Wade opened his eyes again, looking at her. If she could find his brother, David could help. She had no idea where he was but suspected he might be following Lion Mane and the others.
She stood as still as a spotted statue. Not even her tail was swishing as she considered her options in the shadowed jungle, listening for any sounds that would indicate men were approaching. Her heart was pumping hard and her body felt overheated. Unable to sweat like a human could, she began to pant, the only way for a cat to cool off.
She moved in close to Wade and bent down to nuzzle his cheek. She licked it, trying to get him to stand and shake off the drug. He sat up and shifted into one gorgeous naked hunk of a human male.
“Go,” he said, his voice dark, deep, and… sleepy.
She shook her head and nudged at him to climb a tree. He struggled to get into one, and it was almost painful watching him climb the liana—a drainpipe-thick vine-like plant—slipping and scrambling for purchase and pausing to catch his breath, as if every movement was the most wearing. When he reached the first branch off the ground, he shifted back into his jaguar form. Couldn’t he have jumped up there more easily as a cat? Was he too out of it to be thinking clearly?
Now what to do with the female jaguar? Maya tore a liana with her teeth and dragged the plant over to the sleeping jaguar, allowing the water dripping from inside the plant to fall on her face. The liana was a common source of water for survival, pure and cleansed as it was filtered by the plant. If Maya could revive the cat enough, she’d have another reason to revere the life-giving source.
Wake up, she pleaded in her jaguar brain. If she could just get the jaguar to wake enough, she could attempt to move her away from the area where the dead men were lying. The dead men. She needed to deal with them, too. The female jaguar’s tongue licked at the water droplets on her face, but she didn’t sit up.
Wade was watching her, his head resting on the branch as if he couldn’t lift it.
Maya jumped onto the branch next to him, and they stayed there until he seemed to be able to gather more strength and leaped to another tree farther from where she’d killed the men.
Then she had another horrible thought. What if Connor and Kat came to her cottage and found her gone? What if they both came looking for her here?
She had to get Wade to her cottage before they came for her and got caught in the crossfire. If Lion Mane came, he’d know just who she was, and he’d smell Wade’s scent, too.
Connor and Kat always rendezvoused with Maya at her cottage at night, but he and Kat had taken a little more time than usual so he was late arriving at Maya’s place.
He knocked on her front door. “Maya?”
At first he was thought she was with Wade, but he heard no sounds coming from inside her room. He didn’t think Wade had come back for her since that night he’d visited her. She had never told Connor that Wade had been with her, but Connor knew, just from her blushes and Wade’s scent on her deck.
He’d also seen the way she’d watched for Wade when they were exploring the rainforest, looking for any signs that he was nearby. A couple of times, Connor had thought Wade was following them, watching their backs, being protective like he’d been when they were in the Amazon.
Connor paced in front of the door, then knocked again. “Maya!”
When there was still no response, he went around to her deck. He smelled that she’d been here recently, but the trail led down into the jungle. He opened the door to her cottage and quickly searched the place.
Maya wasn’t there. She had obviously decided to take a run through the jungle by herself while he and Kat had been busy making love. Again. He wasn’t happy about Maya exploring the jungle on her own. He understood Maya’s restlessness and the fact that she probably was feeling like a third wheel. And that being this close to the jungle pulled on their wild-cat urges.
Back at his cottage, he found Kat straightening up their bed and said, “Stay here and wait for Maya to return, Kat. I’m going to look for her.”
“She’s gone again?”
“Yeah, like last night. I’ll be right back.”
“Can’t I come with you this time?” Kat asked.
“No. I don’t want to worry about you being out there if she’s gotten herself into trouble. Stay here and I’ll return soon.”
He kissed her and hugged her tight, knowing she didn’t want to be left alone. Last night, Maya hadn’t been far from the cottages. He hoped he’d find the same thing tonight.
Returning to Maya’s deck, he removed his clothes and shifted in a blur of tanned skin to golden fur, nails to claws, and much bigger teeth. Then he leaped from the deck and took off to find her most recent trail. She’d been exploring the jungle in a happy-go-lucky way as they usually did, carving her nails into a tree, rubbing off strands of fur on another, but then her path and the scent she left changed.
That had him worried. Dogs were barking somewhere in the distance as he moved a mile away from the cottages.
Then he smelled Wade and the other female jaguar. What the hell?
And the odor of men. Two of them.
He could tell from Maya’s scent that she was terrified. The men had to be hunting the jaguars. Connor was trying to keep a clear head where Maya was concerned, but his blood was racing through his veins, his heart pumping hard as he feared for Maya’s safety.
He moved through the jungle, smelling the ground and low tree branches, sniffing the air. Unable to contain himself, he roared for Maya.
She immediately responded, her jaguar’s roar sounding like music to his ears.
He’d covered another mile from when he heard her roar and discovered two dead men with Maya’s scent all over them. He looked more closely at a place on the ground where a jaguar had lain, his body pressing the grasses down into a mat, and smelled the scent—Wade Patterson’s. A female jaguar was still sleeping on the ground nearby.
His heart hammered his ribs. Where the hell was Maya? And Wade?
Maya had been so relieved to hear Connor’s roar that she let him know just where she and Wade were hiding. Her brother would help get Wade to the resort, and then she could assist Connor in moving the dead men and hiding the jaguar female until she revived enough to take care of herself.
Everything would be all right.
Before she could tell Connor where they were again—she thought he probably had been sidetracked as he checked out the dead men—she saw him staring up at her and Wade as they sat on the tree branch together above him. Well, Wade was reclining, unable to sit. Tension filled every one of Maya’s muscles as she worried about her brother’s reaction.
Connor just waited, as if he was thinking she should come with him now. Connor grunted at her. She licked Wade’s cheek, although Wade didn’t take his eyes off Connor. The two jaguars were ready to do battle. If only Connor knew how unable Wade was to fight in his current condition.
She jumped off the tree branch and landed next to Connor. He nudged her as if telling her to return to her cottage, but she nudged at him to go with her instead. He followed her, and she led him back to Mylar and then pawed at the gun that the man had used to tranquilize Wade and the other cat. She waited for Connor to get it. She moved away from the dead man and pawed at the earth where Wade had been sleeping.
Connor sniffed at the ground, then stared at her.
He got it. Wade was not in any shape to help himself. She bolted back to the tree where Wade still waited for them, too drugged to move.
This time when Connor joined them, he shifted and folded his arms across his chest, looking up at Wade. “I take it you’re too tired to move much at all.”