Accidentally Catty (20 page)

That’s because Beck’s body was hard and tight and sculpted to within an inch of his life. Oh, wait, hers was, too. Almost. Who knew if tomorrow wouldn’t bring abs of steel and thighs like weapons that would need registering with the government?

And this was the second time in as many days someone had told her to lighten up. She’d once been light. Too light. No more light. Light meant you didn’t pay attention, and when you didn’t pay attention, bad things went on behind your back. Things you just couldn’t convince anyone you knew nothing about. “I can assure you, I did
not
have a look at your body. And even if I did, that’s still not a reason to . . .”

“Have one off? I think it’s every reason. And here’s another thought. Now that we’ve gotten the question of my sexual preferences out of the way, we
are
sharing the same space. You’ll have trouble keeping your hands off me in such tight quarters,” he said, following his bold, downright egomaniacal words with a boyish grin.

Oh, really. “Only a boy could make a statement so pathetically immature.”
That’s the way, Katie. Strike back at all those hormones he made scream in any old mature way you can.

“We’ll see who’s immature when you can’t stop your estrus.”

Her who-us? Wait, she knew that word. It was Latin. She’d learned it in veterinary school, but she couldn’t remember what it meant because she couldn’t think clearly since this had all gone down. A frown wrinkled her brow. “My what?”

Beck’s expression said he knew something she didn’t know, and it was all too confident for her liking. “Huh. The lady with all those big words doesn’t know what an estrus is. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a four-letter word for the opposite of cold.”

Heat? She clearly wasn’t making the connection.

His laughter at her failure to guess made her eyes narrow at him. “Your heat, in simpler terms. It lasts upward of possibly ten days, and it’ll make you writhe with need.” His words came out quite matter of fact, shooting from his mouth like he was narrating a cougar fact while reading a script for a
Nat Geo
program.

Katie’s mouth fell open. Her heat? Like the kind where she was rubbing up against trees and lampposts while she howled, advertising her availability to any male within a hundred-mile radius heat? Flashes of the hundreds of animals she’d spayed and neutered in her career zipped before her eyes.

But wait again. How ironic that he could remember that part about being a cougar, yet nothing else sprang to mind? “It’s funny how sexually selective your amnesia is, don’t you think?”

Beck’s delicious lips pursed and then he frowned, too. A frown that said he didn’t know where that cougar detail had come from. “That just came out of—”

“Nowhere,” she finished for him on an exaggerated sigh. “I’ve heard this song before. Look, forget it. Forget everything that just happened because it won’t happen again. Ever. There’ll be no slap and tickle with me to pass the time while we
Murder, She Wrote
this out. No way. Kissing me was a mistake. Don’t make it again.”

As she turned to leave him there in the middle of the woods, his big hand slapped her on the ass with a playful thwack. “That motherly tone of yours turns me on. Big, old lady.”

Narrowing her eyes, Katie gritted her teeth. “You do that again, and I’ll show you the meaning of the word grounded. Now let’s hit it. If we screw around here in the Enchanted Forest any longer, Nina will come looking. You do not want me to tell her you had the nerve to touch my butt.” She turned with a stomp to head down the hill, furious he took absolutely nothing seriously.

He virtually squealed with laughter, the clunk of his feet right behind her, his breath, hot on her neck. “Ooooh, no! Not the big, scary Nina. Please, please, anything but that.”

Katie whipped around, her anger sizzling and spiky. “Are we going to take this seriously, or do you want to keep fooling around until we get caught?”

“I’m all for fooling around.”

Her lips thinned in utter fed up.

Beck rolled his eyes with exaggeration, throwing up his hands and giving in. “Okay, fine,
Mom
. This is me serious and ready to storm the castle.”

“Good. Now be quiet and let’s go.”

As they made their way down the steep hill leading to the parking lot, Katie fought the insane emotions Beck had dredged up in her. He’d made her feel like a living, breathing woman. Sexy, wanton, aware.

He’d also made it clear he wanted her in all of her estruswhateverthehell.

She’d made it clear that would go absolutely nowhere.

Watching his ass while he took the hill with sure feet, she had to ask herself why she’d done that?

“Are you looking at my ass, Dr. Woods?” Beck mocked over his shoulder with a chuckle.

“You are an ass!” she hissed in return, her face hot with embarrassment.

Katie’s heart throbbed in her chest. But it wasn’t with fear. It was with utterly euphoric,
youthful
jubilation.

She hadn’t felt this good in more years than she cared to count.

Beck stared up at her from down below just as she crested the top of the chain-link fence. He’d promised to catch her if she fell, but the confidence with which she’d climbed it left her unafraid to jump to the pavement below. What worried her was what her back would feel like once she made impact.

She wasn’t twenty like Teen Cougar. If she hit that pavement too hard, there was some Icy Hot and a muscle relaxant in her future. Or a hip replacement. She swung a leg over, straddling the fence, her minor fear of heights as far off as yesterday’s saggy ass.

“Mind making haste up there, Spider-Girl?” he whispered, giving a cursory glance around the all too well lit parking lot.

Katie stifled a giggle. She’d climbed the fence like she was an extra ape in
Gorillas in the Mist
. Hand over hand, she’d attacked the climb without much forethought and totally as though it was instinctual to crawl up a chain-link fence like she had suction cups on her feet and hands. When she hit the top, she felt like a young, athletic eighteen-year-old had possessed her body. No creaks, no aches, and absolutely no hesitation for what she was about to do next.

Without a qualm, Katie lunged to the ground, landing on all fours with a hushed thump.

Beck looked down at her with admiration in his eyes, his hands jammed into his jean pockets. “Impressive.”

She rose as though her knees had springs, her adrenaline rushing and her cheeks hot with the flush of his praise. “That was awesome times a million.”

His eyes held concern when he met hers. “I saw video cameras. We’re going to have to skirt them if we hope to avoid being caught. I think it’s possible, but better safe than sorry. We should use the ski masks.”

Katie nodded, dragging hers out of her pocket and pulling it over her face. Somewhere between the woods and hitting the parking lot, this whole breaking-and-entering thing strangely excited her. Adrenaline pumped through her veins at warp speed and fire burned in her gut. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it. Follow me, which won’t be a hardship, I gather.You will have that view of my bum you so vehemently deny indulging in. But I think I’ve located all of the cameras, so I know where to go.”

She rolled her eyes at him before falling behind his back.

They crept along the length of the fence, zigzagging in spots, ducking in others to keep from getting caught on the cameras.

Somehow, they’d found their way to the outer offices where the staff worked, passing huge outdoor waterfalls and trees designed for the cats to climb. There were faux caves and holes, a cougar’s favorite place to hide and sleep, according to Ingrid’s research online.

When they came to a padlocked door, Katie cursed at not having brought something to cut the heavy lock with, then shook her head in disbelief that this was all that kept criminals from getting in and dangerous animals from getting out.

“Shit!” Beck pulled up his mask and grabbed the lock in his hand, then yanked at it in angry frustration.

And then, as everything was wont to do in Beck’s hands, the steel lock virtually melted away, clattering to the ground.

“Uh, Spider-Girl, meet Superman,” she joked from over his shoulder.

Beck looked as surprised as she was when he stared down at his hands. “I just know there has to be X-ray vision in this for me.” He popped the door open, peering around the corner before allowing her to follow him. His hand at her waist to prevent her from walking into a dangerous situation made her glow—then curse under her breath for even remotely considering a hint of a glow.

Katie’s eyes went instantly to the corners of the ceiling. “No cameras? How can they possibly entertain ensuring the safety of these animals when their security is, at best, archaic?”

“Let’s just be grateful it’s archaic and get moving,” Beck replied, heading down a long hall, taking her hand and pulling her behind him.

The walls of the corridor were lined with colorful pictures of the cats, elephants, a rhino, and even a camel in their performance costumes. Each was labeled with a name and the date they’d been brought to the park. Larry, Curly, Mo, Abbott, Costello, Alfalfa, Laurel, Hardy, Martin, Lewis . . . “Someone liked slapstick comedy,” she remarked.

Then one picture in particular stopped her cold.

There was a framed photo of Spanky, sitting by a beach ball, a pink, fluted collar around his neck. In cougar form, he almost stole her breath away in the same fashion he did when he was in human form.

Beck let his chin rest on her shoulder, making a wild pattern of goose bumps scurry along her arms. “Me, I gather?”

“Definitely you. That’s what you looked like before you shifted.”

“I can see why you found me so irresistible. Though, I’m not sure I’m fond of the pink,” was his dry remark so close to her ear, her nipples beaded when his hot, minty breath skittered over her skin.

She shooed him from her shoulder before she threw him to the ground and insisted he fix her estrus by way of wonk. “I think it makes you look approachable.”

“So I was one of the animals who performed then?”

“You know, that’s what’s strange about all of this. Usually, when Mr. Magoo gets a new exotic, he slaps more announcements up all over town than Craigslist has. I don’t get why he didn’t do the same with you.”

“Maybe I was untrainable—one of those diva performers who has to have only yellow M&M’S and Evian in a stemmed glass that’s been chilled in the freezer for exactly two hours waiting for me backstage.”

Katie fidgeted with the ends of her ponytail in thought. “Maybe. Or maybe that’s not what you were here for at all.”

“Maybe we’d better get looking so we can find out why I was here. Time is of the essence,” he commented, pointing to her wristwatch.

A persistent vibration grew in her head when they stopped in front of a sanctuary, leading to glass enclosures filled with cats of prey. A cougar-topia of slumped, sleeping exotics all wearing identical collars to Spanky’s, though none of them looked terribly undernourished to her physician’s eye.

She rubbed her fingers over her forehead to assuage the pounding in her head.

Beck knocked shoulders with her as they stared into one particular glass window meant for the staff’s viewing. “Aren’t cougars nocturnal?”

“Asked the cougar of the cougar.”

“Now who’s not being serious here?” he accused.

“You’re right. Sorry. From the little I know about them, not necessarily. They hunt from dusk till dawn, but are known to nap on their journeys. They like thickly wooded areas to hide in while they hunt, but I imagine, given their circumstances here”—she couldn’t fight the disgust in her voice—even if the place was clean as a whistle—“it seems appropriate they’d adjust and sleep at night because there’s nothing to hunt and nowhere to roam. Which makes my stomach turn, in case you were wondering.”

His look of sympathy warmed her insides—whether she liked it or not. “Defender of animals without a voice, are you?”

She’d been called worse. Her heart melted when she gazed upon the fierce beauty of so much restricted mammal. “I love animals. I always have. I like them better than most people, which is why I became a veterinarian to begin with. I was always the kid who brought home the stray, stopped by the side of the road when I saw one injured, wanted to save them all. My heart aches for the abused and neglected. I take in as many as I can because I can.”

“You’re a good person,” Beck said, his tone held admiration she heard but refused to wallow in. She didn’t deserve his respect.

“But these animals”—she tapped the glass with a finger—“exotics who should be free to roam and let Mother Nature do with them what she will, are the ones I feel most sorry for. They’re not meant to be gawked at through glass enclosures or paying for someone’s fancy BMW by filling bleachers full of people who want to see some fool stick his head in a tiger’s mouth. And while I realize some are in captivity to prevent extinction, or they can’t survive in the wild, I don’t agree with putting them on display, and Mr. Magoo knows it. That’s why there’s that restraining order.” Her speech ended on a growl of pent-up frustration.

Beck brushed some stray strands of hair from her face with the tip of his finger in a gesture of familiarity she didn’t attempt to shoo away for the comfort it brought. “Easy there, killer. Tell me about the restraining order.”

She shrugged, the crinkle of her jacket harsh to her sensitive ears and her pounding temple. “It’s not that big of a deal. I didn’t break in here like Ingrid and Kaih did to help you. I came in as a paying customer. I did make my objections about what appeared to be some shoddy care very clear. Looking around now, I feel a little stupid. I only saw the one tiger, and he didn’t look well to the naked eye. So I objected. Okay, so maybe I jumped the gun because I’m an animal rights activist, and maybe I was a little loud when I did it, but I offered free vet services as a way to ensure they were getting at least the bare minimum. I don’t know a great deal about exotics, but I can handle simple things. I mean, I handled you, right?”