Kat smiled at Maya. Connor shook his head again. He wondered if that was the reason their mother had kept them away from others of their kind, ensuring they lived in a more natural environment.
When they walked into the dining room, they found they were the first to take their seats for the evening meal.
Each of them chose to begin with the chicken soup.
Kat happily chatted about all that she’d seen in the jungle, from the largest flying bird in the Americas—the jabiru stork—to a rare agami heron, tons of hummingbirds, neon-green parrots, macaws, and a snowy egret. She described several of the orchids they’d witnessed. Then she said, her eyes bright with excitement, “We saw an ocelot!”
“No jaguars, though?” Maya asked, a teasing light in her eyes.
Guests said hi to them as they took their seats around some of the tables. Connor and Kat always arrived early for dinner so they could go on their jungle treks at dusk, while the other guests spent their days in the jungle and stayed in their cottages at night.
“Did you hear the howler monkey?” one woman asked another at a different table. “It nearly gave me a seizure until I figured out what it was.”
“What was Wade like?” Kat asked Maya.
Connor tried not to stiffen, but he didn’t manage well—especially when Kat was asking about Wade.
“He’s protective,” Maya said.
Connor meant to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t let that go. “Yeah, like he left you alone and a barroom brawl started over you.”
Two of the men and a woman at another table looked in their direction. Maya’s cheeks blossomed with color.
She tilted her chin up and said to Kat, “He came to my protection and even carried me out of there when I slipped on all the broken glass.” She gave Connor an “I told you so” look.
All conversation at the other tables concerning what the guests had discovered on treks to a nearby cave and the jungle died as soon as the barroom brawl was mentioned. Connor knew Kat and Maya should have had this discussion in one of their cottages.
Then he began to consider the sleeping arrangements at their home, and before he could stop himself from saying something about it, he asked, “None of the men slept in our bedroom, did they?”
“Of course not,” Maya said, sounding irritated. “We all slept in my bed.”
He knew she was kidding because there was no way in hell all of them could have slept in her queen-size bed with her. Not that he would have believed she’d slept with her cousins or David. Wade? Connor wasn’t certain about him.
Kat laughed. “As if four men could sleep in that bed of yours with you.”
Maya sighed. “If you must know, our cousins slept on the floor in the living room. Wade took one of the recliners so he could watch David. Poor David had gotten hit in the head by a bottle, and it cut him. So he slept on the couch.”
One of the male guests was smiling and shaking his head, and another was watching Connor and waggling his brows.
As dessert was served, Connor saw Maya suddenly look in the direction of the window as if something had caught her eye.
“What did you see?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” She dipped her fork into her banana rum crepe.
She looked pale and her heart was thumping hard.
“Maya?”
“I… I thought I saw something.”
“Someone,” he said, knowing her better than that.
“Okay, someone. After what Wade told me about the hunters, I’m just feeling a little jumpy.”
“They wouldn’t come to the lodge or the cottages looking for a jaguar,” Connor assured her.
“One was spotted last night in the jungle below our deck,” a woman at another table said, smiling. “The owner said several guests have seen it. Nothing to worry about, though.” She poked her fork into her dessert and continued talking to her companions.
It couldn’t have been Wade because he had arrived at the same time as Maya, she knew. Hell. If it was a true jaguar and word got out that it was frequenting the area, that could bring the hunters down on top of them.
Chapter 11
In the middle of the night, Wade reached the treetop cottages where Maya was staying. He and David hadn’t needed a GPS to locate them. In their jaguar forms, they’d followed Kat and Connor’s scents to the resort. Wade had smelled another jaguar in the area—a female, which didn’t bode well if Bettinger and Lion Mane got wind of her and led the smugglers this way. He wanted to warn Maya and the others that Bettinger and Lion Mane were in on the jaguar-smuggling plans. As jaguar shifters, the men could scent another jaguar and tip off the smugglers who would take the big cat into custody.
While he suspected that Bettinger and Lion Mane wouldn’t lead the smugglers to a shifter, Wade didn’t like the fact that they could make a move on Maya if they learned she was here.
The cottages appeared to be suspended in the trees, a walkway connecting each to the next. Wade and his brother roamed through the trees below, listening for sounds of people up and about. Everyone appeared to be sleeping. No talking or laughing, just silence from the human population.
The jungle noises still cloaked Wade as he searched for the cottage that could be Maya’s. He leaped into a tree next to a deck and smiled his jaguar smile as he smelled that Maya had been sitting in one of the rocking chairs a short while ago. There was no sign of Kat or Connor’s scent on the deck, so he assumed this cottage had to be Maya’s.
He glanced down at David, who motioned with his large spotted head in the direction he planned to go while Wade checked on Maya. David would leave him alone, but he knew his brother would stay close by until Wade left Maya. After that, they’d return together to search for the smugglers and their guides.
His paws muddy, Wade shifted, then turned on the shower on the deck. If she was asleep, she wouldn’t hear him. After he cleaned up, he planned to check on her and tell her about Bettinger and the other men. A bottle of eco-friendly soap was sitting on a table nearby, so he poured some out into his hands and then started to soap himself down, the citrus scent pleasantly natural and sweet. He hoped she wasn’t running through the jungle tonight, though he hadn’t smelled her scent down below. Probably too busy dealing with her brother and explaining why she smelled of four male cats.
As soon as he had rinsed off, he saw a wide-eyed Maya staring through the glass door of her cottage, taking in every inch of him. He couldn’t help his reaction. Her perusal of his body instantly made his other head stir to life. That, and what she was wearing.
A slinky, pink itty-bitty nightie barely covered her crotch. Instantly, the cool water drizzling over his body felt as though it sizzled against his suddenly hot skin. Her rigid nipples pressed against the silky fabric in response… to his arousal? He grinned at her, but she wasn’t looking at his face.
He fought the urge to leave the shower, pull her close, lift that dreamy excuse for nightwear, and take her against the wooden table covered in towels nearby.
Oh… my… God. Maya couldn’t help staring at Wade’s gorgeous body. Bronzed. Muscles hard with vigorous workouts—the only way they could look that good. And he was hung. But that stunning part of his anatomy wasn’t just hanging there… He was quickly becoming aroused.
What was he doing here? A shiver stole up her spine as she thought of Connor and what he’d do to Wade if her brother found him naked on her deck.
Wade’s hands were rubbing soap all over that kissable, lickable skin, washing away the dirt on his feet and legs, then moving over every inch of the rest of his body. Her body heated so much that she felt that she was having a hot flash, although she was certain she was too young for one. She was standing inside the cottage, the air-conditioning on, so she shouldn’t have been burning up. She continued to peer out the glass door at the incredible hunk, unable to do anything but stare.