And then? Connor shifted! He was just as naked as her, sexier than any man she had ever seen nude. Then he scooped her up with tenderness—if she hadn’t been so tired and stressed, she would have felt much more than just shocked—and carried her into the hut.
God, he was gorgeous. If she hadn’t been so shook up and tired, she would have enjoyed the intimacy between them more—their bared skin heated as they touched one another, and the way he was so hard, virile, and sexy. But more than that. He was kind and protective, careful not to appear brusque or annoyed, but genuinely concerned for her well-being. He had to have been irritated with her when she wouldn’t come down from the tree deep in the jungle and he had wanted her to come home with them. He had to have been incensed when she actually knocked him off the branch. In front of his sister, too.
She was certain it couldn’t have been good for his alpha male ego.
At first, Kat thought he had been aggravated with her when he jumped so quickly back onto her branch and then shoved her off. But she realized afterward that by reacting so fast, he had caught her off guard. That time, he had gotten her out of the tree like he had wanted, not that he was irritated with her. Just concerned that they needed to get her back to the hut.
She frowned. Omigod, what if she had shifted earlier? In the tree? Without a stitch of clothing on?
This was truly a nightmare.
Chapter 13
Kat let out her breath and stared at Connor’s naked chest, contemplating just how gorgeous he was. All tanned muscle, with light golden hair trailing down to his boxers. No battle scars. No tattoos or freckles. Just unblemished golden skin. Before he had slipped into a pair of black boxers, she had gotten an eyeful of an erection she had stirred up, tan the way the rest of his skin was, and the golden curls surrounding it. Did he lie out in the Texas sun and soak it up?
For a second, she stared at his lap as he sat next to her on the bed, just studying her without saying a word. Then her eyes widened, and she looked back at his eyes. She had been eyeing his jaguar male package—just to determine which sex he was—when he had jumped into the tree to join her the first time she had seen him as a jaguar. She realized that had been him. Connor. In the jaguar flesh.
He had been checking her out when she was soaking wet, staring at her breasts as a big, old, safe cat. But he hadn’t been all cat. Or safe. He had been a man who had been intrigued with a woman alone in the jungle.
She groaned to herself, trying to remember what else had happened between them when she had thought he was only a jaguar. Nothing, she hoped.
“We were born with the genes,” he finally said.
Kat swallowed hard. “But I wasn’t.” Which meant what? Did they know many who had been changed like her? What difference would it make in her case, as compared to jaguar-shifters who were born that way? Besides the obvious, which was that she didn’t have control over her shifting like they did. “How will I be different?”
His gaze remained on hers, although she saw a shadow of concern in the darkened depths of his eyes. “Truthfully, I don’t know.”
This was so not good. “Where… where are you from?”
“Texas,” he said, offering a small smile. “Just like I said.”
“You’re not human,” she said, frowning at him.
“Not like regular humans.” He sighed and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “But we’re human when in human form and jaguar in our cat form. Although we retain our human thought processes while a cat and our cat senses when we’re human.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I ate a raw fish. I would never have eaten a raw fish if I had retained my human sensibilities.”
He smiled. “As a jaguar, you’ll want to satisfy your hunger in a feral cat’s way. It’s instinctive. You hadn’t had dinner. You were hungry. Fishing for your dinner came naturally. Eating meat raw is usually the only way we eat in our jaguar form. No need to cook. Our stomachs can handle it. We don’t need spices to make it taste better. We eat to survive.”
On some level, she could understand the concept. But she was still human and the notion that she would eat raw meat didn’t appeal. “So then Maya changed me?”
“She said she scratched you. I wouldn’t have thought that would have done it, but apparently it did.”
Kat stared at the bed for a moment, then frowned up at Connor. “She licked me afterward. I worried a little that she would get a taste of my blood and want more.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s how she did it.”
“Why? Why did she change me?” Kat couldn’t keep an upset tone out of her voice. She was something so alien to herself now that she couldn’t grasp the ramifications. She didn’t think she minded that Connor and his sister were different. They couldn’t help what they were. But she did mind that she herself had changed.
But then she wondered—if she had discovered what they were, would they have had to resort to what Maya had done anyway? Change her? Or kill her even? Surely they couldn’t let the world know what they were.
“She wanted me to have a mate,” Connor said, his tone matter-of-fact.
Kat’s eyes widened. Not that she was totally surprised, but still, it seemed… medieval.
Connor let out his breath. “And she wanted you to be her sister.”
Kat bit her lower lip, trying to focus on one thought as millions of questions swirled through her mind. “Why me? Besides the fact that I was stuck here with you in the jungle and made for an easy target.”
“Kat, our kind don’t easily take in strangers and develop a fondness for them. I didn’t want her to turn you, although I assumed she would try. I wanted to take you to the resort before it was too late. But you were too sick.”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to visit you in Texas. Or with Maya, rather. You were afraid she’d try again if she wasn’t successful the first time.” Now his reaction to Kat made some sense. His interest in her, yet his need to keep his distance once she was feeling better.
Despite his wanting to stay away from her, Kat recalled Maya’s words to him: “You were dying to know what had happened to her when she was wounded. You didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and we even left here early because you were so disconsolate. And as soon as we returned here, what did you do? Went straight back to the place where she’d been wounded, and then you didn’t come back for hours.”
Just like Kat had felt compelled to return to the Amazon and find Connor to thank him for rescuing her. She had often thought of him, bare-chested and barefooted, leaning over her, cutting the rope from her wrists, and then hurrying to bind her wounds. His eyes had focused on hers with so much concern and tenderness that she had often wondered what it would be like to be with a man like him.
Connor cleared his throat. “Yes, I was afraid she’d bite you to change you. Neither of us has ever tried to turn someone before. She knew I wouldn’t do it.”
Kat shifted her gaze from his muscled torso to his face. He hadn’t wanted her enough to change her himself. But then again, that made him more honorable, didn’t it? That he did indeed care for her but wouldn’t turn her against her will. “I wouldn’t have allowed it if I could have prevented it.”
“So now… you’re stuck with me?” That was a disagreeable notion.
His mouth curved in a predatory way. “Hell, Kat, I wouldn’t have turned you, but you’ve got to sense the chemistry between us. If I’d met you somewhere in Texas, you still would have garnered all my attention.”