Leopard 03 - Burning Wild

to look him in the eye, her green eyes glittering, his golden gaze furious. They stared at each other until she buried her fingers into the lush fur coat and pushed him away from her.
    “Go away, Jake. I’m really upset with you right now.” Her voice sounded odd, far away. She clutched the fur tighter, but her fingers slipped. The ground tilted. She slid down the wheel of the car and found herself staring up at the leopard’s fur-lined belly. Her lashes fluttered, her lids too heavy to keep up.
    The leopard nuzzled her as she closed her eyes and gave in to the drug.
    16
    EMMA woke slowly, her mouth dry, jackhammers drilling through her temples. She burrowed into the warmth surrounding her before she realized Jake was rocking her in the large chair he’d brought to her room a year earlier when Andraya was born. He liked to sit in the chair and rock Kyle, feeding him his bottle while she fed Andraya.
    “I don’t like you very much,” she murmured, keeping her eyes closed. The room was dark, the house silent. His chest was bare beneath her cheek.
    “I know you don’t,” he answered softly. “Go back to sleep. The doctor said you’d have a headache and would probably feel like a truck ran you over.”
    Mostly she felt exhausted. It shocked her a little that he’d brought in a doctor and she hadn’t even roused from the drug enough to know. “You should have been thinking about me, Jake, not yourself.
    That was a terrifying experience. That man would have raped me. Maybe all of them.”
    He nuzzled the top of her head. “I wasn’t thinking like a man, Emma. That’s no excuse, but it is the truth.”
    “My mother was leopard, Jake. There was no difference between her and her leopard, and there shouldn’t be with you either. You use your leopard as an excuse.”
    He smiled at the little bite in her voice and briefly buried his face in her hair again. “You should have told me about your mother.”
    “Why? How? It isn’t exactly normal. You didn’t tell me.” Emma passed a hand over her face. Her arm still felt like lead.
    “You weren’t afraid or even shocked when I shifted.”
    “I lived with you for two years, Jake. Did you think I wouldn’t see the claw marks on the floors and walls, especially in your office? Did you think I wouldn’t know what you were doing the nights you went running and came back with your clothes shredded? Or the time your mother—the enemy,” she corrected herself, “came and you left fresh marks on the floor in the nursery and punctured your own palms? I lived with my mother for nineteen years. It’s not like I couldn’t read the signs or smell the cat.
    If you didn’t want to tell me, I wasn’t going to bring it up.”
    “And your family had been hunted. You didn’t entirely trust me—or anyone else,” Jake prompted, knowing it was the truth.
    She shrugged and lifted her head up, for the first time opening her eyes. His eyes were still a cat’s eyes, glowing red in the dark. “You have to admit, it was a big coincidence, my mother being a leopard, our family hunted and eventually killed, and then you bringing me here. Drake. Joshua. Conner. Aside from my mother, I’d never met a single leopard until I met you. I had to know what you wanted.”
    At least she hadn’t run from him. She’d had the courage to stay, giving him a chance to prove himself even though she had to know there was a possibility he had ulterior motives. “And Trent and the enemy told you, no doubt.” His voice held a note of bitterness. He knew they wouldn’t resist planting seeds of doubt in her mind.
    “They told me what they wanted me to believe. And I know what they wanted, that was made very clear. Me. A cub from me. They think I might be a shifter, or at least be able to produce one for them.
    They think one will give them an advantage in the oil fields, but I doubt if all shifters can scent oil in the ground or they’d be doing it already. They want me to believe that’s the only thing you want from me as well, that and to prevent them from having me.” She looked at him. “I thought it strange that they didn’t even realize what a sense of entitlement they have, believing they have the right to buy people, that somehow they are superior to the rest of us.”
    “All this time, it was a game to me, the enemies, pitting themselves against me,” Jake admitted. “I thought they were after an unknown oil field or natural gas reserve. I knew they wanted a shifter of