Tempted by the Jaguar #1: Transformation (Riverford Shifters) (3 page)

The level of exhaustion that she was currently feeling was unlike
anything she had ever experienced. She was sure that she had just scraped her
knees and elbows raw, but she was so tired that the only thing she could feel
was a bone-deep numbness. By sheer force of will, Kylie forced herself to her
knees and leaned against the door as she struggled to slide the key into the
lock.

After what felt like an eternity of fumbling, she finally managed to
get the door open and promptly fell across the threshold with a weak grunt as
she landed face-first onto the carpet of her living room. The world was quickly
fading fast, but Kylie shook her head in an effort to clear the haziness that
had started to creep in and struggled to pull herself the rest of the way
inside.

Her hand moved on autopilot to close the door, and her last thought
before her mind lost the battle with consciousness was that she hadn’t locked
the door.

Loud pounding sounded right next to her ear, and Kylie’s eyes flew open,
her heart practically tearing out of her chest. It took a couple of seconds
before the room blurred into focus, and with some confusion, she realized that
she was lying down on the carpet near the front door.

What in the—

A series of rapid, loud raps on the front door made her jump a second
time, and Kylie scrambled onto her knees, nearly face-planting on the floor
when the world suddenly did a one-eighty. She squeezed her eyes closed with a
groan and grabbed her head between her hands, the unexpected vertigo making her
feel queasy. It was then, her head bent down as she slowly opened her eyes
again, that she noticed that she didn’t have a stitch on.

“Shit!” Kylie cried as she scrambled unsteadily onto her feet, memories
of last night’s horrors finally beginning to rise out of the confusion of her still
sleep-fogged mind.

That was probably Paul at the door!

Kylie started to turn, intent on going to her bedroom to throw on some
clothes, when she froze. No—it couldn’t be Paul. She hadn’t heard him say it.
The secret word.

She only had time to take an alarmed step back before the knob started
to turn. Shit! The door wasn’t locked!

Kylie dashed forward and slammed both hands against the door as hard as
she could just as it started to open. However, the door was pushed heavily from
the other side, and whoever was standing there managed to wedge a
white-sneakered foot into the crack that had momentarily opened. With a cry of
terror, she shoved at the door with all her might, but it was as though she was
trying to move a brick wall for all the door budged.

“I just want to talk,” a vaguely familiar male voice said, sounding
much too calm given the battle of force they were engaged in.

“You have the wrong apartment,” Kylie said through gritted teeth. She
was still feeling incredibly weak from her ordeal last night and could feel
that she was just seconds away from losing the battle.

The guy snorted. “We both know that isn’t true,” he said, sounding
rather matter-of-fact. “I can
smell
you.”

His odd words gave her pause only for a split-second, but it was the
edge he needed to finally push the door open wide enough for him to squeeze
through. In a panic, rather than make a break for her bedroom, Kylie grabbed
the doorknob and pulled the door flush against her front and scrambled back
until her back hit the wall, using the door to cover her nudity.

Immediately she felt a tug on the door, and Kylie gripped the doorknob
so tightly that her entire hand was beginning to hurt. “No! Don’t!” she moaned
desperately.

The stranger abruptly stopped trying to pull the door away from her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

Kylie sucked in a sharp breath. Those words, that tone—she had heard
them before, just last night, in fact. It was
him
, the shifter guy, the
jaguar. How in the hell had he found her?

“I can smell you.”

She mentally cursed as his earlier words echoed mockingly within her
mind, remembering how acute her sense of smell had been while she had been in
her shifted form. He had tracked her. She had never had any chance of escaping
him at all.

“I—” Kylie had no idea what to do. She was quite literally backed into
a corner, and her options were practically nil. Weak and trembling behind a
door, she doubted she could solve her nudity problem by shifting since she both
lacked the energy and more importantly, had no idea how to initiate the change
in the first place.

Light was pouring through the window beside her, too much for it to
still be early morning. Surely she had been passed out for longer than a couple
of hours, so where was Paul? Had his plane been delayed?

She needed to stall for time, and that meant getting him talking and
playing dumb.

“I—don’t have any clothes on,” Kylie admitted.

She was completely unprepared for his sudden laugh. “Why didn’t you say
so in the first place?” he scolded.

Kylie couldn’t help feeling slightly offended by his tone. “Maybe it
was because I was too busy trying to keep some psycho from breaking into my
apartment!” she snapped.

“The door was unlocked,” he said pointedly, sounding completely
unrepentant.

“And?” she shot back hostilely. “Since when does that give every
asshole on the street permission to waltz into the apartment of someone they
don’t know?”

“You’re certainly taking all of this a lot better than I’d thought you
would,” he remarked. She could hear the sound of cloth rustling as he talked.
“Things may be more serious than I thought.”

Suddenly he thrust something dark between the door and the wall. Kylie
shrank away instinctually before she saw that it was a thin, navy blue sweater.

“Put that on, and come out. As I said before, for now I only want to
talk.”

The sweater was utterly saturated with the smell of him, of something
earthy and powerful that she knew she would have never smelled yesterday. The
jaguar’s senses were muted but very much still a part of her even in her human
form.

Her nostrils instinctually flared as she slipped his sweater over her
head, his scent starting to make her head spin. She got the feeling that by
putting on his sweater, she had just done something that she really shouldn’t
have done, but between some vague feelings of misgivings and parading out naked
in front of some unknown guy, there really was no competition.

Kylie was relieved to discover that the sweater was more than long
enough to cover her ass. After pushing the overly-long sleeves up past her
wrists, she hesitantly slipped out from behind the door. She half-expected to
be met with the sight of a bare-chested man, but the dark-haired man standing
only a foot or two away from the door—and completely blocking that potential
escape route—was dressed properly in a simple white t-shirt and jeans.

It had been dark back in the forest, and she most definitely had not
been herself, so Kylie really didn’t remember much about the shifter that had
confronted her. Now, she couldn’t help but stare as she noted his tanned,
well-muscled arms and not just for the obvious reasons. Either he had not been
trying too hard to push open the door earlier or shifting had changed her body
even in its human form. She wasn’t sure which idea disturbed her more.

Her gaze rose to his face, and Kylie could feel her entire body stiffen
as she fought to control her startlement. To say that the guy was hot didn’t
even begin to accurately describe him. He had the type of chiseled, perfectly
proportioned face with plump, luscious lips and just the right amount of
stubble on his cheeks and chin to give him that sexy edge that photographers or
painters wept over. His eyes, a hazel color more golden than brown regarded her
with all the wariness of a predator presented with an unknown entity.

Kylie was grateful for that look. It instantly dragged her mind out of
the gutter it had fast descended into and back to the seriousness of the
situation. Her eyes flickered once towards the door to her bedroom. It had a
lock, and the window was large enough for her to climb out. Could she make it?

A slight narrowing of her uninvited visitor’s eyes was all the answer
she needed. The last thing she wanted was to end up tackled on the ground while
wearing only an overlarge sweater.

“Okay. Let’s talk,” she said, gesturing over to the couch.

The smile he flashed her made her heart seize, and now completely
irritated with herself, Kylie tore her eyes away from his mouth and stomped
over to the couch while the door clicked shut behind her. What was wrong with
her anyway? She was beginning to wonder if last night’s horrors had robbed her
of her sanity after all.

She gave her head a mental shake. Now was not the time to think about
her kidnapping. She needed her mind sharp and her emotions stable to safely
maneuver the potential minefield this jaguar shifter presented.

Kylie sat on the far end of the couch, making sure his sweater
adequately covered all her naughty bits. She watched him approach, all feline
grace even as a human. She was relieved when he sat at the other end of the
couch, respecting her personal space.

“So, will you at least tell me your name?” she asked, hating how stiff
her words sounded. This was not a man she could afford to show any weakness to,
no matter the circumstances.

“Hunter Rivera.” He raised an eyebrow expectantly.

She hesitated, but then realized that by knowing her address, finding
out her name was only a Google search away.

“Kylie Moore.” Then before he could say anything else, she asked, “Do
you want to tell me why you think you’re entitled to forcing your way into my
apartment? Why I should even
talk
to you instead of calling the cops?”

Hunter’s eyes suddenly hardened. “Take a good look at your hands,” he
said quietly. “That’s all the permission I need, given it was
you
that
entered
my
territory and did what you did.”

Wondering if he was trying to trick her in some way, Kylie was
reluctant to take her eyes off him, so she raised her hands to eye level
instead. She immediately gasped in shock when she realized that her hands were
splattered with dried blood. Without a word, she abruptly rose and headed
towards her bathroom.

She had already turned on the tap in the sink when Hunter’s large form
filled the doorway. He stood there silently and watched with no discernable
expression as she vigorously soaped and scrubbed her hands raw until even the
blood beneath her fingernails had been cleansed. By then, Kylie’s entire body
was shaking with the effort of trying to keep it together, and her breathing
sounded sharp and panicky. But damned if she was going to fall apart in front
of this man without knowing his intentions.

“He’s alive you know,” Hunter said suddenly, making her jump.

Slowly, she turned to look at him. That wary look had entered his eyes
again.

“Although you damned near gutted him, he managed to get back to his car
and drive to the outskirts of the city before crashing into an auto repair
shop.”

Kylie turned her head and looked down at her reddened, damp hands. ”He
was going to hurt me,” she whispered.

She could see him nod out of the corner of her eye. “I was hunting
nearby,” Hunter said. “I heard you screaming.”

“He snuck up behind me when I was reaching into my backseat for my
backpack,” she continued, the words suddenly tumbling from her lips as if of
their own accord. “He knocked me out, and I woke up tied up inside his trunk.
He took me into the forest. He had scissors. He started to—started to—c-cut—”
Kylie wrapped her trembling arms around her waist and squeezed tightly. “Then
I—I—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Hunter said gently, reaching a hand out to her, but
stopping just short of touching her shoulder. “For now, why don’t you go
change. I’ll be waiting for you in the living room.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and left her to try to regain
her composure.

When Kylie walked back into the living room more than half an hour later,
now dressed in jeans and a simple long-sleeved shirt, Hunter was seated back on
the couch staring pensively at the various picture frames of family and friends
that hung on the wall next to the TV. Frankly, she was surprised that he had
not barged into her bedroom to drag her out.

She didn’t know what to make of him. It was clear that he wasn’t going
to leave until he received whatever answers he had tracked her down for. For
that reason alone, she wasn’t quite ready to trust in his professions of not
hurting her. Just because he hadn’t hurt her
yet
didn’t mean he wouldn’t
later if he felt her answers were less than satisfactory.

Once her trembling had more or less stopped, Kylie had shut herself
into her room and quickly threw on the first set of clothes that had caught her
eye in her closet. She had even put on a pair of her running shoes, seriously
contemplating trying to escape through the window. However, her phone was
likely still on the floor somewhere near the front door, and she had never
memorized Paul’s number. Even if she holed up at a friend’s place, Hunter would
likely literally sniff her out before Paul could find her.

She was screwed either way, so the best thing she could do was
cooperate with Hunter until Paul showed up. At the very least, Paul would add
an unexpected variable to the mix, and maybe, just maybe she and Paul would be
able to talk their way out of this whole nightmare without raising anyone’s
suspicions.

It was now almost five hours since she had made it inside her apartment
and collapsed in front of the door. Either Paul had been unable to catch a
flight home on such short notice and was forced to drive or his flight was
delayed. Whichever it was, it probably wouldn’t be long before he arrived. She
only had to hold it together for a little while longer…feign ignorance…

“What are you thinking?” Hunter suddenly asked, startling Kylie from
her thoughts.

She turned her gaze back to him but didn’t move closer to the couch,
nervously bunching the sweater she had planned to return to him between her
hands.

“This is a nightmare,” she replied. “That’s what I’m thinking. People
don’t turn into freaking leopards, no matter how scared they are.”

He scowled. “Jaguars, not leopards,” he corrected, an edge to his voice
that made her think that particular mistake was made often, though in her case,
she had made it purposely. She knew damn well there were only four different
cat shifter clans in Riverford, and none of them were leopards. “But you’re
right.
Humans
don’t turn into animals, but
shifters
do.”

“
Shifters
?” she echoed with feigned confusion.

“As in shape-shifters.” He was watching her face very closely. “Or
were-jaguars if that helps you understand it better.”

“Were-jaguars…you mean, like
werewolves
?” Kylie exclaimed as incredulously
as she could manage. “But—but—last night there wasn’t—”

Hunter sighed. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you? We
don’t shift at the full moon if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How can you be so calm about all of this?” she demanded. “I turned
into a freaking jaguar! I nearly
killed
someone, no matter that the sick
bastard deserved it! How can any of this be
real
?”

He held up his hands. “Fair enough. Come and sit down. I obviously
can’t take you to see the Elders when you’re this confused. We need to figure
out a few things first.”

Kylie stayed rooted to her spot. “Elders? What do you mean
elders
?
I’m not going
anywhere
with you!”

“No, not yet,” he agreed, “but Kylie, let me make something clear right
now. You are a shifter, and as such, you are expected to obey certain laws. If
it had only been me that witnessed your shift last night, then the situation
would not be as dire as it is.”

Kylie shrank back in true alarm. “What do you mean?”

“You shifted in front of a human not in the know,” he explained, “and
that is the one law that must never be broken.”

“But I didn’t know I could even…!” she protested.

He nodded. “And now that I know that, we can fix this, figure out what
happened here.”

After staring each other down for a long, tense moment, Kylie finally
set his crumpled sweater on the arm of the couch before she cautiously seated
herself as far away from him as she could.

“You were adopted weren’t you?” Hunter asked.

Her eyes widened. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because that’s the only explanation that would make sense here,” he
said wryly. “If your parents had been shifters, then there’s no way you
wouldn’t have known about your own heritage, not even if you were a Deadend.”

Kylie went positively rigid; she simply couldn’t help it.

“What’s a ‘dead end’?” she asked.

Just saying the word left a very bad taste in her mouth. She damn well
knew what it meant and had hoped that she would never hear it spoken again for
as long as she lived. However, she didn’t want to raise his suspicions by not
asking the obvious question.

Hunter’s lips twisted in what looked like disgust. “It’s what kids born
to shifter parents are called when they lack the ability to shift. It happens
very rarely, but until recently, it was seen as something shameful—a weakness
in a shifter family’s bloodline or for other, equally stupid reasons. These
children were almost always sent to live with humans from the moment their
inability to shift was discovered.”

“I see,” Kylie said frostily. “You think my birth parents abandoned
me?”

“Maybe,” he replied reluctantly, “or they might have been killed. Lord
knows we jaguars have our share of enemies. How you came to be raised by humans
could have been for any number of reasons. Some parents are reluctant to give
up a Deadend child but do not wish them to grow up with this stigma. Thus,
adoption is seen as the best option for the kid.”

“But I shifted,” she pointed out.

“The fact of which muddies the waters completely. How old were you when
you were adopted?”

“Just a baby. Why?”

“And you know
nothing
about your birth parents?” Hunter pressed,
ignoring her question.

Kylie frowned. “I would think that was pretty obvious by now.”

His lips quirked up. “So far all your reactions have been way different
than I had expected, so sorry sweetheart, but there is nothing ‘obvious’ about
you at all.”

I’m not your ‘sweetheart
,
’
Kylie bristled, but she
managed to keep her irritation from her expression. Now was not the time to
unnecessarily butt heads with him. She needed to concentrate on getting as much
information as she could about him, how much power he truly wielded within his
clan, as well as stalling for time.

“Keep smirking like that and I won’t answer any more of your questions
at all,” she warned. “In fact, what even gives you the authority to barge into
my home demanding answers in the first place? Those elders you mentioned
earlier? Are you some kind of underground shifter cop who answers to only them?”

He made a face. “God no, but the Riverford PD
does
have a few
shifters on the force. Which brings me back to the reason why you’re currently
in deep shit. As I mentioned before, the man you shredded lived. He’s currently
in the ICU of St. Agnes’s Hospital babbling about God sending a girl who turned
into a ‘leopard’ in order to punish him for what he had done to a shit-ton of
other girls.”

“So he
does
have something to do with all those missing women
that have been all over the news lately,” Kylie interjected softly, not able to
stop the cold shudder that rippled through her body.

“Probably,” Hunter agreed. “The bastard was practically begging to
confess
something
at the very least, and because the pair of detectives
sent down to the hospital happened to include a shifter, the elders of
all
the Riverford shifter clans know that there was a breech of secrecy. The only
reason why they aren’t here and I am is because everything you did last night
happened within
my
territory, and like it or not, it makes you my
responsibility above all others.

“You’re lucky—not only that your body picked
that
moment to
shift for the first time, but that the bastard’s system was pumped so full of a
cocktail of illegal shit that it’s a wonder he could even stand up straight. Everyone
that heard him ranting on and on about his victim turning into an animal just
assumed it was the ravings of a druggie tripping out after getting attacked by
a mountain lion or bear. As I said before, we can fix this—if you’ll let me.
But you’ll have to plead your case before the elders. There’s no getting around
that.”

“And if I don’t?” Kylie said slowly. “If I refuse to see them, to have
anything
to do with your clan or shifters in general?”

Hunter flashed her a sad smile. “I hope for your sake, sweetheart, that
you don’t force me to show you the answer.”