Terry Spear - [Shifter 02] (2 page)

“Oh.” Well, of course she should have figured Wade was interested in another jaguar shifter. Why wouldn’t he be? She could just imagine she-cats wanting to rub against him up close and personal.

“Yeah,” David said, sounding like it was just his luck. “He didn’t like that Connor was paying so much attention to Kat and leaving you to your own devices.”

“
Me?
” She frowned at David, wondering just how much Wade had seen.

“In fact, he was pretty incensed.”

“Because my brother was paying so much attention to Kat when Wade wanted to.”

David shook his head. “No, but I’d better not say anything else.”

She could have kicked him. Now he sounded like
her
brother. “What?”

“Well… I shouldn’t really say, but… when you were swimming in the Amazon River, he wanted to swim with you.”

She
knew
Wade had been watching them. “You mean with Kat.”

“Nope. With you. That’s what he said. So what are
you
doing here?” David asked. “Wade said you and Connor had a garden nursery a couple hours out of Houston.”

For a moment, she was so flabbergasted to learn that Wade had wanted to swim with her and not Kat that she forgot what she was doing there. Refocusing, she cleared her throat. “I’m meeting a couple of cousins I just learned of.”

She was so excited about getting to see them that when David had approached her at first, she’d thought maybe
he
was one of her cousins.

“Female cousins?” David asked, sounding hopeful.

“Male. Two of them at least. They have a sister, but she’s not coming this time.”

“I see.” David’s voice reflected disappointment. “Do you come here often?”

She shook her head. “My cousins told me about this place. I’ve never been here before.” She didn’t want to let on how naive she was. She and her brother hadn’t ever found other shifters in their travels. Jaguars were elusive by nature, and the shifter variety even more so by necessity. Maya was certain Connor would have had a fit if he knew she had come here by herself.

Maya had expected a dark, smoky room full of loud music, drugs, and drinking in the Jungle Cat Fever Club, and had been thinking that when her cousins arrived, she’d convince them to go someplace else. Instead, the air was clear. Alcoholic beverages were readily being consumed, and the music had a beat to match the jungle theme, but it wasn’t overpowering. The place looked normal to her. If her cousins hadn’t told her it was a shifter club, she would never have known.

The club was decorated like a theme park version of the rainforest. Audio clips of macaws screeching or squawking, gibbons singing, howler monkeys calling out, and elephants trumpeting—
elephants?
—were played over the piped-in jungle music. Fake giant ferns, hanging vines, palms, and fig trees added to the jungle ambience.

When she first arrived at the club, Maya had observed three men watching her from a wrought-iron balcony above. As soon as she had parked the car, Maya felt all eyes on her as she left the vehicle, the newcomer to the scene, and entered the club. She’d hoped her cousins were already there. She didn’t do club scenes, and she hadn’t felt all that comfortable being here by herself.

She glanced again at Wade. He was watching her, a scowl on his face, his gaze latching onto hers. She didn’t think right at this moment that he would have been interested in swimming with her anywhere.

He was wearing jeans and a sky-colored, soft chambray shirt—the long sleeves haphazardly rolled up his muscular arms, the buttons only closed to halfway up his chest, as if he hadn’t bothered to finish dressing or he wanted to give viewers a peek at his bronzed skin.

In comparison, David had shaggy, darker brown hair, and his eyes were greener than Wade’s. He wore a white polo shirt that stretched over his muscles, black dress pants, and loafers—a mix of casual and dressy as if he couldn’t decide which way to go. He had just as beautiful a smile as Wade did.

Not that Wade was smiling right now. He looked like he was about to use his clenched fists to pummel someone, his gaze hard on Maya. Maybe because he thought she was married to Connor, and he worried she was going to get his brother into trouble.

Maya also noted the buxom women who had joined Wade at the table, their provocative dresses cut so low that she could almost see their navels. The women practically slobbered all over Wade, though his attention was clearly focused on Maya and David.

“Come on,” she said to David. “Let’s put your brother out of his misery.”

The three men who had spied her from the balcony outside had entered the building and taken the stairs to the dance floor, all of them watching her dance with David. A tall and muscular redhead wore blue jeans and a T-shirt, his amber eyes raking her up and down. She immediately didn’t care for him. He smiled at her like they were already best friends.

He spoke to a man with long blond hair that reminded her of a lion’s mane. Lion Mane held her gaze. She wished
she
had such gorgeous hair, but she had to admit his body was nice, too, under a muscle shirt and tight-fitting jeans.

The last of the men was dark skinned with black curly hair, wearing nice black slacks and a white shirt, the collar open, making her think he had just gotten off work at some professional job. When he caught her eye, he gave her a nice show of white teeth.

Lion Mane and the redhead drew close to the dance floor, watching her as if getting ready to pounce on her.

When the song ended, Lion Mane motioned to a small table. “We have a table here for the pretty lady.”

His two friends stood on either side of him, all motioning to the four chairs. The men all smelled like cat shifters. The inference was that David could get lost.

She opened her mouth to say “No thanks,” but David beat her to it. “We’ve got a table over here.” He pulled her along quickly. “The problem with someone like you coming to a club like this is that other shifters want a bite.”

She frowned up at him, not getting his meaning.

“They instinctively know you’re different.”

“Different, how?” She was a cat. They were cats. She couldn’t detect any difference in them.

“You’re a jungle cat.”

“Jungle cat?” Weren’t they all?

They reached the table before she could ask anything further. Wade was already standing, pulling the chair out next to him, his feral gaze fixed on her. Maya hesitated to sit beside him. He seemed so primal. So dangerous.

“She’s Connor’s
sister
,” David quickly said.

“Sister.” Wade studied her. His mouth quirked up fractionally as if he was seeing her as someone different and intriguing now.

“I’m not
Kat
.” She hated sounding annoyed. She loved Kat as a sister and was thrilled she had fallen in love with Connor. But she didn’t want some guy who had been interested in Kat thinking that Maya was just like her.

“
No
,” he said, drawing out the word, “you’re
not
Kat.”

She frowned. Then she was irritated at herself for caring when it shouldn’t have mattered.

The three male cats watched Maya as if they were calculating how much of a risk it would be to approach her when she had two male bodyguards. She didn’t think she would have all that much trouble around other shifters. Until she saw Wade in the Amazon, she had never witnessed another jaguar shifter, except for her mother and brother. She’d been more than interested in Wade. Who wouldn’t have been when the jaguar had risked his life for them, and he hadn’t even known them?

Wade and David were still waiting for her to take the seat between them. She hadn’t expected other cats to be so territorial with her. She shook her head and took the seat Wade offered her.

The brothers traded relieved looks. The other cats looked like their pumped-up egos had instantly
been deflated.

As if the brunette sitting on the other side of Wade was afraid she might lose out, she stretched out her hand to him. “I’m Candy, and you are?”

Too
hot
for
you
to
handle
, Maya wanted to say. David grinned at his brother.

“Wade.” He gave her a brief handshake and glanced at Maya, as if he were worried about what she’d think.

Candy frowned at him. “We all just give club names in here. Like the guy over there, the redhead who’s watching
her
”—she poked a finger in Maya’s direction—“that’s Red, though he’s asked me out before and told me his real name is Bill Bettinger. The blond dude, the one that’s also salivating over your friend here, is Blondie.”

“Lion Mane.” Maya hadn’t meant to say anything, but that’s the nickname she thought suited him.

“Lion Mane?” Candy stuck her tiny nose up in the air. “He goes by Blondie.”

Maya wanted to call Lion Mane over to the table and prove to Candy that he would come no matter what she called him—or didn’t call him. The way he was eyeing her, she was certain a crook of her finger would bring him to her.

Wade shook his head at Maya, just slightly, telling her not to do it. He seemed to know what she had in mind.

David was studying her just as closely, waiting for whatever would happen next. Wade appeared settled and complacent, but a jaguar would change his posture into combat mode in the blink of an eye if necessary.

Maya had no plans to stir up a lot of trouble, though it was tempting.

Candy eyed Maya. “So what’s your club name?”

“Wildcat,” David answered for her, smirking.

Wildcat?
Maya was opening her mouth to protest—she did not make up aliases for any reason—when Candy replied, “
Really
. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be a wild
any
thing.”

Maya snapped her jaw shut and glared at Candy.

Wade said, “You have
no
idea.”

He said it in such a deep, sexy way that Maya stared at him, trying to discern his meaning. He wasn’t smiling. He was looking straight at her with those jungle-cat eyes that said he
meant
what he said.

He was still watching her as if he knew just what was going on in her head. The music was beating away, but it had faded into the background. She vaguely heard the women ask David what his name was.

Lion Mane finally got up the nerve to move closer to their table.

“What do you mean by that?” Maya asked Wade, ignoring the blond guy.

Everyone at the table stopped introductions to hear what Wade had to say.

He smiled in a feral way and took Maya’s hand. “Let’s dance.”

Candy took Wade’s cue and grabbed David’s hand. “Come on. Wanna dance?”

David grimaced, as though he’d prefer doing anything else, but he got up and took the woman to the dance floor.

“What are you doing here in Houston?” Maya asked in Wade’s ear as he danced her across the floor to the slower-paced beat. His brother might not want her to learn the truth, but she had to know.

“David and I have a job to do.”

“And it has nothing to do with seeing Kat?”

He frowned. “I thought Kat was one of us when I first contacted her. You know how it is. It’s difficult to find more of our kind. I thought that when she posted on her networking sites about jaguars, she was throwing out a lifeline, looking for someone special to be in her life.”

“I can understand that,” Maya said sincerely. “Until Kat arrived, Connor and I had never met any shifters. I’ve certainly wanted to meet others of our kind.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted to thank you for helping us in the Amazon.”

“I thought you were Connor’s mate.”

She smiled up at Wade. “I know. David told me.”

Wade smiled a little.

She sighed. “You know, Kat and I wanted to thank you when we were there. It might have been nice if we could have all stuck together. Of course, it would have been even better if we could have just enjoyed the time being big cats—fishing, swimming, lazing in the trees—like we’d planned and not had to deal with those assholes.”

“Hmm,” Wade said, his expression unreadable.

“Well, I’m sorry we messed up your vacation plans.”

“It all worked out.” Wade narrowed his eyes a little. “Why are you here alone? As protective as your brother is, I wouldn’t have thought he would like you coming here by yourself.”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t know.”

“So you sneaked out to come to a shifters’ club?”

“
No
,” she said in an elongated, irritated fashion, not liking that he sounded annoyed with her for slipping out of the house without her brother’s approval. She didn’t need her brother’s say-so, even though Connor might think differently. “He’s gone on a vacation with Kat. I’m to join them. I heard from my cousins, and they wanted to meet here.”

He didn’t say anything more and just danced with her, which she loved. She hadn’t danced in ages, and never with a big cat.

Maya and Wade had started a respectable distance from each other as they moved to the music, but somehow they’d quit dancing apart. Their bodies were sliding against each other, rubbing like cats would, scent-marking, claiming each other. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, his arms around her waist.

“You feel good,” he murmured, nuzzling her face with his cheek. If they’d been cats, their whiskers would have been touching, sensing each other.

He
felt good. Hot and sexy and hard—very hard—as he showed her just how good she was making him feel.

“You smell good,” he whispered, his husky voice breathy against her ear, making her shiver with expectation.

He
smelled good. Like one turned-on, spicy-scented, musky male big cat.

“You taste good,” he finished, licking her earlobe, then moving his sensuous mouth over hers with barely a kiss, just a sweet caress of lips.

Maya cupped his head and held him in place as if he might release her. She wanted to see how good
he
tasted. She pressed her lips against his mouth and slipped her tongue between his lips. He growled low as if he hadn’t anticipated her to go that far. She’d never been with a cat shifter before, only humans. His hot kiss made her forget where she was, that they were surrounded by a lot of shifters, that his brother was watching—
everything.

With Wade rubbing against her as they continued to move to the beat, and his hands secured around her back, she felt sinfully sexy.

And aroused. Her blood heated with the press of his body against hers. She wanted to do more as the jungle drums pounded through the floor and filled the air around her. Her heart pumped just as loudly, the rush of blood thrumming in her ears.

She wanted to unbutton more of his soft chambray shirt, to skim her hands across his chest, to flick her fingernails against his pebbled nipples. She craved running her hand over the rock-hard erection she was gently rubbing against her thigh as they continued to move to the rhythm of the music.

Growling, she kissed him more fiercely, penetrating his mouth again with her tongue, making him groan as he tongued her back, his hands remaining at her waist. Infuriatingly, she wanted him to cup her buttocks, to touch and kiss her breasts, but she knew he couldn’t. Not here. She shouldn’t have wanted it. But she did.

A male voice beside them broke through her lust-filled thoughts. “Your cousins are here, but they were afraid to break things up between you and Wade so they sent me.”

David grinned at her and then at his brother.

Feeling flushed and needy, Maya refused to appear
embarrassed in front of Wade and his brother or
her cousins.

David observed her for a moment before he said to Wade, “Remember, we’ve got a room if you want to use it.”

Okay, so she might feel like she wanted to get a room and finish the moves with Wade in privacy, but she didn’t appreciate Wade’s brother saying so.

Maya instantly pulled away from Wade. “My cousins, where are they?”

Wade looked like he was ready to slug his brother. He slipped his arm possessively around Maya’s waist.

“At our table. I saw these two new cats looking around as if they were searching for someone, then heard one of them ask about a Maya Anderson. They saw you dancing with Wade and wanted to know who
you
were.”

“Wildcat,” Maya said, casting David an annoyed look.

“Hell, yeah.” David grinned. “Candy had nothing on you, and she’s been stewing with her girlfriend ever since you hit the floor with Wade.” He glanced at Wade. “I don’t remember
you
ever having dance moves like that. Must have been Maya who inspired you.”

“She’s
inspirational
all right.” Wade tightened his hold a little on Maya, as though he wanted to make sure the other cats in the place knew she was with him, although she wasn’t. Not exactly.

“Maya’s cousins’ faces fell when they learned she was their relation,” David said smugly.

Amused, Maya smiled. As they returned to their table, Wade asked Maya, “What would you like to drink?”

“A Singapore sling.”

She hadn’t been out with a man in eons, and she was having fun. She thought all she’d be doing was getting the garden nursery ready before her flight to Belize tomorrow. She’d never expected to hear from cousins she didn’t know she had, or visit a shifter club she didn’t know
existed, or meet up with Wade and his brother there.

A well-built man a couple of inches shorter than Wade and his brother and her cousins, wearing denims and a black T-shirt, approached the table. His gaze took in the men seated there, but his light brown eyes quickly fastened on Candy. Maya assumed he knew her and was a bit bothered by the other men sitting with her.

Maya took in a deep breath, like every shifter at the table did, trying to smell his scent. Jaguar shifter. Not purely human.

They could differentiate a human from a jaguar shifter if they got a good whiff. The big-cat scent was enough to clue them in. The only other way to know was if they saw them actually shift.

“Candy,” he said, raking his hand through ash-blond hair and drawing close as every male shifter at the table fixated on him. He turned his broad back on them, looking a little as though it bothered him to see the attention he was gathering. “We got a date later?”

Candy smiled, cleared her throat, and said softly, though the cats could still hear what was being said, “Yeah, George, later.”

“Did you want to dance?”

“Um, we’re getting together later. All right?”

He squeezed her hand, then turned and gave the men at the table a hard look. Candy appeared to be hedging her bets, looking to add to her stable of boyfriends in case one of these guys appeared to be interested in her and she grew tired of poor George. “I’ll see you later, George,” Candy reiterated.

George leaned down and kissed her lips, taking his time about it.

“What was that for?” she asked, red faced.

Showing off, claiming her, Maya thought.

“Just to let you know how much I’ll be thinking about you.” Then George gave the other men at the table a growly look and headed for the bar.

Poor guy. Maya felt sorry for him and hoped he’d dump Candy for someone else.

Wade ordered beers for David, himself, and her cousins, and a sling for Maya, while Maya introduced herself to her cousins, Everett and Huntley. Candy and the other woman, Cherry, were still nursing margaritas.

Everett was taller than Huntley by a couple inches, with grass-green eyes and blond hair sweeping his shoulders like Lion Mane’s. He was dressed in black leather pants and a black muscle shirt. Huntley, dressed in blue jeans and a navy T-shirt, was staring hard at Wade, his eyes a bluer green than his brother’s.

“Have we met somewhere before?” Huntley asked Wade. There was a seriousness to the question that made Maya sit a little taller.

“The Service,” Wade answered.

Huntley’s mouth dropped for a fraction of a moment, then he snapped it shut and nodded.

Everett shook his head. “Small world. Thought you lived in Pensacola.”

Wade lifted his beer mug off the table. “I do. I’m just here with my brother, now visiting Maya.”

Her cousins knew Wade? Maya wanted to learn more, but the two human women were listening in, delighted more hunky guys chose to sit at their table.

“The service,” Candy said, grinning, looking from one to another, as if trying to decide which of the men was the yummiest. “How cool. Which branch of the service? My dad was a Marine.”

Huntley looked over at her as if he’d just realized she was sitting there. “Special unit. Classified.”

Her eyes grew big. “All of you?”

No one responded.

Maya had been about to ask her cousins what they did for a living, but now she didn’t need to. The idea that they were in some secret service unit intrigued her.

Everyone’s drinks arrived, and Wade paid for the first round.

“I wish you could meet Connor and his wife,” Maya said to her cousins. “I’m joining them in Belize tomorrow.”

“Belize,” Wade said, his eyes widening. “You didn’t say that’s where you were going.”

David choked on his beer. Everett and Huntley frowned at her.

“I didn’t realize you had a need to know.” When no one said anything, she asked, “
Okay,
is there something wrong with going to Belize?”

“Yeah, it’s really not safe for you,” Wade said. “Can you cancel?”

“No. I’m flying out tomorrow afternoon. We’re staying all next week.” She waited for Wade to tell her what the trouble was.

“Where are you staying?” Wade asked, his cell in hand.

“The Treetop Cottage Jungle Resort.”

Wade punched it into his phone and shook his head.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Okay, so want to tell me what’s wrong?” She was starting to feel antsy. Her brother and Kat were down there.

Everett and Huntley exchanged looks, then Everett said to Candy, “Want to dance?”

“Sure. I thought you’d never ask.”

Huntley took the other lady to the dance floor and Wade moved Maya’s chair closer to his, then spoke in a low voice for her hearing only as David watched them. “We’re with a special unit, tracking exotic animal hunters down—jaguar hunters specifically.”

“You think they’re in Belize?”

“We’ve had word that the buyer meets with hunters here, then the men—or possibly women, though I’d lay odds they are men—head for the regions where jaguars live. To our knowledge, they plan to hunt in Belize this time.”

Belize was a big place. Tons of unexplored territory—places in the jungle where no man had ever set foot. She and her brother and Kat would be fine. She took a deep breath. “Okay, look, it’s illegal to hunt jaguars in Belize, but we both know hunters do kill them. It’s a risk we’re willing to take. We’ve always done so. Drug runners can be a danger, too. It’s the same with them. If we worried about this all the time, we’d never return to our native jungle habitat.”

He was wearing a worried frown.

She tilted her head to the side. “Are you going there?”

“Yeah. David and I.”

“You’re going after these guys.” She didn’t ask him. She knew from the feral look in his eyes that he wasn’t planning on just talking to the hunters who used the club as a rendezvous point. “Is… is this just a job?” She didn’t think so. He was so tense that he looked like he was ready to snap.

“Yeah, it’s a job.”

But it seemed personal. Or maybe she was just projecting.

The dance music ended, and Everett and Huntley hurried the women back to their chairs.

“Um,” Everett said, glancing at the human women, who were all ears. “Did you come to some decision?”