Remembering all the times Canino had bumped and rubbed against Rebekka as they traveled set Aryck’s teeth on edge. The Jaguar stirred, its desire to reach Rebekka melding with the man’s.
Aryck slipped into a lope. With no human form, Canino had been settled temporarily near a small pond.
The path opened up and Aryck saw Rebekka. She was sitting with her face lifted to the sun and her eyes closed. Caius was draped over her lap in tiger form, biting and batting Canino’s tail as it flicked back and forth.
A furious tide of emotion roared through Aryck. A swirling mix starting with the desire to mate but settling into jealousy as Jaguar and man both seethed.
He didn’t dare give in to the urge to shift forms, though he couldn’t stop himself from stalking toward her. On some level he knew it was perverse to want her to startle in guilt and jump to her feet, to hurriedly put distance between her and the Tiger. Without a human form, Canino wasn’t competition.
But knowing it didn’t change anything. Didn’t erase the image of her lounging next to another male, a cub with them as though they were a mated pair.
It did nothing to calm him when she opened her eyes, offering a smile in greeting even as Canino rolled to his back and she casually scratched the big cat’s chest. If not for Caius lying across her lap, Aryck would have picked her up bodily and hauled her off. He had to settle for a terse, “You’re needed. Seven Wolves lie unconscious after suffering from convulsions.”
Caius scrambled off her lap and Rebekka rose to her feet, hand going to the pocket of her pants to touch the journal in a gesture Aryck was well familiar with. “I’m ready,” she said.
Two steps and she was within his reach. His fingers closed around her wrist and touching her, taking possession, soothed him, though not enough to keep him from meeting the Tiger’s gaze and baring his teeth in warning.
Canino yawned.
Aryck nearly shifted.
“We need to hurry,” Rebekka said, snapping his attention back to her.
The amusement lurking in her eyes broke the leash of his control. If she hadn’t hurried to keep up with him, he would have dragged her onto the path and out of the Tigers’ view. He managed a little more distance, so sound wouldn’t carry and bring Canino and Caius running to investigate. Then he trapped her against a tree, his hand pinning hers above her head, holding her in an open, defenseless position as his mouth slammed down on hers.
He’d agonized since Phaedra ordered him away from the cabin. But instead of pining for him, seeking him out, Rebekka had sought the companionship of other males. It was infuriating, challenging—
It was an excuse to do the very things he’d been fantasizing about.
His tongue battled hers. His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her lower body tightly against his.
He ground into her. Rubbing his cock against her mound, her clit, until she smelled of pure, feminine arousal. Until she softened, whimpered, grew compliant and submissive.
The Jaguar urged him to take her to the ground. To use human fingers to rip and shred her clothing so it would never again be a barrier to mounting her, mating her.
The man was more than willing. Since Phaedra sent him away he’d relived those moments of having Rebekka beneath him, her thighs spread and her body receptive, needy.
He growled low in his throat, frustrated, not wanting to free her hands or to remove his arm from her waist. His mouth left hers and the growl deepened when she whispered, “The Wolves.”
A flash of guilt made him bare his teeth. He remembered the urgency he’d felt, the fear he wouldn’t get her to Jaguar lands in time to save the cubs.
“We’ll finish this later,” he said, nostrils flaring at her shiver of erotic fear and the look in her eyes that said she still needed to be convinced.
He stepped back but couldn’t bring himself to release her completely, not when they would soon be in the presence of other males. Wolves. Enemies.
Rebekka allowed Aryck to lead her to where the Wolves waited. Her thoughts and emotions were in too much chaos to protest the hand shackling her wrist as though she were a prisoner—or a prized possession.
Her channel spasmed. No man had ever reacted to her the way Aryck did, as if she belonged to him and it was all he could do not to take her.
She shouldn’t let it go further. Couldn’t. She knew it, but the minute he touched her, her mind shut down and her body ruled.
They were wrong for each other. He was pure Were and she was a healer who lived in the outcast brothels. They had no future together.
You don’t know that, a small internal voice claimed. You’re gaining allies. Phaedra. The parents of the Jaguar cubs. Aryck, whose father is alpha. Perhaps even the shaman and the Were ancestors.
Hope fluttered through Rebekka’s chest with the memory of Phaedra’s words. Nahuatl has spoken to the ancestors and your continued presence on Jaguar lands won’t anger them.
There’d been no talk of a time limit when she agreed to stay and share knowledge. And now, she was proving herself useful, an ambassador of sorts. What if—
A cold weight settled in her chest. There were other considerations besides giving in to lust or chasing the dream of having a husband and children, a true home.
“What do you know about the sick Wolves?” she asked.
“Little more than I already told you. A mated pair with three grown and two young pups returned to the Wolves’ village and began convulsing. They quickly lapsed into unconsciousness. Poison was suspected but the Wolf healer found no trace of it. Their trespassing so boldly onto our lands means the healer can’t save them and the alpha worries for his pack.”
They reached the gathered Wolves a short time later and, despite their coming in peace and asking for her help, Rebekka couldn’t suppress a small shiver at the sight of those in their furred form. Too many times she’d witnessed ferals running in packs and ripping humans apart in the red zone.
“You have nothing to fear,” the man with them said, stepping forward. “I am Jael, the pack’s enforcer. Your safety is guaranteed.”
A smile played at the corners of his mouth as his gaze flicked between her and Aryck, glancing down to the possessive hold on her wrist. His nostrils flared, taking in the scent of desire that no doubt still clung to them. But his expression quickly grew somber. “We need to hurry. I’m not sure even now we will make it back in time.”
Eighteen
AT least thirty Wolves milled around a home constructed of hides. All of them were in animal form. They bristled with hostility and suspicion, circled, some of the braver ones showing their teeth.
A glance from Jael sent them backing away. He opened the flap and stepped aside to allow Rebekka and Aryck to precede him.
It was roomy inside, large enough to house the family it belonged to. They lay clustered together. A man and a woman in human form, and from the looks of them Rebekka thought they were two of the adult offspring instead of the mated pair. The rest were furred.
The Wolf healer was there, along with a shaman. Both were crouched on the opposite side of the unconscious family.
The shaman wore a cape made of wolf hide. His hair was braided with beads made of bone. Scars marked his chest, as if a giant eagle had dug its talons through flesh and muscle and risen in flight with him, leaving him hanging, suspended in the air.
The drum he held between his knees was stretched hide trimmed with wolf fur and decorated with bone beads. He struck it with his fingertips, pounding out the steady rhythm of a heartbeat as the Jaguar elders had done in the presence of the dying cubs.
With matching yellow eyes, the Wolf shaman’s face so closely resembled that of the healer next to him that Rebekka thought they must be brother and sister. Neither spoke as she knelt beside the female who’d been in human form when she slipped into unconsciousness.