Hunter reluctantly released her when she pushed hard against his arms, but he stayed close as she carefully picked up Paul’s right hand and gave it a gentle squeeze between her own.
“So I take it, it really wasn’t a scratch?” Paul said more jovially than a man waking up from surgery should have been capable of, his gaze weakly sweeping the room.
Kylie fought hard to keep the tears that were threatening to well up at bay. The last thing she wanted to do was to make Paul worry about her distress.
“When is it ever?” Kylie scolded, forcing a tiny smile. “That bitch nicked your liver. Needless to say, you’re going to be in here a while.”
“Where are we?” Paul asked, wincing as he tried to shift his legs. “This room doesn’t look like any of the patient rooms in Riverford Regional or St. Mary’s.”
“It’s the jaguar clan’s private clinic,” Hunter interjected. “None of the humans even know it exists. I’m sure you, of all people, understand the need for that level of discretion in this case.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed. “Given the eyeful I got when I woke up, I think introductions are long overdue.”
Without batting an eye, Hunter offered Paul his hand. “Hunter Rivera.”
She had no idea how the bastard could handle everything so calmly all the time.
“Paul Moore. I was conscious long enough to know it was you and your people who saved my daughter from that lioness. I can’t thank you enough. However, forgive me if I’m just a little bit concerned about you two starting something again given the circumstances.”
Kylie winced. She heard Paul’s chastisement loud and clear even if Hunter didn’t. What she had just allowed to happen was incredibly dumb—no, it was actually incredibly cruel to both of them. It was just as she’d told Hunter earlier. It was simply too dangerous to stay in Riverford longer than was absolutely necessary. She knew it, and Paul knew it.
“I will protect her.”
Kylie turned her head to look at Hunter so sharply that her neck cracked. What the hell was he saying?
But Hunter wasn’t looking at her. He was looking down at Paul with a look of challenge in his eyes. Paul met his gaze with an unconscious upward lift of his chin.
An eternity later, her adoptive father slowly nodded. “As long as you truly mean it, and it’s what Kylie wants, then I won’t say another word about it.”
Kylie opened her mouth, but no sound emerged as she was inundated with a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. She fisted her hands tightly at her sides and tried again, “Paul, I—”
“Kylie,” Paul cut in gently. “It’s not me you should be talking to right now. As you can see, I’m fine now, if rather achy and sleepy. Go take care of what needs to be taken care of. You know where to find me afterwards.”
“I’ll call the doctor for you, Mr. Moore,” Hunter said, wrapping a deliberate arm tightly around Kylie’s waist. “I’ll also make sure Kylie gets some rest.”
Too conflicted to argue, Kylie merely said goodbye to Paul and allowed Hunter to guide her out of the room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I’m curious,” Hunter said as he slowly ran a hand soothingly through her hair. “How is it that a Polyshifter can choose which animal to shift into? Do you just think “jaguar” or “tiger” with the desire to shift?”
They were currently lying intertwined on top of the comforter of a bed located in one of the spare rooms on the top floor of the clinic that the hospital provided for the staff. Kylie’s head was pillowed on his chest.
She had balked at first when she had walked into the room and had seen the bed—she had been expecting a waiting room or staff break room of some sort—but after some gentle coaxing, she had given in to the desire to be held by him again. She knew she could trust him when he had said that nothing would happen in that room that she didn’t one hundred and ten percent want to happen.
Kylie sighed wearily. “I wish it was that easy. Then this whole nightmarish day could have been avoided. No, the trigger is either shifter blood or…” She wrinkled her nose. “…territorial markings. It has to come in contact with my skin. Provided I inherited the right shifter genes, it triggers a change in which animal soul becomes dominant. I was in your territory the night my shifter side was awakened. That’s why my first shift was into a jaguar. Unless you have a habit of bleeding all over the place, as embarrassing as it sounds, I must have touched some of your territorial markings when that monster tossed me onto the ground.”
“Your hands were once covered with the blood of a human,” Hunter pointed out. “Why didn’t you revert back into a human?”
“Changing into a pure human is different. Only the saliva of a human can trigger a shift that represses all of my animal souls. My father and Paul thought it might be because of a particular enzyme within a human’s saliva that negated whatever biological process that allowed us to shift to begin with.”
“Polyshifters are more mysterious than I ever imagined,” Hunter said.
“We can’t all be lion clan spies,” Kylie quipped and then instantly regretted it. What the hell was wrong with her?
Hunter’s hand stilled. “You know I feel horrible about immediately thinking that about you, right?” he asked quietly.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re angry,” he stated.
“Not at you—at least not anymore. That you rejected me so quickly hurt, yes, but that was mostly my fault. Given what a lot of Polyshifters have done to so many shifter clans on behalf of the lions—well, it would have been stupid for you not to be suspicious. I can pretty up my part in the whole mess by saying I was just afraid, that we’d only known each other for a couple days, but while those things are true, it’s also true that I did deceive you by pretending not to know anything about shifters at all. It was awfully unfair of me to expect any other reaction from you when I wasn’t even being completely truthful.”
Hunter lifted her chin up with a couple of fingers until her eyes met his. “I don’t want you to be angry at yourself, either,” he said firmly. “We both could have handled everything a thousand times better, so let’s just leave it at that.”
He bent his head down and brushed his lips lightly against hers. “Can we start over?”
There were a thousand reasons why she should get up from that bed and walk away before it was too late. She was bad news. As a Polyshifter, she would always be bad news, a curse to everyone who dared get close to her. Maybe Hunter would hate her for a little while, but that was better than him dying because someone was after her.
“I will help you Kylie,” Hunter said gruffly, hugging her body more securely against him. “Maxim, Paul, Karen, and Mitch—we’ll all help you. You don’t have fight those bastards alone.”
To her horror, Kylie felt her eyes begin to well up with tears. It was as though Hunter’s words had poked at a ball of hurt she hadn’t realized had been festering deep in the bowels of her soul.
She immediately buried her face into his t-shirt. Damned if she would let him see her fall apart.
Hunter tightened his arms around her and rolled them over until his body lay atop hers. Kylie kept her eyes scrunched shut even as she clutched at his shoulders almost desperately. His weight felt good, making her insides start to tingle with warmth and something much more exciting. The urge to cry began to slowly ease as her cheeks began to grow warmer.
He kissed her forehead tenderly, and Kylie’s eyes finally opened. His eyes glittered with strength as well as what she imagined was the wild spark of his jaguar soul.
She slowly opened her legs until Hunter’s body naturally settled between them.
“I want you,” she admitted.
It was said in a barely audible whisper, but there was no doubt that Hunter’s keen jaguar ears heard her loud and clear.
His eyes seemed to flash with an inner light, and then he was devouring her mouth, his tongue thrusting aggressively into her mouth and finding hers ready to
join its pleasurable dance.
Kylie’s knees tightened around his waist as Hunter began a slow, hard grind against her groin. If he didn’t slow down, her panties would be drenched before they even got naked. She tugged at his shirt insistently until he took the hint and pulled himself away from her lips long enough for her to pull it over his head, followed almost immediately by her blouse and bra.
With a mischievous grin, Hunter dipped his head and bit down lightly on one very erect and sensitive nipple, making her involuntarily cry out, before taking it into his mouth and sucking hard. Kylie arched her back and grasped a handful of his hair, tugging at the dark locks in time to his licking and sucking.
Needing something more, she searched blindly for his hand and once found, brought it up to her thus-far-neglected breast. Still guiding his hand, she teasingly slid his fingers slowly over that aching nipple once, then back again before she released him. Hunter slid his thumb over the nub several times, just as slowly, maddeningly as she had shown him, before he abruptly pinched it hard.
“Hunter!”
Kylie bucked her hips and moaned, “Pants off, now! I want to feel your sexy skin sliding against my entire body…”
She only got as far as unbuttoning her jeans before they and her panties were whisked down her legs at the same time faster than she could blink. His own jeans and boxers soon joined hers over the side of the bed.
Then Hunter’s body was once again stretched over hers, grinding her down into the mattress as he thrust his hardness against her aching pussy until she moaned.
When his lips once again found hers, Kylie nipped at his bottom lip hard, pleased when a faint, coppery taste flooded her tongue as she licked it. Within moments, Hunter’s masculine scent changed to something achingly more familiar and heady.
Hunter pulled away with a gasp. “Kylie you—!” he sputtered, his nostrils flaring several times and the hazel in his eyes becoming more prominent. “You didn’t have to do that. It doesn’t matter if you’re human, a cougar or a jaguar or a bear to me.”
“But it does matter,” she insisted. “If we do this, if I ultimately decide to stay here in Riverford, then it will be as a jaguar, a member of your clan. What better time to make the change than now?”
Kylie then leaned forward and pressed her nose into his neck and inhaled deeply. “Besides, smelling you like this really turns me on,” she said with a wicked grin.
The startled look on Hunter’s face quickly turned to something much more lustful. “Then in that case—” He reached down and inserted two of his fingers into her wet passage in one hard thrust, making her squeak and dig her nails into his large, rock-hard biceps. “Let’s see if I can’t stoke the fires a bit higher.”
He hooked his fingers as he began to thrust them in and out, rubbing that spot that never failed to drive her wild while his thumb massaged rough circles over her clit. He then bent down to claim her lips again, swallowing her moans as though he needed them to breathe.
Already on the brink of climax, Kylie reached down to encircle his already leaking cock and gave it a few, aggressive strokes until it was Hunter’s turn to moan.
“I want to feel your cock deep inside me,” Kylie pleaded against Hunter’s swollen lips.
That delicious fullness pounding into her was something she never thought she would ever feel again, and now that the experience was miraculously within her reach again, she felt as if she would die if she had to wait even just one more minute.
Hunter quickly removed his fingers and positioned himself at her opening. Kylie’s breath caught in a split-second of agonizing anticipation before Hunter filled her up to the hilt with a single, powerful thrust. Her muscles clenched around his thick, silky member as she cried out. God, she was already so close, and he hadn’t even started to move yet!
Kylie felt her knees being pushed up, opening her up even wider to receive each bone-jarring thrust. Hunter was fucking her like it was the last time, thrusting deeply and more aggressively—dominantly—than he had the previous night. Maybe he really thought it might be. She certainly hadn’t been forthcoming on any promises.
But now was certainly not the time to make such an important decision, not when one of the most gorgeous guys on the planet was buried balls deep into her trying his damndest to screw her into the first floor.
Then the pressure building in her groin exploded, and Kylie lost all ability to think at all. She might have screamed, but then her whole world had condensed down to the area between her legs and the pleasurable spasms centered therein. Then a flood of warmth coated her insides, and Hunter groaned into her mouth, thrusting hard and deep a couple more times before collapsing heavily onto her trembling body.
Kylie immediately wrapped her arms around his back and began to kiss every bit of damp skin she could reach on his chest and neck, still caught up in the frenzy her climax had incited. In contrast, Hunter was almost lazily thrusting his still-hard cock shallowly into her as though teasing her, his hips moving in a sort of slow circle.
It wasn’t long before she felt his soft lips cover her mouth again, and Hunter spent the next few minutes lovingly kissing her breathless before finally pulling out of her and rolling onto his back, pulling her with him. Kylie laid her head onto his chest and closed her eyes, intent on enjoying the post-climax heaviness in her limbs as well has Hunter’s intoxicating scent.
Hunter lightly ran his fingertips along her back, and if Kylie had been a housecat rather than a jaguar, she imagined she would have been purring up a storm.
“So now that you’ve spilled all your secrets, it’s only fair that I return the favor.”
Kylie’s heart skipped a beat as she raised her head slightly to look up at him. “Why does that sound so ominous?”
His eyes had taken on a solemn tint. “You have good instincts.”
She stiffened. “It has something to do with the brother that injured wolf shifter mentioned before he passed out, doesn’t it?”
Kylie was ashamed that in all the excitement of the day, she had forgotten completely about him.
Hunter sighed. “And apparently also a good memory. You see, a year ago, Ryder—”
Her phone’s ringtone suddenly sounded loudly from somewhere below the bed, making Kylie jump and Hunter curse.
“I’d better get it,” she said, reluctantly untangling herself from Hunter’s warmth with an apologetic smile. “It might be Karen. I was supposed to call her when dad woke up.”
“Oh my God, Kylie, where have you been?” her friend, Tara, cried before she could even finish saying hello.
For a split-second, Kylie was thrown a bit off balance. The last person she had been expecting was her friend.
However, before she could rattle off an excuse for her sudden absence, Tara had already started talking again.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for forever! Kylie, something terrible has happened to Molly!”
—
TEMPTED BY THE JAGUAR #4: INFILTRATION
The final installment to the first arc of the Riverford Shifters series. After receiving one huge shock after another, Hunter and Kylie are determined to mount a rescue within the heart of one of the lion shifter clan’s secret facilities, but will even the might of several of Riverford’s shifter clans backing them be enough, especially when they’re no longer sure who they can really trust?
Releases on April 30, 2015
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cristina Rayne is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who lives in West Texas with her crazy cat and about a dozen bookcases full of fantasy worlds and steamy romances. She has a degree in Computer Science which totally qualifies her to write romances. As Fantasy is her first love, she feels if she can inject a little love into the fantastical, along with a few steamy scenes, then all the better. She is also the author of the Claimed by the Elven King and Erotic Tales from the Vampire Underground series.
Tempted by the Jaguar #3: Ramification (Riverford Shifters) Page 7