. “So what’s the message from this leader-in-hiding?”

  His tone was nonchalant but Kalina knew he was on high alert, the rogue’s words piquing the interest of all four of the Shadows.

  “Oh, he’s definitely not hiding and neither are the rest of the tribes,” Bianca told Rome. “Not anymore. We’re all here, all around you. Lormenia, Serfins, Croesteriia, Bosinia, and even more Topètenia than you’d ever imagined. We’re here and we’re ready.”

  Kalina did not gasp, but she did sit up straighter in her chair, her cat ready to lunge at the Bengal tiger. Rome reached forward then, letting his palm rest on Bianca’s, which he patted as if she were an insolent child. “If you’re ready to follow, you will be safe. If not, you should warn them to stand down.”

  Bianca looked down at Rome’s hand on her own, then over her shoulder to Kalina whom she smiled at knowingly. Or at least the rogue thought it was knowingly. Kalina had no doubts where Rome the Leader or her mate were concerned. She showed that by smiling at the rogue in return.

  When Bianca looked back at Rome it was with her seductive smile still in place. “We only follow one leader, and it is not you. Or your pregnant little cat over there.”

  Rome’s gaze flew quickly to Kalina as Bianca stood up straight, looking over at Jax and Eli as she chuckled.

  She took a step away from the table and then paused to add one more thing before leaving. “You’ve been warned.”

  Eli followed Bianca out of the restaurant while Jax stayed close enough to the table to hear Rome’s surprised inquiry to his mate. “Pregnant?”

  * * *

  This had been one of the longest days in Nivea’s life. It was nearing dinnertime and she was bored out of her mind. For nine hours straight she’d sat in the tech room watching security monitors, reviewing news feeds, and monitoring the Internet for any mention of cat people, the shifters, or the hybrids. It was a daunting task, one she’d shared with forty other guards that for whatever reason actually enjoyed being cooped up in a room with no windows and jugs of coffee.

  Earlier this morning she’d awakened alone to a note from Eli. She’d thought she would roll over and cuddle her face against his chest as she’d done frequently throughout the night, but the paper had crinkled against her skin, instantly waking her up.

  He was going out in the field and would be in touch by cell phone. Initially she’d been pissed by the note and the fact that she’d been ordered to stay inside, even when her shoulder was relatively painless at the moment. Then, Nivea had lain back on the bed, reveling in not only where she was but how far she’d come. She’d slept with Eli Preston last night. Not had sex with him as they’d done before and then been sent on her merry way, but she’d lain in his arms while he held her close and they’d both slept, peacefully.

  Once upon a time, so many of Nivea’s nights had been riddled with nightmares, with dark and disturbing memories that refused to let her go. She’d gone through years of therapy, possessing a determination her therapist had said she’d never seen in another female victim of sexual abuse before. But Nivea had wanted to be normal, she’d wanted desperately to move past the things that had happened that had not been her fault. She’d wanted to forget but to be smart enough to remember at the same time. Because remembering was what kept her sane and focused. It’s what kept her from killing the man who had tried to destroy her life.

  Just before, Nivea had received two text messages and one picture message from Eli. The two texts were of an address and a list of the contents of a bag he’d found. She’d run everything through the computers, coming up with a name, Robert Slakeman of Slakeman Enterprises. Slakeman was a defense contractor. His weapons armed the U.S. military and some high-level cartel members, as recently alleged by a few FBI agents on the West Coast. Nivea had no idea what any of this had to do with the hybrids or what the shifters were dealing with now, but she certainly planned to ask Eli when he returned to Havenway.

  She’d just finished viewing the picture message when there was a knock on the door. Her bed was on the far side of the room, her dresser and a desk closest to the door. She moved past both and pulled the door open, not in a million years expecting who was on the other side.

  “Long time no see,” Richard Cannon said, making his way inside her room without an invitation.

  Nivea’s heart immediately pounded and while she would have preferred he’d stayed out in the hallway, she wasn’t about to make a scene that would
alert everyone that he was here. As she closed the door she wondered how he’d managed to get inside anyway, considering Rome and Nick were looking into his financial dealings. Maybe that wasn’t public knowledge as of yet, which would be the only reason the guards at the gate would have allowed him passage. That and the fact that he was a shifter and her father.

  She sighed with that thought.

  “What do you want?” was her question the moment the door was closed and she was relatively sure nobody would overhear what was going on.

  Some would say he looked good for a fifty-seven-year-old man, with his black suit, crisp white shirt, and slate-gray tie. His hair was midnight black and combed back from his face so that his thick eyebrows and expertly cut mustache were prominent. Money really did do wonders, she thought, because the asshole that lived in those clothes would never be more than a dirty, scumbag pervert in her eyes, no matter what he wore.

  “Is that any way to greet your father, whom you haven’t seen for years?” he asked, looking around her room as if there might be something there he had interest in.

  Nivea knew that was not true. There was nothing at Havenway that interested her father. Nothing the Shadow Shifters were doing that he wanted to be a part of. After all, his number one goal for the last thirty years had been to kill off whatever shifter children he could in an effort to end the breed entirely because he believed the world would never accept them. He was the biggest, sorriest kind of hypocrite there was. While his nonprofit foundation boasted how many children they helped and saved from abusive homes and sickly situations, the man—Richard Cannon—had the blood of thousands of shifters on his hands. The wretched bastard.

  “No, but that’s how I greet the man who made me swear not to ever tell what he was doing to me to anyone or he’d terrorize my sisters the same way he did me,” she replied vehemently.

  Richard didn’t even have the gall to look affronted by her comment. Actually, his shoulders almost lifted in a shrug, but he took that moment to step closer to her instead.

  “I specifically recall telling you to keep your mouth shut. So imagine my surprise when I find out you’re now spreading your vicious lies to this so-called Assembly Leader you insist on following.”

  She took a step back, hating that she couldn’t control the instinct to get as far away from him as she possibly could.

  “You’re the last shifter I would waste my time talking about.” Nivea spat. “Now you can just take yourself back to New York.”

  Richard shook his head, clicking his tongue against his teeth, creating a sound that echoed through her small room, sending wary shivers up and down her spine. He used to make that sound whenever she cried. When she’d run into the corner of her room, turning her back away from him, and thinking that would be enough to send him away. It hadn’t been, and the sound had represented his first show of disappointment in her. The leash around her neck had been the final clue. It had meant he could control her, that she was his to do with as he wanted. And he had.

  “Someone’s been asking questions. They’ve been digging into my financials, talking to my shareholders, putting doubts in their heads. Your mother’s friends are acting as if they no longer want to talk to her. I think you know why.”

  Nivea shook her head. “I don’t go back on my word. I don’t lie or betray like you and she did.”

  “Just tell me what you told him and then we’ll go to him together and explain that you lied. That you’ve always been a liar, always a troublemaker looking for attention. We’ll tell him that and see just how long he wants to keep you here among this little army he believes he’s building.”

  “I did not lie!” she yelled at him. “I didn’t lie when I told her what you were doing to me and I didn’t lie when I said if you put one hand on my sisters I would make you pay.”

  “Don’t threaten me, you little bitch!” Richard yelled, stepping so close, so quickly that his chest pushed against hers.

  The movement caught her off guard and she stumbled back a step. Trying to regain her composure, Nivea moved around Richard, going deeper into her room, her back to the wall but her front to the door, where she planned to kick his ass out in the next few seconds.

  “Don’t talk to me like that! You are no longer allowed to talk to me like you own me. I’m an adult and I’m free from you,” she countered. “I don’t have to tell anybody a damned thing about you if I don’t want to. And guess what, I don’t want to. I don’t want to mention your disgusting name!”

  The hand that came up to slap her was quick, but Nivea was quicker. She blocked the slap, grabbing hold of Richard’s wrist and twisting it until he frowned back at her. He didn’t yell out. No, Richard Cannon was too strong for that. She bristled at the fact that here was where her inner strength had originated. The very part of her that she’d relied on so heavily to get over all that he’d done to her, had come from him, the sick bastard.

  “You think you’re so tough, but you’re not. Remember Amina and Serene are still with me. They’re still mine.”

  “I kept my part of the deal,” she told him, releasing his hand as if it had been on fire. “I did what I promised so you would keep your filthy hands off of them. They don’t deserve what you did to me.”

  “I did nothing that you didn’t want,” he taunted, his eyes filled with the same glint they always had when he came into her room, just before he …

  “You were always front and center, singing the loudest in the school plays. Shining brighter than any other star in the Christmas play. You outran your sisters, outdanced them, and outlearned them. No matter what they did, you did better. And when I finally opened my eyes to that, when I finally gave you the attention you fought for, you cried foul, running to your mother of all people!”

  “I was your daughter!” Nivea yelled, her chest heavy and heaving with each breath she struggled for. “You were not supposed to do those things to me.”

  “You wanted it, Nivea,” he told her, taking a step closer to her. “Just like you want it now. You’re not getting the attention you want, maybe from one of these misguided shifters. That’s why you brought up my name, and it’s why you’re telling these lies about me. You want them to think you’re special, that you’re worthy.” Richard grinned. “They have no idea.”

  Every muscle in her body trembled. With the blink of an eye Nivea was sixteen and back in the Manhattan condo where she’d lived with her sisters. She’d just come home from school—from track practice—and was all sweaty and tired and had already peeled off her shirt, toed off her tennis shoes, and was headed to the shower, when he’d walked into her room. It was daylight outside. He never came to her during the day, was never home. Why was he now?

  Why was he here at Havenway?

  She felt dizzy, her throat clogging, hands sweating. In her mind, she knew the difference. She knew the here and now, that she was a guard for the Shadow Shifter Assembly and that Havenway was more heavily protected than the humans’ White House. But another part of her, a part she’d thought she’d closed the door on long ago, had just been revealed. He was back and he was close and she was …

  Richard was on her in the seconds she hesitated. She should have known better, should have never given him the moment to act. Nivea fell back onto her bed, the force of his quick launch knocking the air right out of her. With a gasp she looked up at the ceiling, at the plain dark-gray paint that covered all the walls in her room.

  His body was pressing into hers, familiar and sickening all at the same time. He was hard and strong and she wanted to scream. No, she wanted to fight. All those years it had taken her to stand up to her father, to stop the cycle of his vicious abuse. She shouldn’t be in this spot now. He shouldn’t be here and she wasn’t about to take this shit from him again.

  Nivea lifted a knee, aiming right at his groin, but he slid off her just in time to avoid the contact, wrapping his hands around her neck and squeezing as he rolled partially off of her.

  “You were always
too stubborn, thinking too damned much to do you any good. You should have just listened like your mother and sisters did, then I wouldn’t have had to punish you,” he told her, his hands tightening at her throat.

  Nivea smacked at his wrists, kicking her legs up and down, struggling to breathe.

  “I told your mother we should have taken care of you, but no. She wanted to make the deal. She said that even though you were the youngest, that you were the smartest of the three and you would do what was right. You would protect them all and thus keep our secret.” Sweat dripped from his forehead down onto her cheek. “I knew she was wrong. She wasn’t smart, not at all. I should never have listened to her. Should have … done … this … before!”

  He continued to choke her and Nivea felt like she was falling, her limbs dangling in the wind as she plunged to her death. Then her hands wrapped around his wrists and she squeezed with all her might. Her watery eyes focused on his bulging, erratic ones, and she centered her mind and body on all that she’d learned, on how to kill this bastard.

  * * *

  Something inside Eli’s chest pounded, a hurried rhythm that moved from his shoulder blades all the way down to his ankles, propelling him forward from the moment he stepped out of his truck in the parking lot of Havenway. He moved quickly past Jax and Rome and Kalina, reaching the door to the side entrance before any of them. His fingers punched in the code so quickly they looked like a blur of movement.

  Inside his cat hissed and swiped so that Eli’s human body reacted by moving even faster. In the back of his throat was a sour taste, similar to the night in the Sierra Leone rain forest when he’d been on his knees in the shaman’s hut, inhaling the thick smoke that he’d been promised would heal him. He swallowed deeply, hoping the memory of the taste would subside, but instead it increased and Eli’s heart pounded, his legs breaking into a run.