She caught Connor’s elusive smile.
Wade. Alpha male all the way. He wouldn’t let Connor command him or have the last word either, no matter how worn out he was.
She loved her brother. He could be as hardheaded as the rest of them, but he still had a heart of gold. And Wade, well, tonight she definitely wanted to keep him close.
When she reached the tree where she’d hidden her clothes, she jumped onto the branch, climbed higher until she was on the branch where her clothes were stashed, and then shifted and began to dress. She said in a low voice, “Go, take him back to the resort.”
Connor shook his head.
Stubborn man, but protective. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight until he had her back at the cottage. Kat wasn’t leaving her, either.
“I’m staying with him at my cottage,” she warned Connor. She would take care of Wade. She wanted to ask him so many questions… when he was awake enough to respond. She had to know where his brother was. She was certain Wade was just as concerned about David and his whereabouts.
“No,” Connor said.
She had expected Connor to say no, but she wasn’t going along with it. “Okay, so he stays with you and Kat?”
Connor grunted. “Hurry up, Maya.”
“I’m hurrying!” She pulled her shirt over her head. “Or Kat and I can bunk together, and you can sleep with Wade.”
Chapter 15
“Get real, Maya,” Connor told Kat.
She stifled a laugh. She could just imagine the two large men sharing a bed, fighting over the covers, and shoving each other away if one encroached on the other’s side of the mattress. She laughed this time because the image proved just too precious.
Dressed and ready to return to the cottages, she climbed down from the tree and looked at Wade’s sleeping face.
“Okay, so what is the plan?” she asked, as if letting Connor rule the roost, although he wasn’t. Not this time.
He didn’t say as they continued to walk through the thick vegetation until they saw the first of the cottages, Kat’s and Connor’s. Kat leaped onto their deck, shifted, and slipped inside the cottage. She reappeared wearing only a long pale-blue T-shirt.
The first thing out of Kat’s mouth was, “Is he okay?”
That got a disgruntled grunt from Connor. Maya was sure that wasn’t the question he wanted from Kat. Not when he was feeling somewhat unsettled about her interest in another jaguar.
Kat cast Connor an annoyed look and folded her arms. “You know, if you’re always going to be worried about me and other men, you’ve got a problem. Deal with it.” Then she stalked smartly inside their cottage and slammed the door with a resounding thunk.
“Hmm,” Maya said.
“Don’t say a word, Maya,” Connor warned as he made his way with Wade through the jungle to Maya’s deck.
“You know she has a point.”
He gave his sister a cutting look. She tilted her head to the side. “So you stay with Wade, and I stay with Kat, and we have an all-night girl party where we dish impossible alpha males. Or you can go to bed with Kat and make it up to her, and I’ll…”
“You’re not going to bed with Wade Patterson, damn it, Maya.”
She sighed. “I didn’t say I was.” Not that it was any of her brother’s business. “But I want to talk with him.” They climbed the steps to her deck. She unlocked the back door, and they walked inside. “We’ll be fine. He’s too sleepy to be any trouble.”
As if they hadn’t been there before.
Connor carried Wade up the stairs to her bed and dumped him on the mattress, rough enough to see if the guy really was sleeping or just playing possum.
Wade didn’t stir a muscle and appeared to be out for the count.
Connor turned his hard gaze on Maya. “You tell me the minute he wakes. All right?”
She nodded. She would, truly. But there was awake and there was awake. As long as Wade had a hint of sleep about him, she wasn’t calling Connor.
Besides, she knew how Connor would make it up to Kat. Maya wasn’t about to interrupt them. Despite what he thought he wanted, she was certain Connor wouldn’t appreciate it if she ran over to their cabin and stopped them in the middle of getting heavy and hot to tell him Wade was awake.
She could imagine Kat being angry with Connor all over again. And with Maya this time, too.
When Wade woke enough from his drowsy state to have some idea of his surroundings, he felt a woman’s arm draped over his naked waist as he lay in a soft, white bed, a ceiling fan spinning above. He was lying on his side, his back to her chest, when he took a deeper breath and breathed in her sweet scent.
Maya.
He turned to look at her. Her blond hair spilled over her bare shoulders and her breasts were naked, her nipples rosy. An ice-white sheet was draped over their waists and legs.
She was sound asleep, her breathing even, her expression peaceful.
His heart was hammering a hundred miles a minute. How, where… what was he doing naked here in bed with… he felt her bare leg touching the back of his… a very nude Maya?
Sunlight pressed against the sheers over the expansive windows in the living room, covering three walls, and he realized it had to be early afternoon. He didn’t want Maya having to explain why he was here, should Connor come pounding on her door. Hell, what was he doing here?
“Maya,” he whispered, wanting to be here with her like this as much as she obviously did with him. But the last memories he had were of tracking Bettinger and his hunter minion in the jungle, hearing they’d taken down the female jaguar, and rushing to her rescue.
Maya opened her eyes, looking sleepy and sexy and cuddly.
“Hmm,” she said, and tried to snuggle closer against him.
“Maya,” he whispered, turning onto his back, pulling her into the crook of his shoulder, and stroking her long, silky hair. Then he recalled having been shot. He vaguely remembered a growly Connor helping him into a pair of sweatpants. After that, nothing.
He wasn’t wearing them now. He suspected he’d removed them sometime during the night, not used to wearing anything in bed. Or… he looked down at Maya… she had removed them.
He leaned over and kissed her, just a sweet brush of his lips against her sexy mouth. Not expecting her to respond, he was startled when she reacted as if she was starved for affection, kissing him back, sliding on top of him, and molding to him.
She was kissing him so frantically that he suspected something was wrong. “Maya.” He tried disengaging from her, pushing her shoulders back gently so that he could see her expression.
Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked stricken.
“Maya,” he said consolingly and pulled her close against his body. She sobbed against his chest, her tears falling freely on his bare skin. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“You could have been killed,” she choked out, her hand clenched in a fist against his waist.
She could have been killed, and he would never have forgiven himself.
“I… would never have seen you again,” she said, swallowing hard.
He drew her clenched hand to his mouth, kissing her fingers until she spread them like a flower opening its petals. Then she cupped his face, her teary eyes gazing into his. She lowered her mouth to his, and this time they kissed slow and hard, her tongue in his mouth, his in hers. Her hands slid over his hair, her body pressed fully against his.
He combed his fingers through her silky tresses as their kissing went back to soft and gentle. He swept his hands down her back and felt her shiver a little, then reached down to spread her legs for him as the hunger for her reared up inside him.