Leopard 04 - Wild Fire

brushed a kiss along the back of her head.
    “I won’t be long.” His lips moved against her ear and she felt her heart leap. Her fingers curled into claws and dug into the spongy, vegetation-covered ground.
    “Don’t get killed,” she hissed back and then closed her eyes, feeling as if she’d just betrayed her father.
    She could pretend to him and everyone else that she didn’t want him dead because she was afraid of being left alone in the rain forest, but she refused to lie to herself. She hadn’t shoved the knife into his chest because the thought of him gone from the world was devastating to her. And it made her hate herself all the more.
    “I’m a cat,” he reminded softly and his voice had a roughened edge to it that slid over her skin like the lap of a cat’s rough tongue. “I’m hard to kill.”
    He was gone, and even with her heightened hearing, she could barely follow his progress through the jungle of broad leaves. There was the soft slide of his body along the brush, no leaves crackling, only a whisper of movement as he crept closer to his prey. She turned her head slowly inch by inch, even though he’d told her not to look. Instinctively she knew it wasn’t about drawing attention, as a fixed stare could do, but that he didn’t want her to see death—and what it looked like.
    Conner may have been in the form of a man but at that moment she knew he was all leopard, just without the form. She understood what he meant when he said to let her cat rise close to the surface. He looked like a large leopard, roped muscles sliding beneath his skin, his body moving in the freeze-frame stalk of a predator, head down, eyes focused on prey. He carefully positioned each foot, making certain he stepped in absolute silence as he crept toward his prey through the thick brush. When the man emerged just in front and to the left of him, halting to listen and look carefully around him, Conner was motionless, crouching low in a spring- loaded position, held frozen by the ropes of banded muscle power.
    Isabeau’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the man with the deadly automatic weapon slung around his neck emerge from the brush and turn his head to look directly at Conner. Her heart pounded in her chest and her fingers dug deeper into the thick vegetation, as if the cat in her was ready to spring, to attack. She held herself still, feeling that other presence now inside of her, smelling her—the itch under her skin, the ache in her mouth, the need to allow the animal to burst free.
    Breathing deeply, she kept her gaze fixed on the life-and-death struggle playing out just feet from her.
    Overhead, wings fluttered and something heavy crashed in the canopy. A monkey screamed. The man looked up and Conner sprang. She saw the powerful movement, and yet she could barely comprehend the amazing physical leap that took him into the armed man. He hit with the power of a battering ram, slamming his prey to the ground, the sound terrible as the two bodies came together with tremendous force. Conner’s body was so graceful and fluid flowing over the ground that she half expected him to use his teeth to tear out the man’s throat and claws to rake his belly open. He rolled the man over and caught his neck in a powerful, unbreakable hold.
    She would never forget that picture of him, all raw strength, his face a mask of relentless determination, the muscles in his arms bulging, the death grip, nearly identical to a cat sinking teeth into a throat and holding while prey suffocated. She should have been repelled. She should have despised him all the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    more. Broad leaves tried to camouflage the intense struggle as his prey kicked and hit at him, but she could see through the foliage. The man grew feebler until only the heels of his boots drummed into the soil. Then she heard the audible crack as the neck snapped and there was no more movement.
    Conner released the man slowly, his head turning away from her, back behind them, as if he’d heard something else. His body remained coiled tightly, ready for another attack. He carefully removed the automatic weapon and belt of ammunition and slung it around his own neck. All the while he stayed very low, his eyes on something she couldn’t see.
    Isabeau strained to hear what had alerted Conner. Voices came. Faint. Two men some distance away.
    At first she couldn’t make out the words, but then