Leopard 05 - Savage Nature

our way of life. And I don’ think the body dumped just off the marsh had anything to do with oil either. There were two boats. I thought drugs or gun runnin’ you know. The swamp is isolated and if you know your way around, you could elude law enforcement fairly easily. You can get to the lake, the river or the gulf.”
    He rolled onto his stomach, settling his chest over her, both hands working on her muscles, his elbows propping him up. He waited until the flare of tension in her receded under his massaging fingers. He wanted her to feel relaxed and unafraid.
    “So you see lights in the middle of the night, figure drug smuggling, or possibly gun running, and you jump right in your little boat and head over there alone. I got that right, didn’t I? You thought that would be a good decision?”
    She gave an inelegant snort, half laughter and half derision. “I waited for them to leave, Drake. I wasn’t just goin’ to stick my head in a noose. I didn’t expect to find a dead body.”
    His fingers gentled, stroked and caressed. No, she hadn’t expected a body, but she’d hauled it out of the water and examined it with alligators around in the middle of the night. He sighed. She was definitely going to give him trouble.
    “I didn’t know him. He looked about forty. He was in good shape, had a tattoo on the back of his hand. I sketched it. Someone had stabbed him in the stomach, but that wasn’t what killed him. A leopard had bitten his throat and suffocated him. It was a kill bite.”
    He bunched the T-shirt at the hem and slowly worked it up over her firm, rounded bottom and those intriguing pink-striped boy shorts. Higher still, over her waist and up the expanse of her back until he had the shirt raised to her neck, exposing all that soft skin.
    Saria swallowed hard and started to turn her head to look at him, but he gently stroked his hand down her hair, preventing her. “And because he was both stabbed and bitten, you were afraid it was one of your brothers,” he ventured. He began idly tracing circles on her back, between her shoulder blades, occasionally sliding caresses over the long, nearly healed furrows.
    It took a few moments before she once again began to relax. “I’ve lived here all my life. If I hadn’t accidently seen my brothers shift, I don’ think I would have ever found out about leopards. It seems so far-fetched. Even now I have a difficult time actually believing the entire thing and look what’s happened to me.”
    “So you didn’t tell anyone.”
    “No. I know that was wrong, but Remy is a homicide detective. What if it was him? And maybe they had no choice.”
    He blew warm air over her skin and nuzzled her shoulder over the vicious bite the male leopard had put there. “And the second body?” He brushed little kisses back and forth over the puncture wounds.
    “That one scared me. It was about two months after the first one and it was a little different. Only one boat and there were beer bottles nearby. I thought maybe they’d come there together, the killer and the victim, friends—and they got into an argument. The first man, I was certain it had something to do with criminal activity, but the second one didn’t look that way, although he was stabbed in the stomach and suffocated with a leopard bite.”
    Drake felt the tremor that ran through her body. “We’ll figure it out,” he said softly and pressed a kiss into the sweet spot where her shoulder and neck joined. She shivered and he felt the sudden electrical current surge between them. “What happened then?”
    “I wrote Jake Bannaconni a letter. I tried to word it so that if he really was aware of shifters or was one himself, he would realize what was happening and come out to Fenton’s Marsh and investigate himself. I took the letter to the post office and put it in the outgoing mail. Two days later the letter was pinned with one of my fishin’ knives to the bottom of my pirogue.”
    “A warning.”
    “I certainly took it that way. I was angry with myself for not being more careful with the letter. Anyone could have seen it.”
    He took his time exploring that soft expanse of skin, kissing his way along her shoulder, his teeth teasing, scraping back and forth to send shivers down her spine before nipping gently. “And the third body?”
    “I couldn’t help watching Fenton’s Marsh, and about two months to the day after the second killing, the third body was there. This time it was in the water,