Sentinels: Jaguar Night Read online

  Maybe it was his own self-indulgent recrimination that allowed her to get so close before he noticed. Quiet as she was for a woman who took no other shape than her own, he heard her slipping down a steep section of land off to the side; he smelled the honest scent of her. And when he looked for it, he felt her presence within, marked by the increasing unrest of his bones. Of his tail, when it came to that. He stood, hesitating at the edge of his rocky platform, and found her making her way down the hill, clearly familiar with the dark terrain even with her limited human vision, and just as clearly looking for him. Scenting him, in her own way.

  Limited light or no, he had no trouble seeing her. Bare ankles above sneakers, bare legs below skimpy night shorts, the gleam of toned skin, the shape of lean muscle. A hooded sweatshirt covered her arms and shoulders; the bare scoop of skin above her nightshirt’s neckline caught and held his gaze. Her hair, on its own for once, was deliciously mussed. As he watched, she descended slightly below his level, hesitated and lifted her face to the stars. Listening.

  Listening for him.

  And she must have heard him. She turned on the spot, looking into a darkness he knew she couldn’t penetrate—and yet looking straight at him. Moving more slowly than she had been—no longer uncertain of her path, but uncertain of her welcome. She headed back up the hill, stopping just below the base of the rocks that made up his overhang. Her sweatshirt had slipped, baring her shoulders. She opened her mouth, but if she’d had words to say, she evidently couldn’t find them.

  Dolan hung on to their silent tableau for a selfish moment, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, heavy jaguar head stretching slightly into the breeze, drinking in the scent of her. Drinking in, too, the rising power of what lay between them, letting it swell within him instead of fighting it, letting it rumble through his body until it verged on intoxication. It pounded in his veins, grew warm around his heart, shivered down his spine.

  Below him, Meghan drew her sweatshirt together with one hand and shoved her hair back with the other, poised for flight and determined to pretend she wasn’t. Suddenly vulnerable, and yet unable to keep from tipping her face up to the stars again, from leaning toward him ever so slightly.

  It was his undoing.

  He leaped from the rock, never minding the distance to the ground, invoking the shift along the way—riding the flash and crackle of the change and landing human. A good, square landing, crouched to absorb the tremendous energy of it all. Stronger, again, than any human would be. Stronger, finally.

  And damned ready to face this thing between them.

  “Meghan,” he said, and his voice came out as more of a growl than he’d intended. At this distance, no longer clothed in the black, rippling pelt of the jaguar, he was perfectly visible to her.

  She still blinked from the night-shattering light of shift on the fly, of his sudden appearance—but she hadn’t flinched before, and she didn’t now. She took a single step forward, stopped.

  Dolan—riding the pounding demands in his body, the ache of being so close and yet not touching her—gave up on breathing for that moment. Until she lifted her face slightly, leaning into what lay between them. She took a deep breath; she let it out on a single, quiet, “Yes.”

  He hesitated an instant longer—just long enough to be sure of what she’d said.

  Yes, this was her making a decision. Yes, she was here to be with him. Yes, she’d felt the incantation, but she was her own woman, responding to her own desires.

  And that was all he could give it before breaking—three long strides downhill, barefoot on stone and stick and gritty soil. She ran up to meet him, no wavering as they came together. He lifted her right off the ground and she wrapped her legs around him, tight and close, only the flimsy material of her shorts and his jeans between the heat of them—it felt like no barrier at all and completely intolerable interference all at the same time.

  He ran his hands under her bottom—toned muscle clenching to stay close as he took her back uphill, kissing the hell out of her on the way. Her arms wrapped around his neck, keeping her where she could find his ear, a quick bite and nibble. That’s when his legs nearly gave way; she laughed low in his ear and he surged against her and nearly lost his footing then, too. And again when she dropped her head back to reveal the graceful lines of her neck, and he buried his mouth against her skin, finding the sweet salt of it.

  She cried out, a gasp of surprised pleasure, and that did it. Finally he went down, balancing them as his knees found dirt and his toes dug against rock, and he leaned forward to delve into that sweet notch between her collarbones. She gave him that, falling backward, vulnerable and exposed and dipping back into his grip. Her back curved against his arm; her breasts waited for attention.

  But her legs kept her close and tight; she moved against him and caught them both just so and she gasped and he growled, and his tongue left only a brief and longing path along her collarbone before she groped frantically at his pants, entirely supported in his arms—and getting absolutely nowhere, not with these Sentineltailored button-fly jeans. Nowhere, that is, except taking him close to the edge of his control, so close that he snatched her back up to him.

  She flung her arms around his neck and took to nibbling his ear again, and he managed the jeans himself, reaching around beneath her—movements jerky with need, breath panting and catching and sometimes just plain forgetting to happen. And then, hands still free, he found her—warm and moist, no underwear beneath the skimpy shorts he easily pulled to the side; he touched her, cupping her—wringing a cry from her. Ready and waiting and poised to receive him, and still he hesitated—and she knew what he needed. “Yes,” she repeated, her voice a needy whisper in the ear she teased, a warmth on the neck she tended. “Yes, dammit!”

  And so he plunged into her, and the deep rumbling hum inside him burst into two and grew a fine alto counterpart, filling him so completely that his movements jerked to a stop—filling her so completely that she clutched him with arms and legs and inner muscles, both of them overwhelmed by sensation, and he knew, he knew what she felt, that sweet fire gathered along her nerves and joyful tears in her eyes and that they both tightened toward an inward crescendo of sensation without even moving, just by being and touching and—

  He groaned, heartfelt and beyond all restraint, and she gasped at the mutual pleasure reverberating between them, starting its climb while they quivered and held on to each other and then quite suddenly neither of them could stand it any longer—they moved, and they cried out together, and again and again and—

  The world came to an end, a loud and tangled and bursting end, pinwheeling through them both, back and forth and back again, until it finally eased off into echoes of itself and Dolan found himself sitting on his heels and Meghan sitting on him, still joined tightly but no longer clinging and clutching and demanding. Just breathing, the both of them, panting against each other. Her hair moved and fell, tickling him; eventually he stirred himself to gently move it away.

  But where he stayed relaxed, Meghan grew tense; where he reveled in satisfied completeness—perfectly happy to follow his instincts and desires to this moment, to wait until late to sort out the unexpected tenderness he felt, the expected reluctance to separate from her in any way—Meghan grew distant without even moving. Her forehead still rested against his shoulder as she said, “What’s…what is that?”

  And unlike the moment at the homestead where their touch had ignited something between them and her reaction had been accusation and annoyance, this time he heard a thread of fear. He felt it in her as she lifted her head, pushing back far enough to look him in the eye—or as close as she could get in this darkness—while he could see her perfectly—and see that same thread of fear on her face, strong eyebrows raised, eyes widened, pupils huge. She searched his face in the darkness, but even in daylight he had no answers—

  Ah. Unless he did at that. Unless he, fool, had underestimated the effect of Sentinel initiation. Sentinel blood with blood,
releasing any hidden potential…

  With a young Dolan, it had made little difference. Dolan’s jaguar had roared upon him full strength in early adolescence, and initiation hadn’t done anything to change that. But for a woman never encouraged to use her skill in the first place…a woman who hadn’t pushed her boundaries, even if she’d never take another shape…

  Dolan winced.

  She must have felt it in him. Maybe in the flicker of tension through his arms, maybe because it suddenly seemed evident that they’d never again be able to hide anything from each other. She stiff-armed away from him, slipping through his grasp and finding her own feet—and as much as he wanted to close his arms around her and keep her here, still close, still together, he let her go.

  She didn’t bother to straighten her clothing; the sleep boxers rode crooked and her sweatshirt had slipped off her shoulders entirely, but she didn’t care or notice. This he knew; this he didn’t have to guess.

  It did create an odd inward echo at that.

  Her voice, when it came, was low and strained. “What is this?” Her stare was direct; he began to wonder just what she could see after all. “What is this?”

  He hesitated, and then he stood, tucking himself away and then resisting the urge to gently and—there it was again—tenderly replace her sweatshirt over her shoulders against the chill of the night. And then he just plain hesitated, so suddenly aware that he’d made a mistake. Possibly a big mistake. By not being certain…by not pursuing it…by not bringing himself to deal with it earlier, when he’d been so focused on dealing with the manuscript…

  “Don’t even try to tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “No,” he said, more abruptly than he’d intended. “I think…” He closed his eyes, resigned himself. “I mentioned this earlier. Sort of. Almost.” He’d alluded to it, that’s all. And she hadn’t been interested, and he’d accepted that. His attention had been elsewhere, too.

  Her fear was still there…but anger came on strong. “Then you not only know what it is…you knew it would happen.”

  Oh, fuck. He was in trouble. Real trouble.

  Chapter 11

  Meghan stumbled on her swift way home, catching herself only because she’d fallen uphill and there really wasn’t far to go. She slapped away Dolan’s hand and he withdrew it. Had to give him credit, he knew when he wasn’t wanted. I don’t want to give him credit. Here she was, body still throbbing from their encounter—their lovemaking—and she didn’t want him touching her, she didn’t want him close enough to touch her.

  Lovemaking. Meghan’s few casual trysts in the past had been more about groping her way through the loss of virginity, about wanting to care about someone but discovering that she really didn’t…about wanting a relationship in her life and learning it didn’t work that way. And this time…

  This time it had been very much different.

  Even if one of them had apparently been expecting the aftermath.

  This.

  This, with the world blooming before her in an odd black-and-white view, a silver cast over all. With her normal sense of the world and its creatures—the same one that allowed her to crash through rattlesnake territory in sneakers even when the cold hadn’t made the snakes sluggish—blown all out of proportion, reeling through her mind with such invasive force as to hinder, not help, her progress through the juniper and cedar woods.

  And so she stumbled again, and this time Dolan did snag her arm—and this time she lashed out at him, not caring that she fell on her ass against the steep ground. “How could you!” she snarled at him, even more frustrated when she utterly failed to connect; he evaded her easily. “All this time, you knew…you probably wanted this, so you could use me—” And she kicked out at the ground in the fury of the thought, scattering gritty dirt in his direction.

  His denial whiplashed back to her on a level she wished she’d never experienced. Stupid people, those who wanted to be so close as to read their lovers’ minds. Stupid, stupid people!

  “I didn’t,” he said, and she felt his chagrin, too. “I should have…Look, I knew you probably hadn’t been initiated, but I wasn’t thinking about it. It’s not why I’m here.”

  “Initiated,” she said bitterly. “Is that what it’s called? Turning my head inside out? Making my body into some rutting—”

  “No!” he snapped, and she felt his true anger, too. “That’s not what that was. You know that’s not what we did. There was choice—”

  “Not about this!” she snapped back. “I shouldn’t have trusted you.”

  She hadn’t expected her bitter words to sink in—to hurt. For his voice to turn raw. “No, dammit!” He closed in on her, ignoring her fisted hands. “That’s not how it was. That’s not who I am.” He pushed in closer, way too close, his cheek briefly bumping hers; she leaned back into the steepness of the ground as he put an arm on either side of her. Bitter juniper scents clung around them, mixing with the scuffed-up dirt, strong in the higher humidity of the night. “That’s not how it was,” he whispered into her lips, low words with the same impact as a shout.

  They breathed there for a moment, sensations swirling around them—surging and breaking against her until she didn’t know if she wanted to ravage him or run from him or simply curl into a ball and put her hands against her ears to shut it all out. Abruptly overwhelmed, she twisted away—still beneath him, but no longer facing him. Half curled into that tempting fetal ball.

  He dropped to the ground behind her, propped on one elbow—and nearly upright at that, on this odd patch of ground of theirs. His hand came to rest on her shoulder, then moved to stroke back her hair. “No wonder you can’t keep it in that ponytail of yours,” he said. “Too damned fine…” And she realized then that he comforted himself as much as her, soothing his fingers in the silk of her hair. When he spoke again, his resulting calm rested against her, softening her edges. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” he said. “When I have a goal, it fills my head. But not this time. Not since I met you. To have been unable to walk away…”

  “Since when?” He’d walked away after they met, and now he’d been itching to walk away for days.

  He sounded surprised. “Since I spoke to you at the round pen.”

  “You left,” she pointed out.

  His low laugh tickled her ear. She found herself relaxing against him. A stick poked her leg; before she could think to do it, he brushed it away, and then returned his attention to her hair—running it through his fingers, letting it fall against her neck…stroking it back over her ear. “I went somewhere else,” he admitted. “But I never really left. Or do you really think I just randomly reached out to you after the Atrum Core got me?”

  She said nothing. She let the words rest against her along with his calm.

  “I knew you probably hadn’t been initiated. It just wasn’t…” His hand stopped moving her hair. “Relevant,” he said finally.

  She blinked into what should have been darkness and no longer was. “And initiation?”

  “Hell,” he muttered under his breath, startling her. His brief peacefulness evaporated. “I just realized…Carter…if they find out…”

  They’re going to find out. She could read that belief, clear as anything. “Tell me.”

  “They must have assumed there wasn’t much potential going untapped. But now—sonofabitch.”

  He would have shoved off to his feet out of the pure need to move, but she twisted around and caught his arm. “Dolan.” And she wasn’t about to let go. Not until she understood.

  “Initiation,” he said, all but vibrating with the need to move—to shift and snarl off some frustration and concern. “It’s not that complicated. Anyone with Sentinel blood—whether you take the shift or not—has two levels of potential. One before you’re initiated by another Sentinel, and one after.”

  “Initiated. That’s a dull Sentinel term for mindblowing sex, or what?”

  He flashed a quick grin at
her—unexpected, given his mood, and it struck a place deep within her, the part that still hummed with his presence inside her. “Not necessarily. At sixteen, that’s what I thought it was, but it turns out I was wrong. The thing is, some of us have all our skills right there on the surface; the initiation doesn’t make a lot of difference. And some of us run deep. That would be you. And because brevis regional assumed you didn’t have enough of the blood to have that power lurking, they dismissed you. Cut you loose.”

  “Cut their losses,” Meghan said bitterly, not quite ready to address the changes within herself. To ask him about them…or even ask for help with them. As if she could just pretend nothing had changed at all, and maybe it would go away. “It’s just as well. They’d have gotten nothing from me. They still won’t.”

  “When they take you in young,” Dolan said dryly, “there’s not much choice. You’re one of them, and they don’t easily let go of their own. Their secrecy depends on keeping us all trained and leashed and following their cabalistic little rules.”

  “Well, they’re not getting me now.” Meghan let her hand slide from his arm, and straightened herself out to head up the hill. “They blew it when they blew it.”

  Dolan took her hand, helped her find her footing and then released her to cut diagonally across the slope to the faint game trail. “I suspect your mother had something to do with that. She obscured you, somehow. No doubt it’s in these wards somewhere. Your mother and her wards…” He shook his head.

  It was Meghan’s turn to grin. “No one outtricked my mother. She had this special little smile…” She trailed off, because it had been a long time since she even thought of that smile and yet there it suddenly was, evoking the same happiness it had given her as a child.

  Good God, in rejecting the Sentinels, had she somehow hidden her mother away, too? Had she lost what she might have had of that energetic, loving woman?