“And found you a lovely air-conditioned cabana to stay in.”
“Hmm,” she said, running her fingers through his hair as she rested her chin on his chest and gazed at him. “You did.”
“And then found you this lovely air-conditioned cottage to sleep in.”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Wasn’t that the best wake-up you’d ever had?”
She grinned. “I’ll admit that since I’ve been waking up with you, they’ve all been pretty nice and eventful. Although I doubt Maya will be very happy.”
He laughed. “She’ll expect it. And be happy for it. So what do you say we get married?”
She tugged gently at his hair. “What if I’m not a jaguar-shifter like you and Maya any longer?”
“You know too much about us,” he said very seriously. “You’re part of the family already, Kat. If you want to take time to decide about marriage, that’s fine with me. But I do want to marry you.”
She sighed.
He kissed her mouth. “Ready to get up? We need to grab a bite of breakfast and get on the road. How does taking a shower first sound to you?”
“I suppose you want to conserve water.”
“No, I want to ravage you in the shower. You know, as jaguars, we love the water.”
Smiling, she rolled off him, but just as swiftly as a jaguar could move, he was off the bed, scooping her up in his arms before she could agree or disagree. He swung around and headed for the bathroom.
With having her own shower masseur, how could she go wrong?
But still, she couldn’t say yes to marriage, not yet. She had to know if she was truly one of them. If she wasn’t, Connor shouldn’t be tied down to her. He should have a shifter to love who was just like him.
She breathed in the smell of the water and wondered if the reason it smelled so… refreshing was because she still was a shifter… who couldn’t shift.
The walls of the cottages were paper-thin, and since hers was butted up against Connor and Kat’s and because jaguars had such good hearing, Maya heard everything, including Kat’s indignation that Connor would call her his wife without first speaking with her about it and Connor’s muddled attempt at asking Kat to marry him.
Maya was going to have to have a talk with him.
Then the lovemaking. Couldn’t they have at least pulled the bed away from the wall?
And the shower running, and more lovemaking.
She stretched in bed and closed her eyes, still enjoying a lazy morning wake-up. Although she wished she had a mate to wake up to. She wondered again about the mystery jaguar. Was he staying somewhere nearby? Sleeping in a car? Or at one of the cottages?
She climbed out of bed and moseyed into the bathroom to take another shower, wishing again she had someone to share it with.
After showering, she had just finished getting dressed when Connor banged on her door. “What’s wrong?” Maya whispered, letting him in, then shutting the door quickly behind him.
“They’re here. Gonzales’s men. And they’re looking for blood.”
Chapter 26
“I want you to come with me, and we’ll stay with Kat at our cottage. That way if we have to deal with Gonzales’s men, we’ll at least be together,” Connor said in a rush, and Maya knew that he didn’t want to leave Kat alone for even a moment.
He grabbed Maya’s bag, but she quickly asked as she shoved on a pair of hiking boots, “Why didn’t you bring Kat over here?” The move would have been the most logical, and if Connor was anything, he was the most commonsense one in the family.
“She has shifted.”
Maya had thought he would look perturbed that Kat had no control over her shifting, that given the current situation, they could be having a lot more difficulty, and that Maya had been at fault, but he seemed guardedly pleased.
She cleared her throat and studied Connor’s expression. She hadn’t been wrong. He definitely had a sparkle to his eyes and a barely suppressed gleeful look. “And this is good, why?”
“She worried she might not be a shifter any longer.”
Maya closed her gaping mouth. Omigod, she had never considered that Kat might all of a sudden lose her shifter status. That somehow her own blood would beat it back and dominate again.
All she could manage was a feeble, “Oh.”
“If she did, I’d have to turn her.”
Maya considered Connor’s expression, dark with determination. He was serious!
“I’m not losing her, Maya, no matter what.”
He didn’t have to convince Maya of that! “I knew you felt something for her the first time you’d met her, trussed up by the bad guys. Took you long enough to admit it, though.”
Ignoring her, Connor peeked through the curtains. “All clear.”
“Where were they?” Maya whispered.
“Looking at our rental vehicle. The police spoke with them in a nice, cheerful way. I figure they knew who they worked for and were trying to smooth things over, but the police didn’t tell them we were staying in these cottages.”
He grabbed Maya’s bag, and she cautiously opened the door. Then with one more look to make sure no one was about who might see them, she led the way to Kat’s and Connor’s cottage next door. He unlocked the door and they quickly moved inside, then he relocked the door.
In her jaguar form, her whole body screaming with unleashed primal power, Kat paced across the tile floor. She stopped to look at them, her expression feral. Maya had no doubt that if the men had broken into the cottage, Kat would have taken care of every one of them.
Maya beamed at her, then rushed across the floor, knelt, and gave her a big hug. Kat rested her head against Maya’s shoulder and then rubbed in a cat’s way of greeting, her tail whipping around with happiness.
Maya whispered against her ear, “Don’t you agree to marry my brother until he asks you in the proper way.”
Kat licked her cheek as if in total agreement.
Connor grunted to see the women ganging up on him, then peered around the curtain as discreetly as he could to see if anyone had followed their movements.
“Do you think they know that’s our rental vehicle, or are they just checking because we happen to be tourists who might fit the descriptions of Kat and her male and female companions?” Maya asked.
“Either is a distinct possibility. They’re not around now. At least in sight. But they could very well be staking out the car.”
“Should we make a run for it?” Maya asked.
As a jaguar, that’s what they would normally do. Leave, rather than confront someone with guns. When they were in the Amazon near their hut, it was a different story. Or like the last confrontation they’d had with Gonzales’s men in the jungle where they didn’t have any choice. If they faced men like these, the situation was truly a case of survival of the fittest.
But in civilization, they had to be more… civilized. Unless they had no choice. Already, Maya was considering stripping naked, then coaxing the men into the cottage, but only after Connor had shifted. Then locking the door, she would shift herself, and the jaguars would take care of the men.
But what a mess they would leave behind for the maid service to clean up. And everyone had been so nice to them here in the village that she didn’t want to do that to them.
Connor raised his brows at Maya.
Maya considered Kat. “Guess we can’t make a run for it, not until she shifts back. Although, what if we left with her like she is? We’d confuse the hell out of Gonzales’s men. No Kat. Big cat instead.”
Connor didn’t say anything right away as he watched Kat. She was looking back at him, and Maya swore she was willing to do whatever would work. Connor folded his arms. “We wait it out for a while. An hour. See what happens. If Kat doesn’t change back, we might just try it. If she’s agreeable. But the problem really is that it’s light out, we came here with my wife, and we leave with a jaguar that we didn’t have, and—”