It was hard, but he managed to resist that urge, knowing it would probably end with him intimately acquainted with the pick she wielded.
Instead of manhandling her, he opted to lean his right shoulder against the doorframe, cross his boots at his ankles and fold his arms across his bare chest, admiring her as she worked.
She had made swift progress with her hole. It was twice as deep as it had been last night and she stood knee-deep in it, her long black hair hanging down her back in tangled ribbons. She muttered to herself in an odd language, one that had a lyrical quality to it. He wasn’t familiar with it, but then that hardly surprised him. Besides fae, the common demon tongue of the seven realms and English, he spoke only broken Portuguese.
There were countless languages in this realm and in Hell that he didn’t know. Hers could be any one of them. He wished he knew what she was speaking though, because it might give him a clue as to her species. Guessing what she was had kept him awake most of the day and had become his favourite way of passing the time since sunset.
Well, guessing her species and replaying how she had sat crouched on his chest, one slender hand pressed against it, branding his skin with her touch as her beauty seared itself on his heart.
Kyter ran a steady gaze down her, slowly taking in her curves. If she turned to face him, would she be as beautiful as he remembered? Would she be as beautiful as she had been in the dreams he’d had whenever he had succumbed to sleep?
Just recalling the lustful visions of making love to her in the room where they had met last night, pinning her against the plastered column as she clung to him, kissing him fiercely as he took her hard and fast, a primal and violent mating, had him filling with need again. He palmed his length as it twitched to life, fighting to tamp down his rising hunger.
He silently drew her scent over his teeth and wanted to growl at her smell and what it did to him. He was instantly rock hard in his combats, straining against the button fly. He crushed the need to growl, unwilling to reveal what he was. He liked keeping her guessing, and almost couldn’t wait for her to notice him and ask him again what he was.
His mixed blood would keep throwing her off his scent.
He had a feeling that despite her age she hadn’t met a jaguar before.
“What do you expect to find in that hole?” he said.
She gasped and whirled to face him, sending her long black hair flaring outwards from her shoulders, her eyes enormous and dark in the low light creeping in from outside the room. The smudge of dirt on her left cheek would have made her look adorable if it weren’t for his gut-deep feeling she was dangerous.
Her green eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
She went back to her work, as if he wasn’t a threat to her. Nothing for her to worry about. Her acting ability was improving. He knew that he had startled her and he had caught the momentary flicker of self-castigation in her eyes before she had turned her back on him. She was ashamed that he had been able to sneak up on her.
“Go away,” she grumbled, hefted her pick and brought it down harder than before. Taking out her frustration on the ground now?
She could take it out on him if she wanted. He had a perfect way of releasing pent up frustration.
“Not going to happen.” His gaze drifted down her tall frame again, taking in every inch of her. His mate. He still couldn’t quite believe that he had one, or that this female was his. She struck the ground again and spat out something in her strange tongue. He smiled. “There’s nothing down there.”
She paused and glared over her shoulder at him.
His smile broadened. “I found an entrance in another building last night after you left. I figured that maybe you would have known about it… being so old and all.”
Her glare blackened into a scowl and her lips settled into a firm line.
“I know a guy who looks at people that way,” Kyter said and scrubbed a hand around the back of his neck. “It’s not very becoming of a lady though.”
Iolanthe ignored him, nimbly leaped out of the hole, and set her pick down. She leaned forwards and brushed down her black trousers, giving him a wonderful view down her top. Her head snapped up, her accusing glare pointless considering he hadn’t stopped looking at her breasts.
She straightened and stalked towards him, a sway to her hips that had his gaze dropping lower and a smile curving his lips again as he imagined claiming those hips and drawing her against him. She lightly pressed two fingers against his left shoulder.
The world whirled past in a blur of sombre night tones and pain exploded across his back as he slammed into something solid.
He dropped hard and crumpled into a heap, dazed and confused for a split-second before his head cleared and his vision stopped swimming. He grunted and frowned at the pavement beneath him. It wasn’t possible. She had tossed him across the street with only a touch, sending him crashing into the wall.
What the hell?
He bared his teeth at her and picked himself up, his bones aching from the blow. Bitch. He pressed his hand into his back and arched forwards, cracking his spine back into place, and almost growled when he saw she was already halfway along the narrow paved street.
Kyter stalked after her, swiftly closing in on her. He tamped down his fury with each long-legged stride, determined not to let her get to him and goad him into losing control. He had a plan and he meant to stick to it. Losing his shit was definitely not in the plan, no matter how much he wanted to fight her for what she had just done to him.
“Maybe we should work together.” He tossed her another smile as he came up beside her and she threw him a look that said she was considering tossing him across the road again.
She was more powerful than he had thought. It should have unsettled him, warning him away from her, but all it did was make him want her even more. The thought of fighting her had his blood burning, on fire with a need to tangle with his little kitty.
Of course, his hunger to fight her was probably due to the fact that every battle with her that ran through his head ended in a heated kiss that led to him getting between her legs and her screaming his name in pleasure.
The feel of her gaze on him intensified, ringing bells that warned a fight wouldn’t go the way of his fantasies and it was dangerous to drop his guard around her.
He sidestepped to place some distance between them but didn’t surrender his position beside her.
“I do not require a partner.” She turned her cheek to him and picked up her pace.
He huffed and doubled his, falling back into step with her.
She curled her lip at him and tipped her nose up.
She could pull all the faces she wanted, she was still beautiful to him. Moonlight stole all colour from her skin, threaded her long black hair with silver, and turned her eyes a strange shade of turquoise. She looked even more ethereal and otherworldly, captivating him and making him itch with a need to draw her into his arms and kiss her.
“Come on, we’d be great together.” Because he was her mate and he was sure that once she realised that, she would do as he asked and would hand over the artefact to him.
She was his woman after all.
A niggling voice at the back of his head chastised him for that thought and said that wasn’t how he should treat her, but a stronger voice crushed it, telling him that a jaguar’s female always obeyed her male.
It was tradition.
“I am not interested in working with you. Go away.” She turned cold eyes on him. “Stop playing at being a treasure hunter. This is my job.”
Kyter stopped dead, clenched his fists to stop himself from grabbing hold of her, and fixed his gaze on the back of her head. She slowed to a halt.
“Playing?” he barked, his voice echoing off the crumbling stone buildings around him, and she spun on her heel to face him in the middle of the ancient road. “This isn’t a goddamned game to me. What I’m after, I need. For me. Not for a fat pay off like you’re after.”
Her eyes widened and then narrowed on him and she took a single step towards him, her fingers flexing and eyebrows dipping low. “You know nothing about my business and my reasons for doing it.”
Kyter stepped up to her, towering over her despite her height, and snarled, “You know fuck all about mine.”
He had to admire her for standing her ground, even when he could smell the acrid scent of fear coming off her.
She breathed hard, her pulse beating fast in his ears, and looked torn between punching him and walking away.
And possibly kissing him.
The muscle in his jaw popped as he ground his teeth, holding her gaze and refusing to give an inch. Silence stretched between them, thick with a collision of desire and anger.
The breeze picked up, filling the tense silence with the soft sway of the cypress trees that surrounded the site. It stirred the dust, lifting it into the air, dampening the scents that swirled around him. Including hers. He wanted to breathe deeper to catch a stronger thread of it again and take her into him, making her a part of him.
Her lips parted and his eyes dropped to them, a fierce hunger to claim them sweeping through him, threatening to obliterate his anger and leave only desire behind. He clenched his jaw again, refusing to let that happen. She had overstepped the mark and he was damned well going to let her know it.
She lowered her head, stepped back, and whispered, “This is not a game to either of us.”
She turned away and he reached for her, coming close to catching her arm before his hand fell to his side and he let her walk away. It wasn’t a game to her either. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
She made it to the end of the street ten metres ahead of him before he could no longer resist the need to pursue her. He had to give chase. The more she walked away from him, the more fired up he became, driven by a need to hunt her. He couldn’t deny that primal instinct.
He stalked her through the dark moonlit streets, his thoughts caught on the words she had whispered. Whispered. She hadn’t spoken them with her usual confidence. Had the cause of the fear he had detected in her been because of something other than him?
Did she fear her client?
She had refused to speak of her client to the demon she had met. Kyter hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but he did now.
He hurried after her and caught up with her as she reached an open area that had gone to patchy grass, lined by broken white columns.
“You need my help,” he said and she did something unexpected.
She laughed, mocking him with the rich sound. “You think you can waltz in and do what… exactly?”
Kyter snarled and lunged for her before she could take another step away from him. He was through playing. She was going to stop and listen to him and she was going to do what he said.
The second his hand wrapped around her bare arm, a thousand volts blazed through his palm and his bones, burning him with the feel of her soft skin giving beneath his fingers.
He spun her to face him and she glared at his hand on her and then up at him.
“Release me.” She wriggled and he tightened his grip on her.
“No,” he snapped and dragged her closer to him, until they were almost touching and she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. Her lips parted. He did his best to ignore the urge to kiss her that tore through him. “You will let me have the artefact and I will let you have it when I’m done with it.”
She shoved the flat of her palm against his bare chest and he flew across the courtyard, landed on his back and flipped heels over head to end up face down in the dirt. He grunted, pressed his hands into the patchy grass, and sprang to his feet.
“I will do no such thing.” She held her hand out, her palm facing him, and he hesitated, reconsidering launching himself at her and taking her down. She was stronger than he had thought, and had powers he hadn’t anticipated. She had tossed him twice now with a touch that should have only knocked him back a step at most. “I have no reason to let you take it from me, and you will have to take it. I have no reason to trust you.”
Kyter couldn’t stop the feral snarl that peeled from his lips as he stalked towards her, his heart pumping hard, fuelled by a dangerous combination of desire, anger and grief. The first emotion was the only one he felt for her, but the other two mingled in with it, his emotions out of control as his primal instincts roared at him to fight her.
To make her submit to him.
Gods, he had been hungry for a fight ever since he had set foot in the rainforest and had seen with his own eyes what had happened there.
That hunger had been steadily growing and he had been bottling it up, storing it for the fight against his father, but he hadn’t anticipated this turn of events. His mate stood before him.
Unwilling to trust him.
Treating him as if he was nothing but a stranger to her.
He growled, baring emerging fangs, and she took a step back, her hand shaking as she held it towards him.
“You have every goddamned reason to trust me,” he snarled and sprang forwards, ignoring the small voice as it whispered through him again, telling him to halt and consider what he was about to do, because it wasn’t like him.
The stronger voice roared above it, drowning it out and commanding him to make her submit. That was the way of pride jaguars. A strong male’s female submitted to him.
That was tradition.
The very essence of mates as taught to him by his pride.
He had her wrist locked in his fist before she could withdraw her hand and escape him. He tugged her arm up above his head and dragged her against him, so the full length of her body pressed against his. She wriggled and smashed her other fist against his chest.
Each blow only made his blood burn hotter and his voice was little more than a fierce growl when he said, “You belong to me.”
She froze.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Her wide eyes stared unblinkingly into his.
“Excuse me?” she whispered, her voice so weak he almost didn’t hear her.
He lowered his other hand to her hip and then slid it around to the small of her back, pinning her against him as his golden gaze devoured the vivid luscious green of hers. She smelled like the rainforest and had eyes as verdant as nature.
His mate.
“You felt it too,” he murmured and rubbed her back, slowly lifting the hem of her silver top. He caressed the patch of bare skin he exposed and she trembled in his arms, the reaction drawing a rumbling growl of appreciation from him. His female was perfect. She reacted so sweetly to him. He dipped his head towards her. “I know you did. You’re my mate. My fated female. We belong together.”
In his dream, she had fallen into his arms like this, and he had awoken shortly after he had taken her home to his pride.
“Say I am your mate,” she softly murmured, her voice teasing his ears and delighting them. “You believe that makes me belong to you?”
He nodded. Now she was getting it. She was his mate. She belonged to him. He dropped his head to kiss her.
Her left hook came out of nowhere, smashing into his jaw and snapping his head back. He lost his grip on her arm and she slammed a hard right uppercut into his gut, lifting him off the ground. He dropped to all fours and breathed hard, fighting for air as his side burned and he clutched at the grass.
Kyter coughed and wheezed as he pushed himself up. He lifted his head, catching sight of her boot a split-second before it crashed into the underside of his jaw, flipped him and sent him slamming onto his back.
The coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth and his vision swam. A couple more hits like that and she was going to have him down for the count.
He pushed onto his elbows, struggling to focus on her. She wobbled as she advanced.
A blade appeared in her hand.
Literally appeared.
What the fuck?
Either she had kicked him harder than he had thought
or she could use magic.
She advanced on him, a dark vision of beauty as her eyes narrowed on him and her irises began to change colour.
Turning violet.
Kyter had the sinking feeling that he was about to get his arse handed to him.
Now he knew why she hadn’t required bulky armour to protect her in the fae town.
Black scales rippled over her body, concealing her breasts just as her top disappeared, giving him a tantalising flash of creamy swells. Those scales swept downwards, covering her torso and arms and spreading over her legs. Her trousers and boots disappeared, revealing the armour to him. The scales crawled over her delicate hands, turning her fingers into vicious serrated claws. She flexed them around the hilt of her blade and stood over him in her skin-tight armour, her black hair whipping around her shoulders, parting to reveal the pointed tips of her ears.
“I bow to no male,” she snarled in a voice filled with venom and darkness. “I need no male. No master.”
She swept her blade through the air between them and her eyes brightened, blazing amethyst that entranced him.
She was beautiful and terrifying.
His.
“Will you persist with this nonsense?”
He didn’t move, but she clearly read the answer to her question in his eyes. He would. She was his mate. He had only one in this world. He wouldn’t give up until she belonged to him.
“Very well.”
She raised her blade to her side, gripped it in both hands above her left shoulder and pointed it at him.
“I will kill you then.”
CHAPTER 8
Kyter sprang onto his feet and kicked forwards, narrowly avoiding the black blade as it arced through the air where he had been. Iolanthe hissed and turned on a pinhead, sweeping her sword out in another deadly arc in his direction.
She was serious.
She meant to kill him.
He rolled beneath her blade and onto his feet. He hit the ground running, using speed to his advantage as he darted between the white columns and came around behind her. His claws extended and he launched himself at her.
Hunted by a Jaguar Page 7