In the back of her mind, she wanted to pull her camera out of her bag and take a picture, take a hundred pictures. That was just plain crazy. She stayed porcelain-statue still, afraid any sudden movement would trigger him to pounce. She had envisioned watching one swimming in a river or maybe drinking water at a riverbank. She’d thought she might catch sight of one lounging in a tree while she watched from a nice, safe distance, but not on the prowl like this while she was standing in its path.
Her heart still pounding out-of-bounds, she stared at the jaguar, which had the most beautiful golden eyes and matching golden body covered in large black rosettes. His belly was white and covered with more rosettes. His long whiskers bristled. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air, taking a whiff of her scent, she was certain, although there wasn’t a whisper of a breeze with all the vegetation surrounding them. Was he trying to smell just how tasty she might be? Despite the muggy heat, a chill raced down her spine.
His eyes were round, fully watching her as he stood frozen in place. His tail twitched, jerking back and forth in a tight motion, just like her cat’s would when she watched a bird on a tree branch near the living room window. Her cat’s eyes would be just as huge as the jaguar’s and her body just as tense, ready to pounce on her prey if she could have gotten beyond the glass windowpane.
Don’t move, Kathleen screamed silently to herself. He is curious. Just curious. You are not dinner.
Who was she kidding? All she could think of was the Indian word for jaguar, yaguar, meaning “he who kills at one leap.” Looking at the way he was standing so still, she wondered if he was thinking about it. He wasn’t in pouncing form, crouched, ready to leap, but maybe he was waiting for her to run, offering more sport that way.
They would eat deer and tapirs. Why not a tasty woman?
Then to her shock, she heard another growl. This one came from behind her. Yet the jaguar was still standing in front of her, and he hadn’t made a sound. Her skin grew a fresh rash of goose bumps.
Maybe he wasn’t a he, but a she, and her nearly full-grown cub was behind Kathleen, coming for dinner. Or maybe this one was a he—he looked awfully big not to be, around six feet in length and weighing, she guessed, around two hundred and fifty pounds—and the other was his mate. How big was the other, then?
If they were mating, maybe Kathleen was needed to keep them well fed for another bout of tying it on. That didn’t improve her outlook on the situation in the least. The only thing she could hope for was that they had the hots for each other, and one human wouldn’t distract them that thoroughly. Maybe that’s why they had been roaring. As a love call. Or maybe he would think Kathleen was a threat to his mate.
She hoped both cats had recently eaten and that she wasn’t about to be on the menu.
He slowly walked toward her. She had to tell herself that was because the other jaguar was somewhere behind her with Kathleen inconveniently in between the two of them.
She wanted desperately to dash off. But she couldn’t outrun a big cat that could take her down with one leap. Not to mention that if she turned and bolted, she would probably run straight into the other jaguar.
She meant to glance behind her for a tree that she could reach and quickly climb, but when she looked over her shoulder, she saw the other cat. And her heart nearly stopped. Her breathing definitely did.
Smaller, though not by much, the second jaguar observed her with the same golden eyes and had the same golden coat with black rosettes and the same hungry look. This was so not good.
She angled herself away from the cat behind her, returned her attention to the bigger cat in front of her, and backed toward the tree she’d spotted. If she didn’t move, the big guy in front of her was going to walk right into her. She planned to climb the tree and stay up there until the cats went away, certain they had come to see each other and weren’t interested in her.
If she just got out of their way, everything would be fine. That was what she hoped, anyway. She even had the dumb notion that she could take some great shots of the two cats once she was safely in the tree and they were still on the ground in perfect view for picture taking. What if she could even capture the jaguars mating on video?
She bumped into something and nearly had a seizure—thinking she had run into the other cat. She turned to find it was the massive tree instead, its roots sprawling all over the ground and nearly tripping her. Vines wrapped around the trunk, coiling upward while plants nestled in its embrace. But she didn’t have time to enjoy the bit of relief she felt that she’d only bumped into the tree and not the cat.
She grabbed a vine and with a lot more difficulty than she thought she would have—the heat, the lack of sleep, her wet, slippery hands, the panic flooding her bloodstream—she finally managed to scramble up the tree into one of the lower branches. She was glad the vine hadn’t ripped loose because of her weight. Then she tried to climb a little higher to put more distance between her and the jaguars. Thank God, the Army had taught her how to rappel off brick buildings and wooden towers and to climb mountains, although swinging from trees was something that might come in handy now. Come to think of it, she had swung on a rope across a very deep trench on the officers’ obstacle course.
If her luck was anything like it had been running recently, she could just imagine grabbing a vine here as she tried to swing from tree to tree like one of the spider monkeys she had seen doing so, and accidentally getting hold of a nice meaty snake instead.
She hadn’t made it very far up the tree’s massive trunk, which was so tall that it shot up toward the sun like a skyscraper, when a huge golden body went sailing past her shoulder and landed on a sturdy branch to the left of her head. His sudden action startled her so that she let out a strangled scream, her skin heating with a sudden prickle of fear, and she nearly fell out of the tree.
As evidenced by his large male package, she noticed right away that he was a he.
She glanced down to see if the other jaguar planned to join him. But all she did was stretch her body up toward Kathleen, her claws fully extended like long, curved miniature daggers, and then she raked the tree trunk.
Marking the territory. Her territory. And one human who wasn’t supposed to be here.
Now what was Kathleen to do?
His pheromones were kicking up a firestorm again as Connor stared down at the drenched woman dressed in sturdy hiking books, wide-brimmed hat, long-sleeved tan shirt, and lightweight trousers, a field pack strapped to her back. She was pretty, petite, and petrified—as evidenced by the smell of fear on her. But even so, he could smell a hint of the sweet fragrance she wore and a sweet feminine scent that he swore was Kathleen McKnight’s. The captain he’d saved in the jungle a year ago. But this woman had the biggest sage-green eyes he had ever seen—green, not blue like the captain’s had been. And her hair had been blond and cut ultrashort, not long, dark brown, and in curls, like this woman’s.
Was she a botanist or wildlife biologist? Even if she was, what in the world was she doing in the rain forest without a guide or protection? Sure, he had witnessed an American biologist doing research in the Amazon on his own, but a woman normally worked with either a husband or a team of researchers. Women didn’t usually venture into the jungle alone.
That made him believe she had become separated from her party and was lost. Despite the difficulties this would cause for him and his sister, he had to get the woman to safety. He wished in the worst way he could convince her she had nothing to fear from them, but as a jaguar, even if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t expose his wicked canines, he was a predator to fear.