Beast Within

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Beast Within ISBN 9781419919480 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Beast Within Copyright © 2009 Betty Hanawa Edited by Briana St. James. Photography and cover art by Les Byerley. Electronic book Publication February 2009 The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

BEAST WITHIN

Betty Hanawa

Dedication To Delilah Devlin and Myla Jackson, mentors extraordinaire. To the Mt. Helicon Muses for support, fun and the Magic Time Machine. And to my husband, a true-life romance hero.

Acknowledgements Thank you to veterinarian Dr. Skip Tewell, his wife Nancy and their staff for information on animal vaccines. Thank you to Laura Clayton Furst for directing me to information on the amygdala system of the brain. Any errors are mine.

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Chapter One Mate. My mate. Dylan Gomez took a deep breath and focused on identifying the scent of the female he knew was his mate. He smelled parched grass, dust, deer crap filled with rotting mesquite tree beans, the rusty residue of rabbit blood spilled during a kill in the night. The almost overwhelming stench of metal surrounded him, but it didn’t have the antiseptic pinch of the Hell Hospital or the pungent stink of fear and despair. Since this wasn’t Hell Hospital, he figured whatever held him now wouldn’t hold him long. He reminded himself he’d almost gotten out of Hell Hospital. He cracked open one eye and realized he was in a cage within a van. He scented oil, grease and gasoline from the van. With the van’s doors open and this simple cage, he had a good chance of getting away. He ignored the metallic tang at the back of his throat and sniffed again, trying to get a sense of how many people he needed to take out. There. He caught it again. His mate’s aroma. Near. Every molecule in Dylan Gomez’s being knew his mate. Despite having a fun life with pleasurable sex, he never had settled with one woman. At this moment he knew this new, unique fragrance was that of his lifemate. He inhaled the bouquet of her womanly scent mixed with the clean aroma of detergent, starched and ironed cotton. The woman he would mate with. His woman. Still lying in whatever metal cage held him, Dylan savored the redolent combination of wet, sun-heated skin and the spice of his future mate’s juices. But she also exuded a nip of hunted things. Of fear.

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She had nothing to fear. She was going to be his mate. He would protect her. Kill for her. Her. His mate. Dylan opened his eyes to see the black barrel of a gun pointed at him. The woman he knew in his gut to be his mate, the woman he’d never seen before, stood in front of the too-small cage his naked body was crammed into, holding a semiautomatic pistol rock steady. He wanted to snarl and scream at her for threatening him with a gun. He saw her face tighten and the tang of her fear grew more pungent. Dylan reached deep inside himself to push back the anger and focus on calming her apprehension. He had to reach this woman, not scare her. He wanted her. And, on the more practical and essential side, he needed her to get him out of this damn cage. She was a Valkyrie, a goddess of large bones, voluptuous curves and streaky blonde hair worn short under her Parks and Wildlife officer hat. However, gorgeous and sexy didn’t mean much when she held the gun in a no-nonsense two-hand grip aimed straight at his face. Her solid hold on the pistol took long, concentrated hours of practice at a firing range. Dylan knew intimately how much that gun weighed with a full load. He had used the same gun first as a part-time Texas State Trooper while he worked on his college degrees, then during his military stint. With the familiarity of her hold, he didn’t think she kept her gun anything but fully loaded.

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“Who the hell are you?” His Valkyrie’s voice shook a bit, but even nervous, but her tone demanded an answer to not only who he was but any other questions she had. At this point he didn’t think he’d share answers with her, not even his name. He needed to pull himself together better before he talked to her, before he mated with her. His muscles and joints gave him pain as though they were finally stretching after being tied tightly. Once again he was coming back into himself after one of the blackouts that had afflicted him since his sojourn at Hell Hospital. This time his hard-on ached and pulsed more than any other time. This time he knew he had found his mate. He wanted her lovely pale hands wrapped around his shaft, not around a pistol’s handle. Unfortunately, his cock needed to wait. It pulsed with exquisite pain. What it wanted, it wanted now. With sheer will, he overrode his blind third eye and forced blood to his brain. He needed to think. Yeah, he needed to fuck too, but it had to come later. But not much later, not with his mate within reach. “I asked you a question. Who are you? ¿Quién son usted?” Her Spanish held the accent of classroom lessons, unlike Dylan whose bilingual skills came with his mother’s milk. Her voice had strengthened and Dylan knew he had to coax her to release him from this cage. He cleared his throat. “Water? Please?” The gun and the pretty hands disappeared from Dylan’s view. The cage sat near the edge of the back of a van. An aluminum ramp extended downward. Its bright metal reflected the sun with the heat of summer into the van and through the mesh wire cage. In deep south Texas, it didn’t matter the calendar said mid-May. At least, he thought it was still May. It had been before this last blackout. Dylan checked his internal clock. Yes, he realized, this blackout had lasted barely two days.

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Hell Hospital had put him through sleep deprivation and tried to mess up his concept of days and nights by keeping him in windowless rooms with lights and meals at odd intervals. They had even placed him in complete sensory deprivation. Despite their best efforts, his internal clock took the licking and kept on ticking. His shaman uncle, who practiced holistic medicine, told him it was because he was in tune with Mother Earth. He was grateful for it. Because he always knew when he was, he always kept a kernel of who he was. His clock kept him sane. He cringed away from the jumbled memories and dreams that haunted him since the last time he’d been fully aware of himself. This waking up naked and with no idea where he was had to stop and stop soon. He wanted to go back to being a state trooper since his military service was now kaput. The damn blackouts got him invalided out of his military duty and Special Forces, despite his protests. The lovely hands came back into view, set a bottle of water and a pile of solidcolored material beside the cage. When he spotted sleeves, he realized the material was a jumpsuit. He found it touching that despite being frightened, she had the kindness to bring clothes for a stranger. On top of the jumpsuit she placed a digital camera, then efficiently unsnapped the clasp on the cage. Damn, he hadn’t realized it wasn’t locked. Of course, he didn’t exactly have the strength to cut and run, even if he had opened the cage. Plus he had no room to maneuver around to undo the clasp anyway. The click of a double-barrel rifle being cocked into ready position had him looking at her again. Shit, the woman was the epitome of the Norse warrior maidens. She would probably shoot his balls off before he got three feet away even if he tried to run. The woman had a freaking arsenal. In addition to the pistol, now holstered at her side, and the rifle she held, he spotted a tranquilizer gun. Rage that his mate—his mate—held guns on him and didn’t trust him roared through him. Dylan battled the instinctual rampage, barely gaining control. Just as his cock and his emotions knew she was meant for him, his cool logical side reminded him they’d never met. She had no reason to trust him. Yet.

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Before he could mate with her, he had to earn her trust. Now it was time to start that. Slowly, feeling joints creak and pop with strain, Dylan squirmed from the cage far enough to get an arm out to grab the water bottle and gulp its contents. Water flowed down his throat, easing the dryness. He practically felt his system absorb it. With a deep breath, he emptied the bottle down his throat. The lovely hands exchanged a second bottle for the first one. Dylan was falling in love with those hands. He lusted after this woman, but he truly appreciated her compassion. He drank the second bottle more slowly, but still finished it quickly. “More water?” The feminine voice, as gentle as her hands, circled around his head. Usually content with casual relationships, Dylan grew hungry for something more permanent at the sound of her voice. Plus she smelled so good. Her light scent held no perfumes, just the pleasant scent of sun-warmed woman in starched clothes. With her standing closer to him, he more clearly scented her pheromones. His cock assured him he was still alive and it was fully functional and ready to go. No, his logic told his cock, it isn’t time to mate. Not yet. “Maybe in a minute. Thanks.” “You’re not an illegal. Your accent is south Texas, not Mexican. Who the hell are you and where is the jaguarondi? Did you have a falling out with your poacher buddies?” Despite the firm, no-nonsense tone, the cadences of her voice still warmed him. Dylan propped himself up on an elbow and tilted his head up to see his captor who sounded more confused than he was. “What are you talking about? I just regained consciousness trapped in this cage. Who the hell are you and where do you think you’re going to take me?”

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The Parks and Wildlife Management uniform’s name badge read “Lundberg”. To his surprise, Ms. Lundberg’s face drained of color as he watched. Her knuckles whitened when she tightened her grip on the rifle. The barrel never left his face while she sank onto the dirt. “Ma’am?” Dylan pushed on the cage back with his feet. The cage rolled backward allowing him to further slither from it without falling face first on the hot metal ramp protruding from the van’s bed. Jumping to his feet, Dylan leaped from the van to get to her, to help her. The rifle swung to his chest, which was the only thing that kept him from touching her. He shrugged off the slight pain of the rocks and stickers under his bare feet and focused on Brunhilde. He didn’t dare try to take any of the weapons at this point. She might decide to blow his head off if he touched her rifle. Her pale blue eyes looked a little wild. She didn’t look at his engorged cock, which kind of surprised him. While he didn’t think he was any more of an egotist than most men, women did tend to view his package with appreciation whenever he was naked. And God knew his cock wanted her to admire and appreciate him. Instead, she looked at his left ear as though it were a snake about to bite. Dylan touched his ear, suddenly aware of it throbbing with its own sharp pain. His fingers rubbed on a chunk of plastic embedded in his upper cartilage like a weird earring. “What the hell?” He tugged at it but wasn’t able to dislodge it. “What is this?” The Norse goddess shook her head as though she were rearranging her thoughts. Her dark blonde hair gleamed with the late afternoon sun trapped in it. Color began to come back into her face. She stood up in one swift movement and poked Dylan in the chest with her rifle. Her full lips thinned until they were white. Her jaw locked so tightly it could have been a statue’s jaw. “It’s an endangered wildlife tag. I put it on a jaguarondi. Now where is the cat and how did you get it on? As a matter of fact, how 10

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did you get it off the cat? Those things have a special locking mechanism that only PW personnel can remove.” What kind of trap had he fallen into this time? No way in hell was he going to give her the psychological advantage of standing over him. Not that it helped him much to stand next to her. In her boots, she stood several inches taller than he. Plus she had bigger bones, a rifle and clothes on. Granted, he just barely hit the height level for the troopers and active military duty, but no one ever made him feel like a shrimp. And Hell Hospital had taught him not to let being naked rattle him. So far she hadn’t shot him. At this point he didn’t think she would. Dylan pushed the rifle’s barrel away from him and stepped into her personal space. Grim pleasure warmed him when she took steps back. She was his mate He was going to start proving it. But first he wanted to know what was going on. It would really suck if his mate were part of the Hell Hospital crew. “What jaguarondi? Lady, I don’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about.” “You poachers are getting damn brazen. I parked this van exactly once. I was out of sight of it a grand total of five minutes. How did they manage to get the cat out and you in while I was gone?” “You know more than I do,” Dylan snarled back. “I’ve been unconscious. I don’t know what happened to your damn jaguarondi. I just woke up naked and squashed in that cage. I’m not a poacher. Why’d you leave the van anyway?” “I went in the convenience store to pee after I filled the gas tank. Got a problem with that?” Dylan modulated his voice to more gentle. “No, Ms. Lundberg, I don’t. I do have a problem with waking up naked in a too small cage and no idea where I am.” “How do you know my name?” Dylan grinned, then drawled, “Forget you’re wearing your name tag?”

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She blushed lightly with a sheepish look of having swallowed a stupid pill. She dropped her eyes from his face, then quickly returned her attention to his face. Her blush flashed scarlet. Dylan crossed his arms over his chest, well aware his cock still proudly commanded attention. At this moment, he held the upper hand in their subtle battle for control. For the first time, he began to relax. Even though they never completely broke him, the people in charge at Hell Hospital never got rattled by anything. Since Ms. Lundberg’s composure was slightly shaken, he tentatively thought she might not be part of that organization. Maybe she really was a Parks and Wildlife officer. Time for him to go on the attack and press his advantage. Again ignoring the rifle, he moved closer to her. This time she not only didn’t move away, she lowered the rifle slightly. “I am damn tired of people trying to mess with my mind. I don’t know what kind of drugs were in that gun your friends shot me with.” Dylan rubbed his thigh feeling the adhesive of temporary skin. The bullet must have gone cleanly through. Someone had carefully patched the entry and exit holes. “But I know damn well I’m not going to be held prisoner again.” He watched her blush fade to pale again, too pale, almost as if she were trying not to faint. “Where were you a prisoner? Mexico?” Her milk-white face registered confusion. Her innocence became more convincing for Dylan when her hands fractionally relaxed around her rifle. She acted as if she was hoping he’d been in one of the God-forsaken Mexican jails. If he had been, he might have been able to bribe his way out, unlike the Hell Hospital. “In a circle of hell.” Dylan stepped closer into her personal space. Her hands tightened around the rifle again. The closer he stood to her, the more he wanted to touch her. The horniness that came after his blackouts grew stronger each time he breathed her scent. This went 12

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beyond a rigid cock. This hunger to possess her came from his gut, as though his heart knew she was the one for him. Dylan reached a single hand with one finger extended slowly, carefully toward her head, making very sure he didn’t move near her rifle. Her short hair feathered across his finger and the skin behind her ear was soft. He drew his finger forward to touch her jawline and slide across to her chin. His mate. As much as he wanted to cup her face in his hands, he moved back and clasped his hands behind his back. It made him hurt to not caress her, but he wanted her to make it clear he was allowed to touch her. She relaxed her hold on the rifle and he watched her eyes. As they widened, her breath hitched. The tip of her tongue touched her lips, then he leaned closer to her. When she didn’t move away, he pressed his mouth to hers. God knew he tried to keep the kiss simple. When her lips opened to his, the taste unleashed the wildness in him. His tongue ravaged her mouth and he pressed his naked body against her clothed one. He needed his scent on her, to mark her as his mate. He rubbed his cock between her thighs. Even with her heavy khaki pants keeping his cock from her pussy, the heat between her legs nearly undid him. Dylan managed, just barely, to stop himself before he came all over her like a virgin teenager. With both of them breathing heavily, he nipped her bottom lip, then laved his mouth across her throat. Even though she still held her rifle, her other hand slipped down his back to grasp his ass. He wanted her hand on his cock but settled for her pressing him tighter against her while she twisted a leg around one of his to get him closer to her. While her fingers continued to pluck and grab his ass, he rubbed his cock harder against her. He jerked her shirt collar and a button pinged against his bare chest. His mouth went straight to her shoulder’s soft flesh. He bit down, determined to mark and hold his mate.

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Her body shivered, then shook around his while she keened a note that went straight to his groin. This time he didn’t bother to hold back, but pumped himself against her material-covered thigh. Holding her in place, he used his second hand to pull more buttons loose to reach her breasts. When the rifle barrel banged against him, he grabbed it, intending to throw it away from them. She promptly kneed his groin. Dylan dropped to the ground, clutching his cock and balls. The rifle barrel pressed against his belly. The hot woman suddenly transformed into a warrior. A warrior no one messed with. “Do I shoot you now? Or later?” Brunhilde sounded cool and dispassionate as though she were trying to decide whether to have a steak or chicken at a restaurant. “Shoot me now, please,” Dylan managed to say. “Put me out of my misery.” Pain radiated from his groin, even making his hands tingle. He managed to jerk his attention from his painful groin to his hands. The tingling grew to aching, then burning. His fingers curled inward and his nails began to grow. The pain moved to his feet, making his toes curl inward. “Help me,” he tried to tell Brunhilde, but his tongue didn’t work right. The words came out as a growl. Once again the color drained from her face, leaving her skin the gray of dirty concrete. His butt flashed with pain. He forgot about his aching groin because of the pain of his bottom spine stretching. Instead of helping him, the sadist had set down her rifle and was using the camera to take pictures of him. Considering how compassionate she’d been to him and how readily and sweetly she’d responded to his kisses and touch, he hadn’t thought she was the kind of sicko to post these pictures on the Internet.

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By the time she finally set the camera down, he was panting with exhaustion from the pain. He saw her load the tranquilizer gun with a cartridge, then take aim. No one was going to shoot him while he had a spark of life in him, especially not with a tranq. He was not going to run the risk of going back to Hell Hospital. He leapt from his prone position and hurled himself at her jugular. A burning thump hit him in the chest. He dropped back to the ground and tried to pull out the plastic dart. Brunhilde set the rifle back in the van and knelt beside him. The tranq drugs were making him groggy. She appeared to have grown until now she loomed over him. Her pale blue eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry if it hurts. It’ll be better soon.” Yeah, right. It would be better soon because he was dying. Whatever she had in that tranq was killing him and she had the nerve to say she was sorry? Dylan wanted to laugh at the irony. She reached a hand to his chest, but he batted her hand away. She jerked back with a gasp and stared at her bleeding hand. Just before the blackness swallowed him, he saw her taking pictures again while the blood dripped down her hand from three ragged scratches.

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Chapter Two No matter how many times Haley Lundberg watched what she recorded, her stomach still crawled up her throat when she watched the man she had met this afternoon turn into a jaguarondi. While she knew the Native Americans claimed to shape-shift, she had always thought it didn’t happen in real life. “Never use ‘always’ again, Lundberg,” she muttered at the computer screen. If she had gone with logic and terror, she would have put a bullet in the brain of a real-life Hollywood creepy critter. She’d been scared enough to. No one would have known she’d killed the thing the man had become. She knew how to hide bodies. No one would believe what she’d seen anyway. Despite the fact her body quivered at the memory of the orgasm she’d had thanks to him, great sex really didn’t have anything to do with her not killing him. Not much at any rate. If she’d had to kill him, orgasm or not, she would have. But this wasn’t war. She didn’t have to kill any longer. When the change happened, she saw the man had no more idea than Haley what was going on. The fear in his green-gold eyes stopped her from killing him. She rubbed the bite on her shoulder. More than a hickey, he’d broken skin and left tooth marks. Instead of human rounded omnivore teeth, his teeth had left the pointed, jagged marks of a carnivore. She had cleaned it when she treated the scratches on her palm from the jaguarondi form he had become, but for some reason couldn’t bring herself to seal the bite with artificial skin the way she did the scratches. Stupid of her, she thought. The bite was deep enough to leave a scar. Yet she made no move to cover it with the artificial skin.

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Instead her body shivered again at the way he kissed, the way he rubbed his body against hers until they both came. Deep as the bite was, she didn’t remember it hurting. She’d been too caught up in the physical and emotional maelstrom to realize what he’d done. “Lundberg, you’ve got it bad. Ten years in the Amazon battalion and you let a man get into your hormones and turn your brain to mush. Getting soft and sloppy since you left the military.” Which she knew when he tried to grab her rifle. “Sloppy, sloppy. You’re lucky he didn’t get the gun. Let your lack of regular nookie take over.” She had no qualms about encouraging his hands and mouth on her. She was ready for a new lover. He was attractive, hot and hung. The conversation they’d had reassured her he was as confused about being in the cage as she was. Her Amazon training took over when he made a grab at her rifle. She’d pulled her strike at his groin some but got him on the ground. In the privacy of the room she set up as her home office, she admitted it weirded her out when he started shifting into the jaguarondi, which led to her decision to tranq him. Better for both of them if she kept him under control until they figured out what was happening to him. She’d given him the antidote to the tranquillizer as soon as she had the jaguarondi back in the cage. Like when the farmer tranqued him earlier in the day, the cat continued to sleep. She smuggled the wildcat home and left him in her bedroom with the cage open. Throughout the evening, she periodically took pictures of the sleeping jaguarondi, finally moving him out of the cage and onto her bed. Eventually, she watched and controlled her nausea while she recorded his body converting back into human. Her phone warbled the opening bars of the Beatles’ classic “Hard Day’s Night”, her personalized ring for the station. Took them long enough to make a decision. She managed to control her exasperation to keep her voice level while she touched the earbud to activate it. 17

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“Lundberg.” “Hey, Haley,” responded the clear baritone of the sole officer on night duty. “Chief says it’s okay for you to take your leave this week.” “You’ll have enough staff?” “Joe will be back tomorrow.” “Oh, good. His family is feeling better then?” Haley heard the bidet activate, then the shower start. Relief made her shoulders ease. Her guest stayed in human form and hadn’t changed into the jaguarondi again. She hated to think what a scared, enraged wildcat might have done to her bedroom, but she didn’t want to leave the person trapped inside the cat in the cage. “Yes, and he said to tell you he really appreciated you giving up your vacation time so he was able to take care of the family.” “Tell him he’s welcome. I was happy to help, but I really want to visit my sister. She’s been pretty sick with this virus going around.” Haley had no qualms about lying. Her sister wasn’t the least bit sick, but this virus was keeping them shorthanded and she needed some personal time to help this man. Helping sick family members was a viable excuse. Besides, she was due vacation time anyway. “Chief says to tell you good luck. Stay in contact though. With this gawd-awful virus running rampant, he might need to recall you. No problems releasing the cat?” “Not a bit,” Haley lied yet again. As if anyone was going to believe the truth anyway. She still had trouble believing it and the man who had been the jaguarondi was in her bathroom. Naked. Hot shivers ran through her. She controlled her breathing and told her co-worker, “I’ll be in touch and you can always call me.” “Gotcha. Have a good trip. Night, Haley.”

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“Night. Thanks, Fred. Thank the chief and Joe for me. I’m glad he’s back at work so I can take off, but please tell Joe I’m glad his family is feeling better.” “Will do. See you in a couple of weeks.” “Bye.” She toggled the closure switch on the phone and tossed it onto the table, then headed to the bathroom. She needed to ask him what he wanted to eat before they started working on why he shifted. Ruefully, she realized she probably had to first make him realize he had shifted into a jaguarondi. Heck, maybe she needed to ask him his name first. She heard the shower click off before the efficiency unit cut in. Like others who lived in south Texas, he knew how to shower quickly to save water. The desalination plants at the coast helped the water situation, but everyone knew how precious fresh water was. She knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey. How’s it going?” Keep cool, Haley. With a click, the door was opened and there he stood, lean and gorgeous with green-golden eyes. His shoulders, chest and abs still gleamed with water, making him glimmer like a bronze statue in the rain. Dark stubble no longer covered his strong jaw. Flat slabs of cheeks ended in sharp cheek bones, evidence of Aztec or Mayan ancestors who had also gifted him his burnished bronze skin. His short hair glistened with diamond sparkles of water. The rose decorated towel slung low around his hips didn’t detract one bit from his confident masculinity. His chest had a smattering of dark hair that thickened into a trail leading from just below his navel to hide under the towel, which tented enticingly. No, she told herself, don’t go there. Find out his name before you jump his bones this time. “Hi.” Oh, terrific, she sounded like a freaking twelve-year-old meeting a hottie from the teen mags. Haley swallowed hard. Before she could open her mouth again, he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask if I could use your shower. I needed to bathe.” 19

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Even though he held himself as though he was ready to fight, his voice was gentle. His eyes still held the same shell-shocked combination of fear and worry she’d seen as he first began to change. “Oh, that’s fine. I’d hoped you were calm enough to make yourself at home. I, uh, didn’t catch your name earlier.” He leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his arms in front of his chest above those tight abs. “I didn’t give it, Ms. Lundberg. I don’t normally introduce myself to people who want to shoot me.” Despite his tone being cool and amused, his eyes ignited with heat as he gazed at her. His arms hung loose and unthreatening while he moved closer to her. She refused to back away from him. Her skin heated at the look in his eyes. Her lightweight gauze summer dress suddenly became too confining. Her bare breasts peaked and rubbed on the bodice. She found herself wanting his mouth to suckle her nipples through the thin material. Haley tried to be as cool and casual as he sounded. “Well, excuse me, but as far as I was concerned you were a part of a poacher pack. As the old saying goes, ‘The best defense is a quick offense.’ I wasn’t going to risk getting hurt.” “And yet you brought me here. Into your house.” “Yes. My house.” “Why?” Nearly touching her, he tilted his head upward to look straight into her eyes. Barefoot, he stood at least three inches shorter than she. Yet for some reason, Haley felt as though she were the smaller of the two of them. This time she did take a step backward. “I felt sorry for you,” her mouth said before she thought.

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“Sorry for me?” His jaw dropped, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who kneed me in the nuts. You’re the one who held two different weapons on me, then shot me with a tranquillizer dart. Why the hell did you do it?” He pressed forward again until her back was against the hallway wall. His towelcovered jutting cock brushed against her. Her body jumped with electricity. Her cream flowed heavy and warm as though his naked skin had rubbed against hers. His voice deepened and grew rougher. “Did you bring me to your house to be your sex slave?” His face came closer to hers. She held herself rigid, not trusting herself to not rub against that smooth cheek. If she did, she’d take him here. Hot and fast on the hallway floor. “I must say, being held prisoner as your sex slave beats the hell out of the last prison I was in.” His voice vibrated across her skin like a cat’s purr. He stepped even closer to her. She smelled the mint tang of toothpaste. His heavy cock pressed against her belly. Haley’s juices soaked her panties at the idea of him as her sex slave. Him on his knees licking her pussy while she stood above him. Him pounding into her while she lay across her bed. Her riding him with her breasts being teased and fondled by his hands. His lips lifted and his eyes gleamed with a smug look of being a superior being. Annoyance flashed through her, cooling her heat. Jerk with a cock he needed to go jack off. “You’re not a prisoner. You can leave anytime. Walk out of here. You have no money. No ID You won’t get far. Or you can tell me your name and I’ll fix you something to eat, then drive you where you need to go. Your choice.”

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“First tell me why the hell you tranqued me.” For the first time, his posture held no trace of sexual aggression other than his own animal magnetism. He held himself with the tenseness of a trained fighter ready to do some damage if he didn’t get the answers he wanted. “I didn’t tranq you. Well, I did, but you weren’t exactly yourself at the time.”

Dylan noted she wasn’t intimidated despite his standing against her body with his tell-me-or-get-hurt stance. Her blue eyes held his without flinching or fear. The scent of her on her bed, in her bathroom had enticed him. Now she stood in front of him. Every instinct in his body made him want to immediately pounce and make her his. He didn’t dare at this moment. The conflict was going to drive him mad. She was his mate and he wanted her with a ferocity that shook the foundation of his being. She still wore his bite on her shoulder. Satisfaction she hadn’t covered it with temp skin welled in him. As much as he wanted to take her now, on the floor, against the wall, he also wanted this kind, compassionate woman to want him, not just because he planned to make her his mate. He knew he had enough prowess to make a woman happy and satisfied. Contrary to the madness in him, he knew there was more to having and keeping a mate than just sex. With that thought, he managed to throttle back his rampaging hormones. She was a female to entice, not grab and mate. He stepped back knowing the added personal space would ease her, but not far enough back for her to think he was ceding to her stance. She rubbed her lovely left hand across her right palm as if massaging away pain. Dylan took her hand as carefully as he would take his baby niece’s. On her palm he saw the dark color of artificial skin covering three long parallel lines.

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He remembered her reaching for the tranq dart embedded in his chest and himself knocking her hand away. Why did he remember her blood dripping into the dirt while she took pictures of him while he was in pain? “I wasn’t myself? I’m always myself.” Dylan kept his voice mild despite the urge to growl at her. She took her hand out of his. “I tranqued the jaguarondi that was attacking me.” “Riii-ght, lady. Sure, you tranqued a jaguarondi, not me. What the fuck is it with you and this jaguarondi obsession?” As he talked, another memory tumbled through him. This time his mind’s eye gave him a picture of himself launching his body up at her, determined to rip out her throat before she could shoot him with the tranq gun. He saw paws where his hands should be, claws outstretched. He ran his tongue around his teeth, reassuring himself he didn’t have the fangs he’d felt when he tried to grab the tranq gun, just before the thud hit his chest. He looked at his chest and saw a small scab over a puncture wound. He shook his head. No. He wasn’t going crazy. He wasn’t going to let her mess with his mind. “Do you want something to eat?” Her gentle voice soothed the confusion eating at his gut from the muddled memories. He didn’t think they were his memories, but his internal clock counted the time for him. He remembered the pain. Maybe if he ate something, he’d be able to think more clearly. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I’ll,” he gestured at his lower body with his towel-covered cock insisting on making its presence known, “get some clothes on.” Belatedly it occurred to him. “Thank you for the clothes and shaving stuff.” “You’re welcome. I worked in uniform supply for a while when I first did my compulsory service. I’m used to eyeballing a person and guesstimating the sizes.”

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“What else did you do in service?” He didn’t think she had learned all that selfdefense and ease of armament handling passing out uniforms and skivvies. In these days of mandatory military service, no exemptions at all—those belonged to his grandfather’s generation of the 1960s, support jobs were normally held by those unable to do the actual fighting. Her mouth lifted in a grin. Dylan found himself enchanted by a dimple that popped into view by the corner of her mouth. “The Hellcats.” Hot damn. He knew this woman embodied the spirit of the Norse goddess Brunhilde. Dylan bowed. “Well, hell, no wonder you kneed me in the nuts when I touched your rifle. I’m lucky you didn’t cripple me for life.” “I did pull my kick a bit. Sorry about that happening. But the training automatically took over. No one takes a weapon from an Amazon without her permission.” “This Special Forces mud foot is honored to meet one of the goddesses of the First Amazon Division. I no longer bear the humiliation of being smacked down by a girl. You ladies sure wreaked havoc in the Middle East.” She shrugged. “It’s easy to infiltrate wearing a hijab. Plus the men aren’t expecting a woman to fight them, even though numerous women in their culture have been used for human bombs. Cultural prejudices work both ways.” “When I woke up a bit ago, I actually had this fleeting thought you’d almost crippled me because you were afraid I was going to rape you.” “Oh, please.” She gave him the look his sisters and girl cousins gave him when he said something stupid. “No one can rape an Amazon. We might use sex to get opposing factions’ intel, but no one rapes an Amazon. Besides, rapists have a different attitude to sex. You didn’t take. You asked without words and you shared.” Thank God he was forcing himself to take this a bit slower than he wanted. Unlike the females with whom he just shared a quick wham-bang, she was receptive to the gentleman his mom and women relatives had tried to build in him. “Well, at the time I 24

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didn’t know you were an Amazon, much less a Hellcat. So, it did worry me. But logically, I realized you wouldn’t have brought me into your home if you thought I was a rapist.” Dylan met her eyes. “I figured if you thought I was, you would have, at the very least, had me arrested. More likely though.” Dylan met her eyes. “I figured if you thought I was, you would have at the very least had me arrested. But considering your arsenal…” Dylan stopped and lifted his eyebrows at her. Her answering grin was sharp and wicked. “I would have shot you, starting at your cock and disposed of the body.” Dylan found himself laughing with Haley. “Hey, speaking for me and my cock, we’re really glad you decided not to shoot us. Are you going to demand I be your sex slave since you spared my life?” Because I plan to make you my mate. Since you’ll be my slave, I’ll be yours. She fingered her full skirt as though she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Her breathing hitched and she studied the decorative carpet runner in the middle of the hardwood floor. Aww, was she shy all of a sudden? Amazing. Especially considering she’d had no qualms this afternoon in the brushy area of the national park. Time to ladle on some more sweetness before they got down and dirty again. It wasn’t difficult at all to be sweet to this lady who had already done so much for him. Dylan smoothed a hand up her arm and discovered how pleasant it was when she moved closer to him. As he slid his hand across her shoulder’s silken skin, he paused at his mark he left on her. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t realize how hard I bit you.” He leaned in closer and kissed it. “It’s fine,” she answered, a bit breathlessly. She stepped closer to him and Dylan realized this time he was against the wall. But he held a double armful of curvy woman in his arms so he wasn’t going to complain a bit.

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With his teeth, he untied her dress’ spaghetti strap and continued to nuzzle across her shoulder to her neck. He cupped her head with one hand, enjoying the feathery softness of her hair through his fingers. His other hand coaxed the top of her dress down to mound a full breast in his palm. She moved her face so her mouth met his. Once again, he delved into her welcoming wet darkness. He thumbed her nipple and was rewarded by her groan vibrating through her mouth. She flicked off his towel and grasped his straining cock. He managed to keep himself under control, untied her other strap and held both her naked breasts while not taking his mouth from hers. He plucked and teased her nipples while she firmly stroked him or feathered her fingers against his balls. Just as he began to hunger to suckle her breasts, she pulled her mouth from his and slithered down his body. To his shocked delight, she knelt and took his cock, inch by smooth inch, into her mouth. He jerked with pleasure at her supple tongue curling around one side, then the other. She lightly scraped her teeth across him, then suckled him deeply. Dylan flexed his hands on her shoulders, then grasped her tightly as she alternated the speed of her sucking. Her fingers busily flicked and squeezed his balls. He thought he was going to explode and pressed his ass and back hard against the wall in an effort to gain control. He didn’t want to come without her experiencing this ecstasy too. “Wait,” he managed to gasp out. She sat back on her heels and smiled up at him with the sheer smugness of a woman who knows the strength of her power. Her beautiful breasts hung temptingly over the folds of her dress. Dylan scooted down the wall and drew first one nipple, then the second into his mouth. His mate’s skin tasted like ripe peaches, but he had to—needed to—taste her flowing cream. Still savoring her breasts one at a time, he laid her back onto the rug centered the length of the hallway. 26

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As he flipped her skirt up and began to position himself to eat her, she said, “Hey! I wasn’t finished with you. Twist around, sex slave, and let me enjoy you.” With a laugh, Dylan did what she ordered, then settled between her thighs to enjoy her. He buried his nose into her crotch. The scent of her alone was enough to send him into a mini-orgasm and he felt his first spurt shoot into her mouth. She sucked greedily, as though he’d produced the finest taste she’d ever encountered. While she suckled him, he began to lick her thong, tasting her, learning her folds through the silk. This was the taste he’d hungered for in his dreams at Hell Hospital. This scent, this taste, this woman gave him a focus for life. He nudged the bit of wet silk aside with one finger and drew his tongue through her curls, cherishing their springy texture. Leisurely, he stroked between her folds, enjoying her cream as it flowed. Her mouth had amazing suction while her fingers squeezed and flicked his balls. When she put pressure on his butthole, he had barely enough thought to wonder why she didn’t put in her fingers. Then she slapped his butt and all his thoughts gibbered with the intensity to mate. Dylan pulled her thighs further apart. When she gave a small yip, he loosened his grip slightly, well aware his strength might have left bruises. He buried his face into her woman’s perfume and cream, then drove his tongue into her. Pulling her knot deep into his mouth, he sucked and nibbled on it the way she was him. She began to quiver, then her thighs clamped tightly around his face. He increased his pressure and lapped her cream. Her quivering turning into shaking. Her moans vibrated against his cock. The added sensation had his balls clenching. As her orgasm sent her into frantic pulsing against his face, his own balls exploded. He pumped himself into her mouth and swallowed her cream while she sucked him dry. 27

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They lay on the carpet, breathing heavily and still occasionally nuzzling each other. To Dylan’s embarrassment, his stomach growled. She laughed. “I think you need food.” She pulled herself away, then stood upright and adjusted her bodice. “Aw, did you have to do that? I was enjoying the view.” His stomach rumbled again. “You can enjoy them later.” She put her hand down. When he put his hand in hers, she gave a pull and helped him to his feet. “For now, I think you need to be fed and we need to talk.” On her palm, Dylan again felt the texture of temp skin. He turned her hand to see her palm, then traced over the artificial skin with his index finger. “How did this happen? And don’t give any guff about a jaguarondi.” She pulled her hand from his. “We’ll discuss it after you’ve eaten. Bacon and eggs? Or do you want something more substantial, like a steak?” “A steak?” His mouth watered at the thought of a steak, cooked to perfection, the juices running on the plate. “Steak it is then,” she said with a laugh. Dylan ran his tongue over his lips to make sure he wasn’t drooling. “How do you want it?” “Rare.” He barely stopped himself from licking his mouth again. He thought for half a second he felt his canine teeth turning in fangs. Oh joy. Bad enough Hildy kept talking about a jaguarondi. All he needed to completely lose his mind was to imagine himself turning into a vampire. Just put a stake through him right now. On second thought, he’d wait on that until he had a steak in his belly. Maybe then the world would make sense. “You’ve got it. Why don’t you get dressed?” She turned to leave him, then looked over her shoulder. “Hey, mud foot.”

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“Yes, Hildy?” “Hildy?” Oh, shit. His nickname for his goddess just slipped out. “Sorry. Um,” Now how to extract his foot? Might as well be honest. “This afternoon, I thought of you as Brunhilde the Norse Goddess. Hildy just kind of fits you.” “Interesting. My name’s Haley.” “Thank you, Haley. I’ll try not to call you Hildy again.” “As you wish.” She shrugged. “And will you be Mud Foot?” “Dylan. Dylan Thomas Gomez. And yes, before you ask, my mom is a poet. I ate up his poetry with my pabulum.” “Makes sense to me.” Haley grinned at him. “I’ll have your steak ready in a few. Join me in the kitchen when you’re ready.” “Smug as a cat in the cream,” he said to his grinning reflection in the bathroom’s mirror. He saw the chunk of plastic funky earring had been removed from the top of his ear. Idly, he wondered what it had been. Dylan looked around the room and realized nothing in the room indicated even a casual male presence. With a mirrored tray covered with partially filled bottles of various perfumes to the thick flowered towels, fruity scented shampoo and liquid soap, the bathroom was definitely a girly girl’s haven. She had obviously bought the guy-type bar soap and unscented shaving cream for him when she bought the jeans, t-shirt and other things. He tore off tags and ripped open packages of socks and his choice of boxers or briefs. A quick check proved even the tennis shoes were the right size. What a woman. She knew how to coddle a man in addition to being sexier than a real-life pinup.

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He held the briefs in one hand while he checked the aching place in his thigh. He didn’t know if Haley or someone else had treated him, but he was pleased the bullet hole seemed to be healing cleanly. His hand drifted to his cock. His shaft wanted satisfaction again. Now. “Too damn bad,” he snarled as he jerked on the briefs. “You’re just going to have to wait until I get something to eat. After he finished dressing, he walked into the kitchen to see Hildy—Haley, he had to remember her name—using a pair of long-handled tongs to lift a steak from the oven’s broiler and set it on a plate she held with an oven mitt. She dropped the tongs in the sink, then carried the plate to set it on a quilted placemat where a smaller plate held a baked potato and a shallow bowl held a large, crisp salad. “Hi, Dylan. Just in time. Help yourself.” This time instead of soothing him, her voice made his shaft twitch. He thought how great she sounded moaning his name, inviting him to help himself to her body. Stop it. You’re more than a dick. He focused on how damn long it had been since a woman took the time to cook for him. He’d almost forgotten the enjoyment of having a meal in the company of a beautiful woman. He marveled again at Haley’s thoughtfulness. He’d spent too much time with evil. Being in Haley’s home was a small slice of heaven. Haley was an angel for giving him a small measure of peace in the horror that had been his life recently. Hastily, he blinked his stinging eyes, almost convincing himself his eyes were watering because of the pepper Haley was grinding over his salad. He managed to pick up the knife and fork beside the plate. “Thanks. It smells and looks great.” The knife slid through the steak like butter. The juices spilled from it. He took firm control over himself to not bury his mouth in the meat but be civilized and carry the bite to his mouth on the fork. He ignored the weird way his teeth felt and concentrated on not biting his tongue.

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By the time he finished the meal, his stomach had settled down although his damn cock throbbed painfully against his zipper. “Feeling better?” “Yes, thank you. Oh, and thank you for taking that chunk of plastic out of my ear. I assume you did it?” “Yes. You’re welcome.” She quickly cleaned his dishes and added them to the ones in the dishwasher. “Now,” she turned the laptop she’d been looking at while he ate to face him. “I need you to watch this.” With a click, she started a video on her laptop. Dylan watched himself writhing with pain he almost felt again. He watched as frame by frame he turned into a jaguarondi with a dart in its chest. Then the pictures tracked the jaguarondi on her bed as it changed until the last of the pictures showed him sleeping on Hildy’s bed. “Interesting pictures. Nice morphing software you have on your computer. It almost looks like I changed into the wildcat and back.” “You did,” she said. “Yeah, sure. You’re good, lady. Thanks for the meal. Now can you drive me someplace?” “You did. Wait just a minute.” Haley left the room and returned with a mirror before Dylan did more than put his plates and bowls in the dishwasher. “Thank you for clearing the table.” Her pleasure at the little bit he did had to be gratitude enough because her voice held a bit of northern exposure. “Look in the mirror.” She demanded, yet took his hand, reminding him of his sisters when they needed comfort. She handed him the small mirror. 31

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“Yeah, so what am I looking for?” When he saw his face, he jerked the mirror closer and drew his lips away from his teeth. “That’s right.” This time her voice held the coldness of a woman pissed off because her word had been doubted. Still, she let him cling to her hand as though to a lifeline. “I’ve been watching you eat. As soon as you cut the steak, your teeth sharpened to those of a predatory cat.”

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Chapter Three Not only did he have pointed teeth, but long, black, stiff hairs sprouted from his carefully shaved cheeks. Even his cheeks didn’t look right. They hung slightly over his mouth and his nostrils flared on a flat nose between the hanging cheeks. “Look at your ears.” Because Hildy—Haley, not Hildy, Dylan reminded himself—sounded like a dispassionate scientist observing a interesting phenomenon, Dylan manage to control his panic. He tightened his fingers around hers, needing the connection to humanity. He moved the mirror to see one ear. It no longer lay flat against his head but rode higher, nearly to the top of his skull, and turned forward with the top of it in a sharp peak caught in his hair. When he touched the ear’s peak, he touched stiff tufts of hair instead of his skin. He checked the other ear. The peak on it showed, but it turned more toward his head and almost sat where ears were supposed to be. “You’re changing back.” Dylan used Hildy’s calmness to anchor his own. He watched the fangs and pointed teeth in his mouth shrink and become the round and smooth shapes of the omnivore instead of a carnivore. The flat nose, whiskers and dewlaps morphed back into his own familiar nose and clean-shaven cheeks. His mouth and face stung and tickled, then quit. His ears shaped back into their normal shells. He ran his tongue over his teeth reassuring himself everything was back to normal. “Are you okay?” She placed her hand on his now smooth cheek.

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“What the fuck do you think?” Dylan jerked from her touch and slammed the mirror on the table. The mirror shattered into dozens of glittering shards that flew across the table and to the floor. “What the hell happened to me?” “How do I know?” Hildy yelled back while she brushed shards of glass from her tshirt with hands Dylan saw tremble. The sane part of Dylan didn’t want to contemplate the consequences if one of those shards had hit Haley’s face instead of her shirt and skirt. Her shrieking voice shook slightly, “I picked up a jaguarondi and ended up with a naked man in the same cage. A naked man who changed back into a jaguarondi in front of me. You’re damn lucky I just used my tranq gun instead of my rifle.” Dylan stood up abruptly, knocking the chair backward. A piece of glass from the shattered mirror crunched under his foot. He stamped his shoe on it and ground it to dust. “I still can’t believe you had the audacity to fucking tranq me!” He knew it was a stupid point, but he’d rather focus on that than the impossible thought of changing into a wildcat. Hildy jumped up from her chair and rounded the table to him. The calf-length gauze skirt she wore swirled above her knees from the force of her quick movement. In the bright kitchen light, Dylan saw her breasts pressing against the top of her dress. His vision sharpened as he focused on her nipples peaking against the sheer material. Dylan clamped down on the flash of lust tightening his groin. Hildy got right into his face. “Screw you, bud! I tranqued a jaguarondi attacking me. And like I said, you’re fucking lucky to still be alive. Most people would have seen you change from man to animal and killed you rather than deal with a real-life something that belonged in a Hollywood special effects movie.” He knew, way back in a quiet logical part of his mind, his rage came from terror. He’d just seen the reflection of his face, but not in the shape he knew. Instead, he looked like a bad special effects artist’s crappy construction of a half-man, half-wildcat. That sight scared the shit out of him. 34

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He barely managed to stop from puking as he watched and felt it change back to his own face. His gut churned with the thought of his entire body transforming into a wildcat. He didn’t want to even think about it, much less face the truth in Haley’s statement about changing into a full jaguarondi in front of her. Instead, he distracted himself from his fear by yelling at this woman who was responsible for the very clothes on his back. “If I’m such a monster, why didn’t you just shoot me?” Dylan tilted his head slightly to look into her eyes. Her lips pressed into an angry straight line that Dylan resisted, just barely, tracing with his finger. Pale blue eyes narrowed above sharp cheekbones covered by smooth skin slightly flushed with pink. Honey-blonde eyebrows tried to furrow together resulting in small puckers at the bridge of her long nose. Dylan wanted to ease the creases with kisses while he cradled her face. “I don’t kill innocent people,” she screamed. She took a deep breath which had a very interesting effect on her breasts under the gauze top. More calmly, she continued, “Under the jaguarondi, I knew an innocent man was trapped in something beyond his control.” Her breath wafted sweetly to his nose and held the scent of the green tea and sugar cookies she ate while he devoured the steak. Dylan stepped away from her before his lust turned him completely into a caveman who wanted to take her here, now. He had to figure out what was happening to him and fast. His cock had to take a cool down and let him think. He knelt and began to pick up pieces of broken mirror. In each small sliver he saw his face holding thirty years of growing from child to teen to man. He saw the faint lines brought by studying long hours, by concentrating on skills to save his life and others, by joyously loving family, friends and several incredible women. His anger dissolved and left him with the sick-tasting tang of force-swallowed fear. “I suppose I should thank you for sparing my life, but…”

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“But maybe I didn’t do you any favors considering what you just saw happen to you?” Thank God, she didn’t sound sorry for him. He wanted his own pity party and he didn’t want to invite anybody except maybe his friend Jim with his bourbon or his buddy José with his outstanding tequila. She knelt on the floor beside him. Her lovely fingers began to gather glass fragments. The silence they worked in broke with a gasp of pain from Hildy. Dylan looked up to see her sit back on her heels and jerk a sliver from the gauze skirt. A blotchy red flower of blood bloomed in the pastel floral material.

“Crap.” Haley snatched the stained skirt above her knees to see blood trickling down her shin. She blinked back the quick well of tears. The tears came more from her long-denied reaction to the stressful day rather than the dying pain of the small cut and the blood staining her favorite skirt. “I love this skirt. I bet I never get the blood out.” “Hydrogen peroxide and cold water.” Dylan’s voice sent hot shivers through her to tighten her nipples unbearably and make her cunt wet with longing. “Oh please, all-knowing male,” Haley grumbled while she tried to decide how to stand and still hold her skirt away from the blood leaking down her leg. Crunching glass, Dylan walked to the sink, bits of glass sparkling on the jeans covering his shins like tiny diamonds. He unrolled some paper towels and ran water over them. Haley managed to struggle to her feet and continue her harangue, “I’m such an innocent female. Please tell me something else I’ve known since before you were old enough to slap your sausage.” Dylan’s gush of laughter surprised Haley. She realized he’d temporarily set aside a reality he couldn’t deal with at the moment. The change in his face from solid world-

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weary fighter to easy joy twisted her heart with tenderness. He knelt at her feet and pressed the sopping paper towel against the small cut. Rivulets of cool water slid down her leg. His touch made her so hot she found it amazing the water didn’t turn to steam immediately. “First you call my cock a pickle. Now it’s a sausage. What is this, some kind of food fetish with you?” “Everything’s always better coated with chocolate,” Haley’s mouth said before her lust-filled brain had time to think. Dylan stopped cleaning her leg but continued to apply pressure to the cut. He leaned back and looked up at her. “Got any?” His voice held the challenge of a man in full sexual rut wanting his woman right now. Underneath the alpha male command that appealed to her inner take me, take me cavewoman, the gentle hint of invitation beguiled the romantic in her. Part of her felt assured that if she decided not to go further in this, her choice would be accepted without rancor. “In the refrigerator,” she said, her mouth wanting his tongue in it to ease its sudden dryness. Dylan wiped the last of the water and blood from her leg, then set the paper towel on the table as he rose to his full height. Haley had the giddy feeling of being twelve and in love again for the first time in her life. It took one rapid heartbeat for her to realize the impression came from Dylan being shorter than she, the way the first loves in her life had been before they finally got their adolescent growth spurts. At that point, most of the boys either reached her height or surpassed it. She’d had her fertility inhibition since she was an adolescent. She wanted a baby, but on her terms, not because she neglected to stay up to date with free and easy

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protection. Most loving parents taught their children the practicalities of preventing pregnancy and the tools for safe sex years before the first lust addled their minds. Why run the risk of having a baby during schooling and job skill years when the situation could be avoided with a visit to the local Population Planning Council? She stepped closer to him and put a hand against his chest. “There is a problem. We need to talk about this jaguarondi shape-shifting of yours. I don’t want to suddenly have a jaguarondi on me just as I reach orgasm. You almost did it once already. Shift again while we’re making love and I will use my rifle on you.” “I didn’t change into a jaguarondi!” Haley ignored him and went to the broom closet, then laid a dish towel on the floor in front of his glass-glittered jeans. She used the broom to sweep the jeans free of glass so the shards dropped into the towel. Her thong grew wet at the thought of sweeping her palms across his bulging crotch. “I don’t.” His voice deepened with a harsh growl. “I don’t turn into a jaguarondi. Especially not when we’re enjoying each other.” Haley tilted her head, almost certain she heard a cat’s growl in some his words. Trying to decide how to tell him, she swept the last of the glass into a pile then onto a dustpan which she emptied onto the towel. She set the broom and dustpan away, then picked up the towel at Dylan’s feet. When she stood, she looked into his face set so tense his cheekbones stood in sharp relief, and she marveled at his self-control. If she were the one changing, she’d probably have the screaming jeebies. She pitched the glass-covered towel into the trash, then turned her back to him and lifted her skirt. “Note the claw marks on my butt. Made by you while we were getting it on in the hallway.” Dylan looked down at his fingernails, torn and ragged. “I need to trim my nails. That’s all. I don’t have claws.” She dropped her skirt and turned around. “The jaguarondi tail came out while we were rolling on the floor.” 38

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“You,” Dylan said between clenched teeth, “were fingering my butthole, then slapped my ass.” “I wasn’t doing your butthole—I slapped the tail and it went away.” “You’re crazy.” “I’m crazy? I’m crazy? You’re the one with the jaguarondi shifting. Look,” Haley untied the skinny strings holding up the top of her dress and pushed her shoulder at his face. “Look at the bite you marked me with. It shows pointed teeth, not round human teeth.”

Dylan’s arm snaked out and caught her. He pressed against her ass until her pelvis rubbed against the rigidity of his crotch. “I won’t change into a wildcat. I don’t.” He tilted her face down to his. His mouth nibbled her lips, coaxing, wordlessly pleading for her to open her mouth. She let him in. His tongue dived between her lips, stroking her mouth as though she were the sweetest juice he ever drank. Their tongues dueled and mated, playing the game of chase and retreat, conquer and surrender. Dylan felt her hands first around his waist, then felt the tug of his shirt being pulled from his jeans. While her hands slid up his skin, he managed to get the two of them turned around and her back against the wall. He pulled apart the strings tied on her other shoulder, pulled the top of her sundress down and captured one nipple in his palm. Dylan rolled his prize with his fingers while continuing to lick and suckle her mouth. He used his full body to press her against the wall. Her legs parted under the skirt and he lifted one of her strong legs to wrap around his waist.

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Once again he had access to the treasure he’d been wanting to touch ever since he first saw her standing in front of him in her uniform. Dylan ran his hand across her ass and felt the ridges of the scratches she claimed she gave him. He smoothed his hand across her butt again and traced the silk ribbon of the thong between her butt cheeks. He continued to plunder her mouth and toy with her nipple even while he ran his fingers under the thong. He dipped his finger under her thong and across her folds, judging how wet she already was. Her groan of pleasure encouraged him to slide the little bit of silk covering her curlies to one side to give him room to probe deeper and harder. Her mouth grew frantic under his. She pressed her head against the wall and arched her back to give him full access to her generous breasts. He paused half a heartbeat to enjoy the strawberry red areolas and jutting nipples on the mounds of her creamy skin. Hmmm, when they got around to it, he decided to use her chocolate to have himself some chocolate-covered strawberries and cream. Dylan suckled one nipple deep into his mouth and enjoyed its taut texture against his tongue. He found her clitoris and tickled its tight knot with his fingers the way he tickled her nipple with his tongue. She undulated against him. Her hands dug under his jeans to grab his butt in both hands. Now she pressed him against her. He rubbed her wet pussy again, then drove two fingers deep inside her. Her inner walls clenched around his fingers and her entire body shuddered. Her gasps grew sharper and higher in pitch. Bless her, even while she shook with her own pleasure, she unsnapped the jeans button and pulled down the zipper. His engorged cock pushed its way through the opening in the briefs. Her hands wrapped around it and tugged.

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Dylan pulled his fingers from Hildy’s wet folds and tore her thong on one side. He pressed her tighter against the wall while he lifted her other leg around his waist. The remaining bit of the silk thong slithered around her thigh and against his arm. His fingernails dug into her round ass while he positioned her to plunge into her welcoming wetness the way his tongue had been greeted by her mouth. Her slick passage enfolded him. The sheer pleasure held him breathless for a moment. He also wanted to give her a little time to adjust to his girth. When she started moving on him, he pulled out to thrust in deeper. Her inner muscles clinched tighter around his cock while she moved her body in sync with his pumping. His balls constricted. Her body shimmied around him. Her slick muscles pulsed and vibrated around his cock. He clamped his mouth on her shoulder, determined not to bite her again. The taste of her skin, the texture of her muscle in his mouth anchored his mate to him. He surged deeper into her and exploded into her body as she shrieked with pleasure. Even as his shaft finished its last pulses, Hildy pounded on his back and shoulders. “Ouch!” She screeched in his ear. This scream wasn’t pleasure filled. This was mad. “You scratched me!” “What? Huh?” Still holding her, still locked inside her, he pulled his upper body back to look at her face. “Get your fingernails out of my ass. You’re hurting me! Let me down!” She pounded her fists against his chest and started squirming and kicking. “What the fuck?” Dylan slid out, let go of her butt and set her legs on the floor before she wiggled loose and fell from his grasp. Her pale blue eyes flashed angrily, then widened. “Oh, damn, damn, damn. Dylan, you’re changing.”

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Dylan stepped away from Haley and looked at his tingling hands. Claws protruded from his fingertips. Haley stroked across his face. He jerked his head away when her fingertips touched his sensitive whiskers. Whiskers? Dylan reached his hand to his face. Yes, he still had a hand. The claws curved over the fingertips. He brushed the stiff whiskers with the claws. “Hildy?” From someplace far away, he heard the command voice of his Valkyrie of the First Amazon Unit. “Hang on, Dylan. Remember who you are. Concentrate on being you. There has to be some way for you to stop this. Think. Stay with me, Dylan.”

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Chapter Four Dylan looked up at Hildy, not quite certain what she was saying. He understood his name, but the rest was just garbled. The calmness in her voice soothed him, even if he didn’t have a clue what she was babbling. Her eyes worried him. She pressed against the wall as if she were afraid of him. He never wanted to hurt her. He didn’t mean to stick her with his claws. “Speak English,” he tried to tell her, but his voice sounded like a growl instead of the words he tried to say. He shook himself and the clothes around his backside slid off. He twitched his tail to and fro, enjoying the freedom. Now he needed take off this shirt that clung to his neck. He got front paws freed from it easily, but he had trouble getting it off his neck. “Dylan?” His name he understood. He cocked his head at his mate, his Brunhilde, enjoying the cadence in her voice even if she did persist in talking that weird foreign language. As a member of the First Amazons, she had probably learned a number of languages. He learned several himself during his compulsory military service. Unfortunately, none of the ones he had learned seemed even distantly related to whatever language she was speaking. He wished she’d go back to English or her bad Spanish or something he knew. She moved closer to him and the scent of her sex nearly overwhelmed him. Even though he’d just come, he wanted to mate with her again. She smelled of ripe sexy woman cream, strawberry shampoo, lavender and oatmeal body wash, laundry detergent, fabric softener, the potato she had baked for his supper, that wonderful steak.

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Out of politeness, he had eaten the potato and salad she served with the steak. He wanted to devour the steak and maybe a second or a third one. He still smelled its juices hanging in the air. “Dylan?” Brunhilde knelt in front of him. He smelled his own scent on her. He licked across his teeth, remembering the taste of her tongue in his mouth, the taste of her skin. Every atom in his being wanted to take her and brand her his mate. He wanted to bury his teeth in her shoulder while he again drove himself into her, hard, fast and deep. She slowly stretched one hand out as though she wanted to touch him but was hesitating for some reason. Her scent had changed to the sharper odor of fear. He held himself in tight control. He quit struggling to take off the shirt and held himself still. He didn’t know why she was suddenly frightened. This woman had done so much and been so kind to him, a stranger to her. He didn’t ever want to betray the trust she had showed when she brought him into her house, gave him clothes and fed him. He never wanted to scare her. When she placed her palm against the side of his head, he rubbed against her. If he didn’t mate with her right now, at least he made sure to place his scent on her. Other males would give her wide berth when they smelled him on Hildy’s skin. Haley, you fool. Her name is Haley, not Hildy. To hell with it. For him, she was always going to be Hildy, his Brunhilde. Throughout his work on his college degrees, he dreamed of meeting a perfect living representative of the immortal Valkyries who determined which soldiers would be honored after death by being taken to Valhalla and given the privilege of serving the god Odin. Now one knelt in front of him, rubbing his ears and around his neck and chin. She kept saying his name and talking.

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Dylan settled down into rest position with his legs and paws tucked under him. Bread loaf, that’s what his mom used to call the cats when they sat like that. Hildy put both her hands on his neck and scratched his chin and ears. With her touch, Dylan felt contentment rising in him. His purr rumbled from the soothed, calm place deep inside him. He felt peaceful for the first time since he had been captured while trying to rescue people being abused by the cartels that ran so many of the countries south of the United States border. His capture took a decidedly worse turn when he was imprisoned in the Hell Hospital for so many months. He’d never forget the battles he fought to stay sane in that place. The smell of puke and crap overrode the medicines and antiseptics. The cries and curses of other prisoners remained engraved on his psyche. Disjointed, anesthetic-induced memories haunted his dreams. Yet now, with Hildy stroking his head and talking to him, he finally felt part of the tight tension in him begin to unwind. A jerk snapped Dylan from his peaceful respite. Startled, he jumped to all fours, puffed his fur into attack mode and snarled at Hildy. “What the fuck did you do?” Hildy leapt onto the table He glared up at her, gauging the distance. The table’s puny height offered no protection if he chose to go after her. Then he saw the t-shirt in her hand. Oh, he realized, she took the shirt from my neck. Okay, that was good. He shook himself, glad to be relieved of all the clothes. “I’m sorry I yelled. You startled me. Warn a guy next time you want to strip him,” Dylan told her. How strange. Hildy didn’t act like she understood him. Okay, then. If she wanted to play stranger in a strange land games, he was willing to go along. If he managed to convince her to trust him, he might get lucky again. Damnation. The more he smelled her scent, especially her pussy’s natural perfume, the more he wanted her. Being horny hurt.

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If playing her game got him laid again, he was all for it. To play in her “I’m a scared stranger” scenario, he needed to gain her trust. The first thing to do, he remembered from his training, when approaching someone who doesn’t speak the language is remain calm and don’t make any sudden moves. Nonchalantly, he scratched behind one ear with a hind paw. The healing bullet hole in his thigh ached at the movement. He reminded himself it had only been three days since he’d been shot when he was trying to reconnect with his contacts fighting the human-smuggling cartels. He was damn lucky it had been a stray bullet and had gone cleanly through. Full use of his muscles with no hindrances was going to happen eventually as long as it healed properly, which it appeared to be doing. He gave the sore spot a couple of licks but tasted the artificial skin on the area instead of his own skin and fur. He groomed himself a bit more, both to look better and to get the nasty taste of the artificial skin from his tongue. Dylan finally decided he was satisfied and settled back into his rest position. He hoped Hildy would calm down enough to get off the table and come back to petting him. She still looked at him with wide eyes while in her hands she twisted the torn panties she’d taken off one ankle. Dylan didn’t have anything else to do, so he waited. Considering Hildy had the same tension as a cornered rat or rabbit, Dylan slid easily into the wait that deluded prey into thinking he’d fallen asleep. He just needed to be patient and wait. Through half-closed eyes, Dylan watched Hildy climb down from the table. She approached him quietly and cautiously, then knelt in front of him. Once again, her hand came in front of his nose. Her palm smelled a bit like the temp skin he smelled on his thigh. Her own scent still came through delightfully. Hildy fondled his ears, head and neck for a while, then stood. She picked up his unnecessary clothes and shoes, then looked at him. “Com, Dylan.” With her hand, she gestured as though she wanted him to follow her. 46

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Com? Hmmm, that sounded close to “come”. He stood up, stretched, then walked behind her from the kitchen. He took advantage of their walk down the hallway to strut around her lovely legs and twist his tail around them to further mark his scent on her. He wanted all males to smell her and know she belonged to him. “Dylan,” Hildy garbled a bunch of noises at him, dumped his clothes on a chair, the shoes on the floor, turned on a small Tiffany-style lamp on the nightstand, then sat on the bed and patted the area beside her. Hot damn. Dylan jumped on the bed, happy to have the invitation. He walked all around Hildy, managing to rub his tail and scent on her. She lightly swatted his tail out of her face. Her laughter started his purr again and she began petting him. When she got off the bed, he moved to follow. She placed the palm of her hand against his nose. “Say, Dylan.” Say? Say? With her hand in his face, it dawned on him she meant “stay”. If that meant he didn’t have to leave her bed, it was okay with him. Dylan settled into his rest position and watched her take some pink flowered, flowing clothes from a drawer, then go into the toilet area off the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Dylan looked at the moonlight spilling across the bedroom floor from the window away from the dim lamplight. Dust motes danced in the moon’s path like tiny silver fireflies. He heard an owl’s hunting call and her mate’s answer. A mouse’s squeal died a sudden death. The owl fledglings’ supper was ready. Water ran in the bathroom. Dylan stretched out in pure contentment. His muscles tingled and ached. He told himself to be careful not to snag the soft, yellow comforter with his claws. He watched his fingers as he forced his arms and legs out further despite their pangs and discomfort. What did his mom call this kind of material with the small pattern cut out all over it? Oh, yeah. Eyelet. He stacked the frothy lace and eyelet covered pillows and small

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round and oblong pillows onto the bench at the foot of the bed. On top of the comforter remained two thick pillows, encased in covers that matched the flowered sheets. Dylan tossed the comforter to the end of the bed and lay on his side with his full glory resting on the sheet. “Oh, you’re back already.” Haley shut off the bathroom light and marveled at the complacent, smiling man waiting in her bed with his head propped on one hand and her yellow-flower-splattered sheets under him. His naked shoulders glowed burnished bronzed in the lamplight. The dim light and shadows delineated the dips and curves of his biceps and abs. His dark hair gleamed blue-black, accenting his green-gold eyes, chiseled cheeks and smiling mouth. She itched to run her fingers across his short hair, down his face to follow the light hair dusting his chest, to trace the thicker trail down his abdomen. “I’ve never been anywhere.” His eyebrows lifted in puzzlement. “And you’re speaking English again. I was getting tired of pretending you’re a foreigner trying to confuse poor me whom you cast as the stranger in a strange land. I’m all for playing sex games, but warn me first. I like the pajamas, by the way. Quite fetching.” Haley grinned at him and pirouetted so the wide pants legs swirled like individual skirts. “I love being a girly girl. After years of plain, practical clothes, uniforms in various shades of cam or wrapping up in the depressing clothes of a suppressed Muslim, I love wearing laces and flounces. My mother always insisted I was too big for girly girl clothes.” “You are absolutely the perfect size.” “Thank you,” Haley pulled out the sides of her pajama pants and dropped a curtsy. “I’m happy with my size too. And since Mom doesn’t pay for my clothes, I wear what I want. My only regret at joining Wildlife Management is being stuck in a uniform again. But I make up for it by wearing lace undies.” Dylan gave her a sideways smile and an exaggerated leer. “Yeah? What do these look like? You want to show me?” 48

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“Not right now.” Haley sat on the bed tailor fashion, well aware she didn’t have on any panties beneath her flowing pajamas. Sex energy began to flow as soon as she caught a whiff of his male musk. Much as she wanted to rub herself all over him, she forced herself to sound calm. “And by the way, I’ve always been speaking English. You’ve been a jaguarondi for the past half-hour.” Dylan twisted his kissable lips into a grimace. “I have not. I’ve been watching you in the kitchen and waiting for you to calm down. You were scared after I accidentally clawed you when I was lifting you up against the wall. I swear to God, I wish I knew how that was happening to me and why.” “You remember being in the kitchen?” “Of course. You jerked the t-shirt off my head and then jumped on the table when I yelled at you.” He pinched a fold in her pajama leg. He slid his thumb and index finger along the pleat he made up her shin, then back down to her ankle. Haley shivered with increased sex heat as though he were stroking her skin instead of her pajamas. Her breathing hitched, but she refocused on the situation about his changes. It gave her hope that he had memories of being a jaguarondi, even if he thought he was in human form at the time. Now she needed to make him remember being in his jaguarondi form. For his own sake, he had to accept he changed. “Why don’t you describe what you were doing?” “I told you, waiting for you to calm down.” Dylan’s smile disappeared into an annoyed scowl. Haley didn’t let his scowl bother her, but persisted, “No, I meant tell me where you were sitting, how you were sitting.” He rolled his eyes at her, blew out air, then said, “I was on the floor in rest position. Waiting.”

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“Where were your arms and legs?” Dylan started to say something, then stopped. His face twisted with puzzlement. “Why am I thinking I had them under my body like a cat making a bread loaf?” Haley nodded. “And your tail?” “Wrapped around my body?” The words hung in the air. Dylan looked stunned as though he didn’t believe the words had come from his mouth. “Dylan, it’s going to be all right. We can work this out.” “I turned into a fucking cat and you have the gall to say ‘it’s all right’ and ‘we can work it out’? Why the hell is this happening to me?” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m going to kill the people who did this to me!” Haley lunged across the bed and grabbed his shoulders. She leaned all her weight against his tense back and slid her arms around his chest, holding him to her. “Dylan, listen to me. I don’t know how this is happening or who did it to you.” “I do,” Dylan said. “And I’m going to hunt them down and kill them.” Haley shuddered to hear the cold, bleak determination in his voice. “Dylan, right now, as much as you want to hurt whoever did this to you, you have to first accept what’s happening.” “I don’t have to accept it. I want to be me. Not some wildcat.” “Dylan,” Haley leaned over one rock-hard shoulder and got in his face. Now her shudders came from pure sexual energy. Her breasts pressed against his bare back, her nipples ached to feel his skin instead of her silk pajama top. His mouth was set in a tight line she wanted to ease with her mouth and tongue, but she continued to try to persuade him to see some logic. “If you accept it, maybe you’ll be able to learn to control it. Once you learn how to keep from changing, then

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we’ll be better equipped to hunt down the why, how and who were responsible for this mess in the first place.” “We’ll be better equipped?” Dylan snapped her words back to her. “Yes,” she agreed. “We. You’re not in this alone. I can help. What’s been done to you is wrong. If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll track you on my own. But whether you take me with you voluntarily or I follow you, I’ll be your backup. If you wanted the ability to change species at will, that would have been your choice. But the way it is now, they’ve taken your freedom from you. I joined the Amazons because I wanted to be able to fight those who take away others’ freedoms. Personal freedom for all is still my goal. If you know who’s responsible, I’ll help you hunt them down and hurt them for taking away your freedom.” Dylan’s half smile warmed her and a little bit of her heart gave itself to him, willingly and happily. “What’s in it for you?” He twisted his body to face her. Haley saw the tip of his cock. A drop of cum on its tip gleamed in the silver moonlight flowing through the window. Haley slowly stroked around his cock with one finger. It jerked at her touch. She caught the drop of cum on her fingertip and licked her finger. She looked at his face. His golden-green eyes gleamed at her. The hot lust shining in his eyes nearly made her come without even a touch from him. “What’s in it for me?” She sat back against the pillows and told him. “In my own interests, I want to get laid. I want you to learn to control this because I absolutely have no desire to be in the midst of things again only to discover you changing. Bestiality is so not my thing.”

Dylan placed one hand on her stomach and weighed one breast in his other hand. His thumb stroked her puckered nipple.

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Her words came in gasps between breaths. “Kinky is okay. I can do kinky for a change of pace. I like an occasional light bondage, both as Dom and as sub. I even enjoy participating with my college roommate’s ménage partners once in a while.” “Your college roommate’s part of a ménage? F-M-F?” “Mmhhh,” she sighed as his hand dipped from her stomach to massage the silk pajama crotch. “No, M-F-M. Very stable threesome for several years now. Huge bed for them and their occasional guests. Takes up most of the bedroom.” Dylan felt the silk dampening under his fingers. He slid his hand back up her soft stomach, then untied the pajama bottoms ribbon to run his hand between the material and her soft skin. She spread her knees farther apart as he parted the slick folds covered by her pussy hair. He took his hand away from her breast long enough push the silk and lace top up above her breasts. He held one in his hand to play with the nipple while he placed his mouth on the other to feast on the full bounty. “Now as for me…” What the hell was it with women who chattered during sex? Damn it, if she didn’t willingly put her hands on his shaft in half a minute, he was going to come from just the feel of the sheets, her wet juices on his fingers and the taste of her breast in his mouth. Everything suddenly had more texture as if his nerve endings had been enhanced to feel each molecule separately. Scents grew sharper. He separated out the chemicals in the soaps she used to wash the sheets and herself. Then he concentrated on the natural scents—the grass outside, the smell of her skin, the flowing musk between her legs. Colors disappeared but shapes came into crisp focus. The room no longer was the dim cave of seduction. He watched the interplay of light and shadows dance across her glowing skin. Between the lamp and the moonlight, the room was lit as bright as daylight. 52

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Dylan knew if he lifted his head from his succulent feast of Hildy’s breast, he would be able to see the mouse he smelled and heard rustling in the grass outside the window. He heard the male owl’s hunting scream, then the whoosh, flap of wings. That mouse didn’t even have time to squeak its death call. “But as for me,” Hildy’s voice broke into Dylan’s study of all the different tastes, textures, smells and shapes created by his Brunhilde’s lush body. “I prefer a single male at a time. And while I occasionally like my human males to act like animals, I do not want animal animals as lovers. As much as I love your tongue on my breast, it’s starting to scratch. I think you’re changing again. And if those damn claws come out again while you’re playing with my pussy, I will break your cock in two.”

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Chapter Five Dylan jerked his fingers away from Hildy’s pussy. “Damn it all to hell!” He looked at his hand, four fingers and a thumb—no claws, just fingernails. He breathed a sigh of relief that the changing hadn’t occurred yet. Tentatively, he ran his tongue across his teeth. His teeth hadn’t turned into points. He rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth “Are you sure I was changing? My tongue feels smooth.” “You were shifting into the jaguarondi.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Well, damn, he knew better than to doubt a woman’s word, but still. “My tongue feels normal to me.” She jerked down her pajama top and crossed her arms under the lovely breasts he’d been holding and suckling. “How exactly do you know how normal feels? You spent half an hour in the jaguarondi shape and didn’t even realize you’d shifted until I made you face facts.” Dylan flinched at the reality Haley once again forced at him. Part of him felt like he was five years old, mad at one of his snotty girl cousins. “Want to feel it?” Dylan stuck his tongue out at her. Haley leaned forward, her fingers extended. Dylan resigned himself to no more playtime for the night. He just hoped his First Amazon Battalion soldier didn’t jerk his tongue out in her anger. She swiped her own tongue across his, then sat back before he had a chance to grab her. His cock pulsed angrily. He froze, afraid if he even moved across the soft sheets he’d come all over the bed. “Dylan?” 54

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“Just wait,” he said between gritted teeth. Silently, sweat popping in beads on his forehead, he fought the battle for dominance with his cock. The scent of her body on sheets, the aroma of her wet pussy next to his head, the still slick feel of her juices on his fingers made it all that much worse to gain control over his cock. Damn it all to hell and back. His being—his self-worth—encompassed more than overactive hormones and a nearly out-of-control dick. His cock finally eased off enough that he didn’t think he was going to come at the moment. He made no promises to himself that the next time he’d win the battle or even want to. He hated not being in control of his body. “You okay now?” Haley asked. “Absolutely just fine and dandy,” he snarled. How the hell did she think he felt? He had no control of this changing shit and his cock kept wanting to take full charge. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” Her sweet, sugary, sarcastic voice flayed guilt across him for snapping at her concern. “I had nothing to do with this crap about you turning into a jaguarondi. Don’t get snitty with me, you pickle head.” “Now I’m a pickle head?” “Substitute dick for pickle, pickle head.” Dylan didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. “My older brother and cousins used to call me Pickle.” Haley laughed, then asked, “Are you serious?” “Do I look like I’m joking?” He tried to glare at her. One look at her fighting back giggles and he found himself grinning too. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh. Dylan became Dill, which ended up being Pickle. They quit when I finally got old enough, big enough and mean enough to beat the crap out of them.” Their shared laughter eased some of Dylan’s tension. “Families suck.” “Yes,” Dylan nodded, “and what would we do without them?”

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“Good question. Okay, as long as we’re talking about siblings and confessions, I have a confession.” “You beat up your sister to steal her ruffles and laces?” “I sure wanted to when we were kids. But no, this is different. My sister works in a biomedical lab in Houston. I took blood samples of you when you were in your jaguarondi shape and in your human shape. I sent the samples to her to see what the hell is happening to you. It has to be something triggering the DNA to change. Maybe she and her colleagues can figure out what and help you to stop it.” “Why DNA?” “This has to be happening to you on a sub-molecular level because the change is too perfect. You know, like the scientist in the graphic novels who turns green and bulks way up when he gets mad or scared.” “You’re saying I’m an incredible hunk?” She grinned at him and swatted him. “Behave. You do have your moments, but we’ll get into that later. You said you knew who did this to you?” “Yeah, I think so. It’s not like I was born in a litter and have been doing this my whole life.” Her chuckle at his feeble joke helped him calm down further. He plucked at the loose silk pajama bottom, once again sliding his fingers up and down a fold. He wanted to rub her silken skin but for the moment settled for the material. “Do you know what happened to you? And who did it?” “Specifically who? No. The area where it happened? Possibly. Why? And how? Not a clue.” Dylan concentrated on the silk between his thumb and forefinger, wishing he was touching her wet folds instead. “It has to do with my former job in Special Forces. I’d tell you what I did, but…” “Yeah, yeah, then you’d have to kill me. My security clearance is pretty high. I’ll have you know I came into Reserves as a First Sergeant.”

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“No, kidding? You outrank me. I was invalided out as a Master Sergeant. Should I salute you?” “Your pickle has been doing so all evening.” Dylan shifted on his stomach, trying to find a soft place for his hard shaft. “I have no control over it. Not only are you a toothsome wench, but one of the side effects of the damn blackouts…” “Not blackouts,” she corrected him. “Changing back to human form after being a jaguarondi. My personal opinion is you have trouble adjusting to the differences in your senses from human to jaguarondi. As a result, you try not to remember the experience and consider the experiences as blackouts. I’ll point out that you did remember what happened in the kitchen, even though you were a jaguarondi at the time.” “You know,” Dylan thought back through what he considered blackouts. His internal clock ticked rhythmically. His internal clock always reminded him how much time had passed. Knowing the time helped him remember who he was. With those thoughts in mind, he forced himself through his memories and beyond the confusion and pain during what he thought of as his blackouts. He pushed himself to once again experience the blackouts’ strange sights, sounds, scents. He compared his vague remembrances to what had happened in Haley’s kitchen. He realized his vision, hearing and smell sharpened just before Haley made him aware he was changing when they were enjoying foreplay a few minutes ago. Damn it, when was he going to get some sex again? Probably not until Hildy had her say. “You might be right. And maybe I’m adjusting since I can remember what happened in the kitchen and moving to the bedroom?” “You remember all of that?” “Yes. I remember walking with you and rubbing against you.” The gleam in Haley’s eye gave him pause. “What?” 57

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“Did you grow up with cats?” Why did he suddenly feel like the mouse being toyed with by the cat? “Yes. They were all over the ranch. Why?” “Do you know why cats rub against things? And stroke things with their tails?” “I’m not a moron. To mark the things with the cat’s scent. For the cat to mark whatever it wants as belonging to it.” “And since you were in a jaguarondi body, rubbing all over me, stroking me with your tail. Well,” Haley paused for a heartbeat, “it gives a whole different meaning to the old term of pussy-whipped.” Dylan groaned at her awful joke. He never had understood why a woman’s thatch was often called a “pussy”. Eating a muffin made so much more sense. Having a muff warm his cock—that had some logic. But pussy? Not that it mattered to him. At this point, he really didn’t care what it was called. He wanted his cock pounding hard and deep inside his Brunhilde’s pussy again, its warm slickness taking away the ache hammering at him. He shifted again on the bed, well aware he was close to losing control. “You act like you’re uncomfortable on your stomach. Why don’t you lie on your back?” “There’s a side effect to regaining consciousness from the blackout.” At her glare, Dylan corrected himself. “A side effect to shifting back to human.” “Besides ending up naked?” “Yeah. Besides being naked, I end up horny. Very, very horny.” “Must be the animal part of you.” Haley shrugged her pretty shoulders with the expertise of a first-class stripper. One of the spaghetti straps holding up the pajama top slid down her upper arm. “Go ahead and lie on your back. You’ll be more comfortable.” Her calm practicality amazed him. “Um, it’s a bit of a tent pole.”

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“Oooooh, yum, yum,” her blue eyes widened with mock innocence and sparkling humor. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.” “Do you think you might be so turned on by its size you might force yourself on me to have your wicked way?” Dylan rolled onto his back, then scooted up so the bedstead braced his shoulders. Hildy eyed him, then licked her lips and frowned at him. “We have got to get this changing stuff under control. I really want to have my wicked way with you. But not at the moment. Tell me what you think happened. The how and why will have to wait until we find the specific whos and beat the shit out of them.” Dylan didn’t want to think about his time in captivity, much less talk about it. But he also didn’t want to spend the rest of his life changing into a wildcat at inopportune moments. “It has to start with my Special Forces job that involved infiltrating the cartels across the border that smuggle people and drugs. For all the good it does to stem the tide. And the wall across the southern border is worthless. Amazing the damn ground underneath it doesn’t collapse considering the way it’s riddled with tunnels.” “Yeah, big old waste of taxpayer money. More people, and infrared equipment works better. We spend a lot of our time in Wildlife Management rescuing people who’ve been abandoned in the brush and tracking down caches of drugs. So what happened with your spy job in the smuggling cartel?” He grasped her silk pajama leg again and rubbed it. If he touched her naked skin, he might go completely animalistic. “One group I’d been working with got busted by a rival cartel. All of us, including the people who were trying to get across, ended up in one of the competitors’ prison camps.” “Not fun.” “It gets worse. One night, a bunch of us were taken to a hospital straight from hell. You remember those psych tests we got subjected to when we signed up for our compulsory terms?” 59

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Haley’s full lips thinned. She nodded, her face set in hard, grim planes. “Those were a cakewalk compared to what we were put through. In addition, they did a bunch of things for physical endurance. I also have memory gaps during which I think they did medical things to us because I woke up with anesthetic hangovers.” “You keep saying ‘us’.” Haley’s fingers grasped his shoulder and kneaded it. “Definitely more people were being experimented on. I caught glimpses of other people, plus I heard them. I want to find that Hell Hospital again. The place needs to be razed. They’re not only experimenting on adults, they’re using children.” Dylan closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Once he found the hospital again, he’d alert his former squad members and they’d pull the strings to close it down. “It’s in Mexico?” Dylan shook his head and looked into Brunhilde’s eyes. The winter blue sky eyes looked back at him with compassion and encouragement to continue. “I caught a glimpse of the area at night a couple of times. I have this strong urge to go to the Davis Mountains here in Texas. Maybe it was the star pattern I saw. I know I saw we were in mountains, but it didn’t feel like Colorado or Mexico. I just have this insistent thought that it’s in the Davis Mountains and I have to go there. I think it’s The Halcyon Institute.” Haley’s eyes widened. “That can’t be right. The Halcyon Institute is a very respected research and development hospital for helping people with massive injuries and body trauma.” “I know the reputation,” Dylan snapped. “They get appropriated a lot of government funding for their help with war injuries. I’ve been there to visit injured buddies. I was drugged a lot of the time I was held there, but I think the star pattern and mountain range are the same. I want to be positive before I start blowing any whistles. Besides, I have this extremely strong urge that I have to be in the Davis Mountains and soon.” “But how did you get out?” 60

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Dylan knew by the skeptical look on her face she didn’t believe him about The Halcyon Institute. Hell, he still didn’t believe it either. But he was going to make sure. For now, it was enough that she wasn’t calling the cops on him. Maybe if he finished his story, it might make more sense to both of them. “Someone took us back to a prison camp in Mexico. At least, I woke up from a drug-induced stupor there. A coalition force of Special Forces broke into the cartel prison and pulled us out. The SF people said it was too easy, no more than token resistance, as though whoever was in charge wanted us out of there. Everyone was suspicious as hell, but we were damn glad to be out.” “Then you came back and were invalided out because of your so-called blackouts?” “Hard to stay SF when I kept waking up with no idea how I got places.” “I’m sure the naked raised a few eyebrows too.” Haley grinned at him. One thing he loved already about Haley was that she was wacky enough to find something funny in everything. Her joy in life eased the shadows threatening him. “The stand-up cock didn’t help much either. I was actually worried I’d get busted out for being a pervert.” “Poor Pickle.” Dylan bared his teeth at her. “Damn. If my teeth were pointed right now, I’d rip your throat out.” Haley ran her hand down his chest. “I have an experiment I want to try. I want to see if we can learn to control this changing bit.” Dylan’s blood heated at her touch. His cock jerked. “Oh, yeah? Does it involve you getting naked and an exchange of body fluids, I hope?” “However did you guess?” Dylan lunged at her, but she pushed him back against the bed. “Let me explain first.” “Talk, talk, talk. Yap, yap, yap. Ever heard of ‘shut up and kiss me’?” 61

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“Shut up and let me talk. I have a master’s in biology.” “Big whoop. My mom’s love of poetry led me to get a Ph.D. in European Literature.” Dylan tunneled his hands under her pajama top. He got his hands around her breasts, but she pulled herself away. “Oh, Doctor, I’m so not impressed. And this degree in which you Piled Higher and Deeper qualifies you for what?” “To ascertain if a patron desires fries with the order.” He reached for her again, but she slapped his hands. “Yeah, I thought so. Keep your hands to yourself, big boy, before I get my handcuffs out. And I don’t mean the breakaway bondage ones. I’ll knock you out and get my official ones around you.” Dylan tucked away his grin. She wore her Valkyrie game face which clearly radiated do not mess with me, you will not win. Maybe if Dylan behaved himself for a bit longer while she yakked away, she’d pull out the breakaways and let him use them on her. Being the sub in bondage games wasn’t something he liked, especially after all the crap he went through in Hell Hospital. “Listen to me. When you were eating, even a while ago when we were having sex, you didn’t fully change into the jaguarondi. Do you have any idea what you were thinking at the time?” “Sex?” “Get your mind off your pickle, pickle head! Think.” “Oh, hell. Okay, okay. Let me think. When I was eating the steak, I wanted to get my face into it like a caveman. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you so I forced myself to use a fork.” “Okay, that’s a start. And when we started rolling around on the bed?”

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Dylan felt like he had in sixth-grade when he tried to pick up the eighth-grade head cheerleader. “Hell. I was afraid if I made an ass out of myself by turning into a jaguarondi, I’d never get laid.” Haley patted the top of his head as if he was a little kid who learned to tie his shoes. He grabbed her hand and pushed it onto his shaft. “It’s called lap dancing for a reason.” She had the gall to laugh. “If this works like I think, we’ll get to that.” To his pleasure, she didn’t remove her hand, even though she didn’t massage his cock either. She just kept talking, “There is a part of the brain called the amygdala.” “Wasn’t that the name of Luke Skywalker’s mother in the old Star Wars movies?” “That was Queen Amidala. Shut up or I’ll twist your balls until they turn blue.” “Yes, ma’am, Brunhilde.” “The amygdale decodes emotions, particularly those involving things that threaten a person or animal. It reacts with the brain’s hippocampus that stores and retrieves memories. The result of the two working together is strong emotional reaction to something. Frightening memories retrieved from the hippocampus can result in the amygdale to produce anxiety.” “I’d be impressed if I cared for a biology lesson. When do we get to the sex?” “You are the perfect proof of men who can’t use their brains and cocks at the same time. Not enough blood to work both organs. Now listen to my theory. The anxiety of trauma such as this gunshot wound,” she patted the healing wound on his thigh, “or the horrible realization that you were turning into a jaguarondi in the kitchen resulted in anxiety strong enough to send the amygdala into panic-attack mode. This panic attack released the fight or flight adrenaline and might have triggered the DNA to change you to the jaguarondi.” “Like I changed after you kneed me in the nuts?” “Um, yes. Sorry about that.”

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“Kiss it and make it better?” Brunhilde’s eyes gleamed. “Now we’re getting to my experiment. When you ate the steak, you wanted to not embarrass yourself by acting on the animal instincts. You controlled it. Now the pleasure of making love is similar to the same emotions that trigger pain. So,” she slowly ran her hand up and down his cock, “if I do things like this, we’ll reprogram the amygdala so it associates it with pleasure. With enough work, you might be even be able to learn how to control the change.” “I promise to practice all night if necessary.” Dylan reached for the hem of her pajama top, but she stopped him yet again. “No. You’re going to have to be my sex slave. You’re going to have to do what I say and let me do things to you so you can learn to keep the change from happening.” “Oh, hell.” Dylan considered the scenario. He absolutely hated not being in control, but if the only way he was going to get anything was to be the sub, then he’d suck it up and be the sub. First though, he needed to make something clear to Hildy. “Just don’t handcuff me or tie me up. I think I’ll go into a panic attack after being in the Mexican cartel prison camp and Hell Hospital. Then you might prove your theory is correct when I turn into a jaguarondi and start ripping things up.” “The object is to teach you to learn to not change into a jaguarondi. Okay, I won’t tie you. Hang on to the bedstead bars.” Obediently, he wrapped his hands around the bars behind his head. She pushed apart his legs until she had room to kneel between them. Although she eyed his body up and down, to his frustration, she didn’t touch him. He dug his heels into the bed and lifted his butt, wanting her mouth on his favorite body part and saw a drop of cum on his tip. “Hildy, please. Go down on me.” “No, Pickle. You get no choice in what I’m going to do. No talking or I’ll gag you.” “Don’t gag me. Remember I’ve been held prisoner for real. I’ll shut up.”

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Haley nodded solemnly. “I promise not to gag you then. But no more talking.” Instead of smacking him in punishment, which he would have enjoyed at this point, she sat back on her heels and continued to watch him. She took off her pajama top and he saw her peaked nipples. With her gaze still roving over his body, she lifted her breasts with her hands and rubbed her nipples with her thumbs. Dylan bit back his groan and instinctively arced his back. His hands and mouth tingled. No. He refused to allow the change to occur. He wanted to get laid. She wasn’t going to participate if he turned into a jaguarondi. He forced the tingling to go away. When he looked back at Haley, his Brunhilde was smiling at him. “You stopped it, didn’t you?” He nodded. She told him not to talk and, by damn, he wasn’t going to say a word. “Very good.” She leaned down over his body. Her lovely, white hands toyed with his balls. As it brushed against his darker skin, her blonde hair shone silver in the full moonlight. She blew lightly on his hot, hard shaft. Finally, she took him into her mouth and began to suck.

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Chapter Six To his dismay, she pulled away from him. “Don’t come yet,” she ordered. She licked her lips as though savoring the taste of his cum. “Are you fucking insane? My balls are about to explode.” Haley sat back and glared at him. “Make it stop. If you can’t control your own cock, how the hell can you learn to control the shift to jaguarondi? Don’t let go of the bedstead and don’t talk.” Dylan tensed, focusing all his attention on his cock before it made Mount St. Helen’s most recent eruption look like a pot of vegetables boiling over. His hands gripped the bedstead rails. The tingling in his fingers increased until he wanted to claw something. His teeth ached and his ears felt like they were being twisted off his head. Even his butt hurt like it was being torn in two. He ignored all of it and concentrated on his cock. It jerked with a life of its own while he fought not to have a complete orgasm. His hands got slippery with sweat, but he held the bedstead rails. He nearly bit his tongue. With Haley glaring at him, he didn’t groan or let out a single peep. His cock finally subsided. It still stood hard and ornery, but it quit trying to spray the ceiling. The tension immediately left him as though all the aching and burning never happened. “Better,” Haley crooned. “Much better. You see? You are a man, not an animal or just a cock.” Dylan narrowed his eyes at her as if daring her to get him to talk. He wanted to get fucked, not be fucked around with. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Don’t let go of the bedstead and don’t talk.”

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Haley walked from the room, determined to get herself under control before she went back to Dylan. Never had she been Domme before with a man as determined to maintain control as Dylan. Not only had he surprised her by keeping his cock from erupting, he controlled and dismissed the shape-changing at the same time. How soon was his control going to snap? She only hoped when his instinctive desire to be the leader came to the fore, he satisfied his domination by pounding his cock deep inside her. She hoped she didn’t have to face an enraged wildcat. She needed to get her supply of vet products and be ready to hit the wildcat with a fast-acting tranquillizer if Dylan completely lost control. But first. She discarded her pajama bottoms and leaned against the hallway wall. She ran her fingers across her wet folds, imagining Dylan’s fingers separating them while his tongue lapped her. Her breathing quickened and she pushed two fingers deep inside. She pinched a nipple with one hand, wishing it were Dylan’s thicker fingers. She rubbed herself harder and deeper, her womb clenched with tight pulses. She knew Dylan didn’t have a clue how hard it had been for her to stop sucking his cock. She wanted to drink his cum while it sprayed in her mouth. She wanted to impale herself on that tall, thick cock while he sucked her nipples. A brief orgasm shuddered through her body and relieved some of her ache. Languidly, she pushed herself away from the wall and went to the kitchen to get the chocolate syrup and a couple of tranquillizer slap injections. Nice little gadgets those were. Just slap the animal and the tiny needle on the bulb sank into the animal’s skin immediately releasing the tranq. In Dylan’s case, she hoped she got the tranq into his system before he fully changed. Otherwise, the jaguarondi would tear her up. She eyed her tranq gun. No. He’d worry if he knew the gun was in the room with them. The worry could easily lead to panic. No. She’d trust Dylan’s strength to control himself. And take the tranq capsules just in case. 67

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On her way back to the bedroom, she made a brief foray into the bathroom. She had promised not to tie him or gag him, but here was a nice strip of velvet, a foam paintbrush for the chocolate and some feathers. She really needed to get a small nightstand with a drawer for her sex toys. Not that she’d had much use for them since she was transferred to south Texas. Now why the hell had she settled for her own fingers when she had her nice dual action vibrator here in the drawer? Because the dildo wasn’t as long or thick as Dylan’s cock, she reminded herself. And the butt vibrator didn’t have the same texture as his fingers. She slammed the drawer shut. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to slip into the sub role and be begging him to fuck her. She needed to remain Domme until they both knew he had control over the changing. In her bedroom, Dylan still had his hands clamped around the headboard rails. His angry look subsided when he saw the goodies in her hands. Or maybe because she was naked, her thighs still gleaming from her own cream that flowed when she jacked herself. Whatever. He now looked like he was eager to try whatever she dished out. She set the tranq capsules on the spindly table that held her lamp. “Good boy, you didn’t move,” she crooned at him again, knowing damn well he hated the sound. She’d worked hard to perfect that grating tone, halfway between an indulgent mommy tone and a teacher comment to a not too bright student. It had pissed off the soldiers under her command and made them try harder. She had the very hopeful feeling she was going to be screaming his name in delight in the not too distance future. She smothered her grin, knowing she needed to stay in charge. “Turn your body so you’re on your back and your butt is at the edge of the bed,” she ordered. At his obedient shifting, she knelt on the floor. Perfect. His balls, cock and butt were even with her face. “Put your feet on the bed, but keep your butt where it is. Pull your legs farther apart and hold your ankles with your hands.” 68

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Sweet women of all eternity, she’d forgotten how much it turned her on to have a self-assured man as her sex slave, one who trusted her enough to let her do whatever she wanted. Slowly, she began to weave the feather around his balls, loving the way they tightened and his cock jerked. His breathing turned into panting, but he didn’t show any of the wildcat changing. Haley decided it was time to up the ante. She reached for the tiny foam paintbrush, then decided to hell with it. She wanted to touch his balls and cock herself. She squirted the still-chilly chocolate syrup into her palm, then used just the tip of her middle finger to trace chocolate swirls and lines on the smooth insides of his thighs. Around each ball, she slowly drew concentric circles. With only a bit of chocolate left in her palm, she wrapped her hand around his cock. Under her sticky palm, the veins beat a fast staccato, thickening his cock as she held it. She didn’t bother to look at Dylan’s face. She knew from his breathing and the sheen of sweat glistening in the dim light he was almost at the edge. His body shuddered and she caught a quick glimpse of claws peeking from his toenails and fingernails. To her pleasure, the claws disappeared quickly, like a cat whose claws extend then retract when it stretches. “Good control,” Haley commented. The time had to come to reward both of them just a bit. Gently, she lapped the chocolate off his thighs, then moved slowly to his balls. His body twisted slightly as she started to suck the first one clean, but all she had to do was stop and he stilled immediately. When she started again, he never moved. After licking the second one clean, she wondered if they both had the strength for her to suck his cock. She held her thighs tightly together. She didn’t to take her hands off his body to touch herself. Her cream made her thighs slide against each other.

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She started with a bit of licking, using just the tip of her tongue. The knuckles showed white at the grip he had on his ankles. Encouraged by his determination, she used her full tongue to lap first up the length, then around the girth. Damn, damn, damn. She wanted this pounding inside her pussy, not her mouth. But she needed to make sure he still had control. She began to take him into her mouth, a few millimeters at a time. With one hand, she fondled his balls. The other hand she slid back and forth across his butt cheeks, occasionally touching his butthole. Hopefully, this time his tail wouldn’t come out. His cock jerked in her mouth. She suckled harder, pleased he didn’t come immediately. She adored the shape of the smooth tip, then devoured him deeper to feel the texture of the ridged veins feeding its heavy girth. Her nipples tightened unbearably. Her sex wept hot juices. “Push yourself back onto the bed,” she said hoarsely. She sat back on her calves and touched herself. She had to have him now. She stood up, then climbed on the bed. He still kept his legs spread apart, his hands gripping his ankles. “Let go of your ankles and hold the headboard rails again.” She brushed a taut nipple against his mouth. Ah, a smart study. Dylan already knew not to do anything she didn’t tell him to do. She rubbed the other nipple across his mouth, daring him to taste it. Good. He kept his mouth shut although she saw the strain in his jaw and the taut tension in his body. Haley straddled his body, then rubbed her aching, wet pussy across his chest. Was he in full control? She raised herself up to her knees, noting the tranq caps within easy reach to grab. Right, Lundberg, trying to cover your ass just in case the jaguarondi pops out. She hoped she had time to get to them. Time to test his control.

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She moved up to his face and brushed her wet pussy against his face. The claws popped out from his fingers again but disappeared even more quickly. She lowered herself to his mouth. “Eat me.” His tongue promptly plunged into her, lapping as though he were dying of thirst. His mouth sucked at her and pulled the tight knot of her clitoris into her mouth. For a heartbeat, Haley felt stiff whiskers where her thighs pressed Dylan’s cheeks and a scratchy tongue against her folds. They disappeared as fast as she realized what they were. Rapidly, the essence of her being climbed higher. She rubbed her throbbing breasts against Dylan’s knuckles. If she truly planned to tame him for her pure sex slave, she’d have him keep this level of sensation with his sucking, lapping and occasionally teeth scraping all night long. Just as the thought occurred to her, her being stripped itself from her body. Her orgasm sent her into a frenzy, grinding herself against Dylan’s mouth and tightening her thighs against his cheeks while shudders ripped through her. “Dylan! Oh, saints! Dylan!” The last of the orgasm ignited through her and left her hanging limply on to the bedstead rails. His tongue and mouth moved more slowly now. She felt cherished while he gently suckled and occasionally licked her to send aftershocks through her. Stiffly, she unwound her hands from the rails, then moved herself from his mouth still savoring her. “Nice,” she said, barely able to keep her eyes open. She patted his still-erect cock. “Turn on your side so I can reach your cock.” Without saying a word, he twisted his body. Haley looked at the odd angle he lay at then laughed. “You may take your hands off the rails now and get comfortable.” For a moment his jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.

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Haley took his cock into her mouth and began to suck again. Dylan didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to stand this torture. He didn’t think he had much control left to stop his cock from exploding. Her sweet pussy, glistening with her juices that he still could taste, lay next to his face. The bountiful mounds he wanted to suckle rubbed against his belly. He wanted to grab her ass and eat her again. Hey, he realized, she never told him to stop eating her. She didn’t give him permission to touch her with anything other than his mouth, but he still had permission to eat her. He probed with his tongue, nudging her thighs slightly farther apart. When he reached the ripe knot of her clitoris, she moaned against his shaft. Her fingers dug into his butt, one finger pressing firmly against his butthole. He suckled her knot, enjoying the vibrations of her moans against his cock. With her body shuddering, he lapped harder. He felt as thought he was dying, trying to control his urge to probe her ass the way she was pushing her thumb into his hole and slapping him with light spanks. Her hand slapped with a sharp sting against his butt. She jerked her mouth from his almost exploding cock. “Get rid of the god-damn tail, Gomez!” He took his mouth from her pussy and glanced over his shoulder. His furry tail lashed against her head and shoulders. Son of a bitch! His mind exploded. He hadn’t even felt the damn thing begin to extend. At least he hadn’t said anything out loud. Maybe she’d go on giving him head if he made the damn tail go away fast. Hastily, he concentrated on making it go away. When it was gone, he cursed silently. He didn’t have the energy to start this Domme-sub game again, at least not as sub. His Brunhilde—and damn it all to hell and back, it wasn’t fair that women got to be multi-orgasmic and most men were thrilled to get a single big one—lay on the wrinkled sheets glowing with sweat and post-coital satisfaction.

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His cock still pounded with unfulfilled lust. The last time he had been this frustrated was when a girl cousin dared him to take one of his grandfather’s penis erectus pills. Gawd-almighty, that had been the last time he let a female be Domme until tonight. Just what had he been thinking? His cock throbbed and he smelled Haley’s juices. Oh, yeah, he hadn’t been thinking, just trying to control the damn wildcat urges to take care of his basic human needs. “You just can’t keep from pussy-whipping, can you?” Dylan clamped his mouth shut against the curses curdling his brain. “Dylan, as long as you continue to control the jaguarondi in you, I give you permission to pleasure me in any way you wish.”

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Chapter Seven As soon as the words left her mouth, Dylan had her on her hands and knees in front of him. He spread her legs apart. He eased the tip of his shaft into her. He knew she was still wet for him. She let loose a long shuddering breath when his width fully stretched her. “Harder, Dylan. Faster.” As much as he wanted to, he had permission to pleasure her however he wished. He slid nearly out, then slowly entered her again. Over and over, he continued the smooth solid strokes until she began to keen. When her orgasm began to shake both of them, Dylan pulled completely out. “What the fuck?” She dropped to her belly and rolled over to glare at him. Dylan pointed a finger to his chest, then to his mouth. “Talk, you bastard.” He leaned over the end of the bed and found the long strip of velvet he’d seen her discard when she came in with her toys. “You said I had permission to pleasure you anyway I wish.” Rapidly, despite her kicking, he managed to use the velvet strip to tie her ankles to two of the rails of the headboard. “This is the way I wish to bring you pleasure.” With her legs spread wide and her ass elevated, he kneeled between her legs and surveyed her wide-open sex. He held her hands with one hand, then drove himself into her. He sucked first one breast, then the other, all the while keeping up the relentless pounding his cock wanted so badly. He first put the tip of his little finger into her ass. She arched her back into his driving body. At her obvious acceptance and groaning pleasure, he substituted his index finger for his pinky. At some point, he wanted to take her ass with his cock, but right now, his shaft wanted the sublime slickness and heated shivers of her passage.

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The harder and faster he drove into her, the faster her breathing came. He vaguely felt the changing starting, but forced it into abeyance. Her body began to shake with her orgasm. He clamped his mouth against her shoulder but felt the fangs extend and forced them back. With a shrieking, unintelligible call, her body shook at the peak of her orgasm. He let himself go, joining her primeval scream with his own deep roar while his cum pumped out in sharp bursts. Panting, he became aware of her body supporting his, her hands stroking his damp back. Lightly, he suckled the skin on her sweet, sweaty shoulder, happy he’d forced back the fangs and hadn’t torn her skin this time. Her caressing hands stopped, then her fingers began to lightly feather his back as though she were searching for something. “Dylan, untie me now.” All the sex joy had disappeared with the First Sergeant order in his Amazon’s voice. He had always heard the Amazons knew exactly how and when to separate pleasure from business. “I want to see what’s under your skin on your back.” “Goddamn it all to hell. Don’t tell me I’m now sprouting some fucking wings.” Dylan reached up his back, trying to feel what interested Hildy. He untied the velvet rope. After she flexed her legs, she sat up. “Turn around.” Her fingers moved in small decisive strokes. She sat back on her calves and he turned to face her. “The farmer who found the wounded jaguarondi called me. How did you get shot anyway?” “Trying to make connections with my human smuggler contacts to get them to stop until I got to the bottom of the Hell Hospital.” Hildy worried her lower lip. “When I took possession of the wounded jaguarondi, which the farmer tranqued when he spotted it, I patched up the bullet hole,” she patted

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the healing spot on his thigh, “and inoculated the jaguarondi for rabies, feline leukemia and feline distemper.” “Gee, nice to know I’m protected.” “The vaccines probably aren’t effective in your human body. If they were, all of us in animal protection would automatically be vaccinated against rabies the way the general population is vaccinated against the flu and smallpox. It won’t hurt you either,” she assured him. “We stick ourselves all the time dealing with unruly animals. Anyway, I inserted a GPS unit to track the wildcat for our endangered species program at the same time.” “I have a GPS unit in me?” “Actually, the one I put in is just below your shoulder blade. There’s a second one between your shoulder blades.” “And there’s only one place where it was inserted. The Hell Hospital.” Dylan clamped his jaw shut. “You know what this means, don’t you?” “Just a wild guess, but someone’s tracking you?” “That too but not for much longer.” Haley’s eyes widened. “There’s only one way to remove the tracking units.” “I know. Can you do it?” “Can you keep yourself from turning into a jaguarondi when I cut it out? I have some local anesthetic, but it’s for animals. I don’t know how effective it’ll be on you.” “Just do it,” Dylan said. He grabbed the briefs and scrambled into them and the jeans while Haley grabbed a terry cloth robe. “You realize I’ll have to run from here as soon as you get both of these out.” “Right. And I’m coming with you. Come on to the kitchen.” They ran to the kitchen. “The light’s better in here and I have a powerful flashlight also. I can get a scalpel from my vet kit.” “Why do you have so much veterinarian stuff? Are you a vet too?”

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“Qualified as a vet’s assistant. Authorized to use some specific drugs.” Dylan watched her lovely hands efficiently unpack instruments and packets of things. He recognized Instant Skin and one packet that looked like a general antibiotic. “Parks and Wildlife management does a lot of treatment of injured animals. Most times the animals’ injuries have to be stabilized before they’re moved. And we always vaccinate animals we release back into the wild.” Haley continued. “Are you sure you want both units out? I don’t think anyone will track the jaguarondi I tagged.” “If the Hell Hospital is responsible for the shape-changing I do and put their own GPS tracking unit in me, I can just bet they’ll figure out about the jaguarondi’s GPS. Take them both out.” She swabbed both areas with alcohol, then wiped them with another pad of something. “Where do you want to go? West Texas? The Davis Mountains?” “Might as well. We’ll need cash. They’ll track the money cards.” “I always keep cash on hand. Why let the blood-suckers at the IRS know exactly how much money I have? And if we’re going to West Texas, we can stop by one of the Indian casinos and run it up. Are you ready for me to cut?” Dylan gritted his teeth. He focused on his internal clock. He was himself—the jaguarondi needed to remain deep within him. “Go ahead.” He hissed at the first sharp cut, then again at the sharp probe into his muscle. He forced his hands and feet to remain still. “How do you intend to run the cash up? Poker shark?” “No,” she said, calmly handing him the first bloody GPS unit. “I have phenomenal luck at slots.” He felt her smoothing a stinging cream across the cut, then the soothing coolness of Instant Skin being applied. “Nobody has that kind of luck at slots.” “I do. Ready for the second?”

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He nodded. “Go ahead.” “One of the men my old roommate lives with got curious and had a friend run a bunch of tests. I seem to have a photographic memory and can calculate odds in a flash. I watch the slots for a while and get the rhythm.” Again came the quick cut, then the digging probe. Again he made himself focus on remaining human, despite the tearing pain in his hands and feet. “The worst I ever do is double my money. And,” she handed him the second gory unit, “if we go to the Indian casino I know, we not only can collect some extra cash, but I can sell my car to one of the chiefs who lusts after it.” She finished patching the second wound. “Why does he lust after it and not after you?” Dylan flexed his shoulders, stood and followed Hildy from the kitchen. He stopped by the bathroom and flushed the GPS chips down the can. In the bedroom, Hildy had put on a pair of tiny panties and a lace bra. “He lusts after me too. But you’ll see. Let’s grab some clothes and get the hell out of here before your creeps come hunting us.”

In the heat of the midday sun, Dylan marveled again at the depths to which Haley gave him unconditional support. Elliot Hawksky, not only one of the chiefs but also the tribe’s head of security, counted the last of the cash for Haley’s pristine 1965 Shelby GT350 Mustang Hatchback into her outstretched palm. “Now, Haley,” Hawksky’s voice rumbled like distant thunder, as dark as the jetblack braid hanging down his back, “if you should choose to become one of my junior wives, I shall gift you back your car.” “Not even to be a senior wife, El. Come on, Dylan, let me show you how to play slots.” “Please do not break our bank, Haley,” Hawksky told her. “We must earn a living.”

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“You know no matter what I win, the other patrons will still give you a profit. Come on, Dylan. It’s fun.” “I wish to speak to you alone, Dylan.” Dylan barely heard Hawksky’s voice. He didn’t know what the chief wanted, but he knew he needed to hear it, just like he needed to get into the Davis Mountains. “You go on, Haley. I’ll catch up. I want to cry over this Mustang just awhile longer.” After Haley disappeared into the casino, Dylan followed Hawksky to a hut set away from the modern buildings of the casino, the modern housing for the tribe and the hotel for the guests. When Dylan ducked into the hut’s door, he saw an old man sitting on a blanket on the dirt floor. Facing the old man, Hawksky placed a palm to his head, then to his heart, backed out of the hut and left the two of them. The old man waved a palm to indicate Dylan should join him on the blanket. He offered Dylan the pipe he smoked. Always one to respect his elders, Dylan took a draw and returned it. “I dreamed of you this morning as the dawn rose. I told Hawksky to bring me the wildcat shapeshifter who comes with the woman with the moonlight silver hair. You are he.” After discovering he changed into a jaguarondi and struggling to control it, it didn’t surprise him to have an old Indian he’d never met before calmly recognize him as a shapeshifter and tell him he’d been the center of a dream. “I change into a jaguarondi, yes.” They waited in silence. “Those of us who find our way to our animal shape are rare. You must celebrate your discovery of your inner self.” The smoke from their shared pipe curled around them. Dylan didn’t want to celebrate turning into a jaguarondi—he wanted it to stop.

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“You do not accept it yet. You must learn to not fear the change. You must learn to embrace it. You must become the jaguarondi. The jaguarondi must become you. If you do not, you will lose what you most need.” “What I need most is to control this changing. Can you teach me that?” The old man shook his head. “You are the only one who knows what you need. You must embrace the jaguarondi to keep what you need.” The old man set the pipe on the ground in front of them, then closed his eyes. As though he’d been summoned, Hawksky entered the hut again and motioned Dylan to leave. Although the old man’s eyes didn’t open, Dylan copied Hawksky’s respectful hand signals to the old man before he crawled out of the hut’s small door. Slowly, the two men walked back to the casino. “Do you believe my father’s grandfather?” “Do you?” Dylan tasted the iron tang of fear at being stuck with this changing shit happening to his body the rest of his life. The chief laughed. Strong white teeth gleamed against his dark, bronze skin. “Hawksky is not just pleasant-sounding syllables. It’s what I am inside. You’ll learn.” Hawksky’s casual gaze sharpened suddenly. “What the hell is going on there?” Dylan followed the direction of Hawksky’s look and started running. Both of them pounded across the empty tribal land, determined to catch the men forcing Haley, his Hildy, across the parking lot. Hawksky barked orders into the communications unit strapped on his shoulder. Haley, his Valkyrie, wasn’t going without a fight. Reservist Amazon of the Hellcat Battalion, Master Sergeant Haley Lundberg was fighting them with dirty moves that impressed the hell out of Dylan. One man lay on the parking lot tarmac clutching his balls. A second already bled from scratches across his face. A man in the uniform of tribal security lay in front of parked cars, bleeding from a head wound.

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Beast Within

Windshields shattered from bullets fired by a man in the van to which four men were trying to drag Haley. Another tribal security officer spun with the impact from a bullet and dropped to the ground holding her shoulder. Tribal security officers ducked behind cars and steadied rifles, obviously reluctant to return fire with Haley being held. With three men struggling to contain his fighting Haley, the fourth man hit her across the head with his gun. Dylan’s mate drooped in the arms of three predators. Dylan pushed his way out of his remaining clothes. He launched his jaguarondi body at the predators who dared attack his mate. He added his own claw marks to the face his mate had marked and gained intense satisfaction at seeing the man clamp his hands to his bleeding eyes. He bit a second man in the groin. His pointed teeth easily penetrated the man’s uniform. Dylan hoped he’d bit the predator deep enough that the shrill soprano note he shrieked indicated he’d need penile surgery. One man had a hawk tearing at his head and face. Dylan let the hawk take care of that one. His mate lay on the ground, holding her head and groaning. Dylan attacked the predator who had struck her. When he was done, he shifted back into human form. He wiped the blood from the bastard’s torn throat off his mouth. Tribal security shot up the van as the gunman who had shot their co-workers tried to escape. The gunman slumped over the steering wheel, half his head gone. Dylan gathered Haley close to him while a naked Hawksky snapped orders at tribal security. A woman calmly handed Hawksky a blanket, then one to Dylan while a doctor began to examine Haley. “Pickle?” “Holding you, Hildy.” “You did it.”

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Betty Hanawa

“I did what I could to help you. Hawksky and tribal security got the rest of the assholes who were trying to kidnap you.” To his relief, she opened her eyes, then scolded. “Not that, pickle head. You. You shifted to the jaguarondi and back again.” “I had to let the jaguarondi out to keep my mate from harm. Fortunately, I had a good teacher help me learn how to do it.” The doctor demanded Haley’s attention. After checking her eyes, he declared she had a mild concussion, suggested bed rest for twenty-four hours and to contact him if she started seeing double or got dizzy.

In the high roller’s suite assigned to them by Hawksky, Dylan watched his mate waking up after a nap. When she opened her eyes and smiled at him, he felt his heart contract with love. “How many of me do you see?” “Just one. And I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad. If you had a twin, I could double my pleasure. Maybe one of your brothers?” Dylan ran his index finger down her straight nose to touch her lips. “Forget that. I’m not sharing my mate.” He slid his hand under the sheet to cup her breast and tweaked her nipple. “Are you dizzy? Lightheaded?” “Only if you keep doing that.” Dylan kissed her with all the tenderness that filled his soul. Her mouth opened and took him with a sweetness he knew he needed in his life forever. For a moment, the fear of losing her to those thugs returned. But it didn’t happen. She was here, warm, naked and cuddly beside him. He moved his mouth down her throat to her full, enchanting breasts. He suckled one, then the other while her hands fisted in his hair. He finger-combed through her thatch to discover she was already wet for him.

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Beast Within

While she recovered from the mild concussion, they needed to take it slow and easy. In fact, a down and dirty bang wasn’t what he wanted this time anyway. This time he wanted to make love to her with quiet thankfulness she was part of his life. He rubbed her pussy while he worshiped her breasts. She spread her legs to give him more access and her moisture drenched his fingers. He inserted one finger, then a second to inflame the knot that gave her joy. Her orgasm started. Her body shook and he swallowed her glad cries while their tongues encircled and stroked each other in their joined mouths. She rode his hand over the crest. Her body eased into relaxation. Slowly, he entered her heated, slick passage that welcomed him like a glove on a cold winter’s day. There he waited, content for the moment for them to be joined. When he started to move, she tightened her legs around him to draw him in deeper. She joined the rhythm he started. Their unhurried pace gave them time to treasure the taste of skin, the texture of muscles, the solid strength of bones. They felt the kiss of their bodies meeting and sliding off each other. Their souls joined in the glitter of tears of happiness because they’d found the other half of their being. When their passion began to crest, Dylan once again sank his teeth into his mate’s shoulder, but this time held the wildcat back from breaking skin. Intensifying his ecstasy, Haley locked her mouth on his shoulder, pulling his skin and muscle into her mouth. She broke skin the way he had the first time. The pleasure-pain pushed his control over his jaguarondi. But he held firm and contented the wildcat with the taste of her skin as he suckled the now healing bite he’d left before. Arms and legs locked around each other, their mouths fused to the other’s shoulders, they drove each other to the final frenzy. He emptied into her, triggering her ride to the top and over. Dylan answered her call of joy with his own hoarse growl.

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Betty Hanawa

When the crescendo eased, Dylan rolled to his side. Haley smiled at him and put her hand against the slightly bleeding mark she had left on him. He placed his hand on his mark on her, now oozing a bit again. Dylan looked at her and she nodded. They each licked the marks they left. Their mouths joined, the iron tang of each other commingling with their tongues. “Your blood is my blood,” Dylan told her while holding his hand once again on her shoulder, stopping the slight bleeding. “As mine is yours,” Haley answered, applying pressure to the skin she’d bitten open. “My mate.” “My mate,” she answered. A knock on the door broke into their quiet bonding. They each grabbed guns off the bedside tables. Haley peered through a thin opening between the curtains while Dylan checked the peephole. “Hawksky,” he told Haley. He caught the robe she tossed him. He noted she hadn’t put the safety on the gun she held either as she tucked her hand and gun into the pocket of her robe. Dylan shrugged on the robe and cautiously opened the door with the security chain still on. “I’m alone.” Dylan eased open the door and double-checked the hallway as he let Hawksky into the room. “How are your officers?” he asked Hawksky after he activated his gun’s safety. His mate, he realized, was quite as trusting but kept her hand on her gun in the pocket. “One of them is in the hospital with a concussion from the bullet that grazed his scalp. The other has already been treated and released. Her husbands are trying to talk her into taking a desk job.” “If she’s anything like Haley, they can forget that idea.”

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“She was my instructor in dirty fighting in the Amazons.” Haley yawned and leaned against Dylan. She finally pulled out the gun and thumbed the safety before putting it back in her pocket. He put his arm around her, tucking her tightly to his side. As much as he admired Hildy’s strength and courage, he hoped he never had to see her fighting for her life again. Still it was a comfort to know she could not only take care of herself, but watch his back when he went after the group who messed with him. He controlled the wildcat now, but he resented he had been forced to literally become his inner beast. Hawksky frowned at Haley. “You’re supposed to be in bed. You have a concussion. She’s supposed to have bed rest.” Now his glare went to Dylan. “Not bouncing and banging.” Dylan just grinned at Hawksky. “My mate, not yours. Ever try to stop a member of the Hellcat Battlion of the Amazons from bouncing and banging if she wants to?” “Fat chance of that,” Hawksky said with a grin. “One of my junior wives was in Haley’s unit. Several of our women were or are Amazons. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least to be voted out as chief someday to one of them.” “I don’t know how they put up with you. You’re overprotective, El. That’s why I don’t want to be one of your wives.” “The offer remains open, Haley.” “No way in hell are you marrying him,” Dylan growled. “You’re my mate. If you want the big girly wedding and party, we’ll do it all legally, but you’re my mate.” “And you’re my mate. But, yeah, I do want the girly wedding with all the hoopla at some point.” She kissed him and Dylan once again drowned in the taste of her. “Not exactly the girly vision I had of a proposal, but it works.” “I love you, Hildy. Even if I am an ass about doing the proposal thing. I’ll do it to your specifications later.” “After the Davis Mountains trip,” Haley suggested. “I love you too, wildcat.”

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Betty Hanawa

As they kissed again, Hawksky cleared his throat. “I think it’s time for me to leave.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “Wait, El.” After one more peck on Dylan’s lips, Haley asked, “What’s going to happen to the predators who grabbed me?” “We don’t have to worry about them. Those who didn’t die immediately must have had suicide capsules. They were dead before the medics had a chance to treat them for their wounds.” “Any charges being brought against Dylan?” “What charges would those be? My officers and a bunch of tourists here to play craps, poker and the slots saw nothing but a wild jaguarondi and a hawk attacking some turds with guns who were trying to kidnap a lady.” “Good,” Haley nodded at Hawksky. “Do either of you know who the turds were? The van has no prints and was stolen from San Antonio two days ago.” “I have an idea,” Dylan said, “but you’ll never be able to track them.” “You don’t know my tribe. We can track anything. But as long as they stay off our land, I don’t give a damn. How do you know who they were?” “I think they’re after me and were capturing Haley to get to me.” “My people and I will protect you as long as you’re on our land. Are you going to stay? If you do, we’ll keep them off our land. Flying bullets upset the marks at the casino.” “Thanks, but we have to leave. They may have reinforcements coming.” “They won’t breach our barriers again. We’ll get you both out and on your way in the morning. We have ways of getting people out without outsiders being the wiser. Nice to meet you, Dylan. Haley, if you decide to drop this wildcat, the Most Senior Wife has instructed me to tender an offer to you as Junior-to-Senior Wife.”

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Beast Within

“No, thanks. I’m going to be with Dylan for a long time. We’re going to take care of something for him in the Davis Mountains, then I’ll drag him off to meet my family.” “Sweetheart, just wait until you meet my family.” “Go back to bed and try to get some rest, you two.” Hawksky shut the door to the suite. Dylan and Haley stumbled back to bed eager to once again explore each other’s bodies. When they exhausted themselves, Haley snuggled against Dylan’s chest. She started to drift to sleep when she heard a rumbling. A slight vibration fluttered Dylan’s chest under her cheek. “Dylan, wake up. You pickle head, you snore.” “Not snoring, wasn’t asleep,” Dylan said, cuddling her close to him. “I’m happy. Did some internet research. Kept wondering what caused the sound I made while watching you sleep. Small wildcats make a chuffle when they breathe out. It’s as close as I can get to a purr. And I plan to be purring happily with you for the rest of my life.

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About the Author

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