Leopard 04 - Wild Fire

defended. “He was actually quite gentle and a few times he whispered to me that he wouldn’t really hurt me.”
    “That’s bullshit with his claws in your throat and blood dripping down.” Now there was suppressed rage in Elijah’s voice.
    Isabeau felt the echo of it in the shudder that went through the leopard pressed so close to her. Jeremiah had come very close to death. For touching her. That was where the anger was coming from. Not because he’d threatened any of them or Adan. She was somehow sacred to all of them. Because of Conner? Because she was a female leopard? She didn’t know, but there was solace in the knowledge. A Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    kind of security she’d never felt before.
    There was also a newfound confidence that came with her knowledge. She realized Conner hadn’t shifted at the sight of Elijah, not because he was in a better position to protect her as a leopard, but because he didn’t want to embarrass her with his nudity in front of another man. He’d deliberately stayed in animal form, although he couldn’t join in the conversation. She stroked a thank- you down his back, trying to convey silently her appreciation.
    Modesty was a foreign concept to these men, she was certain of that. Isabeau walked in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the way the mist enveloped them so closely. She couldn’t see very far in front of her, and the steam rose from the ground so that their bodies appeared to be floating through the clouds without feet.
    “It doesn’t hurt,” she assured, when she caught Elijah examining her throat as she came up beside him.
    Elijah fell into step with them, taking up a position on the other side of Conner so that the long, powerful body of the cat was between them. He moved easily, with that same fluid motion Conner had, as if he flowed over the ground in silence.
    “The kid needs another beating,” Elijah hissed.
    The cat made a rumbling sound of agreement deep in his throat, and Isabeau smiled. “I don’t think either one of you is very far from your cat.”
    “Law of the jungle,” Elijah said as if that explained everything.
    And to them it did, she realized. Another bit of information. Their lives were not more complicated because of their leopards, they were less so. They saw the world in black and white rather than in shades of gray. They did what it took to get a nasty job done, and if that meant seducing a woman to save children, so be it.
    Why her heart squeezed painfully in her chest she didn’t know. The thought of Conner touching—kissing—holding another woman made her feel sick. And she’d brought him here to do just that.
    “I guess I don’t understand these clear lines you all have drawn out for yourselves. Who determines what’s right and what’s wrong?” she asked.
    The leopard nudged her thigh again, brushing close to her, and she felt her own reaction, the leaping of her senses toward him, a reaching she couldn’t prevent, as it happened too fast, too automatically. The least little touch of man or beast and she reacted with hope, with need, with an almost obsessive response.
    Elijah shot her a look. “Are we talking about Jeremiah? Or Conner?”
    “Both. All of you.”
    “Talk to Conner,” Elijah advised. “He’s more knowledgeable of our ways than I am. I came to the clan late. And everyone makes mistakes, Isabeau. You. Me. Conner. Your father. My father. We all do.”
    She kept pace with the leopard, looking straight ahead. Water splashed from the sloped hills into a narrow stream-bed. They walked over the rocks and continued wading through the water toward the other side where the bank was less steep. Isabeau felt a pang of uneasiness and then deep inside, her cat stirred, shuddering awake.
    Something tugged at her ankle from behind and then she was down and the water closed over her head.
    Almost immediately she was tumbled over and over, as if in a washing machine, rolling while something wrapped tightly around her, holding her in strong, steel-like coils. She heard herself screaming in her head, but she had the presence of mind not to open her mouth beneath the water.
    Her arm, where her wound was, burned and throbbed. Her left wrist, trapped in the thick coils, felt as if it might burst from the pressure. She tried not to struggle, telling herself Elijah and Conner would both come to her aid and not to panic. The snake rolled her over and she felt the