Spotting His Leopard (Shifters, Inc.)

by Georgette St. Clair

  “The stone of truth,” she said to her. “Bring it at once.”

  The stone of truth? Gwenneth thought with alarm. She didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  The assistant hurried off.

  Tyler leaned back in his chair, grinning from ear to ear. He clearly had no problem with whatever Belij was proposing.

  The assistant returned within minutes, holding out a necklace. A glowing red stone dangled on a leather strip.

  The assistant thrust it towards Gwenneth, who flinched. Finally, reluctantly, she took it, holding the leather between two fingers as if the necklace were a grenade about to explode.

  Belij was nodding happily. “You will return to your hut, and you will each take turns wearing the stone of truth,” Belij said. “It is impossible to lie when you wear the necklace. You will not emerge from the hut until you have each asked the other five questions. No more than five. It is important for couples to have some secrets from each other, yes? Of course it is. A little mystery is good.”

  Gwenneth felt panic clutching at her throat as the helper led them back to their hut and left them there. What would Tyler ask her? How would he feel about her if he knew the real her? And how would he use the information he found out?

  They entered the hut and she dropped the necklace onto the bed, backing away from it and staring at it with dismay.

  “I’m tired,” she said uneasily. “I’d rather wait until morning.”

  “Nah, we should just get it over with.” Tyler grabbed the necklace.

  “Or…we could give up this pretense and leave,” she suggested hopefully.

  “Is it a pretense? I think that this will help us find out some questions we need answered,” he said, and before she could protest further, he draped the necklace over her neck.

  She felt a little electric sizzle jolt her and she was suddenly lightheaded. She took a step back away from Tyler, her breath catching in her throat.

  “Now,” he said. “Why did you really come to this island?”

  She found herself talking without meaning to. Without wanting to.

  “My twin sister Rhonwen accepted a job through a broker known as the Shadow Lord, to steal the Eye of the Jaguar a couple of weeks before the jubilee parade,” she said. “She took the downpayment and then never completed the job and failed to show up to hand over the goods. The Shadow Lord put out a kill order on her and the gang she works with, so I decided to come here and complete the job for her.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “Why weren’t you able to get hold of your sister to ask her what was going on?”

  “I haven’t talked to her in five years. We both used to work for a group of thieves called Les Abandonnes, started with them when we were fifteen, but I quit when I was twenty and left the lifestyle behind. I begged Rhonwen to come with me, but she refused. She got mad at me for quitting, said I was abandoning her, and we got in a big fight and cut all ties with each other.” Damn it, the stone not only forced her to tell the truth, it made her chatty as hell. She wanted to give short, non-committal answers that didn’t really reveal anything, but it wouldn’t let her.

  “What did you do after you quit?”

  “Well, we all lived in L.A. at the time and I knew I needed to leave town if I wanted to quit, so I got a job on a cruise ship as a maid and travelled the world,” she said. “I’ve just been doing various odd jobs ever since then. Bartending and waitressing mostly. I’m a botanist by hobby. I like to grow plants and brew up the kind of concoctions you found in my vitamin bottle.” She smiled ruefully. “That may sound weird for a city girl, but I do love plants. I just don’t like living among them. I like them in pots. I keep a little greenhouse in my apartment wherever I live. I’ve thought about going to school to get a degree in botany, but I’ve lived under fake names for so long I don’t even know how to re-enter the normal world. I mean, I guess I could get a degree under a fake name.” She clapped her hand over her mouth to stem the verbal tide flooding out.

  “You don’t need to. I could help you with that,” Tyler said, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. He kept talking as if she was a part of his future. Did he mean it? She’d soon find out, when it was time for him to wear the Stone of Truth, and the thought terrified her.

  “How did you know about the botched theft, if you don’t talk to your sister and you left the life behind you completely?”

  She grimaced, struggled not to answer, but the words spilled out.

  “I’ve been checking in with a connection from my past from time to time, just so I could keep tabs on Rhonwen. I mean, we had that falling out, but she’s still my sister. I just want to know that she’s okay. Once every three months I go to a public internet board for antique furniture enthusiasts and leave a coded message, and a fence that I’ve worked with in the past will reply. When I checked in most recently, I found an urgent message wanting to know why my sister had screwed up this assignment.”

  He nodded.

  Last question. Would he ask her if she could figure out how to track down her sister? Please, please don’t let that be the question…

  He looked her right in the eye. “Do you know that you’re my fated mate?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  That one hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest. It knocked the breath out of her, and she choked back a gasp, and struggled to string words together into a sentence.

  “I don’t… I…your fated mate? As in…we’re each other’s fated mates? I don’t know if I believe in that whole concept at all, but…” The truth stone wouldn’t let her lie, even to herself. It pushed through the tangled skein of denial and self-protection wrapped around her heart, and she looked him in the eye and said, “Yes. Somewhere deep inside me, I’ve known it since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

  He nodded, then reached out for the necklace and took it off for her and draped it around his own neck.

  “Go on,” he said somberly. “Ask me anything.”

  Her heart pounded so loudly that she could hear the thudding in her ears. This is where everything changes. If I let it. If I let him in.

  “Who do you work for?” she said, her heart racing.

  “A private security firm called Shifters, Inc. We’re based in Playa Linda, California.” So he’d been telling the truth about that. He wasn’t one of her sister’s enemies running some kind of scam on her.

  “Did you come to the island to look for me, or my sister?”

  He shook his head. “No. I didn’t know a thing about you or your group of thieves. I came here because my parents tricked me into taking this technology-free vacation, and I happened to stumble on you in that museum. Although if you believe what they say about fated mates, it was destiny, not an accident, that I found you.”

  “How did you find out my sister’s identity?”

  “After I spotted you, I chartered a private plane and left the island for the day. I had taken a picture of you at the museum with my cell phone, and I ran your face through a facial recognition program of my own design. I compared it to databases of suspected thieves, especially high-end ones. I came up with your name. There was only a record of your sister, not you, and she only came to the attention of law enforcement a few years ago. There was nothing confirmed until this year when she started screwing up big time.”

  “I heard you talking to Maji, asking him if he’d found out anything else about my sister. That was why I was angry at you. Were you just flirting with me so you can track her down and arrest her?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

  He looked shocked. “Of course not. But…if I did find her, I’d have to take her into custody. An entire family was murdered. And two security guards, innocent men doing their jobs, men with families who now do not have fathers. I cannot let that go.”

  She bit her lip. “I know you’re right. I don’t know what I’d do if I thought she really committed those murders – but she didn’t, I’m sure of it. I know it in my bones. For
a million reasons, I know it. All I can ask is that if we ever do come across her, that we at least investigate and find out what happened before turning her in. If…if she really murdered those people…then you’re right, I can’t defend that, even though she is my sister. But she didn’t,” she finished with conviction.

  She looked at him, her heart in her throat. The final question. She knew the answer, so she was kind of wasting a question, but she desperately needed to hear him say it.

  “Do you really want me?” she said, her voice small and shaky.

  A broad smile spread out across his handsome face. “Let me show you how much.”

  “Do you really want me?” she said, her voice small and shaky.

  A broad smile spread out across his handsome face. “Let me show you how much.”

  He leaned towards her, moving slowly as if he was afraid she’d spook and run. She wondered if he could hear her heart pounding as if she’d been sprinting. It was partly from fear – fear of making herself so vulnerable to someone who had the power to hurt her – but it was mostly from excitement. She trembled and held herself tense and still as he placed his warm lips gently against hers. His muscular arms went around her, holding her fast like steel bands, and then it was too late to run – even if she’d wanted to.

  His mouth was firm and sweet against hers, and she parted her lips on a sigh, swirls of sensation in her belly and shivers of anticipation running up and down her spine.

  He gave a low groan and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. Her breasts pressed against the hard planes of his broad chest and she could feel her nipples pebbling into tight little buds of sensation. She knew he’d be able to feel it too.

  She gasped against his mouth, sliding her arms around his neck so they were pressed even more closely together, and he angled his head and pushed his tongue into her mouth, tangling it with hers in sweet, teasing, twisting motions. She whimpered with need when he nipped at her lower lip, feeling a warm trickle of wet excitement in her panties. A low throbbing arousal started between her thighs and she wriggled against him in a futile attempt to ease the ache.

  Suddenly he put his big hands underneath her arms and lifted her effortlessly, setting her astride his lap so she could feel the hot, hard length of his cock against her most intimate folds. She gasped and rocked her hips, setting up a sweet mutual friction that made him groan and clutch her hips hard enough to leave bruises, pushing upwards towards her and panting against her mouth. He lay back on the bed, letting her work above him for a few long moments, writhing on top of him and revelling in the way his dick got bigger and harder until she wondered whether she’d be able to take him. Her core was molten and aching with the desire to be stretched and filled and possessed by his rigid length.

  Then he rolled her over and lingered there, kissing her throat and palming her breasts before he climbed off her and got to his feet, leaving her breathless and bewildered. She parted her lips to ask him why he’d stopped, but he placed a finger to his lips, his eyes burning with dark, intense desire as he looked down at her.

  He slowly unbuttoned his shirt, his expression becoming almost playful as he exposed a muscular chest, a flat, taut stomach and a trail of hair starting at his navel and trailing down below the waistband of his pants. She could clearly see the rigid outline of his erection pressing against the fabric in a way that looked restrictive and painful, and she ached to free him and take him into her hands, into her mouth…

  He quickly discarded his pants and underwear, letting his cock spring free from its prison. It was long and thick with a slight curve, and she could see a shiny bead of precum trembling at the tip, which told her that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She didn’t need the truth stone to prove that to her – his body’s reaction to her spoke for itself.

  Following his lead, Gwenneth wriggled out of her top and bra, dropping them to the side of the bed, and she saw his eyes drift to her full breasts with their hard, dusky nipples as if drawn by a magnet. Then he kneeled on the floor, spreading her legs to either side of him before undoing the button at her waistband and trailing his fingers down the insides of her thighs and her calves. He pulled off her socks, then tugged at her pants, pulling them down her legs and leaving her in only her panties, which were plain cotton – it wasn’t as if she’d been planning to seduce anybody on this trip.

  Then he lifted her ankles onto his shoulders and grinned wolfishly up at her, setting her pulse fluttering once again. She was sure he must be able to scent her arousal, and her thighs trembled as he kissed her calf, then trailed his lips up her leg, lapping at the sensitive spot behind her knee and making her whimper and twitch as he worked his way higher, nipping at the tender flesh of her inner thighs.

  He pushed his thumbs into the sides of her panties and twisted the fabric, drawing the cotton tight so that the outline of her damp pussy was clearly exposed beneath, then lowered his head and ran the flat of his tongue, hard, up the length of her slit, ending with a rough flick to her clit that make her twist and moan beneath him, fisting her hands in his hair to hold him to her as she felt coils of excitement winding tighter and tighter like a spring. She thought she might come just from the heat of his mouth on her pussy, even through the damp cotton.

  Tyler pulled down her panties, tugging the moist scrap of cotton down her thighs and raising the bundled cloth to his face, inhaling deeply and savouring her scent before discarding the panties and returning to her slick, throbbing pussy.

  He lapped at her slit, pushing his tongue just fractionally inside her and withdrawing it again, as if to tease her with a hint of the sensations in store when he entered her for real. Then he ran the very tip around her clit in rapid circling motions that had her gasping and arching her hips off the bed. She released his head to fist the covers on either side of her, white-knuckled as she rode out the near-orgasmic sensations he was eliciting with his clever, playful tongue against her most intimate folds. He washed her thoroughly with his tongue, moaning with satisfaction as he lapped up the juices that flowed from her core as if they were the sweetest honey. Then he sucked her clit hard between his lips and starbursts of light and colour exploded behind her closed eyelids as she teetered on the brink of orgasm, his mouth on her wet pussy and her thighs clamped to the sides of her head.

  He drew back, the bottom half of his face shiny with her juices, and grinned at her as he crawled up her body, pausing to press his face against the soft curve of her belly, nipping at her breast then suckling hard on her nipple, drawing a thread of electric sensation up from her clit through her entire body. Her skin was delicately dewed with a fine sheen of sweat, from the tropical heat of the jungle paradise and the wild, primal arousal that throbbed through her body and made her heart hammer in her chest.

  He quickly sheathed himself, and she felt a brief moment of relief. She was so desperate to feel him moving above her, inside her, that she wasn’t sure she’d even have thought about using protection. She remembered that they were at a fertility temple, for goodness’ sake, and thanked her lucky stars that Tyler cared enough about her to be careful about protecting her.

  He held himself above her for a few moments, arms straight and biceps bunched and shiny with sweat. He gazed down into her eyes as if trying to brand the moment into his memory forever. She knew she’d never forget it if she lived to be a hundred. There was a primal connection between them that went beyond the physical, beyond the sexual, and if she’d still doubted that they were fated mates, that moment would have laid those doubts to rest forever.

  He positioned himself at her slick, needy entrance and she moaned and wiggled against him, urging him to enter her.

  She was tight, and he was so large that at first she struggled to accommodate him, but he worked himself patiently inside her, inch by delicious inch, until he was seated to the hilt and her pussy sheathed him snugly in its hot, wet depths. He closed his eyes and shuddered briefly, and the knowledge of how hard-won his control was made her pu
lse around him with instinctive, involuntary lust.

  The he started to move inside her, and Gwenneth was lost. She thrashed her head from side to side on the bed covers, moaning and whimpering with each powerful thrust, and clutched his buttocks, digging her fingers into the bunching muscles and urging him inside her farther and faster and harder.

  He gave a hoarse, desperate moan and she wrapped her legs around his waist, opening herself to him as far as she could while he drove inside her, his smooth skin sticky with sweat, his muscles working, his breath coming in harsh, effortful rasps.

  Gwenneth’s cries rose, crescendoing as he drove her closer and closer to a peak of ecstasy that had her trembling beneath him with blissful sensation. She froze, shuddering, her thighs trembling, as she came harder than she ever had in her life, unbearable sensation washing over her as Tyler gave a fierce groan and surrendered to his own crisis, continuing to pump inside her until the last spasms faded away and they were left weak and drained, tangled in each other’s arms, sweaty and utterly sated.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I cannot do it, sir.” Maji stood in the doorway of his shanty, glancing around nervously. Tyler and Gwenneth had stopped by to ask for a ride into the city so that they could meet up with Nadette and Corran.

  “Here, you must take this back,” he added, thrusting his fist at Tyler. Tyler glanced down; Maji had a handful of bills clutched in his hand.

  “What is that?”

  “The money that you paid me in advance. I cannot take it.” He glanced around again. “Perhaps you should come inside a moment. It won’t do for me to be seen talking to you.”

  Gwenneth and Tyler stepped through the door quickly.

  The entire hut was one room, with several cots on one side and a small cooking stove on the other. Stacked-up wooden boxes held battered pans and chipped dishware. An older man who looked to be in his eighties lay curled up on one of the cots.