line of living fire. She went completely motionless. He might be human now, but she knew with every ounce of her being that this was the same predator who'd growled at her a second before. The hand around her neck wasn't the least bit painful, but she felt the power in it, understood that he could crush her windpipe without effort.
"I am not a leopard," he said into her ear, and the sound was so rough she wondered if he'd come back fully from the animal.
"Oh." Her mistake was no surprise - she knew less than nothing about the reality of changelings. Her world had never been one where they intruded. "I apologize for offending you."
"Aren't you curious what I am?"
"Yes." She was also curious about his human face. "Can I turn around?"
His soft chuckle vibrated along her body and demanded her complete attention. "It's not that dark, Red - I didn't have any clothes with me."
It took a few moments for her brain to work through that statement. The second she did, she became hyperconscious of the sheer heat of the body aligned so closely to her own. The part of her that craved new experiences wanted to turn, but she knew that would be sheer foolishness. This man was hardly likely to indulge her intellectual curiosity about his body. He'd almost bitten off her head for daring to call him the wrong species.
"Please let go."
"No."
The flat no took her by surprise. Nobody said no to her, not like that. They always tried to couch it in more polite terms. That treatment may have kept her cooperative and rational, but it had also left her no tools with which to deal with the hard reality of a world where people didn't follow the accepted rules of behavior. "Why?"
"Why not?"
She raised her own hand to the one he had around her neck and tugged. No movement. The message was clear. He wasn't going to hurt her, but neither was he going to budge. "If you're not a leopard," she said, deciding to attempt a civilized conversation, "then what are you? You're in DarkRiver territory and according to my information, it's a leopard pack."
"It is." His thumb stroked absently over her skin. She cut off the physical reaction before it began. If her body felt, then soon her mind would want to experience emotion and that was unacceptable.
"You're not with DarkRiver?" Had she been fooled into trusting the wrong cat?
"I didn't say that."
"Why are you refusing to tell me anything?"
"For all I know, you're a spy or an assassin."
The logic of his statement couldn't be refuted. "I only want to speak to Sascha and leave. The Council would mete out severe punishment if they knew."
"So you say."
She became aware that he smelled of the earth and the forest, of a kind of animal energy that was alien to her. Alien, but not unpleasant. If she'd felt things like that, she might even have admitted that she ... appreciated the scent of him. "Jaguar," she said almost before the thought fired through her neurons. "Panthera onca."
His hand stroked her neck. "Very good."
"I read a book approximately two months ago about different cat species." At the time she'd thought it a strange choice, but had been compelled to finish it nonetheless. "You can't blame me for not knowing immediately. Leopards and jaguars have very similar markings."
"I can blame you for whatever I like."
She was starting to feel like cornered prey. "Let me go."
"No."
Almost at the point where she was considering doing something psychic, no matter that she'd never been trained in offensive maneuvers, she heard the whisper of a vehicle. "Sascha?"
"Maybe."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. If you so much as breathe wrong, I'll kill you."
She believed him. "Maybe you should release me now and change back to your jaguar form."
"Why?"
"You're naked."
"They'll have brought me clothes. If not, who cares?"
"Oh." Her eyes went to the trees in front of her. Another male stepped out. He was dressed ordinarily enough in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, but his face bore some savagely primitive markings - as if he'd been mauled by some great beast and come out the winner. Now she was trapped between two predators, both primed to kill.
Then a slender female form moved out from behind the new male. Cardinal eyes met hers. "Hello."
"Sascha Duncan." She would've moved, but the jaguar continued to hold her by the throat. "Can you make him let go?"
The other woman tilted her head to the side. "Nobody