Hunted by a Jaguar

by Felicity Heaton

  Kyter paused, lowered the pick in his left hand to his side and ran the back of his right across his brow.

  Iolanthe stared at his back, a frown marring her brow as she noticed the number of pale silvery scars that slashed across his golden skin. There were so many of them, concentrated on his shoulders but with some lower down, cutting across his waist and even his hips. Her eyes darted to take them all in. More than she could count. Her stomach turned as she tried to comprehend what terror he had lived through to gain so many scars.

  She had a feeling his entire life had been a fight for survival.

  That feeling evoked a fierce and commanding response in her, a deep urge to know what terrible things had befallen him, and awakened a sensation that had her lifting her left hand to her chest and pressing it to the spot above her heart as it went out to him.

  He was a fighter.

  Like her.

  She’d had to fight for everything she had now too.

  She opened her mouth to say something but her voice fled her, driven away by her tumultuous thoughts. What could she say? If she said anything, he would know she had been standing there, staring at him. If she admitted that they were alike, he would take that as permission granted, a sign that she would be his mate.

  He raised the pick and wrapped both hands around it again, returning to his work.

  Iolanthe stood in the middle of the full-width section of the room behind him, her gaze locked on him as he worked between the two walls that intersected the rest of it, dividing half of it into three. She watched him in silence, unsure what to do and unable to stop herself from admiring his physique as he dug his hole, standing knee-deep in it.

  He had a magnificent body. She had thought it the first night they had met in this very place and he had attempted to seduce her by removing his t-shirt. She hadn’t failed to notice that he had chosen not to wear a top since that moment. She had tried to stifle her reaction to the sight of his honed body, but it had been too powerful to contain, and he had seen it.

  He was using his body as a weapon, waging war on her defences.

  She cursed him for that.

  She cursed him for kissing her too.

  She should have been stronger. She should have stopped him.

  But she had wanted his kiss. She had ached with a need to feel his lips pressed against hers so she could know his taste and his touch. Only for a heartbeat. She had only wanted it for a short time, a moment of madness to wash away her fear and give her back control over her own body.

  It hadn’t worked.

  That kiss had made him the master of her body whether she liked it or not. Whenever she laid her eyes on him, she remembered how good his body had felt against hers, how commanding his mouth had been and how intoxicating his taste was. The sight of him working, his muscles flexing and bunching beneath his golden skin, had heat pooling in her belly and her blood burning with a need to run her hands over him.

  He froze with the pick held above his head.

  Slowly turned to face her.

  Eyes of pure gold held hers.

  His black pupils expanded in their centres.

  She felt as if she was being hunted as he stared at her.

  His prey.

  Iolanthe swallowed and took a step back, her boots silent on the dusty stone floor. He lowered the pick and let it fall to the ground as he stepped out of the hole, his chest heaving with each hard breath he drew and his heart a powerful beat in her ears.

  A beat that hers matched.

  She stood transfixed, unable to move as he stared at her, his mesmerising golden eyes holding her immobile.

  He blinked and when his lids lifted, the eerie brightness of his eyes had disappeared and a completely different male stood before her, one far more casual and infinitely less dangerous.

  She had been facing the beast within him.

  Thick silence stretched taut between them. She hated it. It felt too intimate. She had to break it. She had to say something. Anything.

  She cleared her throat and spoke as casually as she could. “What are you doing?”

  He folded his arms across his broad bare chest and smiled, and she had another feeling, this one telling her that he knew what he was doing. He had caught her staring and he could probably scent the desire on her. By folding his arms across his chest, he caused the muscles of his arms to tense and could easily clench the ones of his torso, encouraging every ridge on his six-pack to flex. He was showing off his body, luring her back under his spell. She cursed him, and then herself. She was stronger than this.

  “Looking for an artefact,” he said, his voice a low rumble that rolled over her, stirring unbidden heat in her belly. She doused it with a reminder that he was out to own her and play her too. “What are you doing?”

  She looked beyond him, to the hole he had dug with little finesse right in the middle of the raised section of the room. “I am waiting for you to get out of my way so I can look for an artefact.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off her. “I don’t think we’ll find it here.”

  We?

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  He unfurled his big body and pointed to the ground. She couldn’t see into the hole from where she stood and he didn’t seem inclined to explain. Forcing her to move closer to him? It was a low tactic, one she should have expected from him.

  She rounded the rope that cordoned off the area and took the two steps up to the platform. She hovered at the very edge, over a metre from him, but she still couldn’t see. She shot him a black look that he answered with a smile and shuffled closer, narrowing the distance between him.

  Dangerously close.

  When he looked down into the hole, her gaze disobeyed her commands and leaped to his sweat-slicked chest.

  The blows the demon had dealt were healing and she found it oddly relieving to see the scratches were already little more than dark pink marks. They would soon fade to scars that would add to the ones that already littered his chest. Those were marks of battle with other shifters. The ones on his back were different. They made her think of lashings, and she wanted to growl at the vision of Kyter on his knees, his arms bound, his back slick with blood from a beating.

  His gaze slid towards her and she wasn’t quick enough to stop him from catching her looking. She stared down into the hole, her cheek to him, waiting for him to say something teasing.

  Part of her hoped he wouldn’t, that he would prove her wrong about him and would be a gentleman.

  She grimaced when he shattered that hope.

  “I thought you came back for the artefact? You sure you didn’t come back for another kiss?”

  Iolanthe shunned him and moved closer to the hole, edging around it and placing it between them. It was filled with earth and stone, already several feet deep. There was no underground room here.

  “I do not understand,” she whispered, her violet gaze fixed on the hole to avoid Kyter as he moved a step closer, choosing to stand opposite her.

  His scuffed boots appeared in view and she ignored them, refusing to look at them because she knew that if she did, she would end up following those boots up to his black combat trousers and from there she would end up looking at his body again.

  She shook her head, causing her black hair to brush her bare shoulders as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Panic clawed its way up her throat, tightening it, and she fought it down again. She still had more than a week. She could find the artefact.

  But what if it had been below her original location and someone had discovered it and taken it?

  What if it was lost?

  Would Fernandez believe her?

  Her heart skipped several beats and the feel of Kyter’s gaze on her intensified.

  “Iolanthe?” he murmured, a touch of warmth and concern in his deep voice.

  She shook her head again.

  “I was told I would find something here.” She ground her teeth when her fear coloured her voice, making it
tremble a degree, enough that he would no doubt notice it, if he hadn’t already sensed her emotions in her scent.

  She clenched her fists and pulled herself together. This was a setback. That was all. She would keep looking and she would find the item before her deadline. There was no reason to panic. She had hit dead-ends before and had still found what she was looking for.

  Of course, only money and pride had been on the line those times.

  Not her life.

  She barely resisted leaping down into the hole and taking up the pick. Kyter was right. There was nothing here.

  “The demon I met in the fae town told me to look for knowledge in the shadow of a volcano.” She lifted her gaze to meet Kyter’s, searching his golden eyes in the low light coming in from the gap between the structure and the modern roof above them.

  He frowned and rubbed his stubbly jaw, smudging dirt across it. “The demon told me something different.”

  Iolanthe couldn’t contain her knee-jerk response to that as she shifted closer to him or the way her hoped soared, crushing her fear.

  Kyter’s golden eyes darkened and she silently begged him not to play her, not to make this into a game when he had shouted at her that it wasn’t one. She didn’t dare hope that he could be a gentleman, a decent man, and do the right thing, not even when she desperately wanted him to prove her wrong about him.

  He didn’t shatter her hope this time.

  “The demon told me to look to the mother of the gods in the shadow of a volcano. I came here first to check this spot out but my next stop is Pompeii.”

  Her eyes leaped to the fresco behind him, a painting of two women and a man. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, depicted with her mother, Juno.

  The mother of the gods.

  She slowly edged her gaze towards Kyter, wondering whether he knew that he had just given her the best lead she’d had since starting out on her mission.

  “The Capitolium,” she said.

  Kyter canted his head and frowned, a quizzical look in his golden eyes as he scrubbed the strong line of his jaw. Gods, he was handsome. She shook off that thought and focused on her mission, unwilling to let him cloud her mind now that she felt as if she was closing in on the item.

  “Pompeii. The Capitolium there.”

  He smiled. “It sounds made up.”

  Iolanthe closed her eyes and prayed for strength. He was handsome, but he was severely in need of some history lessons. When she opened her eyes again, he had folded his arms across his chest and was glaring at her, his sensual lips flattened into a hard line and his sandy eyebrows meeting low above his fierce golden gaze. She supposed she hadn’t exactly been subtle in her response to what he had said. He had no doubt detected her disappointment.

  “There is a temple in Pompeii, but it is often listed as Jupiter’s temple. It was actually dedicated to the Capitoline Triad.” She stooped and caught the handle of her pick, and straightened.

  The wooden handle was rough beneath her fingers and she frowned down at it. There were grooves in the shaft. Scratches. She raised an eyebrow at Kyter. He shrugged, no shred of apology in his eyes. He had scent marked her pick?

  She held his gaze as she teleported it back to her bolthole. As an elf, she possessed the ability to teleport anything she owned to and from any location. It made travelling light a lot easier, and had often been a lifesaver during the more dangerous jobs. She could teleport any bulky equipment back to her bolthole if she had to swim underwater or squeeze through narrow spaces, and then call it back to her when she needed it.

  “The Capitoline Triad were three supreme deities. Jupiter, the father of the gods, Juno, the mother of the gods, and Minerva, his daughter and the goddess of wisdom.”

  Kyter’s eyebrows rose. “So… the Jupiter guy is like Zeus?”

  She nodded. “I have to go to Pompeii.”

  She focused on the one location she could remember in the ancient site and Kyter was suddenly before her, his large hand clamping down on her wrist. She twisted her arm in an attempt to break free of his hold but he only tightened his grip.

  “Release me.” She looked from her arm to his face and he shook his head.

  “I can’t do that.” The steely edge to his eyes warned that he was serious. He meant to stop her from reaching Pompeii first and finding the artefact.

  She hissed, her fangs sharpening and ears flaring back against the sides of her head, and prepared to call her armour and her blade.

  Kyter’s handsome face softened and he caught her off guard by raising his free hand and smoothing his palm across her cheek.

  “As much as I love it when you kick my arse, I don’t want a rematch. I want to help you.” His eyes danced between hers, his sandy eyebrows furrowing above them as he moved closer, his hand settling against her face, softly cupping her cheek.

  He brushed his thumb across her skin and her breath hitched. She couldn’t believe him. He was casting another spell on her, attempting to lure her into surrendering to him. She shook her head and he smiled, this one laced with sorrow that tugged at her heart and begged her to give him a chance. Why? He only wanted to hurt her by tricking her into finding the artefact and giving it to him. Didn’t he?

  “Iolanthe,” he murmured and her name had never sounded more beautiful than it did issuing from his lips as his eyes held hers, the softness in them enchanting her. “We got off on the wrong foot… and I’m sorry I was a dick. You can trust me. We can work together.”

  She wanted to accept that honest apology and believe him, but the poisonous dark voice in the back of her mind whispered that she couldn’t trust him and another part of her, a warmer and softer part deep in her heart, said that she couldn’t take him up on his offer because he would end up dragged into her mess.

  Kyter was strong and capable, a powerful warrior, but Fernandez was stronger, and his assassins were legendary.

  She lowered her gaze away from Kyter’s, unable to bear the thought of hurting him let alone seeing it in his eyes when she spoke.

  “You mean to betray me.” She swallowed when his hand fell from her face and his other one tensed against her wrist. “You will take the artefact and I need it.”

  He was silent for too long, unmoving, and she almost crumbled and looked at him.

  “I won’t take it.” Those words leaving his lips made her head snap up and her eyes lock with his. They were steady and still soft, filled with honesty. She couldn’t detect any trace of a lie in his scent. “I just need to borrow it.”

  Her eyebrows dipped low. “Borrow it?”

  He nodded. “I don’t need the artefact to sell it to someone. I need it to find the location of the demon it summons.”

  Her heart set off at a pace. Barafnir?

  “What do you want with the demon?” She couldn’t hold that question back.

  Kyter didn’t look like the sort of man who wanted to summon a dangerous demon for his own profit or to use it against another, as Fernandez most likely did. At least, she hoped he wasn’t that sort of man.

  He smiled and there was only sorrow in it again, pain that laced his earthy masculine scent and echoed in his eyes. He released her wrist and turned away from her, as if he didn’t want her to see him when he told her of his reason.

  His long fingers ploughed through his sandy hair, tousling the longer lengths on top, and then tensed against the back of his head. His broad shoulders heaved on a sigh.

  “The demon it summons… it… he… he attacked my pride in the Amazon.” Kyter’s fingers dug into the nape of his neck as he lowered his head and his voice turned husky and dark, filled with anger and agony, grief that was still so raw that she could feel it in him. “He killed my mother.”

  His bare shoulders tensed, looked as if they might shake, and then he jerked his head up and let his arm fall to his side, all of the pain she had felt in him evaporating, replaced by cold fury.

  “I mean to kill the bastard.”

  Iolanthe stared at the back of his head,
her heart torn in two, ripped between her need of the item and his. His cause was noble. Beautiful. No wonder this wasn’t a game to him. He wanted to avenge his pride and his mother. He needed it with a ferocity that she could feel in him. But if she didn’t deliver the item in seven days, she was in trouble, and it wasn’t the sort that anyone could save her from. Not this time.

  She couldn’t surrender her quest for the artefact, and she knew he couldn’t either. Their paths would keep crossing and eventually Fernandez would send another to check on her and he would discover what Kyter was to her, and she to him. There was only one way of protecting Kyter now, ensuring he didn’t become entangled in her problem.

  She had to work with him. He was right and they would be quicker to locate the item if they worked together, and she had to admit that sometimes two heads were better than one. He had been given a different clue. Without him, she wouldn’t have figured out the location of the item or possibly the next clue.

  If they worked together, there was a chance they could find the item or the next clue in this area before someone came to check on her. They could evade Fernandez’s new spy by discovering it and moving on before he could arrive. Kyter could summon the demon and then she would take the item to Fernandez. If they could stay one step ahead of the spy, it might work. Fernandez would never know what happened. He would receive the artefact. Kyter would have his vengeance.

  She would live to see another day.

  Kyter slowly turned to face her, his stunning eyes still laced with pain and anger, and she felt an overwhelming urge to offer him comfort and hope.

  “If you are lying to me, I will kill you.” She offered her hand to him.

  He gave her a lopsided smile and the pain and anger in his eyes eased, just as she had wanted. “So you keep saying… but I’m not dead yet.”

  He slipped his hand into hers. His skin was warm and a little rough, calloused from working with the pick, but she liked his heat and how gently he held her, his thumb gently gliding along the length of hers, teasing her and sending a shiver dancing up her arm.

  “I will teleport us to Pompeii.” She regretted offering it the second he released her, grabbed his discarded black tank off the top of his backpack where it leaned against the wall opposite her, and dried himself off with it, taking his time with his chest and stomach, rubbing the fabric over his honed muscles.