Wild Cat (29 page)

Eric’s body was large, solid, warm in the cool air. His mouth brushed hers once, twice, opening each time. Iona stroked his hair, but Eric didn’t touch her. He kept one hand on the wall, the other still holding the precious chocolate.

Iona wanted him. In her apartment, alone. Tonight. Wanted him touching and stroking her, letting her touch and stroke his bare body in return.

She wanted to feel her mattress at her back, his weight on her, while his hands lifted her breasts, brushed between her legs, made her on fire for him.

Iona turned her head, breaking the kisses. “What are you doing to me?”

Eric remained close, his body heat like a blanket. “Nothing.” The word touched her lips. “Mating need. All Shifters go through it.”

“I’m only half Shifter.”

“Doesn’t matter. The Shifter side breeds strong.” He leaned closer still, the length of his body against hers. “Come home with me, Iona. I’ll help you through it.”

Seduction with chocolate. And Eric.

Iona sucked in a painful breath. “Forget it, furball,” she made herself say.

To her surprise, he chuckled, a warm sound, and kissed her again. Their mouths sought each other’s, heat, spice, and chocolate melding.

Iona wasn’t afraid. She should be, of this man who followed and watched her, who’d brought her out here in the dark, alone, and fed her chocolate. He made her body hum.

Eric eased out of the kiss, and Iona couldn’t suppress a faint moan of disappointment as he lifted himself away from her.

He touched her lips. “I’ll bring you in sometime, my Iona,” he said. “It would be easier if you didn’t fight me.”

Iona drew a shaking breath. “I’ve lived as human all my life. I can keep doing it. If I feel the need to go Shifter, I’ll call you.”

Her bravado didn’t impress him. “How often do you shift?”

“What?” It had been a while, and didn’t that make her feel itchy? “When I can. I don’t always have the opportunity.”

“Do it at least twice a week. Run it off.” Eric brushed a stray bit of chocolate from her lower lip. “But when you do go out running, you call me. It’s dangerous out there without a Collar, and you need protection.”

“Sure, Eric. But who protects me from you?”

Again the laugh, dark and warm. “I’m your alpha, love. You have no clan or pride, so I’m it by default, as ranking Feline in the area. I protect you—from everyone. Including myself.”

“Now, why doesn’t that make me feel better?”

“You call me.” Eric handed her the bag of chocolate, and she felt another twinge of disappointment. Him feeding her had been… delectable. “Now, I’m taking you home.”

“I’m meeting my friends.”

“Call them and tell them you’re going home.” Eric leaned in again. “There’s bad stuff out there, Iona, and bad people. You have no natural defenses against them.” The look in his eyes was one of true worry, not just the you-obey-me-because-I’m-dominant crap. “I don’t want you dying on my watch.”

“Dying?”

“Yes, sweetheart. The Collars don’t mean we’ve given in to the humans. We chose captivity to save ourselves, and some of those without the Collar are getting wilder and wilder. If they let the animal take over, they go feral. Not a good thing. You feel the wildness though, don’t you?”

Of course Iona didn’t. She’d grown up like a normal girl—playing with toys, skateboarding, jumping rope, riding horses. Although the horses had always been a little nervous with her. Then she’d become a teenager and discovered that she liked clothes, makeup, shoes, and boys.

Normal. Sure.

Iona smelled the chocolate, winding around the hard craving inside her, and she shivered.

“You feel it,” Eric said.

Damn him. “How do I make it stop?”

“It will stop when you mate. When you and your chosen spend days together. When your body is convinced it’s doing the job it was made to do, which is to produce cubs.”

She stared at him. “How nineteen fifties of you. I have a life, a career.”

“You can still have a life. Just one with lots of sex. And cubs.”

“Oh, sure. While the men do whatever they want. I’ve heard
that
before.”

Eric leaned to her again, and her mouth watered.
Need chocolate!

“Males have the same frenzy, sweetheart,” he said. “
I
have the frenzy.” He traced her cheek. “So whenever you feel the need to dampen it a little, you come and find me. We can help each other.”

He was offering to help her ease the pain with lots and lots of sex. Iona should be insulted, not tempted.

She was tempted.

“Give me another piece of chocolate,” she said.

Eric plucked her cell phone from her purse and started punching buttons, one-handed. “I’m putting in my number. When the need gets bad, you call me. If you want to go running around as a wildcat, you call me. You want anything at all, you call me.”

“I want the chocolate.”

Eric laughed. He slid the phone into to her purse and took back the bag of chocolates. He found one laced with citrus and held it up to her. Iona put out her tongue and drew the chocolate into her mouth.

Eric’s eyes went dark as he watched her, but he didn’t try to kiss her again. She craved the kiss, but she didn’t let herself reach for him.

“Come on,” Eric said once she’d finished. He took her arm and kept hold of the bag of chocolates. “You’re going home.”

D
iego gunned the jeep straight through the Shifters. Wildcats, wolves, bears—there were so many of them.

The Shifters leapt out of his way. Diego fishtailed as a wildcat tried to jump on the back of the jeep. The wildcat became dislodged, but not the bear that reached for Cassidy.

Shane roared, half changing, clothes ripping, and went for the bear. Diego saw Cassidy stripping off, heard her growls.

If Diego could get the jeep up to speed, they could beat the Shifters back to the plane. Even Shifters could run only so fast. But the jeep, ancient and worn out, gasped and chugged along. Diego drew his pistol.

A bear charged out of the darkness straight for the side of the jeep. Xavier brought up his shotgun and fired.

At nothing. The Ursine hit the dirt, the shot missing. The bear, a giant of a thing, regained his feet and swiped the shotgun out of Xavier’s hands.

In the next second, the bear had swept Xavier out of the jeep. Xavier fell and hit the ground, rolling, rolling. He’d try to get to his feet, snatch out his pistol, fire.

Diego hit the brakes, and the jeep swung around. The biker in the passenger seat held on, swearing and praying, his eyes closed.

Cassidy was out, her wildcat racing back to help Xavier. Shane rose on his hind legs, scraps of clothes clinging to him, the grizzly roaring his rage.

Diego grabbed his shotgun and jumped out, weapon ready, as he ran back to Xavier. Xavier made it to his feet, but the bear and now several wolves surrounded him.

Xavier didn’t want to shoot. Diego saw that in his stance. He liked Shifters, now that he’d gotten to know some, and he didn’t view them as dangerous animals that needed to be contained. He wanted there to be a way out that didn’t involve death.

Cassidy and Shane simply attacked them.

Shane hit the bear that held Xavier, and Cassidy went for one of the wolves. Diego ran on toward them, his heart in his throat.

Cassidy’s Collar went off as soon as she landed on the back of a wolf, her claws extended, but she kept on fighting. Shane, same thing.

But they’d tire, and the pain of the Collars would break them soon. The other Shifters were many, strong, and not restricted by Collars. Shane and Cassidy were like declawed tabbies trying to fight a horde of angry alley cats.

Diego heard the jeep behind him roar to life. The drug runners. Of course they’d steal the jeep and run out of there to save their own asses.

But they weren’t fast enough. A few bears broke off and rushed the jeep. They didn’t try to stop it or grab the men inside, they just tipped the damn thing over.

The engine whined, gurgled, and died. The bikers tried to run, but the bears and wolves were on them.

Diego took aim at the Shifters surrounding Xavier and fired. One bear fell, moaning. Diego cocked the gun one more time before it was knocked out of his hands. He found himself facing a wild wolf, with crazed eyes, brown teeth bared, its breath horrific.

Diego fought. His body took over, the lessons and experience of hand-to-hand combat closing down his brain. To think meant to die.

He’d never in his life gone hand-to-hand with a gigantic wolf, but the same principles applied. Go for the vulnerable spots, take down the assailant as fast as you can.

The wolf’s muzzle was vulnerable—if Diego could get past the teeth. Likewise the throat, the legs.

The wolf’s front claws tore open Diego’s skin, raising welts of pain. Diego ducked and came up under the wolf, jabbing a hand into the wolf’s throat. It fell back, choking.

Cassidy’s Collar shocked and arced in the darkness. She howled as another wildcat and bear joined her fight to keep Xavier safe. Xavier was firing now, Shifters screaming as he hit them.

Diego dove for his shotgun. It was snatched out of his reach by a bear, who half shifted and rose to his full height. The thing smelled like urine.

Diego rolled into the darkness. Like hell he was getting shot in the stomach twice in his lifetime by the same kind of gun.

The Shifter brought the gun around like a club and caught Diego on the temple. Diego ducked in time to keep the blow from doing full damage, but the world spun around him.

Shane knocked the half-shifted bear away from Diego, but Diego felt himself losing consciousness. The last things he saw before he passed out were at least a dozen Shifters dragging his brother away, followed by Cassidy’s wildcat sprinting after them into the darkness.

“S
hifter woman, I claim you.”

The speaker was a bear Shifter, in human form now. The gigantic man’s skin was covered with tattoos, his shaggy hair and beard touched with gray. At least he’d put on a pair of pants, tattered BDUs.

All the Shifters in the abandoned building wore clothes of some form or other, but none had offered clothing to Cassidy. She’d chased them and tried to get Xavier away from them, but she’d been beaten down by five Lupines and a Feline, plus the shocks from her damned Collar.

The Collar was silent now, and Cassidy sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, holding in the Collar’s aftermath pain. Xavier lay on a blanket next to her, unconscious, his head caked with blood.

Cassidy looked up at the bear Shifter, meeting his eyes. It was difficult to lock gazes with him, because he was definitely the leader here, and he had dominance. Plus he was just so tall, and her neck hurt. But Cassidy knew that if she looked away, if she betrayed any submissiveness to him, she was done for.

A male might hesitate to force an alpha female who was not afraid to fight him, because she could do him a lot of damage. But he’d not hesitate to force a submissive. A feral wouldn’t anyway.

“When my alpha comes for me, you’re not going to be happy,” Cassidy said. “Trust me.”

“Your alpha has to be a thousand miles away,” the bear said. She’d heard one of his trackers call him Miguel. Whether that was his true name or one he’d taken when he’d come to Mexico, she didn’t know. “You have a Collar,” Miguel said. “That means you don’t live nearby. No one around here is Collared. They wouldn’t dare take a Collar.”

Cassidy clasped her knees to her chest, but she kept her voice nonchalant. “Felines, Lupines, Ursines, living together in the wild. Unheard of.”

“We’re just doing what you did,” Miguel said. “Coming together, putting aside differences, only we didn’t bow to humans to do it. The humans bow to us. No Collars. Just Shifters.”

Living in a half-ruined building in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, terrorizing the locals and hiding like fugitives. No access to any stashes of wealth, it looked like. They either killed their food or had the local eateries give it to them free.

“Looks… cozy,” Cassidy said.

“You’re pretty strong. When you’re my mate, we’ll get that Collar off you, and you can be my second. Or third. Depending on how well you fight my alpha mate.”

Cassidy rolled her eyes. “I reject your mate-claim. That’s a no-brainer.”

Miguel laughed. The two Feline trackers who were sitting as his bodyguards did too. The only other Shifters with them at present were another bear and a wolf guarding Xavier and Cassidy.

“Females around here don’t reject mate-claims,” Miguel said. “There are only so many females to go around, and you’ll be mate-claimed by more than one male. But the first cubs are mine. After that, you can fuck whoever you want.”

Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “Way to romance a girl.”

“Romance is for humans.”

Cassidy thought about how Diego whispered beautiful words as he made love to her. She’d take human romance with Diego over Miguel’s disgusting statements any day of the week.

“I’m not standing up with you under sun and moon,” Cassidy said. “Forget it.”

Miguel laughed again. “None of those rituals exist here. We just mate.”

“Taking off my Collar might kill me,” Cassidy said. “Then I wouldn’t be much good for producing cubs, would I?”

“I’ll let you push out a few first, just in case.”

Cassidy pretended to ignore that. Her heart was pounding, but she tried to suppress all emotion. No rage or fear. Miguel would be able to scent her fear and use it to break her.

Cassidy glanced around the barren room again. Wind blew through chinks in the ceiling high above. “This works for you, does it? Coming together, living in harmony, all Shifter races as one. Are you having more cubs, then, a better rate of survival? If so, where are they all?”

The slightest flicker of Miguel’s eyes told her much. They weren’t having the number of cubs they thought they would.

Because they’d gone feral.
Feral
didn’t mean the same thing as
wild
. It meant the animal instincts taking over, the human side being suppressed until the animal ruled, no matter what form the Shifter was in. Shifters were half beings, at their very best when each aspect of them worked in balance. Going too far in either direction wasn’t good at all.