Jungle Fever

by Celeste Anwar

  God, it was a wonder that she could even move. She knew that when she´d snuggled into Remy last night, his scent had been strong, and he´d been resting, so it made sense that his scent would be enhanced in the heat of the day, even if he wasn´t feeling the effects of the weather like she was. That counted for all three of them. The more she thought about it, the more she believed. It was the only thing that made sense, she´d never felt so weak in her life; she was a strong woman, used to a hard and physical life, it was crazy that she would just change overnight. Their pheromones cleared up some of her worries though.

  Nature tended to come out on top of the best of human intentions.

  “Come on, there´s a small pool of water ahead, you can wash up and have something to drink.” Remy hoisted her to her feet. She clung weakly to him for a second, then shook herself, Yvonne Jackson relied on no-one!

  She stood up, smiled breezily and said, “Lead the way!”

  When she saw the pool, she almost cried in relief, she knelt down and ducked her head in the water, she drank some of it at the same time. It was lovely and fresh, she wished that she could bathe in it, but knew that it was important that she not wash away any of the remaining chemical pheromone. She sighed in regret, and they continued on their journey through the jungle.

  Hours later, as they lost the light in the sky, the men decided to make camp. Patches of sky glimmering through the thick canopy had begun to darken with impending twilight, and according to Rafael there was still a way to go.

  Traveling through dense jungle vegetation was no picnic in the park.

  They settled near a small brook, and she watched enviously as Remy and Rafael waded in and washed themselves down. She felt hot and sticky, and she longed to jump in and feel clean too, but she knew that she couldn´t, not yet at least. She´d washed her face, arms, and the back of her neck and hair, so she felt a little better, and she knew that as the temperature dropped she wouldn´t feel so sticky.

  Sitting with Armando in the little area they´d declared as their own, they rested in silence. The quiet wasn´t an uncomfortable one. She wanted to talk to him about his parents, but wasn´t sure how to bring it up or if he’d be comfortable with sharing with her. She couldn´t help but feel sad for that little boy who had lost his parents and had scarred himself forever in the process.

  Hesitant, she swallowed a lump in her throat. “My mother abandoned me when I was a baby,” she confided in him. “I never met her. I spent the majority of my childhood alternatively hating her for leaving me, then making excuses for her when I wanted to believe she´d come back to me. I know they say that it´s better to love and lost, but I don´t always think that´s the case, do you?”

  “No. Did she leave you with family?”

  “She left me at an orphanage, the typical dustbin baby. When I was thirteen, I was sent to a foster family that lived on a farm. They´ve been my family ever since. My dad, David, taught me how to hunt and track. He used to be a bounty hunter, had retired when they got me, that´s how I got into the trade. I suppose that good things do come to those who wait. I´d waited bloody long enough for a nice family. All the crap I went through, all the abuse and anger.”

  She shrugged. “Did it feel better after you´d killed them?” she asked, referring to the men from the cartel who had shot his parents down in cold blood.

  “No, they were still dead. It didn´t bring them back, I just got my satisfaction from knowing that they couldn´t orphan another little boy.”

  He turned towards her slightly. “But then, there are so many more cartels in South America that will take over their territory, and the whole thing will start over again.”

  He laughed coldly. “It´s a vicious circle. But then anything to do with drugs always is. You know, I´ll never forget my parents, I can still see my mama, I can probably remember more about them than many people, who have lost their parents at my age now. I was lucky that my tios took me in. They´re like a second set of parents, plus I had Rafe who has been like a brother to me. I was, I suppose, one of the lucky ones. Didn´t feel like that, at the time though.”

  “Never does. A girl at the same orphanage as me was raped by one of the men in her foster family. I was lucky too, that never happened to me. Strange thing to feel lucky about, isn´t it?”

  He nodded. “We should get some sleep while we can. You were pretty tired today. You need to rest.”

  “Shouldn´t we light a fire? What about snakes and rats and bugs?”

  “You´re going to sleep surrounded by three cats, what kind of rat or snake is going to go into a camp with the three of us here? Pretty dumb ones at any rate, don´t worry.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You´re safe with us.”

  She nodded, pressed into him slightly, then watched as Rafe and Remy came out of the small brook, and almost sighed in pleasure at the sight of their glistening bodies. Water droplets trickled down their hard bodies.

  God, they were gorgeous and so unaware of their masculine beauty. It seemed incredible to her that they weren´t all assholes, believing that they were God´s gift to womankind. They were just genuine guys; when really their looks were enough to make any woman stop in the street, stare and then sigh over what she could never have. It seemed incredible to Yvonne that they even wanted her at all, sure the pheromone helped, but they were strong and had been able to resist the pull all day when the chemical was at full strength.

  That suggested to her that they wanted her, not just an easy or quick fuck, but her.

  Especially yesterday, when she´d been the biggest bitch in the jungle, because she´d been trying to trap them and send them back to that hell. Maybe she was looking deeper into it than necessary, but she couldn´t help but feel as though they were attracted to her. She started to lie down, then nuzzled into Armando, turned into his arms and pressed their bodies to the floor. She draped herself over his chest, and cuddled into him. Remy lay down on her other side. She shivered in pleasure at lying between them again. Remy nestled against her, getting comfortable, and Rafe stood guard over them, she fell asleep knowing that she was safe and secure in their care.

  Chapter Eight

  Sighing in relief, Yvonne washed the back of her neck and dunked her head into the small brook beside the camp they´d settled into last night. She then proceeded to scrub her face and rubbed her scalp to try to clean her hair as well as could be done given her surroundings. She’d be lucky if she ever got all the tangles out of her long, thick tresses when she finally did get out of this place.

  Maybe she’d just cut it all off and start over with something short and cute. It’d been a long time since she’d had something easier to manage. Tyrell had always liked her hair long—most men did, which was why she’d kept it up. But it was a bitch to maintain and keep tame. The humidity made it frizz like a lion’s mane.

  Rinsing the backs of her wrists and then walking into the water, she smiled in pleasure as she felt not only a little cleaner but fresher and more rejuvenated than the day before. Her muscles no longer ached like they had the previous day.

  Some soreness from sleeping on the floor remained in her back and hips, but she was back to peak fitness. It was odd that it had taken only a small amount of exercise to wear her out, but likely that was a lack of proper nutrition and water.

  Yvonne was very fit—she had to be in this business. She trained daily, had to keep in peak physical condition for her job. It was ridiculous really. She wasn´t a laze about. She worked damned hard to keep herself not only trim and slim, but strong and prepared for any eventuality--be it a fight with a two hundred pound biker, or a martial arts expert. She shouldn´t have felt so exhausted after so little output, but she could only believe that it was the humidity that had caused her to overtire.

  The heat was manageable, just barely, but the humidity was unbearable. Think having a shower, without the shower head, taps, and tap water! She wished that she could bathe herself more, cleanse away the dirt from the day before, but the ph
eromone was too important to their plan to just wash it all away in the brook.

  The men had let her come to the brook by herself, if they really looked then they could see her, but she was partially hidden from view by foliage, even more so if she went further downstream. It showed that they were starting to trust her, which was something.

  She had to admit that she didn´t like them thinking badly of her. She didn´t want them to think of her as an angel, because she sure as hell wasn´t one of them, but she wasn´t the she-devil they´d tried to make her out to be either. She wasn´t perfect, who was? But she liked to believe that she was a good person. She had a lot of friends, was well-liked by most people and her staff too.

  Although she wasn´t obsessed about being liked or approved of, she wanted them to like her. It was like being at school and suffering agonies over your first crush, even if you knew that you had not a chance in hell of scoring a date with him, it eased the anguish if he liked you slightly, considered you a friend. You could swab your wounds with that and make the best of a bad situation.

  That was how she felt. She wanted them, needed them to like her. She felt like a lovelorn teenager, pathetic really, but the emotions they inspired in her, made her feel that way. She couldn´t help it.

  She remembered craving approval with her earliest of foster families, wanting to please them and make them happy, but that desire had soon gone, eventually turning to a craving for attention of any kind. She´d been like that for so long, it seemed odd for her to want their approval, a new experience.

  Yvonne waded closer to shore. At the camp, she could hear their muffled voices and knew that they were discussing something, but she wasn´t sure what. She tried to keep hidden and thought that she succeeded.

  Sloshing slightly through the water, she winced at every sound she made. But there were too many other noises in the jungle for them to hear that slight sound above all the others. She knew that their cat´s ears would be perked up for animal movement rather than human movement. She knew and they knew that she couldn´t outrun them--she wouldn´t want to anyway, but they didn´t know that, they might not trust her one hundred percent, but they had to know that she wasn’t stupid enough to run away again.

  She wanted and needed to help. Yvonne truly meant what she’d said, when she said that she didn´t approve of the government facility on the island, and that she wanted them to escape it. Her conscience dictated that she must do this.

  Approaching the bank, she crouched down low and strained her ears for their voices. She heard them almost immediately. It wasn´t very clear, her hearing wasn´t as acute as theirs. With their supernatural abilities, they might have been able to distinguish between birdsong, the rustle of leaves and the wind rippling against the water, but she couldn´t. She could hear the majority of their words though, she just had to strain to hear them.

  “Didn´t you hear that damned cat last night? It was stalking us the whole fucking night,” Armando said loudly.

  She could just see Armando´s frown in her mind´s eye. Suppressing a grin, she concentrated on Rafe´s reply.

  “I heard something, didn´t think it was a cat though, could have been in human form. I didn´t scent his cat and couldn’t find a trail this morning. Mighta been your paranoia overworking.”

  “Nah, if something´s going to prowl around at night, it´s going to be cat. But you´re right, I didn´t smell it either. Wonder why he didn´t make himself known to us? That´s more worrying than being stalked, I´m used to being stalked, it´s their fucking reaction to being caught that´s the pisser. They always act shocked, when you catch them, and toujours, always, with some bullshit excuse. Either that, or they try to claw your throat out,” Remy complained.

  “Well they could be friend and not foe. There´s no reason to think of the guy as an enemy though, if he controlled himself enough when Yvonne was asleep then I can´t foresee there being a problem with him. If he´d been fucked in the head from the virus, he´d have jumped into the camp, attacked us instantly, then would´ve shifted and raped her. But he didn´t, so either he´s just curious and looking, or he wants her and is working out a plan. If he´s here though, then that means that there may be more with him. If we can convince them to help us, then we can all get off this fucking island,” Armando told them both.

  “If we use the pheromone then we have to risk putting Yvonne in danger, which I don´t want to do, but I don´t think there is any other way to proceed. Using the pheromone is the only way I can think of to gather the cats, if there aren´t so many of them, then it´s OK, we can protect her. But if we come across a fucking mini army of the bastards, then we´re in the shit,” Remy said. “I don´t want to endanger her life to save our fucking necks. We can survive in the jungle, even if we get caught we can always try run off again, but Yvonne can´t. She can´t heal quick enough either, we´ve got to keep her safe, I just don´t know how to do it.”

  “Maybe the cat can help us, you never know he may be a valuable ally, let´s look on the positive side, we´re damned strong cats, and can beat the majority of the weaker ones. If we fight together, then we´ll definitely be able to protect her. We´re one of the strongest packs on the island, there´s no reason to think we can´t handle the others. Of course, we can. She´ll be safe with us, even if we do have to use the pheromone,” Rafe answered.

  “Not all of the cats have gone crazy, Remy, some are like us: our bodies may have been altered but our minds haven´t. We´re still the same guys as before, with just a little cat thrown in. There´s nothing that says we won´t come across a pack, and that we won´t be able to discuss our escape plans with them, calmly and rationally. Because we´re going to need some input from whoever is willing to join with us. Our plan is too basic to work yet, and it all depends on the amount of guards the Project has protecting the island, we´re super soldiers, not superman. It´s vital how we take the ship. We have to do it so that no one thinks oddly of a ship going off, if it looks suspicious then we´re fucked, they´ll radio in, discover we´re the cats they´re trying to contain, and boom, we´re dead. Until I get nearer to the port, I can´t make any concrete plans either. We need to speed up, so that I can start planning,” Armando told them both.

  “No matter how much, I would like to walk into a pack´s territory and just sit down and start talking, you know that´s never going to happen. We thrive on weakness, if we walk in there as humans, they´ll rip us to shreds, they´ll only respond to the strength of the cat, if we fight, but not to kill, and we become the dominant pack, then not only will they have to listen to us, but they´ll probably help us as well. I can´t help think that this is the best way to handle the situation, we go in, leave Yvonne behind, somewhere safe, then persuade the other cats to listen. If we use the pheromone, it´s just going to fuck everyone up, even strong cats aren´t going to be able to behave rationally when they sniff at her. We´re begging for trouble if we use it,” Rafe said.

  “Yeah, I agree with Rafe,” Remy answered. “I don´t want her in any danger at all. I don´t relish the thought of leaving her in the fucking jungle whilst we´re fighting, but rather that, than have her in the center of the fight. There would be no way in fuck we could manage that. What if we were outnumbered two to one? If we were alone, then there would be six cats, we´d be fighting two each. If Yvonne was there, we´d be fighting one each and watching as the others attacked her! No fucking way...”

  Quirking her eyebrows at their topic of conversation, Yvonne couldn´t help but feel warmed at their concern for her. She knew that they would worry about anybody in her situation, but that didn´t matter, she was glad they were thinking of her safety. She knew what she was going to be putting herself through, had already accepted it as a necessity for their escape.

  If they wanted to change the plan, then she couldn´t really argue. If she could help, she would. She didn´t have a problem with putting herself in danger. Strangely enough, she knew that they would protect her even if the odds were against them.

  Hearing foots
teps through the brush, she quickly dunked her head, and scrubbed at her face again. She murmured loudly enough for them to hear, “I´m almost done,” without turning around.

  She jolted slightly when she felt one of them place a hand on her shoulder. She flickered her eyes to the side, trying to see who it was in the corner of her eye, but she couldn´t see well enough past the thickness of her hair to judge.

  Yvonne frowned slightly, as they had yet to say something, which was unlike all of them, including Armando. Tilting her head, she tried to scream but was caught short when a strange man covered her mouth with his hand.

  He hauled her up from the water, his hands and arms like a cage of iron. Yvonne struggled in his arms, but he held her too strongly for her to even think it was possible to escape from him.

  Splashing at the water, she kicked her feet out, not only to steady herself as she felt herself standing straighter, but to make as much noise as possible. Even though she knew that the guys probably wouldn´t suspect anything amiss, since she’d been making noise for the past half an hour, she still had to try.

  When she was steady, the man dragged her along. Yvonne tried to bite at his fingers. Having missed the first time, she tried a second time, she heard his grunt of pain, felt his hand lower slightly, but she only a managed a little yelp before his hand returned to cover her mouth, this time much harder and more painful.

  Suddenly the beginning of their conversation came back to her. They’d heard someone in the jungle with them.

  This guy had to be another cat. He was way too strong for her to fight. What was with that? She was damned sick and tired of not being able to fight any of the men in this frigging jungle. Helplessness and vulnerability didn’t sit well with her. She was used to her fighting techniques being equal to any man, not falling flat on her face at the first hurdle. It really ticked her off.