Wasn’t that the truth. But yeah, he liked being a Feral, liked fighting draden and Mage. It was the only thing that gave his life purpose. But he’d never tell her that. Touchy-feely pillow talk sure as hell wasn’t his thing.
“It gets me laid, Sugar. All the girls want to fuck a Feral, you know that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Everything goes back to sex with you, doesn’t it?”
“You ever order your men to go down on you, Red? I can’t stop wondering if you have freckles down there, swimming in the cream.”
He expected her to turn away in disgust, ignoring him again. Or maybe, if he was lucky, she’d lose her temper and slug him a good one. Instead, she turned toward him, shoulders and all, but remained silent.
He glanced at her, thinking she was giving him the evil eye or something, but she was studying him as if she’d shoved him under a microscope.
“What?” he snapped. He was starting to feel twitchy under that cool, intense regard.
“Do you even know why you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Annoy the hell out of everyone?”
Jag shrugged. “It’s just who I am, Sugar. Like I said, I’m not a nice guy.”
“See, I don’t believe that.”
Tearing his gaze from the road, he gave her an incredulous look.
She leaned her shoulder more firmly against the seat as if settling in for a nice long discussion.
Hell.
His gaze returned to the road.
“I saw you with Pink in the war room, Jag. She was by far the most vulnerable person in there, the easiest target, yet you defended her. Violently. And she hadn’t even been attacked, not outright. You wouldn’t allow anyone to so much as hurt her feelings.”
Jag scowled. “Pink’s had a rough go of it.”
“That’s my point. She’d be the easiest of targets if your aim was to hurt, but it’s not. And you never aimed your barbs at Kara or Skye, either. Only at Delaney and me, but you can’t hurt either of us with them, and I think you know that.”
She was starting to piss him off. “I’m not looking to hurt you, Red. Just fuck your brains out.”
“You use sex talk as a defense, do you know that?”
“You can shut up now, Sigmund Freud.”
Olivia didn’t bat an eye. Nor did she shut up, dammit.
“You don’t hurt the vulnerable, Jag. What you do is make people mad at you—the other Ferals, my men.
Me.
You want us mad. You
need
us mad at you. Do you know why?”
He gripped the steering wheel hard, throwing her a glower that would have had men three times her size quaking in their boots. And he knew it wouldn’t make an ounce of difference. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
To his surprise, she turned forward again, tilting her head back until it rested against the seat behind her. For several moments, she was silent, and he thought maybe she was through with him after all. But when she began to speak, he felt transported—to a place he didn’t want to go.
“Years ago, something happened for which I blamed myself bitterly, Jag. I hated myself and everything about me.” Her voice was low, her words devoid of emotion. But the emotion was there, buried so deep he felt it tugging at the hole in his chest where his heart used to be. “I let others hurt me. I practically begged them to hurt me. At the time, I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until years later that I finally figured out that my own self-hatred had sought out the punishment. It almost destroyed me. The thing is, after living with that kind of guilt and darkness, after suffering it myself, I’ve come to recognize it in others.”
She turned back to face him. “I see it in you.”
Goddess, he didn’t need this shit. “I like myself just fine, Olivia.”
“Do you?” She let the question hang in the air, her tone telling him clearly she didn’t believe him.
Damn little prissy psychoanalyst.
“The way I see it, you can’t stand for
anyone
to like you. You need them to hate you as much as you hate yourself. So you antagonize and annoy them as your own personal form of self-punishment. Deep down, you’re a
decent guy, Jag. You don’t actually hurt anyone—you don’t break their things, you don’t kill their pets. You don’t even punch them in the face. Instead, you heckle them until they’re the ones punching you. Until all you see in their eyes is the same deep, raw dislike you feel for yourself.”
He scoffed. “You’ve known me
how
long? How the fuck do you know I don’t break the other kids’ toys or twist the heads off their hamsters?”
“I know.”
Goddess, her know-it-all attitude was pissing him off.
Okay, maybe he didn’t do those things, but she was wrong about the rest of it. Totally off. He wasn’t a decent guy. And he wasn’t some fucked-up self-hating loser. He was just who he was.
“A pretty little theory, Sugar. But I’m tired of hearing you talk.”
He snatched her arm, curling his hand around her wrist and pressing his palm hard against her skin, willing his hand to heat, filling her with sensual fire.
Olivia gasped, trying to jerk her arm free even as her breasts rose, her back arching in an intoxicatingly passionate move. Her head tilted back, and he knew she was feeling the pleasure, the warm, throbbing heat all the way down.
“Now I want to hear you scream. Come for me, Red.”
Her sexy little gasps tore through his senses, lifting his pulse and his blood pressure, sending that blood spiraling hard and low. Goddess, but he wanted to hear her cry out with that ultimate release. She’d been so close last night he’d almost been able to taste it.
She was so close to it again…
He didn’t see the knife coming for his hand until it was too late. The steel of her blade sliced right through muscle and tendons, hurting like a son of a bitch.
The moment she pulled the knife free, he jerked his bleeding hand away. “Damn you!”
“You don’t learn, do you?” But her rough, sexy voice held a hint of amusement.
He snorted. One point to the redhead. “Where in the hell did you get that kind of speed?”
He didn’t expect an answer, so he was surprised when he got one. “Many Therians have gifts left over from the days when we were all shifters.”
The defensive note in her tone told him he’d touched a nerve. Which was interesting, now, wasn’t it?
The stinging in his hand slowly dulled to nothing as the flesh healed. When he glanced at her, he found her watching him with cool eyes. Cool eyes that throbbed with ill-disguised heat. Goddess, but he wanted her.
Even better, she wanted him.
“You know I’m going to win this game, Red. Sooner or later, you’re going to spread your thighs and invite me in. You’re wasting your time fighting it.”
Olivia let out a long sigh. “We’re both wasting our time if we’re doing anything other than trying to catch those Daemons, Jag.” She raked her hands into her hair, pulling the bright locks back from her face in a move that was decidedly unsettled. “It would be wise for us to remember that.”
He turned his concentration back to the road, his lips twitching with satisfaction. Oh yeah, he’d gotten under her skin. As badly as she’d gotten under his.
But she was right. They did have a job to do, and the one thing he never did was shirk his duty.
There was too much at stake.
But that didn’t mean this game had come to an end. Hell no. Sooner or later, she’d be begging him to give her exactly what they both wanted.
Hot, sweaty, mind-blowing sex.
Then maybe he’d finally get her out of his system. He was beginning to think that couldn’t happen soon enough.
By the time Jag and Olivia reached the dramatic confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers and crossed into the small tourist hamlet of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the sun was high in the sky, well past its zenith.
Olivia watched out the window of Jag’s Hummer as they drove along the river road, enchanted by the towering cliffs rising above the rivers where Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia converged. As many years as she’d spent in the United States, she’d never before been to this spot.
Jag pulled up in front of the small, quaint Slumber-side Motel. “Wait here while I grab the room key.”
“Is this place warded?” she asked with surprise.
“No. But we’ll need a place to crash come daylight.”
He returned a few minutes later and drove past the small town and onto a quiet residential street, where he pulled over, parking the car.
“Now the real fun begins,” he murmured, throwing her one of his patent devilish smiles as he opened the driver’s door and unfolded his long frame. She was about to reach for her door handle when he opened the back door and climbed into the backseat, closing the door behind him.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, merely pulled off his T-shirt, giving her a first-class view of hard muscle, then began to unbuckle the belt of his camo pants.
“I won’t be joining you back there, cat, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He lifted a single brow, snagging her with his sharp gaze. “I could change your mind.”
She whipped out one of her knives and twirled it between her fingers. “You could try.”
The grin that lifted his mouth turned bright with challenge and wide with genuine amusement. “I’m going hunting.”
Perfect. Finally, the opportunity she’d been waiting for to get away from him to feed.
The full import of his words hit her, and her eyes widened.
“You’re shifting?” A small thrill caught her at the
prospect of watching him shift into his animal right in front of her. The first time she saw him shift, the first time she’d ever seen any Feral shift, was that day last week when she, Ewan, and Niall had come to meet with Lyon at Feral House. Jag had shifted unintentionally—the fault of Mage magic, but it had happened quickly, and she’d been trying to ignore him at the time so hadn’t been watching. This time she wasn’t taking her gaze off him.
“I always used to think Ferals could keep their clothes on during the shift,” she murmured. “But you can’t, can you?”
“Some can. I can’t. The magic steals them away.” Jag lifted his knee to remove his boot. “The only way I can catch the scent of that Daemon is in my animal. You’re coming with me.”
Not a chance. “I thought I’d drive around a bit, see if anything looks suspicious.” She sensed no capitulation on his part. “Besides, I need to find a loo.”
His gaze flicked to hers, resignation in his eyes, and she knew she had him.
“Don’t go far. I can only talk to you within about a half a mile radius. I’ll let you know if I pick up anything. You do the same.”
“All right.” She knew Ferals were capable of telepathic communication in their animal forms. For half a mile he’d be able to communicate with her. Beyond that, the link would be broken. If she had to guess, the
same was probably true of his ability to sense her feeding. Which meant the first thing she had to do was get at least half a mile away.
Jag wouldn’t be pleased if he found out. She’d come up with some excuse if that happened.
Jag struggled out of his pants in the confines of a vehicle that should have been large, yet felt small and confined when filled with a male his size. She knew watching him undress would only encourage more sex talk but, pride be damned, she didn’t want to miss a second of this.
With a final tug, he tossed his clothing aside and sat back, hands on knees with a rough exhalation of air.
Goddess, but he was a fine-looking male. Striping one inner thigh were four long scars, like claw marks. With a thrill, she realized they were his feral marks. Every Feral Warrior received them somewhere on his body when the animal spirit first marked him.
Her intrigued gaze slid from the marks on his thigh to the other part of his anatomy that most fascinated her. Nestled amid the brown thatch of hair in his lap, lay a fine, large penis.
Beneath her admiring stare, the thick length of flesh twitched and began to thicken.
“Like what you see, Sugar?” Jag drawled.
Her gaze rose to his, meeting hard eyes glittering with amusement and growing desire.
“The root has merit. The tree to which it’s attached, not so much.”
His mouth kicked up into a hard smile, his eyes beginning to glitter. “You’re wanting a ride. Don’t think I can’t tell, Red. I can smell your heat.”
She couldn’t deny it. Well, she would deny it…to him. But to herself, no way. Watching him swell and grow set off a flood of damp warmth between her legs as her breasts tingled and began to ache.
“All you smell is your own conceit, Feral.” But her voice sounded tight even to her own ears, and she knew he was all too aware of how much the sight of him moved her.
He watched her a good long time, the promise of challenge…and passion…thick in the air. Finally, with a snort that somehow told her he thought she was a coward, he nodded toward the steering wheel. “Keys are in the ignition.” Without warning, he began to sparkle, a million colors at once, and the man disappeared. Where he’d sat now perched a perfectly shaped jaguar, the size of a house cat. His fur was darker than most jaguars’, almost black on his face and legs, but the spots showed clearly through the lighter brown fur of his back and tail.
She struggled not to gasp with the excitement of watching something so rare, so magical.
“You’re kind of small, aren’t you?”
Bitch.
She heard his voice in her head as clearly as if he’d spoken, the word trembling with laughter. As she stared at him, she realized he was growing. And fast. Inch after inch, a foot, two feet, until his length stretched across both seats, from one side of the vehicle to the other. A
large,
full-sized, jaguar.
She suddenly understood why he drove a vehicle with darkly tinted rear windows.
His tail twitched, stirring the air with the rich scent of warm fur, delighting her senses. Her pulse rose, part delight, part ancient, primal fear.
As if hearing her accelerated pulse, he swung his head toward her and gave a low growl, revealing massive jaws and sharp, wicked teeth.
Olivia jerked back toward the dash, unable to stop herself, her hand reaching for her knife.
In her head, she heard his laughter.
Who you calling small
,
Little Red?
She stared straight into those jaguar eyes and saw wicked amusement and keen intelligence, reminding her this was no real jaguar but simply another form of her annoying companion. Slowly, her pulse began to calm.
“Point taken, Feral. Why the mini-me?”
I can pass for a house cat when I’m smaller.
“Only to someone who doesn’t look at you carefully.”
His dark whiskered face bobbed up and down.
I’ll attract some attention. I always do. But those who notice me will just think I’m an oddity. They’re humans. What else are they going to think?
Slowly, he began to shrink again. When the animal in the back once more fit on one seat, he leaped into the front and onto her lap, his paws pressing into her thighs, his nose making a beeline for her crotch.
Smelling good
,
Red.
Olivia shoved his face away. “You’re rude in any form, aren’t you?”
Wouldn’t know how to be any other way. Open the door and keep the windows down. The Hummer’s warded against draden
,
which also blocks my communication.
Holding his face at bay with one hand, she opened the front passenger door with her other. With a low growl of approval, the small jaguar leaped out onto the grass.
Stay where you can hear me
,
Olivia.
Of course
, she replied, knowing full well she wouldn’t.
Can you hear me?
Only once had she ever communicated telepathically, last week when she’d first met with Lyon at Feral House. Things had gone a little crazy when several of the Ferals had shifted unintentionally, and Lyon had pushed a request for the Therians’ help into her head. But she’d never tried to speak to someone telepathically herself.
I hear you loud and clear
.
A horrible thought occurred to her. If he could hear her thoughts,
could he read her mind?
Real fear banded around her chest, squeezing her lungs.
Jag?
What is it
,
Olivia?
he demanded, his voice sharp.
She must have communicated her fear, dammit. Calm down, calm down, calm down.
I was just wondering how this works. How many of my thoughts can you hear?
She heard his chuckle in her head.
Worried I’ll learn all your secrets
,
Little Red?
The lazy drawl was back.
Taking deep breaths, she struggled for control.
Just wondering.
Relax
,
sweetheart
,
I only hear the thoughts forcibly directed my way. Usually. Though as tuned to you as I am
,
who knows. I might hear all the lurid things you want to do with my body.
Olivia pushed the hair back from her face with an unsteady hand. Was he toying with her? Or telling the truth? Shit. Could she take a chance?
With a groan, she started counting backward from a thousand. Anything,
anything,
to keep him from reading her mind. Because if he did, if he learned her secrets, her life was
game over.
Jag took off on all fours, his cat’s senses straining to pick up the foul scent he remembered all too well from the cavern where the Mage had first released the three
wraith Daemons from the enchanted Daemon blade. The smell had reminded him of rotting meat, only worse. Much worse. As if evil itself had an odor.
Recognizing that scent should be easy if he came across it again. Unfortunately, that might prove a mighty big “if.” Harpers Ferry was a long way from that cavern. In all probability, all they’d stumbled upon was the work of a human serial killer. A problem for the humans to deal with, not the immortal cavalry.
He padded through grassy yards, staying close to the bushes, where he could hide his true appearance as much as possible from prying eyes.
Too bad he hadn’t been able to talk Olivia into joining him. He’d have enjoyed her company. The woman had claws, nice sharp little claws that dug into him in all the right places. As hard as she tried to hide her attraction to him, she failed. It flashed in her eyes and rose from her skin in a lush scent that stroked his loins until he turned hard and throbbing and ready.
He loved sex, had loved sex since he first stumbled upon a pair of teenage humans rutting in the woods when he was fourteen. The female had seen him and smiled, watching him as she screamed her release. The next day, she’d come alone and indoctrinated him into the carnal world—a world forbidden young Therians. But he’d never been much for following rules.
That was nearly three and a half centuries ago, hundreds of sexual partners ago, yet never could he
remember feeling the blazing-hot attraction he felt for Olivia. If he’d thought she’d obsessed him before he’d tasted her skin and felt her explosive response to the heat of his hands, it was nothing compared to now. He could hardly think of anything beyond touching her, tasting her. Beyond the need to feel her shatter with release.
Of course, he wanted to be inside her, too. That went without saying, except…that wasn’t everything. It wasn’t even half of it.
Usually when he felt desire for a woman, it was all about sex. About finding his own release. Why then did the thought of feeling Olivia’s pleasure excite him almost more than the thought of finding his own?
He wanted her beneath him, on top of him.
Beside him.
On some oddball level he didn’t understand, he wanted her company, her frosty gaze, her sharp heels and tongue. He loved trading barbs with her, loved watching her try to hide the attraction she felt for him.
Damn, he just loved being with her.
Which was completely fucked up. He was perfectly happy with his own company and always had been.
The scent of dog had him detouring across the street. Not that he couldn’t hold his own against any creature, even as Mini Jag. But the less attention he drew to himself, the better, all the way around.
With a conscious effort, he pulled his mind from
Olivia and concentrated on picking up the scent he searched for. A short while later, as he traipsed through a cemetery, that unique whiff of evil and decay hit him.
Daemon.
Found it
,
Red.
He threw the thought out there before he bothered to find her with his mind.
Red?
Dammit, where the hell was she? Had she accidentally wandered out of range? Or had she just gotten tired of driving around with the windows down?
Neither. If there was one thing he was sure of with that woman, it was that she didn’t do anything accidentally. No, if Olivia left the half-mile radius he’d requested she remain within, she’d done so deliberately and for a damn good reason.
So, what the hell was it? Had she spied the Daemon and taken off after it without telling him? No. She was too good a soldier for that. So what was Little Red up to?
A middle-aged human couple strolling through the cemetery ahead caught sight of him. The woman gasped.
“Bryan, look at him! Isn’t he the strangest cat you’ve ever seen? Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”
Damn humans.
Jag ran before they could trap him. The trail of Daemon scent led him into the woods on the other side, growing stronger as he ran. Little by
little, the scent became mixed with another. Blood. Human blood.