Tempted by the Jaguar #2: Revelation (Riverford Shifters) (6 page)

As she trembled and rode the wave of her
climax, Hunter drove into her a few more times in quick succession before he
gave one final thrust of his hips that shook her to the core and abruptly
released her shoulder, throwing his head back as he came with something that
was half-roar, half-moan. For a long moment, he held them in that position,
cock still somehow hard and buried as deep as was physically possible in her
body while the spray of water behind them began to run lukewarm.

Panting as though she had just finished
running a marathon, Kylie let her forehead fall onto Hunter’s shoulder, feeling
drowsy and content to stay just as they were the whole night if that’s what her
lover wanted. That had gone beyond any kind of fantasy she could have ever
hoped for. That she had almost denied herself such a transcendent experience
was a travesty narrowly dodged.

Kylie kissed his damp flesh affectionately,
causing him to stir and lift his mouth from where it had fallen against her
neck. When their eyes met, their mouths naturally came together in a kiss that
was nowhere near as wild and consuming as those that had come before but still
just as passionate.

She gasped when she abruptly felt him
thrust up into her still-tingling passage.

“Again?” she asked breathlessly against
Hunter’s swollen lips, gazing at him with hooded eyes as he continued to slowly
rock his hips against her, rekindling the fire that hadn’t quite been banked
deep within her core.

He leered. “That was just the appetizer.
For the main course, I want to see you spread out on my bed, shaking with
pleasure while I slowly taste every inch of your body before making love to you
until you or I pass out.”

Kylie ghosted her lips teasingly over
his. “We’ll see.”

Hunter’s eyes flashed with desire. “I
always keep my promises.”

“Um—this is probably the absolute worst
time to bring this up, but it just now occurred to me and I’m kind of freaking
out about it now, but… I’m not on the pill, and we didn’t use any condoms,”
Kylie blurted out into Hunter’s chest as they lay intertwined on his bed after
their last round of lovemaking.

She expected the body beneath her to stiffen,
but instead, he chuckled, leaving her utterly confused and a little irritated.
“It’s not funny, dammit!” she hissed, looking up at his grinning face with
narrowed eyes. “Maybe mating and having kids is just par for the course for
jaguar shifters, but
I
was brought up as a human, and I’m in no way,
shape, or form ready to be a mom at twenty!”

He bent down and kissed her on the nose.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh, but the tone of your voice reminded me of a
guilt-ridden kid confessing to stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, like you
expected me to scold you or something.” He squeezed her waist affectionately.
“Don’t worry. I swear I’m disease free. Plus, a shifter can only get pregnant
when she’s in heat, and even then, it’s a little hard to conceive. We jaguars
usually have to bang like bunnies for all twelve days before the woman’ll get
pregnant.”

“But I’m a Returner, so…” Kylie reminded
him.

“True,” Hunter replied thoughtfully. “We
should probably stay far away from each other when you’re in heat.” He cradled
her face in his hands and began to gently caress her cheeks with his thumbs. “Now
that I’ve had you, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to resist you, even if
you
have
learned how to control your pheromones. It’s a damn miracle
that I was able to drag myself away earlier, so let’s not push our luck.”

Kylie felt her tension instantly melt
away. “Thank God for small favors.”

Hunter released her face, and Kylie laid
her head back onto his chest as he wrapped an arm around her waist. He then
slowly began to thread his fingers through her hair.

She sighed. It was strange how
comfortable she felt cuddling with Hunter like this. Had it only been a couple
of hours ago that she had been scoffing at jumping into bed with a guy she had
barely known for a couple of days? While by no means a prude, she had never
been so uninhibited as she had been today. She had dated her last boyfriend for
a couple of months before they had even gone beyond heavy petting to sex, and
before him, there had rarely been any intimate touching at all.

Maybe losing control of her first heat
wasn’t so surprising after all. Kylie absently wondered how Paul was going to
react to the change in relationship status of Hunter and her—

“Oh crap!” Kylie suddenly cried, her
head shooting up and nearly making Hunter pull a clump of her hair out at the
root. “I forgot to call my dad back! He called me right after you left me
writhing on the floor from the heat.”

Hunter frowned. “That makes me sound
like a complete douchebag, doesn’t it? I really am sorry you had to go through
that all by yourself for so long after I left.”

Kylie surged up to kiss him softly. “You
don’t need to apologize at all. As far as I’m concerned, we dodged a pretty big
bullet there. The way my luck’s been going lately, I would have definitely
gotten pregnant.”

“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel rotten
about it. Should we be worried about your father showing up here?”

“If I don’t call him soon, he’ll
definitely be pounding on my apartment door so hard that we’d hear him up here
before morning. I couldn’t completely hide how god-awful I felt from my voice,
so he could tell something was up. I lied and told him I thought I had the
stomach flu. He sent my friend, Molly, over with some medicine, and I was
supposed to call him before she left. Then Jennifer showed up just as Molly was
leaving, and I was so busy trying to explain who she was without giving
anything away that I completely forgot. I left my cell phone in the bag he sent
over.”

“You can use mine,” he offered.

Kylie shook her head. “He’d freak if I
did. He doesn’t know about you or any of this, remember? Plus, I’m supposed to
be sick in bed trying not to puke my guts up.”

She reluctantly pulled herself away from
his warmth and sat back on her haunches beside him. “I need to go get the
change of clothes he sent over, anyway. In the meantime, can I borrow a t-shirt
and a pair of sweatpants or something?”

Hunter snorted. “You’ll look like a kid
playing dress-up in her father’s clothes.” His eyes traveled down the length of
her body that was now on full display before he gave himself a hard shake and
sat up as well. “Let me get it for you. I imagine you’re probably feeling
pretty sore right now.”

Kylie felt a momentary panic before she
forced herself to give him a sour look. There was no way she could let him
anywhere near that bag while the bracelet and Paul’s toothbrush were still
inside, so she couldn’t afford for him to get suspicious now.

“Exactly,” she huffed. “That’s why
there’s no way I’m letting you go anywhere
near
that apartment and its
pheromones of doom! As delicious as you look right now, I really don’t think my
body can handle that monster again tonight!”

He grinned, looking entirely too smug
for her peace of mind. “Don’t worry. The beauty of being a shifter is that we
recover fast.”

Kylie fingered the tender place on her
collarbone that likely sported Hunter’s teeth marks. Yeah, she definitely
didn’t want Paul seeing the wound. She needed time to figure out how to explain
to him why she had decided to get involved with Hunter at such a dangerous time
that didn’t involve the words “hot body.”

“Great. Now, if you’re finished looking
like the Cheshire Cat’s sexy cousin, I’m going to dig in your closet for a
shirt.”

“It might be best if I put some clothes
on, too,” Hunter said, getting up and following her somewhat stilted gait
across the room to the closet. “Pheromones or not, it’ll be hard to resist you
once you come back to bed if I’m still naked.”

“You’re insatiable,” Kylie scolded,
though she wasn’t irritated in the least. Just thinking about all the wild and
passionate sex they had just had sent a flair of heat into her sex that had her
squeezing her legs together.

After throwing on a white t-shirt and a
pair of black sweatpants that she was practically swimming in even after
rolling up the cuffs and cinching the drawstring, Kylie spend a good five
minutes being kissed enthusiastically by her new lover before he allowed her to
leave the bedroom. She returned to the bathroom to retrieve her apartment key
from her discarded jeans and barefoot, hurried down to her new apartment before
anyone could see her in that ridiculous getup.

Once inside, Kylie wasted no time in
grabbing the gym bag and then shutting herself into the foyer closet. Hopefully
the pheromones still circulating in the air were minimal inside. At any rate,
she would only be there for a few minutes tops. Any longer, and Hunter might
decide to come see what was taking her so long.

She plopped her butt onto the ground and
dug out her cell phone. She was relieved when Paul picked up after the first
ring.

“Kylie! Thank God!” Paul exclaimed
before she could breathe a word. “It’s almost one! When you didn’t call even an
hour after Molly left the hospital to take you the things you asked for and you
didn’t answer your phone, I thought for sure the toothbrush hadn’t worked and
something awful had happened to you!”

“Where are you now?” Kylie asked.

“On my way to the ER nurse’s station. I
was about to ask Karen to go look in on you…”

“No! Don’t do that!” Kylie said
frantically. “Hunter doesn’t know that we’re friends with a cougar yet. He sent
an elementary school teacher from the jaguar clan named Jennifer Graham to sit
with me all night. She stepped out for a moment to talk to Hunter at his
apartment, but she’ll be back any minute. We have to keep this call short.”

“You need to somehow get the Elders to
agree to allow you to reveal yourself as a shifter to me soon, or things will
get very tedious rather quickly,” he warned. “But never mind that for now. You
sound normal, so I take it the items worked?”

“Thankfully, yes. Once everything
settles down here, I’ll come see you to explain in more detail. I’ll tell
Hunter that we have a lunch date again on Sunday.”

“I hate to say this, but I’m glad Hunter
is looking after you so closely,” Paul said. “Karen says that someone else in
her clan has seen a couple of unknown shifters that she feels have been
behaving suspiciously enough to possibly be Sniffers. We may not yet know the
jaguars’ plans for you, but at least I know the last thing they would want is
for you to be harmed or the lions to get a hold of you.”

“Don’t worry. After this whole
heat-cycle nightmare tonight, I doubt Hunter will let me out of his sight for
the next few days. This will be a good opportunity to try to weasel some info
from him about the lions. He accidentally brought them up today, so naturally I
jumped at the chance to ask questions.”

“Anything new?” Paul asked hopefully.

“No, but from some of the evasive
answers he was giving me, I’m almost positive that he knows more.”

“Just be careful, Kylie, and please,
please don’t let your guard down with Hunter. Karen told me that he doesn’t
have a mate or even a prospective mate. He may be after something much more
practical than searching out the identities of your parents.”

Yes, and he got it and then some
, Kylie thought ruefully. Paul really was going to be
pissed with her when she finally found the guts to tell him.

“Always,” she promised. “You make sure
to take care of yourself, too, and I’ll see you on Sunday.”

More Sniffers… Kylie suddenly realized
that she had never gotten a straight answer from Hunter about whether or not he
knew of any Sniffers currently skulking around Riverford. He had managed to
completely distract her, damn him—though she had to admit that she was also
partially to blame for allowing one measly smile to waylay her. However, that
didn’t change the fact that he had heavily implied that there were. There could
be more Sniffers roaming the city than any of them had ever guessed. The
thought was terrifying.

Hunter was waiting for her in his living
room, still dressed in the t-shirt and boxers he had slipped on, and casually
sprawled out on the couch with a rather peaceful expression. However, when she
approached, his nostril flared and his eyes zeroed onto the gym bag.

Kylie had been counting on this
reaction. “That bad, huh? I was afraid of that. The clothes inside should be
okay, but do you have a trash bag I can put this in until I can wash it? I’d
throw it out, but it’s my dad’s.”

“Under the sink,” Hunter replied in a
strained voice, obviously trying not to breathe.

Kylie hurried over to the kitchen and
located a box of black, heavy duty trash bags. She pulled out everything in the
gym bag except for the white paper sack and its secrets, placing the clothing
on the counter before securing it inside the large trash bag.

The whole time, she could feel Hunter’s
eyes on her back. It made the jaguar within bristle. Having your back to a
predator, even if that predator was your lover, was never comfortable.

“Put it in the guest room just to be
safe,” Hunter instructed once she turned around, his voice just a tad bit
deeper than usual. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”

A wave of arousal washed through her at
his words even though she knew he probably hadn’t meant them to be suggestive. She
sighed. Her entire body was still incredibly sore both inside and out, so no
matter how hot she was getting for him, her body needed to rest.

She put the bag inside the closet in the
guest room just for a little more added peace of mind before climbing back into
bed with Hunter, his arms enveloping her into a warm, fragrant cocoon as she
snuggled up to his chest. Who would have thought after the hellish way the
night had begun that it would end on such a fantastic note?

Hunter kissed the top of her head
tenderly. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll patrol my territory together tomorrow
morning. It’s about time I took you on that run I promised.”

“It’s a date,” Kylie replied, and then
added amusedly, “just as long as the date doesn’t end with you bringing me a
dead rabbit for lunch instead of taking me to a restaurant.”

A snort was his only reply.