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

by Cristina Rayne

  His eyes were so dilated with lust that she could no longer see any of the hazel, his breaths coming in sharp pants.

  “Not yet. Now it’s my turn to make you scream,” Hunter growled as he lifted her off her knees before she could even blink and hugged her firmly against his chest. “Hold on to me.”

  Kylie hastily grabbed onto his shoulders as his hands snaked down her back and grabbed her cheeks in order to hoist her up, her legs automatically wrapping around his slick waist. He then turned and propped her back against the smooth stone wall of the shower. He leaned over to lick the dampness over her lips once before taking her mouth fully, trying his damndest to suck the breath completely from her.

  He thrust his hips roughly against her groin, once, twice, she lost count, his member rubbing along her clit and sending sparks of pleasure up her spine. She squeezed her thighs more tightly around him and dug her heels into his lower back, trying to match him thrust for thrust, but that tantalizing friction wasn’t nearly enough. She wanted to feel him even more. They had teased each other enough.

  “Hunter please!” Kylie gasped against his lips, not caring that she was begging.

  His hips stilled for an agonizing few seconds before the hands squeezing her ass lifted her slightly, and the head of his cock pressed insistently against her opening. She had only another second to feel a bit of trepidation at the memory of his girth before he thrust up sharply and her passage was being stretched to its limits.

  She groaned at the slight sting and dug her fingers into the muscles of his back as Hunter steadily pressed deeper, opening her impossibly wide, his mouth going to her throat to nip along the juncture of her neck and shoulder, making her jaguar soul shiver at the feel of a predator’s teeth so near her throat. He was shaking with the effort of going slow, allowing her to adjust to his size, and later she would no doubt be grateful when she needed to walk again. However, right now she just wanted Hunter to fulfill his promise and drive that silky thickness into her until she screamed.

  Kylie rolled her hips in encouragement and lowered her head a bit to lick teasingly along the shell of his ear. Hunter growled more loudly against her neck, and suddenly it was all she could do to hold on as he brutally speared her to the hilt and began to thrust into her with swift, powerful strokes that rubbed her in all the right places. She moaned loudly with abandon as bursts of pleasure shot into seemingly every nerve ending in her body.

  Another growl reverberated against her skin, and Hunter suddenly locked her collarbone between his jaws with a firm pressure just shy of breaking skin. The action had the disconcerting affect of simultaneously making her head swim and the sweet pressure building within her sex soar to the brink of exploding. She opened her mouth to shout his name, but what emerged was a strange keening that seemed to snap the last remaining thread of Hunter’s control.

  His fingers dug deeply into the muscles of her ass with bruising force as his cock slammed into her tight heat with a brutal frenzy that finally made her scream in both shock and ecstasy as her body exploded in an orgasm so powerful that it was almost painful. The muscles of her passage clenched down onto the member still thrusting relentlessly into her, making Hunter gasp and bite down harder on the flesh he held between his teeth, likely piercing the skin.

  As she trembled and rode the wave of her climax, Hunter drove into her a few more times in quick succession before he gave one final thrust of his hips that shook her to the core and abruptly released her shoulder, throwing his head back as he came with something that was half-roar, half-moan. For a long moment, he held them in that position, cock still somehow hard and buried as deep as was physically possible in her body while the spray of water behind them began to run lukewarm.

  Panting as though she had just finished running a marathon, Kylie let her forehead fall onto Hunter’s shoulder, feeling drowsy and content to stay just as they were the whole night if that’s what her lover wanted. That had gone beyond any kind of fantasy she could have ever hoped for. That she had almost denied herself such a transcendent experience was a travesty narrowly dodged.

  Kylie kissed his damp flesh affectionately, causing him to stir and lift his mouth from where it had fallen against her neck. When their eyes met, their mouths naturally came together in a kiss that was nowhere near as wild and consuming as those that had come before but still just as passionate.

  She gasped when she abruptly felt him thrust up into her still-tingling passage.

  “Again?” she asked breathlessly against Hunter’s swollen lips, gazing at him with hooded eyes as he continued to slowly rock his hips against her, rekindling the fire that hadn’t quite been banked deep within her core.

  He leered. “That was just the appetizer. For the main course, I want to see you spread out on my bed, shaking with pleasure while I slowly taste every inch of your body before making love to you until you or I pass out.”

  Kylie ghosted her lips teasingly over his. “We’ll see.”

  Hunter’s eyes flashed with desire. “I always keep my promises.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Um—this is probably the absolute worst time to bring this up, but it just now occurred to me and I’m kind of freaking out about it now, but… I’m not on the pill, and we didn’t use any condoms,” Kylie blurted out into Hunter’s chest as they lay intertwined on his bed after their last round of lovemaking.

  She expected the body beneath her to stiffen, but instead, he chuckled, leaving her utterly confused and a little irritated. “It’s not funny, dammit!” she hissed, looking up at his grinning face with narrowed eyes. “Maybe mating and having kids is just par for the course for jaguar shifters, but I was brought up as a human, and I’m in no way, shape, or form ready to be a mom at twenty!”

  He bent down and kissed her on the nose. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh, but the tone of your voice reminded me of a guilt-ridden kid confessing to stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, like you expected me to scold you or something.” He squeezed her waist affectionately. “Don’t worry. I swear I’m disease free. Plus, a shifter can only get pregnant when she’s in heat, and even then, it’s a little hard to conceive. We jaguars usually have to bang like bunnies for all twelve days before the woman’ll get pregnant.”

  “But I’m a Returner, so…” Kylie reminded him.

  “True,” Hunter replied thoughtfully. “We should probably stay far away from each other when you’re in heat.” He cradled her face in his hands and began to gently caress her cheeks with his thumbs. “Now that I’ve had you, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to resist you, even if you have learned how to control your pheromones. It’s a damn miracle that I was able to drag myself away earlier, so let’s not push our luck.”

  Kylie felt her tension instantly melt away. “Thank God for small favors.”

  Hunter released her face, and Kylie laid her head back onto his chest as he wrapped an arm around her waist. He then slowly began to thread his fingers through her hair.

  She sighed. It was strange how comfortable she felt cuddling with Hunter like this. Had it only been a couple of hours ago that she had been scoffing at jumping into bed with a guy she had barely known for a couple of days? While by no means a prude, she had never been so uninhibited as she had been today. She had dated her last boyfriend for a couple of months before they had even gone beyond heavy petting to sex, and before him, there had rarely been any intimate touching at all.

  Maybe losing control of her first heat wasn’t so surprising after all. Kylie absently wondered how Paul was going to react to the change in relationship status of Hunter and her—

  “Oh crap!” Kylie suddenly cried, her head shooting up and nearly making Hunter pull a clump of her hair out at the root. “I forgot to call my dad back! He called me right after you left me writhing on the floor from the heat.”

  Hunter frowned. “That makes me sound like a complete douchebag, doesn’t it? I really am sorry you had to go through that all by yourself for so long after I left.”
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  Kylie surged up to kiss him softly. “You don’t need to apologize at all. As far as I’m concerned, we dodged a pretty big bullet there. The way my luck’s been going lately, I would have definitely gotten pregnant.”

  “Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel rotten about it. Should we be worried about your father showing up here?”

  “If I don’t call him soon, he’ll definitely be pounding on my apartment door so hard that we’d hear him up here before morning. I couldn’t completely hide how god-awful I felt from my voice, so he could tell something was up. I lied and told him I thought I had the stomach flu. He sent my friend, Molly, over with some medicine, and I was supposed to call him before she left. Then Jennifer showed up just as Molly was leaving, and I was so busy trying to explain who she was without giving anything away that I completely forgot. I left my cell phone in the bag he sent over.”

  “You can use mine,” he offered.

  Kylie shook her head. “He’d freak if I did. He doesn’t know about you or any of this, remember? Plus, I’m supposed to be sick in bed trying not to puke my guts up.”

  She reluctantly pulled herself away from his warmth and sat back on her haunches beside him. “I need to go get the change of clothes he sent over, anyway. In the meantime, can I borrow a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants or something?”

  Hunter snorted. “You’ll look like a kid playing dress-up in her father’s clothes.” His eyes traveled down the length of her body that was now on full display before he gave himself a hard shake and sat up as well. “Let me get it for you. I imagine you’re probably feeling pretty sore right now.”

  Kylie felt a momentary panic before she forced herself to give him a sour look. There was no way she could let him anywhere near that bag while the bracelet and Paul’s toothbrush were still inside, so she couldn’t afford for him to get suspicious now.

  “Exactly,” she huffed. “That’s why there’s no way I’m letting you go anywhere near that apartment and its pheromones of doom! As delicious as you look right now, I really don’t think my body can handle that monster again tonight!”

  He grinned, looking entirely too smug for her peace of mind. “Don’t worry. The beauty of being a shifter is that we recover fast.”

  Kylie fingered the tender place on her collarbone that likely sported Hunter’s teeth marks. Yeah, she definitely didn’t want Paul seeing the wound. She needed time to figure out how to explain to him why she had decided to get involved with Hunter at such a dangerous time that didn’t involve the words “hot body.”

  “Great. Now, if you’re finished looking like the Cheshire Cat’s sexy cousin, I’m going to dig in your closet for a shirt.”

  “It might be best if I put some clothes on, too,” Hunter said, getting up and following her somewhat stilted gait across the room to the closet. “Pheromones or not, it’ll be hard to resist you once you come back to bed if I’m still naked.”

  “You’re insatiable,” Kylie scolded, though she wasn’t irritated in the least. Just thinking about all the wild and passionate sex they had just had sent a flair of heat into her sex that had her squeezing her legs together.

  After throwing on a white t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants that she was practically swimming in even after rolling up the cuffs and cinching the drawstring, Kylie spend a good five minutes being kissed enthusiastically by her new lover before he allowed her to leave the bedroom. She returned to the bathroom to retrieve her apartment key from her discarded jeans and barefoot, hurried down to her new apartment before anyone could see her in that ridiculous getup.

  Once inside, Kylie wasted no time in grabbing the gym bag and then shutting herself into the foyer closet. Hopefully the pheromones still circulating in the air were minimal inside. At any rate, she would only be there for a few minutes tops. Any longer, and Hunter might decide to come see what was taking her so long.

  She plopped her butt onto the ground and dug out her cell phone. She was relieved when Paul picked up after the first ring.

  “Kylie! Thank God!” Paul exclaimed before she could breathe a word. “It’s almost one! When you didn’t call even an hour after Molly left the hospital to take you the things you asked for and you didn’t answer your phone, I thought for sure the toothbrush hadn’t worked and something awful had happened to you!”

  “Where are you now?” Kylie asked.

  “On my way to the ER nurse’s station. I was about to ask Karen to go look in on you…”

  “No! Don’t do that!” Kylie said frantically. “Hunter doesn’t know that we’re friends with a cougar yet. He sent an elementary school teacher from the jaguar clan named Jennifer Graham to sit with me all night. She stepped out for a moment to talk to Hunter at his apartment, but she’ll be back any minute. We have to keep this call short.”

  “You need to somehow get the Elders to agree to allow you to reveal yourself as a shifter to me soon, or things will get very tedious rather quickly,” he warned. “But never mind that for now. You sound normal, so I take it the items worked?”

  “Thankfully, yes. Once everything settles down here, I’ll come see you to explain in more detail. I’ll tell Hunter that we have a lunch date again on Sunday.”

  “I hate to say this, but I’m glad Hunter is looking after you so closely,” Paul said. “Karen says that someone else in her clan has seen a couple of unknown shifters that she feels have been behaving suspiciously enough to possibly be Sniffers. We may not yet know the jaguars’ plans for you, but at least I know the last thing they would want is for you to be harmed or the lions to get a hold of you.”

  “Don’t worry. After this whole heat-cycle nightmare tonight, I doubt Hunter will let me out of his sight for the next few days. This will be a good opportunity to try to weasel some info from him about the lions. He accidentally brought them up today, so naturally I jumped at the chance to ask questions.”

  “Anything new?” Paul asked hopefully.

  “No, but from some of the evasive answers he was giving me, I’m almost positive that he knows more.”

  “Just be careful, Kylie, and please, please don’t let your guard down with Hunter. Karen told me that he doesn’t have a mate or even a prospective mate. He may be after something much more practical than searching out the identities of your parents.”

  Yes, and he got it and then some, Kylie thought ruefully. Paul really was going to be pissed with her when she finally found the guts to tell him.

  “Always,” she promised. “You make sure to take care of yourself, too, and I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  More Sniffers… Kylie suddenly realized that she had never gotten a straight answer from Hunter about whether or not he knew of any Sniffers currently skulking around Riverford. He had managed to completely distract her, damn him—though she had to admit that she was also partially to blame for allowing one measly smile to waylay her. However, that didn’t change the fact that he had heavily implied that there were. There could be more Sniffers roaming the city than any of them had ever guessed. The thought was terrifying.

  Hunter was waiting for her in his living room, still dressed in the t-shirt and boxers he had slipped on, and casually sprawled out on the couch with a rather peaceful expression. However, when she approached, his nostril flared and his eyes zeroed onto the gym bag.

  Kylie had been counting on this reaction. “That bad, huh? I was afraid of that. The clothes inside should be okay, but do you have a trash bag I can put this in until I can wash it? I’d throw it out, but it’s my dad’s.”

  “Under the sink,” Hunter replied in a strained voice, obviously trying not to breathe.

  Kylie hurried over to the kitchen and located a box of black, heavy duty trash bags. She pulled out everything in the gym bag except for the white paper sack and its secrets, placing the clothing on the counter before securing it inside the large trash bag.

  The whole time, she could feel Hunter’s eyes on her back. It made the jaguar within bristle. Having your back to a predator, eve
n if that predator was your lover, was never comfortable.

  “Put it in the guest room just to be safe,” Hunter instructed once she turned around, his voice just a tad bit deeper than usual. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”

  A wave of arousal washed through her at his words even though she knew he probably hadn’t meant them to be suggestive. She sighed. Her entire body was still incredibly sore both inside and out, so no matter how hot she was getting for him, her body needed to rest.

  She put the bag inside the closet in the guest room just for a little more added peace of mind before climbing back into bed with Hunter, his arms enveloping her into a warm, fragrant cocoon as she snuggled up to his chest. Who would have thought after the hellish way the night had begun that it would end on such a fantastic note?

  Hunter kissed the top of her head tenderly. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll patrol my territory together tomorrow morning. It’s about time I took you on that run I promised.”

  “It’s a date,” Kylie replied, and then added amusedly, “just as long as the date doesn’t end with you bringing me a dead rabbit for lunch instead of taking me to a restaurant.”

  A snort was his only reply.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The eastern horizon had barely begun to lighten as Hunter and Kylie walked hand-in-hand into the forest behind Hunter’s apartment complex.

  “When you said a morning run, I was expecting a bit more light,” Kylie teased with a yawn.

  Although she had already witnessed the incredible healing speed of a shifter body, Kylie was still impressed that even the teeth marks in her shoulder were gone, replaced by a faint purple bruise that would probably disappear completely by the afternoon. They had been able to enjoy a bit of bed play before getting ready to head out into the forest.

  Without Kylie’s pheromones to enflame him beyond reason, Hunter had opted for a more leisurely rhythm that was less urgency and more worship that had Kylie screaming nonetheless. Even now, her nipples still felt a bit sore from the attentions of his talented mouth.