Tempted by the Jaguar #2: Revelation (Riverford Shifters)

by Cristina Rayne

  TEMPTED BY THE JAGUAR #2: REVELATION

  A Riverford Shifters Serial

  CRISTINA RAYNE

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Cristina Rayne

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ALSO BY CRISTINA RAYNE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kylie sat shaking on the floor of an unfamiliar shower, her eyes squeezed shut as she hugged her knees tightly to her chest. Already, the ice streams cascading down her body were beginning to feel not quite so biting and painful and still the fires of arousal within her core burned just as hotly as before she had drenched herself in this ice shower.

  How long had she been forcing this frigid hell on herself? Thirty minutes? An hour? However long, it was definitely long past the time to admit defeat. Groaning in frustration, Kylie released her knees and moved to shut the water off. Just that small action made the burning within her increase.

  She collapsed back onto her butt and wrapped her arms around herself, dripping wet and shivering. What the hell was she going to do now? For one desperate moment, she considered trying masturbation again even though doing so earlier had not brought her any relief but only seemed to stoke the flames within her higher. Did she dare chance another attempt? Maybe if she massaged herself longer this time…

  A jaguar’s heat cycle wasn’t exactly something she’d ever studied, and even if she had, there were no guarantees that a jaguar shifter would follow the same patterns. Kylie couldn’t believe that every jaguar female had to endure this hell every heat cycle. Just this first time was enough to nearly drive her mad. There had to be a way to end this other than doing the deed because there was no way she would be able to handle this torturous arousal for another hour, much less for the full twelve days.

  Kylie hugged herself more tightly as a very uncomfortable realization suddenly occurred to her. Yes—at this point, she had very few viable choices. She could try masturbating again with the very big, very likely risk of just making things worse. She could call Hunter and beg him to come back and finish what they had started. It was something that should really be a last resort no matter how much her body was screaming for it. Even if they were safe about it, having sex with a guy she had known for only a couple of days would be just plain stupid.

  However, if she was being completely honest with herself, it was not only the choice she most needed but the choice she most wanted. After all, he did say that he would try to find a female jaguar shifter to come help her, but for all she knew, it could take hours.

  …or she could just get over the embarrassment of the whole situation and call Paul to send over her mother’s old bracelet, a choice that could very well be the riskiest of them all.

  “To hell with it,” she muttered. “I’m screwed no matter what I do.”

  She climbed unsteadily to her feet and slowly, carefully, rung out her hair and stepped out of the shower, trying not to allow the inside of her thighs to rub together. Her eyes flickered briefly to the jeans and panties lying crumbled on the small bath rug, and she scowled. There was no way in hell that she would be able to put them back on in her condition, and as far as she knew, the only other items of clothing in the apartment were the blouse Hunter had ripped from her body and her equally ruined bra.

  A wave of heat washed through her body as her mind filled with the memory of Hunter’s hands and tongue caressing her flesh, making her shudder and curse harshly as she hastily put a halt to that line of thinking. Clothes—yes, she needed to concentrate on solving that conundrum…

  Kylie doubted any of her things had been delivered yet, which meant no towels either. She vaguely recalled stumbling past the outline of a couch in the darkness as she searched frantically for the bathroom without bothering to find a light switch until she had located the desired room.

  A couch pointed towards this apartment being already furnished, so there was a slim chance Hunter or someone had already prepared the bed for her. She was really starting to feel the chill in the air and needed to get dry. Sheets or even her ruined blouse would be better than nothing.

  She paused only long enough to tug her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. Then she hurried to the first closed door down the hall from the bathroom. Kylie nearly wept when a fully-made bed, including comforter, was revealed. The room had only a bed, nightstand, and a small three-drawer dresser, as sparsely furnished as a hotel room.

  After tossing her phone on the bed, she went to inspect the closet. To her disappointment, there were only a couple of empty plastic hangers hanging along the clothes bar.

  Shivering from both the fever within and the wet chill against her skin, Kylie proceeded to draw down the comforter and strip off the plain white top sheet from the bed. She then dried herself off as best she could with one end, blotting at her skin instead of rubbing so as not to aggravate her condition. Once finished, the dry end of the sheet went around her shoulders to keep her wet hair from dripping down her back.

  Only then did Kylie sit gingerly on the edge of the bed and reach for her phone again. Paul always worked an evening shift at one of the hospitals on Fridays, so she prayed that he wasn’t unavailable at the moment.

  “Paul!” she cried the moment the call connected, unable to keep the desperation from her voice.

  “Kylie, what’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?” Paul demanded.

  Kylie drew in a huge breath and blurted, “I went into jaguar heat, Paul! Hunter was introducing me to one of his tiger friends and it just hit me. It’s pretty bad. I caused a brawl in the middle of Southern Glacier because I couldn’t control my mating pheromones!”

  “Whoa, whoa! Slow down, sweetie!” Paul soothed, but Kylie could still hear the tension in his voice. He was probably thinking the worst and trying not to scare her by freaking out about it. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the apartment Hunter gave me.” She wrapped her free arm around her waist in a one-armed hug and hunched over the phone as a sudden surge of heat inundated her entire body. “I’m dying here, Paul!” she moaned. “I feel like my whole body is about to burn up from within! Hunter says that I’ll be in heat for the next twelve days, and there’s no way I’ll be able to come out of this still sane! I don’t have anything of yours here in this apartment, so I need you to bring something you’ve used recently. A glass, your toothbrush, a fork, anything, and—mom’s bracelet.”

  Silence, then he asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Is Hunter there with you?”

  Kylie let out a hysterical laugh. “If he was, then I wouldn’t be calling you. It was all he could do to keep from pouncing on me.” Like hell she was going to tell him how far it had really gone. “He made sure I got into the apartment safely and ran for the hills. He’s trying to find a female jaguar shifter that might be able to help me, but for all I know, it could be hour
s before that happens, and I really can’t stand this torture any longer!”

  “Kylie—you do realize that it may not work?” Paul said worriedly.

  Remembering her mother, Kylie squeezed her eyes tightly shut in despair. “Yes, but…”

  “Okay. I’ll need to run home to grab the bracelet from the safe, but from what your father and Karen have told me, it would be a thousand times worse for a human like me to go anywhere near you when you’re in such a state. I’d send Karen, but they’re short-staffed in the ER tonight…”

  Another wave of fire abruptly surged through her body, making her groin throb twice as badly as before, and Kylie gritted her teeth tightly to keep from moaning. She squeezed her knees more tightly together, but that did little to relieve her increasing arousal.

  “Then call Molly and have her meet you at the hospital,” she instructed roughly through her teeth. “Tell her I have a really bad case of the stomach flu and you can’t get away from the hospital to bring me medicine. My friends thought I looked sick today anyway, and I used that as an excuse to beg off going out with them tonight. I haven’t had the chance to give any of them the address to this apartment, so you’ll need to let Molly know I’ve moved. Just feed her the busted sewage line excuse, and send her over.”

  “Are you sure you want to bring Molly into this, Kylie?” Paul asked. “Being so mentally and physically unstable right now—you could accidentally shift. I don’t need to tell you what could happen if the Elders found out that you had unintentionally revealed yourself to another human within only a couple of days. It wouldn’t only be the lions we would have to run from.”

  This time the wave of emotion that washed through her was of dread rather than arousal. “I know. God how I know, but I’m seriously only minutes away from calling Hunter back here and just letting nature take its course because I’m really scared that the jaguar will take over again and just force me to go find what I need anyway.”

  Kylie shuddered. “Remember what I almost did to that teenager! I’m still myself right now, but I can’t honestly say that’ll be true if I have to endure even just another couple of hours of this torment! I don’t want to involve Molly, but with you and Karen unable to come… If I can’t trust my oldest friend, then who else can we?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Her scent was so strong within his nostrils that Hunter half-expected to turn around and see Kylie sneaking up behind him again ready to pounce. He closed his eyes tightly and groaned frustratingly into his hands as he sat on his couch trying unsuccessfully to will away the painful erection straining for freedom against his zipper. Just the thought of her tumbling them both to the ground again had him on the verge of springing to his feet to go finish what they had started, consequences be damned.

  Hell, he could still taste her on his tongue, an utterly unique flavor of salt and a sweet, honey-like musk that all jaguar shifter females possessed. Only Kylie’s flavor was at least three times as potent as any other jaguar he’d had the pleasure of sampling over the years. His mouth watered at the thought of licking and sucking on that soft, pale skin and those pert, pink nipples again.

  Hunter growled and shook his head violently. Damn it! Now was not the time to become fixated on a woman, no matter how good she smelled, how tasty, or how well his body had seemed to fit between her legs…

  “Fuck!” he hissed and started to yank hard at his hair on both sides of his head, the sharp pain finally clearing the cloud of lust from his head a little.

  He seriously needed to get out of the apartment building, to get as far away from the sexy kitty cat only a meager floor below him that had to be some sort of sex goddess sent to torment him if her pheromones were still affecting him when he was this far away from her.

  And that was the problem.

  At the moment, he didn’t trust himself not to run straight back to Kylie’s apartment instead of out the building once he set foot outside his door. That was also the very reason why he needed to drag his head out of his cock and his ass to his truck. If her pheromones were affecting him so strongly, there was no telling if it was because his exposure to them had been so long, or if she had already managed to inadvertently flood part of the building with them while he had sat on his couch trying to pull himself together.

  While there were a few shifter males living in his building, the majority were humans. One whiff of Kylie’s pheromones could potentially cause a repeat of the brawl she had accidentally ignited back at Southern Glacier. Given that she was likely a Returner, Hunter had no idea what to expect from here on out.

  He needed to enlist the help of a female jaguar now—one that he could utterly trust to be discreet. The last thing Kylie needed was to be thought somehow damaged in these first days of integrating into the clan. He needed someone who could teach Kylie how to—

  Hunter jerked his head up. Of course! Who better to teach Kylie control of her own instincts than a teacher? Jennifer Graham to be exact.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have her number. He would have to pay her a visit. Hopefully she and her mate were at home and not out on the town or hunting out in the forest. He didn’t want to have to track them down. He needed to get Kylie taken care of, and then he really needed to get back to Southern Glacier and resume his discussion with Maxim.

  If Maxim’s intel turned out to be legit, and there really were Sniffers spotted within the city limits…

  It was that thought that finally had Hunter on his feet and heading towards the door. He’d be damned before he let his baser instincts keep him from what he needed to do any longer. Kylie wasn’t the only one depending on him right now.

  An image of his brother flashed in his mind, immensely helping to keep the cloud of lust from screwing with his mind again as he held his breath and dashed towards the door to the stairs rather than the elevator. Kylie’s scent no doubt still saturated the interior. He would definitely need to shut it down and stick an “out of order” sign on that potential powder keg once he reached the bottom floor. The last thing he needed was more trouble.

  Hunter raced down the stairs, taking only short, shallow breaths even though he didn’t think he could smell any of her pheromones in the surrounding air. Thankfully, he made it to the ground floor without incident. He hurriedly shut down the elevator and then headed for the parking lot.

  However, when he opened the driver’s side door to his truck, Hunter was almost brought to his knees as a wave of lust abruptly thundered through his entire being. He automatically raised his head to scent the air, looking for the female who was emitting such a delicious smell—and then promptly cursed and backed away from the vehicle as though it were filled with vipers. He was such an idiot! He had completely forgotten about the pheromones still trapped within!

  He would need to air it out for at least an hour. He’d had the smell of her heat in his head for too long. Being surrounded by it once again could very well drive him feral.

  He had no choice. He was already risking too much as it was leaving Kylie alone in the building and hoping her blast of pheromones stayed within her apartment while he went to retrieve Jennifer. Adding another hour or so to the mix could quite possibly be disastrous. He needed Jennifer to come to him.

  Baring his teeth in frustration, Hunter dug out his cell phone from his pocket and selected Donald Gaither from his contacts. Before the first ring could even finish, the Elder answered.

  “I was beginning to think you planned on trying to sweep what happened tonight completely under the rug,” he said dryly before Hunter could utter a word.

  Hunter stilled. “It’s already gotten out?” he asked slowly.

  Gaither snorted. “You two caused such a huge ruckus in one of the most public places in the city. I would be shocked if they didn’t already know about it in the next town over.”

  “It’s not like she could help it,” Hunter retorted. “How was I supposed to know that she would suddenly go into heat? Or for that matter, her? Kylie’s only lived as a shi
fter for a couple of days for God’s sake!”

  Gaither sighed. “Given that it’s taken you almost an hour after the incident to call me, I hope that means you’ve properly taken care of her?”

  An image of Kylie stretched out half-naked beneath him, cobalt eyes wild with yearning, filled in his mind, and a fresh, hot wave of desire washed through him. He shuddered and gritted his teeth against the urge to dash back into the building straight to her soft, eager body.

  “She’s safe,” he replied roughly. “I managed to get her into my guest apartment before anything else happened. I was on my way to Jennifer Graham’s when I realized it would be impossible to drive, and I hardly think her mate would appreciate me showing up naked on her doorstep, so shifting is also out of the question.”

  “Wait! You’re not with Kylie at the moment?” Gaither scolded.

  Hunter growled. “You know damned well why I can’t go anywhere near her right now! With the amount of pheromones she’s putting out right now, not even a saint would be able to resist her. It’s already a damned miracle I was able to resist her long enough to get her into the apartment. She can’t control it at all. That’s why I called you. I need Jennifer’s cell number.”

  “From what I heard, she had half the club patrons enthralled and fighting over her,” Gaither said thoughtfully, his tone making Hunter’s back stiffen straighter than a marble column. That tone only meant trouble.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Gaither, and you can just let that thought leak right out of your ears because it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll mate anybody!”

  “No one said anything about mating,” the Elder replied calmly, making Hunter growl into the phone again.

  Sometimes Hunter just wanted to punch that meddling bastard right between the eyes just to see him rattled for once.

  “Are you going to give me Jennifer’s phone number or what?” he demanded impatiently.