She became aware of the creatures in the canopy. Where before the animals had been frantic, racing away from the fire and shrieking warnings to one another, now they were much calmer—like she was becoming. It was his voice—that beautiful, reassuring, comforting voice. It made no sense. She should have been terrified. She was a hundred feet above the forest floor, surrounded by smoke and mist so thick it was nearly impossible to see the hand in front of her face, carefully placing her feet on slippery branches. Somewhere below, men with guns hunted them and she was with the man who had shattered her world and left it in ruins.
Birds settled in the trees around them rather than flying in fear. Monkeys merely looked at them curiously, but the frantic chatter had faded to normal. The rain poured down steadily and life seemed to return to usual just that fast. She looked at the man leading her with such confidence along the twisted highway of branches. It was Conner. The sheer force of his personality extended calm not only to her, but to the animals.
She followed him, trying to figure out how to stop her reaction to him. How did one block his voice, his charisma, his sheer magnetism? He was the type of man who stood out in a crowd. How was she supposed to keep her blood cool and her pulse normal after sharing a wildfire with him? Every time he looked at her it was there again—that wild, passionate response she couldn’t prevent.
She should have known. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man like him would want. His gaze was too focused, too absolute, making her feel as if she were the only woman in his world. As if he could never see anyone but her. It was the animal in him. The leopard. Stalking prey. She’d been his prey. A single sound escaped, a low and wounded cry she hastily choked back.
At once he whirled around, his body graceful and fluid, almost balletic on the narrow branch. He bent to her, pulling her into the shelter of his body. “What is it?”
You.
The accusation was there in her mind. In her heart. God help her, in her soul. He was what was wrong. The way he moved. The sound of his voice. The memory of his hands and mouth and his body belonging to her. Isabeau shook her head. She hadn’t known it would be so difficult to see him—to smell him. The wild, dangerous scent of him.
“It’s just a little scary up here,” she lied. And she heard the lie in her voice. She could tell by his eyes that he heard it too.
“Lies have a scent all their own,” he said.
“Do they? You taught me a lot of things, but you neglected to teach me that.”
“It wasn’t all lies, Isabeau.”
She shook her head, her heart so painful she brought her hand up to press against her chest. “I don’t believe you. And it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? We have to find a way to get those children back. That’s all that matters.” She forced herself to say it. She wasn’t a coward. “You weren’t wrong about him—my father. I did a lot of digging and found out the truth. He was involved with the terrorist cell you uncovered. He was taking their money.” Her eyes met his. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t love him, or that what you did was right, but he wasn’t innocent.”
“I’m sorry, Isabeau. Finding those things out must have hurt.”
“Not as much as watching him die.” Or finding out that the man she loved above all else had only used her to get close to her father. She had believed in him with every fiber of her being—she’d given him everything she was or would ever be. And it had all been a lie.
Conner’s heart clenched. Isabeau would never be adept at hiding her feelings from him. Hurt wasn’t the word for what he’d done to her. He’d shattered and disillusioned her. There was guilt and humiliation mixed with her pain. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Isabeau. I’m the one who acted without honor. You did nothing wrong.”
“I fell in love with the wrong man.”
“You didn’t,
Sestrilla
, I’m the right man. It was just the wrong time for us.”
She lifted her chin, eyes flashing fire. “Go to hell, Conner. I’m not your job this time. Don’t bother practicing on me; you really don’t need it.”
Her voice cut like a knife, enough to make him wince. He deserved it, though. His gaze moved over her face with brooding intensity. She looked rebellious, defiant, so beautiful he ached inside. He’d told himself he’d walk away from her, but how? How could he give her up? He was already so in love with her there was no way out. He brought her hand up to his chest, pressed her palm over his heart. “You were never my job, Isabeau.” He was going to find a way to win her trust back. There had to be a way.
She swallowed hard and looked away from him, but not before he caught the sheen of tears. “Let’s just go.”
“Damn it, Isabeau. How are we going to get past this?”
“Get
past
it?”
Furious, Isabeau wrenched her hand free and pulled away from him, stepping backward—into empty space. She threw out her hands, but she was already tumbling. Terror gripped her as she looked up and saw the mask slipping from Conner’s face to be replaced by fear. She saw his jaw harden as he leapt from the branch after her. Then she was somersaulting through open air. Panic flooded her body with ice-cold adrenaline.
Breathe. Reach for your cat.
She swore she heard Conner’s voice, as calm as ever, flooding her mind, driving out fright to be replaced by a strange calm.
She felt her body twisting until her upper body was pointed down, and her legs followed suit. She seemed to be tumbling out of control and she gave herself up to the cat struggling to come to her aid. Her skin itched and fur burst along her body, slowing her descent. Instinctively she spread out her arms and folded in the middle. Her spine flexed. Her ears burned, almost as if her body tuned itself to know which way was up and which was down. Her eyes focused on the ground rushing up to meet her.
She found herself tucking her arms in and extending her legs so that her body rotated, the front coming around much faster than the bottom half. Immediately she tucked her legs and extended her arms to bring herself all the way around. She’d rotated completely in midair, just as Conner had said she would. She tried to relax as she felt the burning sensation in her feet and hands, indicating claws breaking through her sensitive skin just before she hit the ground. The pads helped, but she hit hard, her legs and hands absorbing the tremendous fall through the paws.
Pain crashed through her body, her wrists, elbows, knees and ankles crumbling beneath her as she sprawled out on the forest floor.
“Don’t move,” Conner hissed as he landed beside her in a perfect crouch.
She hated him in that moment. He had to be good at everything. She’d fallen from the canopy in the rain forest, managed to right herself and still got hurt. His hands moved over her, examining her quickly and efficiently for damage.
“We just landed in the middle of enemy territory,” he reminded. “Don’t make a sound.”
She realized she was moaning softly and forced herself to go quiet, although she couldn’t stop the tears tracking down her face. She winced when his fingers moved over her left wrist.
“How bad,” he mouthed.
She looked up at his grim face and tried to look brave when she really wanted to curl into a ball and sob. The pads of his fingers brushed gently at her tears, making her heart ache.
“A sprain, I think. The rest of me, just the shock, jamming everything as I landed. I was lucky.” She remembered to whisper the words, using a thread of sound that his acute hearing could easily pick up.
Her body was tuning itself once again to the rhythm of the rain forest. She heard the rustling in the underbrush and knew it was a man, not an animal, brushing against leaves quite close to them. Too close. She smelled sweat and fear and rot. Her eyes met Conner’s. There it was again, that implacable, ruthless,
dangerous
look that meant she was safe. He put his finger to his lips and indicated for her to move back into the cover of the brush. She used her toes and elbows to slide on her belly, easing her way over the thick carpet of decayed leaves until the broader, thick leaves of the bushes provided a screen for her.
All the while she scooted back, Conner held his ground, shielding her with his body. He made it difficult to despise him totally when he continually put himself in danger to protect her. And she wanted—
needed
—to despise him. She had to stay alert to keep from falling under his spell. Out in the forest where a higher law prevailed, life seemed very black and white.
Only when she was safely under cover did Conner begin to move. The gun was always ready, his gaze restlessly examining every inch of their surroundings, missing nothing. He slowly drew back into the brush to lie beside her. With infinite patience he pushed the gun into her hands, settling her finger on the trigger and cautioning her again to silence. His hand, almost in slow motion, went to the small daggerlike pieces of metal in the loops of his belt. He palmed two of them without a sound.
She’d never really noticed them, so small and harmless-looking, but she saw, before his fingers concealed them, that they were lethal stiletto-like daggers. An assassin’s weapon. She closed her eyes for a moment, wondering how she’d ever gotten to this place with this man. He touched the back of her hand and waited until she dared to look at him again. He winked and just like that the tension eased.
Night descended fast in the rain forest and, although she was used to camping for long periods of time while she worked, she was used to being safely off the ground and out of the way of the millions of insects that turned the forest floor into a living carpet. She could feel bugs moving over her skin and might have tried to move in order to dislodge them, had Conner not touched her hand and given her that slow, sexy wink.
Isabeau’s breath caught in her throat and she froze as two huge boots stepped inches from her head. Conner never moved. He lay beside her, his breath even and silent, but she could feel the tension coiling in his body, the bunching of his muscles as he gathered himself, preparing for the spring. The man crouched down and began to inch his way through the brush. Steam rose from the ground, surrounding his boots and calves with every step he took.
The sight should have struck fear into her heart, but Conner was too solid next to her, too much of a hunter, his eyes fixed on his prey, unblinking, like the eyes of a leopard. His eyes blazed, the amber darkening to yellow-green, smoldering with tension, with fire, but mostly with a cunning intelligence. His gaze was penetrating and she couldn’t take her eyes from his face, not even to see where the man creeping through the forest was headed.
Isabeau heard her heart pound, but Conner never moved, using all the natural patience of a leopard, completely motionless as the man turned his back and took several steps away from them, alerting to a soft noise just ahead. Her breath stilled in her lungs as she caught Adan’s scent. He was close and the man hiding in the brush heard him.
Conner slid forward, a slow, belly-to-ground stalk, propelling himself forward inch by inch. He crawled and froze, using the meager cover to inch within a foot of his prey. The closer he approached, the slower he moved, continuing the freeze-frame stalk until he was nearly on the man. Once locked on, his dilated gaze never moved from his intended target. He exploded off the ground, leaping on his prey, the two daggers grabbing, holding and puncturing. He held his prey easily with his great strength, while the large man resisted, trying to fight back, dropping his weapon in the process, unable to cry out.
Isabeau tried to look away, but the sight of the life- and-death struggle mesmerized her. Mostly she looked at Conner’s face. His expression never changed. His eyes looked savage, that strange burning gold now, but his face was a mask of implacable resolve. She couldn’t imagine him defeated by anything. He seemed invincible. He looked ruthless. Deadly. And God help her, she was drawn like a moth to a flame instead of being repelled as she should have been.
Conner lowered the body silently to the ground and let out a series of chuffing noises. The sound pierced the veil of mist rising like clouds around them, reverberating in the darkness, mixing with the natural sounds of the forest. Far off, she heard an answer, the common prusten greeting of a leopard, much like the snorting of a horse. Another answered with a combination that resembled the coo of a pigeon and water running over rocks. A third leopard chimed in with short muffled sneezing, forming a triangle with Conner and Isabeau in the center. The vocalization lasted less than half a second, but the sounds were chilling.
There in the night, already facing unseen enemies, to be surrounded by dangerous, wild animals was terrifying. She knew leopards were more widespread than any other cat, because they were more adaptable—more cunning and bold. They were known to stalk people in villages, going right into houses and taking their prey. They were secretive and supposed to be solitary, so why were there at least three of them? Unless the fire had driven them to the river just as it had Conner and Isabeau. She knew leopards were extremely dangerous—much like Conner. Or maybe he was more so, being man too. Did that give him more intelligence? More control? And maybe he wasn’t the only leopard on his team.
Her mouth was so dry she feared she couldn’t find it in her to swallow, and somewhere the trembling had started. Conner made his way back to her in that silent way of his and lifted her off the ground, setting her on her feet. Pain jarred through her body and her wrist throbbed where she’d sprained it. She stood quietly while he brushed the insects from her shuddering body. She didn’t live like this, with great adventures. She lived a life of solitude, hidden from the world in her precious rain forest, working with her plants. Most of the time she was alone or with a guide, and she certainly didn’t get involved with drug cartels or dangerous men—until Conner.
“I’ll get you out of this,” he said.
His voice was gentle, a slow drawl—like a drug to her, something once experienced, always craved, like his touch. Like the focused, piercing stare from his eyes. So intent. So completely locked on to her. It was exhilarating and unnerving all at the same time. The brush of his fingers against her skin sent tremors through her body, ripples of awareness through her until her very core turned a heated liquid. Surrounded by death and danger, she was more susceptible to him than ever.