Predator (6 page)

“Then tell me.”

Looking at a spot beyond her, he ran his thumb down the valley between her breasts. “There’s more to what’s happening then simple telling. Why do you think I captured you?”

Captured
. The word swirled between them. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.” Up this close, she couldn’t make out his expression so she tried to wiggle out of his grasp. Instead of giving her that small bit of freedom, he clasped her upper arms and pushed her back a few inches but kept her immobile.

Everything washed over her in a tidal wave of emotion and sensation. The world she’d always known no longer existed. Even more essential, she’d lost control of her body and couldn’t possibly regain it until her kidnapper handed it back to her. As if that wasn’t enough, other things were happening, not just to her body, but to her mind as well, things she might never understand.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something. Maybe it’ll help you comprehend.”

What choice do I have?
she wanted to throw at him. Instead, she ordered herself to relax. As she did, her mind cleared, and she again became acutely aware of her surroundings. Now that she’d had time to accept her heightened senses, she came to the realization that whoever had shot the rifle wasn’t close after all. True, she still sensed the hunter’s unwanted presence and heard his boots thumping on the ground as he half walked, half ran to wherever he was headed, but other sounds and life-forms stood between her and him.

A glance at a nearby tree revealed a line of ants heading up the south side. A study of the ground there revealed the opening to the underground home the ants had come from. There among some summer-dry ferns was an elaborate spider web and the nearly transparent yellow spider responsible for the work of art. Farther away, a half-grown bird in his nest clawed, impatient for its parents to stuff yet more food in its gaping mouth.

She
saw
an owl sleeping at the top of a pine,
heard
a snake slither over low grass. She’d always known she shared the wilderness with untold numbers of living creatures; she just had never been able to observe them with such clarity.

Whatever was happening between her and Stark was changing that.

No, she amended. Stark was a vital part of the transformation, but he wasn’t entirely responsible. Although what she’d been experiencing had disoriented her, it didn’t take long to spot where she’d earlier seen the cougar. He was no longer there.

“What happened? The rifle shots—did the poacher scare him off?”

“Nothing frightens Cougar.”

“Then what—” she started, but stopped as an image filled her mind. It was as if she was running beside the predator as it silently loped to where the hunter had fired his deadly weapon. When the cougar stopped, she did the same, her keen gaze following the direction the cougar was staring.

There. Crumpled and lifeless at the bottom of a steep slope, a doe. The man responsible for the murder stood a few feet away, shaking his head and muttering profanities.

“Damn, fucking damn. So fucking sure it was a buck this time!” Cocking his leg, the man hammered his heavy boot into the doe’s side. “Worthless piece of shit!”

Rage stronger than anything she’d ever experienced swept through Mia. If she’d been able, she would have ripped the man’s throat out and left him to bleed to death. Beside her, the cougar’s tail lashed, and a hard guttural scream erupted. At the sound, the man gasped and swung his rifle around. He fired twice in rapid succession, then either he ran out of bullets or his rifle jammed. Grasping the weapon as if it were a club, he began backing away.

“You see, don’t you?” Stark asked.

“Of course,” she exclaimed, then shuddered as the reality of what had just happened sank in. Something, probably Stark’s voice and presence, had pulled her back to where her real body was. She could no longer see the hunter or cougar, and thankfully not the murdered doe. “I don’t understand,” she whimpered, straining against Stark’s hold.

Chapter Six

Stark released her arms and massaged away the imprints his fingers had made. She watched, fascinated by his sure, long and strong fingers.

Hers was a woman’s body, nothing spectacular, but honed by a physical life. If he wanted a centerfold, he hadn’t gotten one. But if he needed someone capable of matching him—

“You aren’t going to run away,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

A perverse part of her longed to point out that taking off
dressed
as she was might be grounds for getting herself locked up, but his tone was too serious for that. As she shook her head, she acknowledged that what remained of her blouse and bra hid nothing. It didn’t matter; modesty had nothing to do with this moment.

“The connection—I didn’t know it would be this easy, that you would begin to join us so soon.”

“Us?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

If she sat cross-legged, her pussy would be exposed in naked invitation, so although that would be more comfortable, she left her legs stretched out in front of her, leaning forward a little to keep her balance. Despite the rough ground, her body continued to hum with the aftereffects of his manipulations. “That’s—that’s how you intended to, what? Convince me, entice me, force me—damn, I don’t know what I’m talking about!”

“Let me do the talking, then.”

“All right.”

“Good.” He trailed a thumb between her breasts. “I need to tell you what happened to me, because I believe it’ll help you understand what’s going on.”

“All right.”

“It started for me the way it did for you. I was hiking, simply hiking, hoping I was miles from poachers, glad to be away from job pressure and touching base with why I’d gotten a master’s in forest biology. I worked for the Bureau of Land Management and had been incorporating new federal regulations into my job description and was frustrated because I had to spend so much time indoors.” His eyes glazed. “I was doing a lot of soul-searching.”

“About what?” she encouraged when he fell silent.

A warm, strong hand settled over her knee. “Whether I’d made a mistake in my career choice, and what the hell could I do about it.” His head came up. He looked fierce, defiant. “I’d made so damn many sacrifices getting where I was professionally and…”

I understand. How I understand
. “What kind of sacrifices?”

“Personal. Letting a woman I loved walk out of my life because I put work first, moving thousands of miles from family, limiting friendships.”

A chill cooled a little of the fire his closeness continued to feed in her. She too had moved halfway across the country so she could work in a national forest and had ended an engagement because her fiancé hadn’t understood the hold the wilderness had on her. She had few friendships, and only two, both with fellow rangers, that she could call close.

“You were trying to decide whether to stay with your career?” she asked.

“Yeah. Complicating my decision was a simple fact: if I turned my back on the only thing I was qualified to do, how was I going to support myself?”

“It was more than that. You knew you had to work in the forest in order to feel alive.”

A moment ago his eyes had taken on that far-away look, but they immediately intensified, and he stared at her as if determined to reach all the way to her soul.

“I’m saying that because I feel the same way.” The words might be the most honest she’d ever spoken. Her back had started to ache, prompting her to bend her legs so she could sit Indian-style. Too late, she realized she’d exposed everything.

With his hand on her knee, his gaze traveled down her body, registered what she’d revealed, then returned to her face. “I was in conflict,” he said, “second-guessing, talking to myself, trying to map out the rest of my life and getting nowhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. It was something I had to do. One night, not long after I got here, I don’t think I’d slept more than a few minutes and woke up just as the sun was rising.” He gnawed on his lower lip. “The largest cougar I’d ever seen was standing no more than ten feet away, watching me, just watching.”

Sleeping alone in the wilderness had never frightened her, but if she’d woken to find a cougar that close— “Just watching?”

“There was nothing aggressive or menacing about his stance.” When he released her knee and raked his hand through his wind-tangled hair, she understood how deeply the connection between man and beast had affected him. “I sensed he was trying to communicate with me.”

“What did you do?”

“I listened. And I learned. Truth was, he didn’t really give me a choice, because when I tried to leave what I figured was his territory, he matched me step-for-step. I tried to scare him off, but that didn’t work. I…hell, I aimed my pistol at him, and I swear, he laughed.”

A laughing cougar? “I’m trying—I’m trying to decide whether I would have been afraid,” she admitted.

“Are you now?” He again settled his hand on her knee, the touch sealing them in inescapable ways.

“No.”

“Neither was I. Until then I’d never believed in anything I couldn’t see or analyze, and yet there’s always been something about the woods, a sense of timelessness, of endurance, innocence and wisdom at the same time. As if a force beyond my comprehension is responsible.”

Oh God, were they really that much alike? “As if there’s something bigger than man at work,” she offered.

“Yeah.” He gently squeezed. “As if man is small and insignificant in comparison with a forest’s complexity and richness.”

She could love him. No questions asked, she could fall in love with the stranger who’d robbed her of her freedom. Shaken by the realization, she tried to remind herself of what he’d done to her, but that did little to undermine what she’d discovered about him. “You—what does this have to do with a cougar?”

“A lot. I think—hell, I know Cougar Spirit found certain things he was looking for in me. He didn’t stalk or intimidate me so much as make sure we shared the same space. I wanted to walk in one direction, but he turned me where he wanted me to go. That’s how I came across two elk carcasses.”

“Two? That’s sick!”

“It is, but that’s not all.” Sliding his hand down her leg, he encircled her ankle. Further cemented the connection between them. “A couple of days ago, Cougar Spirit took me to where hundreds of marijuana plants are growing. There’s some elaborate irrigation in place and two stands for guards. The day before that, Cougar Spirit and I explored a hillside that had recently been clear-cut. When the rains come, the ruts caused by dragging the trees over the ground are going to erode.”

“Clear-cutting’s illegal,” she blurted despite the pulsing warmth climbing up her leg. “Regulations call for seed trees being left standing and replanting.” Although she’d already put one and one together, she shuddered. “This was timber theft, wasn’t it?”

“On a large scale. Mia, I’ve now seen three clear-cut sites in areas so remote I doubt if anyone except the so-called loggers have been there in years.”

This forest was under assault! And because of a creature or being Stark called Cougar Spirit, he’d been handed proof of the extent of that assault.

“Do you understand what I’m getting at?” he demanded. His hold on her ankle tightened.

So much was swirling around her: a hot sexual wind, at least one heartless poacher, marijuana growers and illegal logging. As for why she was being sucked into that underbelly—

“What does Cougar Spirit want from you?” Before he could answer, she shook her head. “Don’t bother. I know the answer. He—I can’t believe I’m saying this—he wants you to right those wrongs, to protect the forest that’s his home.”

“Yes.”

Staring, and yet not staring at him, she breathed deeply. While she’d always stood up for herself and what she believed in, she’d never thought of herself as confrontational or an activist. This time, however, she was too deep into whatever this was to be satisfied with anything less than the absolute truth. “What about me, Stark? How do I factor in?”

Nostrils flaring, he lifted his chin. “I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to.”

“Do what?” she asked and closed her eyes so she could concentrate fully on the words she sensed would change her life.

“Protect this forest by stopping those who are harming it.”

“Say it!” she snapped. “Damn you, say it! How do you propose to put an end to what Cougar Spirit exposed you to?”

“Look at me,” he ordered. He was beyond beautiful, beyond handsome. Like the cougar who’d been watching them, Stark symbolized everything that was wild and real about the part of the world she loved most.

“Why do you think I approached you the way I did?” He jerked his head to indicate her bound hands. “I couldn’t track and lead you the way Cougar Spirit did to me. No matter how hard I tried to get away, I couldn’t fight Cougar Spirit’s power over me, but if I attempted his techniques, you’d have shot me.”

“I’ve never so much as aimed my gun at anyone.”

“But you would if you believed your life was in danger.”

Would she? Probably. “What’s your point?”

“I watched you for a long time before I approached you.”

Unnerved, she started to lean away only to start to lose her balance. Grabbing her around the waist, he pulled her close. Maybe she should have resisted, but she didn’t when he positioned her between the V of his legs so her back and arms were against his chest and wrapped his arms around her, holding her to his heat.

“Mia, Cougar Spirit found a way to make me believe in him, but I couldn’t do the same to you, so I chose another way.”

“By turning me on.” Why hadn’t she mentioned being grabbed, disarmed, tied up and stripped?

“Yeah.”

“You thought if I was so, what—horny?—that I’d fall to my knees and worship you the moment you…you know.”

“Fault my technique if you have to. You have every right. But the bottom line is I want someone beside me who has the same values I do, who shares the same commitment.”

Although she knew he was talking about doing whatever it took to stop the attack on the forest, she lacked the courage to ask for details. “You could have asked.”