had designed his island as a place where all jaguars would be welcome. He’d extended the invitation to Ren early on, and Ren had built a lovely little retreat on the inside curve of the crater that was, in truth, an inactive volcano, which formed the island. Ren fully intended to retire there sooner, rather than later, and live out the rest of his life in obscurity.
His face had become just a little too recognizable. He was a big bucks movie star—something he had never really intended when he’d fallen into the acting lifestyle decades before. He’d hoped to make a little money and enjoy the high life while he could, but despite his best intentions, he’d become an international superstar. People were already talking about how well he’d aged. Unlike the regular human actors he worked with, his face and body weren’t showing the passage of time. Shifters didn’t age like humans. Barring accidents or warfare, they could live for a few centuries in prime condition.
Ren would have to retire at some point and reinvent himself in a way that didn’t draw attention. He’d go to the island and live there for a few decades until the press had forgotten him, if possible. If not, he’d fake his death and perhaps come back as his own son, or something, in due time. He really wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he had options thanks to Mark Pepard and the rest of the jaguar Clan.
For now, he was going to enjoy this movie. The human they’d cast as his co-star intrigued him. He wasn’t sure why, but he was a cat at heart, and curiosity was part of his nature. He just hoped that old saying about curiosity killing the cat didn’t hold true in this instance.
The table read progressed to its end. They had glossed over the action scenes and those troubling love scenes and mushy moments, focusing instead on the dialog. Even so, Ren felt distinctly uncomfortable when his character declared his love for Maid Marian. Suddenly, everything felt just a little bit too real.
It didn’t make any sense. Ren had performed similar scenes—some much more detailed and erotic—throughout his career, with various women. Never before had he felt this strange sensation. Like something that was almost real but wasn’t. He knew his world was one of illusion. He was paid to make people believe that he was the hero, the predator, the gangster, the joker. Whatever the role he was playing, he played it to the fullest.
For the first time, he almost…not quite, but almost…wanted it to be real. Not consciously, but somewhere within, he felt the rightness of the words as he read them off the page and spoke them into existence. It was befuddling. Bemusing. Completely at odds with the reality of the situation.
He was Robin Hood to this stranger’s Maid Marian. The hero. The scoundrel. The archetype that stole from the rich to give to the poor. A character of contradictions, not unlike Ren himself, in some ways.
Perhaps that was it. Maybe Ren was identifying a little too closely with the character he was being paid to portray. It hadn’t happened often in his long career, but occasionally, especially when he had first started acting seriously, there had been spill over into his real life. The characters he was playing for the cameras had influenced who he was when he was off the set.
There had been barroom brawls that mirrored the ones written in scripts. There had also been romances with eminently unsuitable women who had become way too clingy. He’d been a heartbreaker. He knew that and accepted it. Sometimes, he hadn’t been the nicest of guys. Which was another reason to avoid this human female.
He didn’t like hurting people. He especially didn’t like trampling on the emotions of women who made the mistake of thinking he was for them. Oh, he was a killer. The jaguar inside him could not be tamed like some house cat. It liked to hunt, and it liked the victory of the kill, but he never toyed with his victims. If he was going to bring down a deer, he did it cleanly and as quickly as possible. And one thing was sacred—he never hunted human prey, neither physically nor emotionally. Which was why he never got involved too deeply with human women.
Not anymore, at least. Ren had unintentionally broken enough hearts in his youth. He was done with that kind of behavior. But