B008IJW70G EBOK (5 page)

      “Keep focusing. Don’t let your mind stray.”

      Riley’s eyes snapped open at him. Angry. She was sick of trying. And who was he to say she wasn’t trying?

      “It’s not working.”

      Hunter reached for her shoulder, to touch her, fingers curling over her skin. Riley shrugged his hand away, fast. 

      “You’re not ready. Maybe I’ve pushed you too fast.”

      Riley stomped off. This sucked. So she couldn’t change into a stupid leopard. So what? She headed into the forest, feet aching as they snagged at torn branches and hit other sharp tree offcasts.

      She cursed Sophia for telling her not to wear shoes. 

      “Stop.”

      Riley heard Hunter’s command but she ignored him. 

      “Now.” His deep voice rumbled through her. 

      She swung backward as he grabbed, lunged, at her arm. His fingers cut into her arm, made her want to scream out with the sharpness of his hold. 

      “You don’t walk away from me like that.”

      “Why not?” She flung herself around, wriggled until he dropped his hold. His grip hurt.

      “Because it’s not safe for you out here. Not alone, you got that?”

      Part of her liked the anger igniting in his eyes. Liked that he wanted to protect her. 

      “So now you’re worried about me?” she asked.

      She watched as he clenched his jaw, at the tick that couldn’t be disguised. 

      “You
are
my responsibility. Once you understand what’s going on here, what’s at stake, you’ll understand.”

      “Understand?” she spat at him. Now she was angry again and there was nothing she could do to stop herself. “All I understand is that everyone seems to be keeping secrets from me, and that I have no idea,
at all
, what is really going on.”

      She could tell he wasn’t enjoying this conversation any more than she was, but still. He had all the information. He had all the power. And she knew nothing.

      “Come on,” he ordered.

      This time she didn’t argue. If he thought there was something out there in the forest that she needed to be wary of, he was probably right. And her feet were killing her. 

      “Need me to carry you?”

      She looked down at his own feet. Bare like hers.

      Riley just scowled at him. 

      He gave her that annoyingly handsome grin back, and she wished, so hard, that she could slap it straight off his face. 

They sat, staring at one another. She avoided the catch of his green eyes. Now that she knew what she could potentially do, it
was
intriguing, but just because she’d seen him change into a wild cat didn’t mean she could. And it was frustrating. He’d just shown her, again, and she still had no idea what to do. It was like he expected she would know. Was it meant to come naturally? Should she know what it felt like?

      “What if it had just happened, like, at school?”

      Hunter grinned. “Carnage.”

      She knew that wasn’t his serious answer. She raised one eyebrow at him, probably the only thing she could do that he couldn’t, and waited. Being in the forest, sitting here with him, was kind of nice. 

      But she was still frustrated.  

      “Seriously? It couldn’t have happened. Not really. You’ve only been able to change since you turned seventeen. Someone would have had to rile you up pretty bad to force it, and the pain would have given you enough of a fright to stop the trigger.”

      A look crossed his face, like he hadn’t meant to tell her that. 

      “So it will hurt?” she asked. 

      Hunter nodded. “Yeah, but it’s worth it, and it hurts less and less each time.”

      Okay.
Wow.
At least he was being honest. “So on a scale of one to ten?”

      “Eight,” he said. “A solid eight for the first time.”

      They sat in silence. She had no idea what to say. An eight sounded pretty bad to her. 

      “Want to try again?” he suggested. 

      She shook her head. “No.”

      Now he looked mischievous, like he’d figured something out.

      “Come on, just one more time.” Hunter smiled. His perfect white teeth seemed to glisten in the sun. “I promise it won’t be as bad as you’re expecting it to be.”

      From the intensity of his stare, she knew he wasn’t going to give up. 

      “Just once?”

      He grinned. “If you promise to try hard. And once you’ve proven you can do it, Sophia will fill you in on all the blanks.”

      She stood up. “Let’s get it over with then.”

      “Once you’ve done it you’ll want to do it all the time,” he said with a grin.

      “What?”

      He just grinned again. “Puss, puss, puss.” 

He sounded like he was calling a little kitty cat. Anger bubbled slowly, swiftly, through her body. In to her mind. 

“Puss, puss, puss.” He repeated, eyes challenging her. 

Hunter was baiting her. He was trying to rile her.
And it was working.

“Come on pussy cat.” 

This time she watched the way his lips moved, taunting her, as he repeated the word.

A deep growl formed within her throat and her body felt like it was going to explode with fury.
She couldn’t stop it
. She’d get him for this, she’d make him wish he’d never called her that. 

But her feet were rooted to the spot. Stuck. It only made her frustration, her fury, build. Like her wildness was trying to claw its way out, desperate to be unleashed now she’d acknowledged it.  

      “Come on puss cat, don’t you want to scratch me?”

      Riley saw him change, watched through blurred vision as he shed his clothes then turned into a leopard beneath her half-lidded eyes; eyes that were burning so hard, stinging, so she could barely see. Then everything went a dark red, like she was swimming in a pool of liquid velvet. And it burned. Like her entire body was on fire, like every inch of her skin was burning away from her bones. 

      “
Come and get me kitty cat. Little itty bitty cat
.”

      The voice beating in her mind was fierce, low, challenging. A voice she’d never heard before. Riley didn’t know where it was coming from. How she could hear it. Where she was. Why she was even capable of thinking when she was burning alive. 

      “
Whiskers. That’s a good name for a little puss cat.”

      The roar tore the red from around her and revealed him, the black leopard, stretched out before her. Her eyes fixed on his belly, at the soft, downy fur exposed. 

      She wanted to attack him. To rip open his stomach and wipe the lazy look off his face. 

      It wasn’t until she pounced through the air that she realized the growl, the roar, was coming from her. The pain was gone.

      
And she was a cat. 

      How was that even possible! Riley landed on all four feet, her anger replaced by amazement. 

      Hunter showed her his teeth in a spine tingling, alpha smile. 

      “
See
.” 

      Riley heard him say the word, could feel the word, but he hadn’t moved his mouth to speak. She went to open hers, to form a word, but found she couldn’t. 

      He just nodded at her, then beckoned with his tail, flicking it over his back. 

      Riley followed. Her feet fell into a four beat rhythm, stretching out alongside Hunter. 

      
It was unreal.
She was actually, without a doubt, a black leopard. And it was so exhilarating, she forgot all about wanting to kill him or the fact that she’d kind of seen him naked, and let the joy of running fast across the forest fill her mind.

CHAPTER FIVE

      “Are there, um, I don’t mean to sound stupid, but… are there any
real
leopards around here?”

      Hunter stretched out in the sun. His body, even in human form, was similar to his physique as a cat. Long, sleek and lithe. Strong. 

      So strong that she gulped, hard, nearly every time her eyes traced across his frame. Like they were now, as she rested on the ground beside him and watched him. 

      Physically, she’d never felt so exhausted. Her muscles aching, but satisfied. But her mind? She’d never, ever been so confused.

      “Not stupid,” he said. “There are
real
leopards.” His tone was dry, but he was grinning. 

      “Should I freak out about them eating my horses?”

      Hunter shook his head and ran a hand through the shadow of his hair. So short it was barely anything at all. 

      “If they were going to take them down they would have by now.”

      “And by take them down you mean kill them?” she asked.

      He nodded. 

      The thought made her stomach curl. 

      “So why haven’t they?”

      He propped himself up on one elbow. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that.”

      She wasn’t sure what he was hinting at. “Why?”

      “Because Sophia told me only to tell you if you directly asked the question.”

      She hated that they had been having secret conversations about her. What else had they been discussing?

      “Spill.”

      “From the day you arrived I’ve been injecting them with a repellent.”

      He looked smug.

      “Hold up, let me get this right.” She was furious. With him and Sophia. “Behind my back, you’ve been injecting my horses with
poison
? No wonder they’ve been a mess.”

      Now it was his turn to throw her a look. “Their behavior’s your fault.”

      “My fault?” How did he even know they’d been acting up?

      “You were too sad when your sister died to focus properly on riding, and since you’ve been here they’ve been spooked by the change in you. They can sense something’s different.”

      “You really should become a shrink.”

      He ignored her. “It’s not poison.”

      Riley just shook her head and lay back in the sun. This was unreal. Totally, insanely unreal.

      “It’s a natural tea-tree potion. Makes their blood smell strong and stops insects from biting them too.”

      It was hard to stay angry at him. At least he’d been trying to help. “Do you ever want to, you know, kill an animal?”

      He shrugged. “I have before, when I’ve had to, but not for pleasure, if that’s what you mean.”

      “But our kind, I mean
your
kind, do sometimes?”

      “We’re all different.” He reached out to touch her finger, the tip of his nail skimming her skin where it sat on the grass. 

      It made her jump. Made her hot. Made her not want to move her hand in case he stopped. 

      “Some of the leopard shifters stay changed almost all the time. They like to live and hunt like their wild self. Me? I’m happy with a burger or a steak.”

      She turned to watch him. Was he joking? Hunter smiled before he retracted his hand.  

      “No vegetarian options, but I’m a good boy and eat my greens when I have to. I like my meat juicy, but from the butcher or burger bar is fine by me.”

      It was hard not to laugh at him. At the grin on his face which now mirrored hers, and the weirdness of what they were talking about. At everything that was taking place here. Riley was somehow satiated, satisfied, after shifting. A laziness had taken over her body, making her want to lie around in the sun, talking and snoozing, for the rest of the day. She felt… connected to Hunter. Like something had changed between them. Like they’d become close. Like they’d known each other forever. Yet for no time at all.

      Would she wake up and find it was all just a dream?

      “Do you know how ridiculous this all sounds?” 

      “Yup.”

      They lay, backs on the soft cushion of grass, eyes turned up to the blue sky. She could feel him so close beside her, but she didn’t want to move away. Didn’t want to get any closer, but didn’t want to move away either. Like she was starting to crave him being close. 

      “Did I actually do it before? I mean, I was actually a leopard, wasn’t I?”

      He turned his head to face her. She did the same to him. Almost became lost in the green pools of his eyes as they locked on hers. Felt a connection, a bond, like almost visible electricity pulling between them. 

      “You’re ready for this, Riley. It’s your destiny.”      

      Part of her hoped he was wrong. That her gran was just old and confused, that she believed in a hoax that wasn’t true, but there was no denying what she’d seen him do. What she’d done herself.

      Hunter was as much a leopard as he was a human. She’d seen it with her own eyes. 

      What she couldn’t understand was that she was actually the same…
creature
, that he was. 

      It scared her. Worried her.
Terrified
her.

      “Want to try again?”

      She didn’t trust her voice to reply.

      Hunter reached out and cupped her chin with his hand. Made her look at him, into the clear, shining green of his irises. 

      “Okay?” he asked.

      She nodded before forcing a whisper from her throat. “Okay,” she repeated.

      He held her gaze, kept his hand on her, before smiling and letting it drop away. 

      “You’re as beautiful as she said, you know?”

      “She told you about me?” Suddenly her voice had returned. 

      “Of course.” He looked confused. “We’re meant to be together, Riley. I know everything there is to know about you.”

      Great. So he did know. How more embarrassing could life get? 

      And what was with the
meant to be together
? What guy said that? Did he actually buy into the whole soul mate spiel?

      “Um, I hope I haven’t led you on or anything.”

      He laughed. So hard she swore the ground shook, just a little. It was like a bear rumbling inside a cave. 

      “It’ll all make sense soon. Chill,” he said.