Ghostwalker 08 - Street Game

already wet with sweat. The oppressive heat and heavy humidity took its toll on most people, but to Conner, it was energizing. The natives wore a loincloth and little else for a reason. Shirts and pants grew wet fast, chafing the skin, causing rashes and sores that could quickly go septic out here. He peeled off his shirt and bent to unlace his boots, rolling the shirt and pushing it inside a boot for Rio to retrieve.
    He straightened, inhaling deeply, looking around at the vegetation surrounding him. Trees rose up to the sky, towering high like great cathedrals, a canopy so thick the rain fought to pierce the various-shaped leaves to hit the thick bushes and ferns below. Orchids and flowers vied with moss and fungus, covering every conceivable inch of the trunks as they climbed toward the open air and sunlight, trying to pierce the thick canopy.
    His animal moved beneath his skin, itching as he slipped out of his jeans and thrust them deep in the other boot. He needed to run free in his other form more than 283

    he needed just about anything. It had been so long. He took off sprinting through the trees, heedless of his bare feet, leaping over a rotten log as he reached for the change.
    He had always been a fast shifter, a necessity living in the rain forest surrounded by predators. He was neither fully leopard nor fully man, but a blend of both. Muscles wrenched, a satisfying pain as his leopard leapt to the forefront, taking over his form as his body bent and the ropes of muscles shifted beneath his thick fur. Where his feet had been, clawed paws padded easily over the spongy forest floor.
    He went up and over a series of downed trees and through thick brush. Ten more feet into the forest the sunlight disappeared altogether. The jungle had swallowed him and he breathed a sigh of relief. He belonged. His blood surged hotly in his veins as he raised his face and let his whiskers act like the radar they were. For the first time in months he was comfortable in his own skin. He stretched and padded deeper into the familiar wilderness.
    Conner preferred his leopard form to that of his man. He bore too many sins on his soul to be entirely comfortable as a human. The claw marks etched deep into his face attested to that, branding him for all time.
    He didn’t like thinking too much about those scars and how they happened—or why he’d allowed Isabeau Chandler to inflict them upon him. He’d tried running to the United States, putting as much distance as he could between him and his woman—his mate—but he hadn’t been able to shut out the look on Isabeau’s face when she’d found out the truth about him. The memory haunted him day and night.
    He was guilty of one of the worst crimes his kind could commit. He had betrayed his own mate. He hadn’t known she was his mate when he’d taken the job to charm her and get close to her father, but that didn’t matter.
    The leopard lifted his face to the wind and pulled back his lips in a silent snarl.
    His paws sank silently into the decaying vegetation on the forest floor. He moved through the underbrush, his fur sliding silently along the leaves of numerous bushes.
    Periodically he stood up and raked his claws down the trunk of a tree, marking his territory, reestablishing his claim, letting the other males know he was home and someone to contend with. He’d taken this job to stay out of the Borneo rain forest where Isabeau lived. He didn’t dare go there. Because he knew if he stayed there, eventually, he’d forget all about being civilized and he’d let his leopard free to find her, and she wanted nothing— nothing —to do with him.
    A low growl rumbled in his throat as he tried to choke off the memories. He burned for her. Night and day. It didn’t matter that he’d put an ocean between them.
    Distance would never matter, now that he knew she was alive and he’d recognized her. He had all the traits of a leopard, the reflexes, the aggression and cunning, the ferocity and jealousy, but most of all the drive to find his mate and keep her. The man in him might understand jungle law was no longer a way his people could live, but here in the rain forest, he couldn’t keep the primitive needs from rising sharp and strong.
    He thought coming back to his home would help, but instead, the wildness was on him, gripping him by the teeth, slamming into his body with urgent need until he 284

    wanted to rake and claw, to tear open an enemy and roar to the heavens. He