Beast Within (2 page)

“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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“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 towel-covered 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.”

“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.

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.