Terry Spear: Savage Hunger

Still, neither Connor nor his sister had had any luck in locating any kind of cat-shifters, and he wasn’t about to bite some poor unsuspecting woman so he could have a suitable mate. Not that he knew if a bite could cause someone to carry their genes anyway. They still didn’t know if Sir Lionel Anderson was the first on their dad’s side to carry the jaguar-shifter genetics or if someone earlier had carried the genes. Maybe he had been born with it and that was why he’d gone to the Amazon. Not in search of medicinal plants or gold, but in search of a shifter mate. Or like they did—to be one with their jaguar halves. They just didn’t know enough about it.

Then there was their mother’s side of the equation. Her great-great grandfather had been studying some of the ancient civilizations in South America and didn’t return for ten years, this time settling in Texas. He couldn’t stay away from the rain forest, either, and his Scottish wife began accompanying him, although everyone thought it odd. She was more of a homebody from what journal entries had said, so trekking through the Amazon seemed out of character for her. So had he been turned, then changed her?

If a wolf-shifter—although totally fantasy—could turn someone with a bite, why not cat-shifters?

Not that he was about to test that theory.

“Connor, thanks. I can probably walk now,” Kathleen said.

“The tree roots and vines are hard to see at this time of night. Best if you don’t twist your knee while trying to get to our place.” Besides, he enjoyed carrying her, enjoyed feeling her soft curves against his hard chest, smelling her sweet, wet fragrance, and feeling the heat of her body against his. Any physical exertion in the steamy jungle would make a body hot, Connor told himself. So why was holding this woman against his body making every sexual part of him tighten with need?

Which reminded him again that he hadn’t been with a woman in a damned long while.

But it was more than that. He couldn’t say what it was exactly. Maybe the feel of the energy surrounding them in the jungle, the primal, feral nature of it, the fact she was here in his territory, vulnerable and yet adventurous enough to be here, that made him keep thinking about the possibilities of turning a woman.

Not any woman though. Just this one.

Maybe it had to do with the fact that for a year he had thought about what had happened to her, worried that she hadn’t made it out of the jungle in time, and wondered if she had recovered physically and psychologically from the battle with Gonzales’s men if she had.

Kat didn’t say anything more, just leaned her head against his chest, and he thought she might have drifted off to sleep before he arrived back at the hut sitting high on its stilts. As exhausted as she was, he thought she probably had been wandering through the jungle for some time, unable to sleep because of all of the dangers surrounding her. He climbed the rickety stairs to the hut. When he walked across the mahogany floor, the boards creaked slightly with his weight, and she jerked awake.

“You can sit on one of the wooden chairs so that you don’t put any weight on that knee. Do you have a change of clothes in your pack?” he asked, moving toward the chair. He set her down on it, then helped her off with her pack, resting it on the floor nearby.

“Yes, I have several changes of clothes.”

“Good.” He wasn’t sure Maya would want to share her clothes with a virtual stranger if Kat had nothing else to wear.

He had left a kerosene lamp glowing in the one-room hut so that she wouldn’t be so spooked when he brought her back here. The lamp cast a soft, mellow light throughout. The roof was thatched over wooden walls, and screened windows provided some relief from bugs and snakes. Mesh netting covered the two beds to keep the mosquitoes away because there wasn’t any way to keep them out of the hut in the wet jungle environment.

He and Maya used a small propane camping stove to cook what they needed when they couldn’t eat as jaguars, although they normally hunted their meals and ate them as a cat would—no mess, no bother. Connor and Maya came down here from Texas to be one with their jaguar halves, normally not intending to play house as humans while on a jungle vacation. But if they were worried about hunters in the area, they remained in their human forms until the threat passed, therefore the necessity to have provisions for any situation that might arise.

A basin of water was nearby, and he motioned to it. “Fresh water that you can clean up with. We don’t have any real privacy here so I’ll leave while you change.” He glanced at Maya, who was still in her jaguar form, pacing across the hut’s floor and swishing her tail. He knew she wondered why Kat had called him by name while he was still in his jaguar form. “Did you want to stay with her?” he asked his sister.

She grunted, which he took as a “yes.”

Good . He nodded. “Be back in a little while.”

“I’ll hurry so you won’t have to be out there for very long.”

He smiled at the notion. Here Kat was worried about his safety, while he was worried about hers .

He just hoped the men who had been cutting a swath through the jungle weren’t looking to cause trouble for any of them.

Maya continued to pace across the hut as Kathleen turned her back and began unbuttoning her shirt. Maya wondered just what the connection was between Kathleen and her brother. She had seen the raw attraction between them, smelled it, felt the air between them fairly sizzle. For the first time in a year, he had shown real interest in a woman. Why this one? And how had Kathleen known her brother’s name? She and her brother made it a point not to get attached to humans. So where had he met Kathleen before?

Her mouth gaped as the notion came to her—the battle between the drug runners and the U.S. soldiers. When Connor had returned to the hut early that evening, Maya had been annoyed that dinner had grown cold before he had shown up. But when she smelled and saw the blood soaking his fur coat, she had been horrified and rushed to see to his injuries. Except he hadn’t been injured.

Maya stared at the woman as she peeled the wet shirt off and hung it over the back of the chair. Captain Kathleen McKnight. Connor had been beside himself with worry over the woman’s condition when she had been shot. He had tried to hide it from Maya, tried to pretend the woman had been an inconvenience, but Maya knew her brother better than that. He couldn’t eat dinner that night, hadn’t slept, had prowled the jungle in his jaguar form. She had followed him and discovered that he had returned to the drug dealer’s encampment.

Except for the marks on the ground where a tent had been secured, blood splatters, and spent bullet casings, they found nothing and no one—no dead men, no one alive either. The jungle had reclaimed the territory as its own as if humans had never existed there. She had returned before Connor had seen her spying on him, but she had never seen him so… distracted, so bothered by human affairs.

They had even cut short their visit to the Amazon, something they never did. He hadn’t been himself, totally disconsolate, and they finally had flown home. For weeks, she had found him searching on the Internet for something, but he wouldn’t say what. When she caught him at it, he would shut the computer off, act irritated, and head back outside to the nursery to dig some more holes, whether they needed to plant a tree or shrub or not.

Had he been looking for Kat all that time? For word about her well-being?

Maya smiled in her jaguar way. She wasn’t about to let Kat get away from her brother this time. At least her brother could have someone in his life if Maya could make this work.