Jaguar Night (11 page)

She’d been the one he called.

And even uninitiated, she’d heard him.

Not, he thought, because her skills ran so deep, not without initiation.

But because she’d been listening.

Just as he listened now—for any sound of her, for any indication she was still awake, that she hadn’t been able to shake off what had happened between them.

Get a grip.
Big, bad Sentinel, obsessed with his physical reaction to a woman. Consumed by it. He snorted softly, rolling out of bed after all and ignoring the tiny voice protesting that it wasn’t just physical—wasn’t just chemistry and wasn’t just incantations.

He didn’t bother with his shoes. For the sake of propriety, he did pull on his pants, recently washed and stiff. He listened in the hallway just long enough to make sure he hadn’t disturbed Meghan, and he padded down the hall to the kitchen, having already learned to open the door just so far and slip through if he wanted to avoid the most startling of creaks.

He stood on the porch, breathing in the crisp smells of junipers and cedars, the bitter taste of willow, the damp, cold night air holding down the scents of the sky island. He shivered, wishing he’d brought his jacket…and then realized he had no intention of staying in this thin human skin.

For the first time in days, the jaguar called clearly to him. And there, on the porch of the old ranch house, he reached for what had been waiting within, blanketed in herbs and illness. Impatient, eager…ready to run. Ready to hunt.

Ready to escape what hunted him.

A futile effort, and he knew it. But he lost himself to the change anyway, a flash of internal light that sizzled off the post-and-rail of the porch edge, reflected off the counters in the kitchen and faded away around the form of the jaguar, darker than the night itself.

He stalked off the porch, through the yard…and down into the wild desert highlands.

Chapter 10

M
eghan dreamed not of Dolan or of their intense encounter, or even of the Atrum Core stalking this ranch.

Meghan dreamed of her mother.

Her mother laughing, her mother’s wildflower scent, her mother’s enfolding arms, the spare and satisfying hug of a woman as wiry as Meghan herself.

She woke feeling comforted and somehow serene…and she couldn’t understand it in the least. She felt as though it was meant to be a message, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant. She stared up at the ceiling she couldn’t even see in this darkness, and finally settled on gratitude.

If she’d ever needed a hug from her mother, it was now, confronted by this unexpected part of her mother’s legacy, confronted by the Atrum Core and tangled up somehow with a shape-shifting Sentinel who asked
everything of himself—and, it seemed, everything of her.

She reached out to him, an action quickly grown to habit, just to touch his presence, which was as much as she could do…and could do it at all only because of that impossible hum persisting between them.

If only she’d had some inkling of those unintended side effects when she’d laid the incantation on the herbs, or when she’d laid the herbs along his gums—or when she’d failed to duck his lightning-swift paw.

Right. Because then she’d surely have turned and walked away, leaving him to die.

Dammit. This
had
been her choice. Her choice to listen for him in the night; her choice to go to him when he called out in his pain and warning. Her choice to break out her mother’s enhanced, preserved herbs, and to add her own touch to them.

She hadn’t known what she was getting into…but in hindsight, that was no bad thing. Cowardly, cowardly hindsight—not knowing had spared her the struggle of an informed decision, and she was glad of it.

Only then did she realize she hadn’t found Dolan where she expected—that he wasn’t asleep in the guest room, succumbed to the exhaustion of the day and their hard work near the end of it. She sat up in bed, and the chill night air hit her bare shoulders. Sleeveless tank above, girly boxers below—snug, comfortable indulgences from Victoria’s Secret. Not exactly sexy, no matter how it looked on the models with their chests thrust out.

But Meghan’s life hadn’t required
sexy.
Hard work, practicality and persistence…a love of life. But sexy?
The men around here were hard, age-bitten cowboys or adolescent boys.

No wonder Dolan’s presence had hit her so hard.

Meghan cast her vision wider, hunting him as her mother, taking the coyote, had once hunted mice.

Except her mother had let the mice go. Meghan wasn’t sure she’d have that choice with Dolan.

And there he was. Downhill from the ranch, stationary. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, groping for the hoodie sweatshirt she’d left over the wroughtiron footboard, then hesitating when she realized he felt…different. Bigger. More powerful.

Understanding hit her like a blow.
He took the jaguar.

He was improving not only daily, but practically by the hour, and he’d found the jaguar again just as she’d so casually assured him that he would. The implication of it—that he had little reason to stay here any longer, that he was no longer virtually chained to this ranch, to her guest room—that he could leave at any moment—had her across the house to the pile of shoes by the back door, stuffing her feet into sneakers even as she pulled the hoodie on, running out into the yard where the cold air hit her bare legs and jolted her to a stop.

But only for a moment. Only long enough to orient herself. To accept that the man himself had touched her, and not just enhanced herbs and a shared near-death experience. To give in to instinct and drive and
want,
and run down into the scrubby tangle of foliage and rugged terrain.

To run for Dolan.

He’d stalked the hills, moving around in darkness when he would have preferred twilight. He stretched his
muscles; he leaped from outcrop to outcrop, testing himself. He felt strength returning by the moment. If he was smart, he’d leave this place here and now and return to his mission.

Except it was about more than that now. This ranch had come to the attention of the Core…and for the first time in his bitter rogue’s life, Dolan felt the impulse to let something come between himself and his primary goal. To think about more than that narrow mission focus. He’d continue to look for the manuscript, but he also had to make sure these people were safe. Until the Sentinel team finally arrived, he had to stay close to Encontrados. For if the Core was circling this ranch, Meghan was surely their ultimate target. She was the one who’d slapped their first probe down…the one who’d drawn attention.

He easily found the best vantage point in the area, outcrops jutting over the hill so profoundly as to create hollow, protected places beneath. He rubbed his face against the stone and then leaped lightly to the top, stretched out with his tail idly tapping the accumulation of leaves and debris over hard rock. Not Sentinel, not Dolan…just the jaguar, mind emptied of everything but the terrain around and below him.

But thoughts of Meghan constantly tickled his mind; he found the lack of her a bane, one that waxed within him until the landscape no longer had his attention and he lifted his lips, tipping his whiskers in a silent snarl. His tail gave one violent lash before he forced himself to stillness. He would have cursed what she had wrought between them, but he no longer had the heart. He could no longer wish she’d never come
to him that night—not now, not having felt her lips and her body.

And there went his tail again, slapping rock. Not cool. He glared at it as though it were a separate entity, offering it its own silent snarl of warning. Big, tough Sentinel, tail out of control.

Maybe it was his own self-indulgent recrimination that allowed her to get so close before he noticed. Quiet as she was for a woman who took no other shape than her own, he heard her slipping down a steep section of land off to the side; he smelled the honest scent of her. And when he looked for it, he felt her presence within, marked by the increasing unrest of his bones. Of his tail, when it came to that. He stood, hesitating at the edge of his rocky platform, and found her making her way down the hill, clearly familiar with the dark terrain even with her limited human vision, and just as clearly looking for him. Scenting him, in her own way.

Limited light or no, he had no trouble seeing her. Bare ankles above sneakers, bare legs below skimpy night shorts, the gleam of toned skin, the shape of lean muscle. A hooded sweatshirt covered her arms and shoulders; the bare scoop of skin above her nightshirt’s neckline caught and held his gaze. Her hair, on its own for once, was deliciously mussed. As he watched, she descended slightly below his level, hesitated and lifted her face to the stars. Listening.

Listening for
him.

And she must have heard him. She turned on the spot, looking into a darkness he knew she couldn’t penetrate—and yet looking straight at him. Moving more slowly than she had been—no longer uncertain of her
path, but uncertain of her welcome. She headed back up the hill, stopping just below the base of the rocks that made up his overhang. Her sweatshirt had slipped, baring her shoulders. She opened her mouth, but if she’d had words to say, she evidently couldn’t find them.

Dolan hung on to their silent tableau for a selfish moment, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, heavy jaguar head stretching slightly into the breeze, drinking in the scent of her. Drinking in, too, the rising power of what lay between them, letting it swell within him instead of fighting it, letting it rumble through his body until it verged on intoxication. It pounded in his veins, grew warm around his heart, shivered down his spine.

Below him, Meghan drew her sweatshirt together with one hand and shoved her hair back with the other, poised for flight and determined to pretend she wasn’t. Suddenly vulnerable, and yet unable to keep from tipping her face up to the stars again, from leaning toward him ever so slightly.

It was his undoing.

He leaped from the rock, never minding the distance to the ground, invoking the shift along the way—riding the flash and crackle of the change and landing human. A good, square landing, crouched to absorb the tremendous energy of it all. Stronger, again, than any human would be. Stronger, finally.

And damned ready to face this thing between them.

“Meghan,” he said, and his voice came out as more of a growl than he’d intended. At this distance, no longer clothed in the black, rippling pelt of the jaguar, he was perfectly visible to her.

She still blinked from the night-shattering light of
shift on the fly, of his sudden appearance—but she hadn’t flinched before, and she didn’t now. She took a single step forward, stopped.

Dolan—riding the pounding demands in his body, the ache of being so close and yet not touching her—gave up on breathing for that moment. Until she lifted her face slightly, leaning into what lay between them. She took a deep breath; she let it out on a single, quiet, “Yes.”

He hesitated an instant longer—just long enough to be sure of what she’d said.

Yes,
this was her making a decision.
Yes,
she was here to be with him.
Yes,
she’d felt the incantation, but she was her own woman, responding to her own desires.

And that was all he could give it before breaking—three long strides downhill, barefoot on stone and stick and gritty soil. She ran up to meet him, no wavering as they came together. He lifted her right off the ground and she wrapped her legs around him, tight and close, only the flimsy material of her shorts and his jeans between the heat of them—it felt like no barrier at all and completely intolerable interference all at the same time.

He ran his hands under her bottom—toned muscle clenching to stay close as he took her back uphill, kissing the hell out of her on the way. Her arms wrapped around his neck, keeping her where she could find his ear, a quick bite and nibble. That’s when his legs nearly gave way; she laughed low in his ear and he surged against her and nearly lost his footing then, too. And again when she dropped her head back to reveal the graceful lines of her neck, and he buried his mouth against her skin, finding the sweet salt of it.

She cried out, a gasp of surprised pleasure, and that
did it. Finally he went down, balancing them as his knees found dirt and his toes dug against rock, and he leaned forward to delve into that sweet notch between her collarbones. She gave him that, falling backward, vulnerable and exposed and dipping back into his grip. Her back curved against his arm; her breasts waited for attention.

But her legs kept her close and tight; she moved against him and caught them both
just so
and she gasped and he growled, and his tongue left only a brief and longing path along her collarbone before she groped frantically at his pants, entirely supported in his arms—and getting absolutely nowhere, not with these Sentineltailored button-fly jeans. Nowhere, that is, except taking him close to the edge of his control, so close that he snatched her back up to him.

She flung her arms around his neck and took to nibbling his ear again, and he managed the jeans himself, reaching around beneath her—movements jerky with need, breath panting and catching and sometimes just plain forgetting to happen. And then, hands still free, he found her—warm and moist, no underwear beneath the skimpy shorts he easily pulled to the side; he touched her, cupping her—wringing a cry from her. Ready and waiting and poised to receive him, and still he hesitated—and she knew what he needed. “Yes,” she repeated, her voice a needy whisper in the ear she teased, a warmth on the neck she tended. “Yes, dammit!”

And so he plunged into her, and the deep rumbling hum inside him burst into two and grew a fine alto counterpart, filling him so completely that his movements jerked to a stop—filling her so completely that she clutched him with arms and legs and inner muscles,
both of them overwhelmed by sensation, and he knew, he
knew
what she felt, that sweet fire gathered along her nerves and joyful tears in her eyes and that they both tightened toward an inward crescendo of sensation without even moving, just by
being
and touching and—