Jaguar Fever

“Mother,” Maya corrected. Except for donating the sperm, her father hadn’t taken part in their lives.

“Your mother, then, must have kept you isolated from our kind and stuck to the old ways. My father was like that, too. Not until David and I began raising hell on our own did we learn about the Service.”

“What about your mom?”

He shook his head. “She died when my brother and I were sixteen. A man involved in the exotic-animals markets trade killed her. She’d fought him tooth and claw, attempting to free herself. We guessed he thought she wasn’t worth the battle and terminated her.”

“I’m so sorry, Wade.”

“Yeah, well, Dad was in his own world then. Without his heavy hand, David and I cut loose. We got into trouble and learned all about the Service. We were lucky that one of the Enforcers thought we

were salvageable.”

She shook her head. “I can’t imagine you did anything that bad.”

“Don’t tell her all the stuff we did, and I won’t, either,” David said.

She smiled, intending to learn what she could later. “So you guys are…?”

“Part of a Special Forces unit called the Golden Claw JAG Elite Force. We do a little of everything.”

She thought the organization sounded like an admirable cause and important for their kind.

“It sounded too dangerous for me to join. But… we weren’t given much of a choice.” David was smiling when he said it.

She shook her head and wondered how often Wade and his brother had faced danger on their jobs. And off their jobs. She and her brother had certainly encountered trouble from time to time while visiting the rainforest over the years.

“What about the man who murdered your mother? Did they ever catch him?”

“No.” Wade glanced out the window, and she suspected that wasn’t the end of it.

“Are you searching for him?”

Wade’s gaze swung around to meet hers. His eyes were dark and feral—a hunter’s eyes. “Yeah.”

She swallowed hard. No wonder Wade was in the business he was in. “Every time you look for a hunter, do you suspect it might be the man who murdered

your mother?”

“Yeah. But he might have given up hunting after that. We’re still looking for him.”

She bit her lip. “But if she was killed as a jaguar, she would have turned into a human. Wouldn’t he have reported it?”

“You’d think so.”

Realization dawning, she gaped at him. “You think he knows? About our kind?”

“Yeah, like he’s one of us.”

That sent a chill racing up her spine. “Why would he have hunted her?”

“We don’t know. Speculation? To give her to someone who wanted a female jaguar shifter.”

“Slave trade—only not in humans.”

“That’s what we believe, but we haven’t been able to uncover such a market. So we really don’t know. Unless he’s just human, was scared out of his wits to see her shift, and took off. What could he say? ‘I killed a jaguar that turned into a human?’ And all he has left to show for it is a murdered woman. So yeah, we’re still looking.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What about Belize? What’s going on there exactly?”

“A team of hunters has gone down to Belize to capture a jaguar, and they’re staying at another resort only a few miles from yours.”

Maya stared at Wade, then slumped against the car seat. “You hadn’t told me that. I’ve got to get word to Connor and Kat as soon as I can. They’ll have been running in the jungle as jaguars from the time they arrived.”

“We have another problem.” David leaned back against the car seat, looking wiped out.

Wade looked at Maya as if she was the source of it. “What’s the problem?” Wade asked.

“The human, Thompson, looks to be real trouble,” David said.

Chapter 4

Thompson. Oh, him. Maya had nearly forgotten about the zoo man who had questioned her about the jaguar on her web page. She pulled Wade’s shirt away from the gash on David’s head and was not happy to see that the bleeding hadn’t completely stopped.

“The one who helped Maya out of the dance club,” David said, explaining to Wade who he meant. “He was asking her about the jaguar on her website.”

“What jaguar?” Wade asked, frowning.

She clenched and unclenched her teeth. “I told him the jaguar was Photoshopped, but he believes the cat in the photo was stolen from his zoo in Portland, Oregon. I put the picture up only a couple of days after the jaguar was taken.”

Wade glanced back at Maya. “I take it the jaguar was you.”

She smiled at him.

“He didn’t believe the jaguar was Photoshopped,” David added. “And she told him she was the jaguar and was from a family of jaguar shifters.”

“Yeah, like any human would believe me,” she said, giving David her fiercest look.

Wade wished that Maya’s sweet body was pressed up against him in the backseat, instead of his brother. Not that he wanted the head laceration to go with it.

His whole outlook on Maya had changed the moment he learned she was single and Connor’s sister, not his wife. Dancing with her at the club had stirred a male response Wade couldn’t deny. It wasn’t just lust, either. They had a history, even if it hadn’t been up close and personal. Now it was. And he wanted more of it. His jealousy over Lion Mane dancing with Maya confirmed his own feeling that he felt something deeper for her.

He’d never acted like that about a woman. He hadn’t felt possessive toward the shifter woman he’d intended to marry five years ago. She’d still wanted to see others when he finally sought to make a commitment or end the dating game. That had been the end of their relationship.

Now he was fascinated with a shifter who wanted the same thing, he realized grimly. Having his head examined seemed like a good idea. But he had never backed down from a challenge, and right now, Maya was one woman he wanted to get to know much better.

Wildcat. Yeah, that’s exactly what she was. He smiled back at her, recalling the way she had stared at his naked chest—intrigued, forgetting why he had removed his shirt in the first place. Hell, he was ready to dance with her again and feel her pressed against his body, kissing her sweet mouth and showing her just how much he wanted to get to know her better, every silky, mouthwatering inch of her.

* * *

When they arrived home, Maya was helping David out of the car as her cousins pulled behind them in the parking lot. Where had David been that he’d heard so much of what she’d said to Thompson? Probably dancing nearby. Jaguar hearing could really be a nuisance sometimes when a shifter was listening in. Her brother was testament to that.

David looked pale and was a little unsteady on his feet, though he was trying to show how tough he was. She was attempting to hold him up, but his weight was too much for her.

Wade quickly took charge of his brother, giving them both an out. “Can you get the door for us, Maya?”

She gave David the shirt to hold to his forehead, then opened the front door. As she walked inside, she turned on the lights for them. “Put him on the couch if you would. In the first bedroom on the right, if he prefers a bed.”

“The sofa’s fine,” David said.