Wild Cat (3 page)

T
he hunter watched from his safe perch, tranq gun on the girder beside him. He seethed in frustration as Cassidy Warden was led off and stuffed into the back of the patrol car, the damn cops ruining what he needed to do. He’d been so close.

Nothing personal, Shifter bitch, but I need your blood. All of it. It’s the only thing that’s going to open the gate for me.

The hunter hated himself for what he’d become, someone who would hunt another for something more than basic survival.

It is survival!
part of him screamed.

No, it was the perversion of what was natural. It was something
they
would do. They’d made him become like them—cruel, obsessive, ignoring the pain of others—and for that they’d pay.

He had to get Cassidy first. It was the spring equinox, a year after he’d first tried the spell, failing because the human hunters he’d hired made such a mess of it. Cassidy’s mate had died for nothing. The Shifter male had been sacrificed needlessly, and the hunter hated that.

This time, he’d work alone, trusting no one. But he had to hurry. The spell had to be worked at the equinox or the few days on either side of it. Time was running out. Cassidy was the best candidate—she was strong, powerfully strong, and besides, she was still grieving her mate, and Shifters were barely alive when they grieved. He’d be doing her a favor, he’d convinced himself.

His self-loathing filled him again, but his need to work the spell overrode it. He needed to get home. He could taste it. Exile was bitter. This time, he’d succeed, no matter what.

T
hey gave Cassidy a blue coverall to wear and made her sit alone in the interrogation room, her hands on the table. At least they’d let her out of the cuffs.

The room smelled like something rotten, the walls dirty yellow and puke green. Shifters liked warm colors, clean paint, and places that didn’t stink of human sweat. Humans considered Shifters to be wild and dangerous, but Shifters had much better taste in décor.

The door opened, and Cassidy tensed. She’d been sitting in here for hours, no one coming to her, no one offering to let her call a lawyer, or even her brother. But that, she’d heard, was what they did with Shifters.

The man who came in was the cop she’d saved up in the building. Lieutenant Escobar, she’d heard the others call him.

He’d been the one to usher her into the back of the patrol car, after he’d draped a blanket around her naked body. His movements had been quick, efficient, his large hands warm.

She hadn’t realized that humans could be so warm. His voice was dark, sliding around her in liquid syllables, though he hadn’t spoken directly to her since telling Cassidy her rights.

Which he should have known wasn’t required for Shifters. The man must not know much about Shifters or human laws for Shifters. So why had they sent him in here?

Lieutenant Escobar gave her a dark-eyed look as he shut the door. Without saying a word, he moved to the table and placed a file folder on it. He took off his suit coat—again, his movements economical—and draped the coat over the back of a chair.

His white button-down shirt hugged powerful muscles, his black holster and butt of his gun stark against his left side. If he removed the shirt, she knew she’d see an undershirt pasted against hard abs, muscles solid under dark skin.

Escobar’s black hair was cut short, almost buzzed, which emphasized the sharp lines of his face and a scar that cut across his temple to his forehead. His dark, almost black eyes held intelligence and something even an alpha Shifter would acknowledge.

I’m not taking shit from you
, those eyes told her.
If I like what you say, I might play square with you. Try to fuck with me, and you’ll regret it.

He sat down, smoothing his tie so it wouldn’t be caught by the table’s edge. Escobar opened the file folder and flicked a switch next to the small microphone on the table.

Without looking at her, he said, “Interview with Cassidy Warden, Shifter from the Southern Nevada Shiftertown, by Lieutenant Diego Escobar, arresting officer.” Diego looked up at Cassidy with those bottomless eyes. “Tell me, Ms. Warden, what you were doing at a closed construction site forty miles west of your Shiftertown.”

Cassidy felt a strange impulse to blurt out the whole story—
tell me everything, and it will be all right
, he seemed to say. But Escobar was human, and Cassidy had to be careful. Going out to make her peace with the place her mate had died was only half the story.

“Shiftertowns aren’t prisons, Lieutenant,” she said, pinning him with her gaze. “I’m allowed to come and go as I please.”

He didn’t seem impressed. Diego Escobar either didn’t understand that her looking straight into his eyes was a challenge to his authority, or maybe he just didn’t give a rat’s ass.

“You broke into a fenced-off property on a shut-down, private construction site,” he said. “Plus you endangered the lives of three police officers, one of which happened to be me. So, tell me what you were doing there.”

Cassidy folded her arms. “None of your business.”

Diego eyed her for a moment longer, then he flicked off the microphone, stood up, and came to her side of the table.

He was angry; she could scent that and tell from every tense line on his body. He’d shown deep rage at the construction site too, not necessarily at Cassidy. A man like him shouldn’t fear anything, and yet, in the unfinished skyscraper, he’d been afraid, with a deep gut-wrenching fear, and that was before he’d fallen.

Diego looked at Cassidy for a while, then he leaned one hip on the table, arms folded across his chest. The movement made his muscles play, but it also let him keep his hand near his gun.

“Shifter Division had a cage in their SUV,” he said in a flat voice. “They wanted to subdue you with shock sticks, lock you in that cage, and haul you back here. Without the blanket.”

Cassidy flinched but she didn’t break eye contact. “Typical human fear response,” she said, trying to sound bored.

“You know why they didn’t,
mi ja
?” He pinned her with eyes like pieces of night. “Because I told them not to. I’m the only reason you’re not downstairs, naked in an animal cage, with the shits in Shifter Division walking around you deciding what they want to do to you.”

How did he want her to respond? She didn’t know how to react to humans, especially not to one like him. Humans she danced with at the clubs were different—but those were Shifter groupies who would do anything even to stand next to a Shifter. Diego Escobar was a human who didn’t care that she responded to the warmth and scent of him, that she was a female Shifter without a mate.

Diego leaned to her. “You cooperate with me and tell me what I want to know, or by regulation, I have to let Shifter Division have you.”

Cassidy looked right back at him. “Are you playing good cop, bad cop?” she asked tightly. “I’ve heard about that.”

“I’m playing
you tell me what I want to know or I escort you downstairs.
There’s no choice, no games. They only let me talk to you because I claimed you saved my life up there.” Diego sat back, holding her with eyes so dark. “Why did you?”

Cassidy shrugged. She was still wound up from her run from the hunter who’d chased her up into the tower, the edge barely off her fighting instincts.

The hunter had been stalking her, she realized that now, and must have been waiting for her in the place Donovan had died. She’d picked up the hunter’s scent before she’d gotten the candles lit, and she’d slipped into the woods to shift, but he’d found her before she could get away from him.

Cassidy had led the hunter back down into the desert, thinking she could lose a human in the giant, half-finished building on the outskirts of town, but damned if he hadn’t followed her right up into it. His seeming defiance of gravity proved that he wasn’t human, nor was he Shifter. He’d terrified her.

The chase, the cops’ arrival, saving Diego from falling, and then the feel of Diego’s hands as he cuffed her—all had Cassidy’s Shifter adrenaline soaring. Sitting here waiting had increased her tension, not eased it. She needed the comfort of physical contact, to be held and stroked until she calmed down.

She looked up at Diego and wanted to touch him. No, she
needed
to touch him. To brush his skin, to feel the rough of whiskers on his face. He’d shaved—she smelled the faint odor of aftershave lotion—but his dark skin was already touched by new growth. A man who had to shave religiously or have a permanent five o’clock shadow.

Most humans seemed uncomfortable with their own bodies, but Diego Escobar leaned against the table with ease, knowing he controlled the room. His eyes were hard but had little crinkles in the corners, which meant he smiled sometimes.

Cassidy reached out her hand, slowly so she wouldn’t startle him, and rested it, softly, on his thigh.

Steel hard muscles met her touch, and Cassidy closed her eyes. Diego’s flesh was warm beneath the fabric of his pants, and oh, Goddess, wouldn’t it be heaven to touch his bare skin? His skin would be hot and smooth, tight against the strength beneath it.

Cassidy’s rising need surprised her, but she didn’t move her hand. She hadn’t touched a male since Donovan’s death, hadn’t had a sensual thought until Diego Escobar had looked at her with sin-dark eyes fifty stories above the ground.

Cassidy opened her eyes. Diego held himself so still, watching her, not making a move to touch her in return.

“You’re supposed to keep your hands on the table,” he said.

Cassidy curled her fingers into her palm and drew her hand away. A shudder of pain went through her. She was never going to calm down.

“Please,” she said. Goddess, now she was begging. Second in command of Shiftertown, Cassidy Warden was begging a human for sympathy.

“All you have to do is tell me what you were doing up there.”

“No, I mean. I need…”

She couldn’t explain. Cassidy got out of the chair. Diego watched her come, not pulling his weapon, but not moving his hand from near it, as though curious to see what she’d do. Cassidy read in his eyes that he’d let her do only what he wanted her to, nothing more.

Cassidy put her hands on his folded arms. Diego remained still. She slid her palms up his arms, the female in her responding to the firm strength of biceps under the shirt. On up to his shoulders, which held even more power, while Diego simply watched her.

His warmth was calming, amazingly so. Cassidy had never touched a human before, not like this. She’d had no idea that touching one would be so comforting, so satisfying. It eased something in her that had been tight for a long time.

Diego still didn’t move as Cassidy stroked her hands up his neck to his close-cut dark hair. She liked how the ends of his hair felt, soft yet prickly. Cassidy cupped his face, his whiskers like fine sandpaper against her fingertips. She read rigid anger in dark eyes, vast pain and guilt. Unhappiness she didn’t understand.

Diego’s voice, when he finally spoke, was completely steady. “You need to sit back down, Ms. Warden.”

“Wait. Not yet.”

Diego put one hand on her wrist. She noticed that he kept his other hand over his gun, snapped inside the holster, keeping her away from it.

“You need to obey the rules.”

He wasn’t afraid of her; he was stating facts. Cassidy’s adrenaline wouldn’t let her obey any rules but Shifter instinct. She twined her fingers through the backs of his and raised his hand to her face.

“Please, just a little while,” she said. “I’m so scared.”

Diego’s eyes flickered, and Cassidy couldn’t believe she’d said that. Admitting fear was the last thing she should do.

“You’ll be all right,” Diego said. “I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you.
Three simple words, but Cassidy felt a blanket of safety wrap around her. She knew damn well it was a false blanket and that she needed to get the hell out of here, but the basic need inside her responded to the firm strength of his voice.

Cassidy let go of Diego’s hand, wrapped her arms around him, and pulled him close.

Diego found himself with his arms full of tall, beautiful Shifter woman, her naked body obvious beneath the baggy coverall.
Dios mio.

He thanked all the saints that no one was in the observation room—at least that he knew of. Diego had spent two hours persuading Shifter Division and his captain to let him interrogate Cassidy Warden alone. Cassidy could have let Diego die up there in that tower, and she hadn’t. Diego wanted to find out why.

But it was against all procedure—Shifter Division viewed Shifters as deadly, unstable animals, no matter what form they were in, no matter that their Collars were supposed to keep them tamed. Diego had won a few minutes alone with Cassidy only because his captain sided with him—reluctantly. Diego hadn’t lied when he’d said that if he couldn’t persuade Cassidy to talk, he’d have to give her to Shifter Division. He sure as hell didn’t want to.

Now, Diego felt Cassidy Warden’s long body against his, the sleek warmth of her hair on his cheek. He inhaled the scent of her, which, considering she’d been running around naked in the desert plus sitting in here for hours, was sweet and good.

Diego’s body responded. He’d kept himself celibate too long, and this woman was beautiful.

No, she was damn
hot
. He remembered her fine ass when he’d locked the cuffs on her wrists, her beautiful breasts when she’d stood over him on the catwalk.

He felt those breasts now, still unfettered, against him, her strong thighs along the length of his. She had one sweet, gorgeous body, and her face was strong and lovely. A man would have to be dead not to respond to her.

More than that, Diego wanted to lean her back over the interrogation table, open those coveralls, and explore everything he found inside the package. Beautiful, warm woman. Sex with Cassidy would be… explosive.

But Diego also felt her fear. He’d heard truth ring when she’d said,
I’m so scared.
It had cost this woman a lot to say the words.