Ronan woke at dawn, galled by the growing desire he felt whenever he got a whiff of Makayla Phillips. The lion within roared to mate her. She smelled of honey and spring rain with a hint of deep forest soil. The burning sensation in his gut and the numbness in his brain made his heart weep. It wept for her. Damn it. Why?

He'd never wanted a mate in his life, let alone a long-winded city woman with tastes for fancy clothes and expensive shoes. If he had to have a mate fall into his lap, why couldn't it be a tough forest girl? A shifter, someone with the keen eye and the quick wit of a mountain cat like himself. Makayla was a puffed-up, preening house cat who'd never even caught a mouse. They had absolutely nothing in common!

Nevertheless, he couldn't resist her. Everything about her called to him. Even her most annoying traits got under his skin and started to grow on him like a parasitic lichen. It should make him want to scratch out his skin, but instead it made him want to sit beside her and lick her ears all day long.

He'd put a big pot of water on the stove to boil and another on the fireplace. He intended to wash his little kitty until she was fresh and clean. How he would control himself in the process remained to be seen. The overarching desire to claim her for himself stuck in his throat like a raw chicken bone. He rubbed his throat, hoping he could massage it out. He couldn't.

Makayla stirred in bed when he poured the first pot of water into the big wash basin he'd brought in from outside. It was an old-fashioned bronze bathtub that was light enough to move inside and out. He used it when he wanted to get a deep cleaning in warm water. For a cat shifter, cleanliness was of utmost importance, even for a recluse like himself.

"Is that my bath?" she said, stretching in bed.

"Yes. It's almost full."

He poured the other pot of water in the tub and tested the temperature. It was too hot, so he added another large pot of cold water, making it perfect. She flipped the covers off of herself and began to unbutton her shirt. He stared at her, unable to peel his eyes away.

She said nothing as she slipped out of her shirt. She sat at the edge of the bed in her bra and jeans. "These clothes probably need to be washed too," she said, leaning back to pull off her pants.

Makayla sat in her bra and panties and stared at Ronan. He stared back. He could feel himself grow with desire as he looked at her plump, white flesh. His sharp canine teeth extended in his mouth, and his eyes began to dilate into those of a lion.

Her eyes widened at him. He regained control of his shift and pushed the desire aside. Her face turned sly, and she raised her injured ankle in the air at him.

"I want to take off the bandage while I'm in the water. Can you help me?"

He pounced across the room and was at her feet in a split second, her foot on his lap. He peeled the bandage from her foot and examined the ankle.

"Swelling’s down."

"It feels much better."

He unwrapped the poultice from her head and looked at her wound. It was mending well. His poultices had excellent healing qualities. She reached around her back and unsnapped her bra. Her full breasts fell out and jiggled in front of him.

Ronan couldn't remember the last time he'd seen breasts that close. It took all his will-power not to reach out and knead them like two billowy mounds of dough. He licked his lips, aching to flick his tongue over her tight pink nipples.

She balanced herself on her good leg and gingerly settled the injured foot to the floor. She pushed her panties down and stepped out of them. "Help me into the tub, Ronan. I need a hand."

He was caught by the sight of her, the manicured black hair between her legs, the wide hips that tapered into her waist and her soft stomach. He sniffed the air and caught the intoxicating scent of her body. He purred.

"Ronan. Please?"

He stood and gave her his hand while she very carefully lowered herself into the tub. A satisfied moan passed her lips and it turned him on even more.

Her black hair touched the water and she slowly leaned back against the head of the tub. "This is heavenly. Absolutely heavenly. I wish I'd thought of it before."

Ronan reached into a cabinet and pulled out a bar of handmade soap. "Here," he said, handing it to her roughly. He had to get away from her before he lost his mind or something even more valuable, his solitude. He moved toward the door and grabbed his parka. He got one arm in before she called him back.

"Ronan, could you please help me wash?"

He growled deep in his throat and put his coat back on the rack by the door. He turned to her. Her breasts bobbed buoyantly in the water. Ronan rubbed his eyes with his rough hands. What had he gotten himself into?

Maybe if she knew what he was, she'd stop tempting him. The thought crossed his mind to growl at her, half shifted, and scare her to death. He chuckled to himself, but then realized he didn't want to scare her. He didn't want her to be anything but happy. That realization made him grumble within.

He crossed the room and pulled a chair behind the tub. She passed the soap over her shoulder, glancing at him from under thick black lashes. Her round white cheeks had turned pink from the hot water. He wandered if her other cheeks had turned the same color.

Taking the soap more roughly than he needed to, he dipped it in the water and then rubbed it over her back. She pulled her hair over her shoulder so that the flesh of her posterior was exposed to him. He examined how her neck curved up into her jawline. He could sense the beating of her heart in the veins in her neck. He licked his lips, wondering what it would taste like to grip her there with his strong teeth.

"Oh, that feels good," she moaned.

He snapped out of his daze. There was no way he'd let this city woman tame him. Nope, not going to happen. No matter how much the animal inside him wanted to rut with her and claim her curvy white flesh, he wouldn't let his quiet life be disrupted. He'd worked too hard to isolate himself from the rest of the noisy, stinking world. He wasn't about to let it all go for a human woman.

He abruptly dropped the soap between her legs and turned to the door, grabbing his coat on the way out. He heard her say, "wait," as it slammed shut behind him. He planned to sniff out a way to get rid of her.

The snow pack was still knee deep. Even if her ankle were better, she probably couldn't hike twenty miles in this deep of snow. Damn. There had to be a way.

No matter how much he detested the idea of having Forest Service on his land, he regretted chasing off Ashton. He should have asked his younger brother to send someone to take her away.

Ronan trudged through the snow to the overhang and peeled off his clothes. The cold bit into his skin, and he began to shake violently before he got down to his boots. When the final garment lay over his wood pile, he turned. His body contorted and changed in the gasping span of a sharp breath.

He stood in his feline form, grinning over sharp teeth. He stretched his back and clawed at the ground. How good it felt to be a beast again. His claws grated the frozen soil, giving him a keen sense of release.

Swiftly, he pounced into the wood beyond his cabin, sniffing the frozen air with his big black nose. The world was muffled in a blanket of white. Sounds and smells were muted by the heavy layers of snow. Above, the sky was piercing blue. A hawk glided over the forest, shrieking for a kill.

Ronan growled at the other predator. No matter if the bird flew high in the atmosphere, the land below belonged to only him. He would defend his domain against anyone man or beast. Or woman.

The mountain cat urged the human inside him to go back to the cabin, grip the female with his sharp claws, sink his teeth into the vulnerable flesh on the back of her neck, while he pumped into her with his dripping member. The human inside him refused. He'd never been so at odds with himself in his entire life.

How could his cat disagree? Both man and beast had sought the solitude of the forest. Both man and beast had rejected the advances of would-be mates in the past. Now they disagreed over one woman, a woman who had stumbled into his life and turned it instantly upside down. No one but Ashton had been anywhere near his cabin for years. Now it had been taken over by her.

In disgust, Ronan's human mind pushed the lion deeper into the wood. Enticed by the scent of a hare and the rapid beating of its heart, the lion forgot the woman and hunched into a prowl. He followed the scent until it smelled fresh and recent. Pulling the odor into his nose and mouth like liquid, he let it wash through him and down his throat.

He could sense the rabbit had scurried under a downed log. He put his nose to the ground and prowled through the low undergrowth. Crouched behind a log, downwind of the rabbit, he waited for the twitching creature to emerge from its hiding spot. A loud crack cut through the still, frigid air. A second crack came with a bite. A bullet hit Ronan's foreleg, grazing the muscles of his upper leg.

He stumbled backward. He hadn't sensed the humans. Stupid oversight. The smell of the hunter's gun powder stung his keen senses. Blood dripped from his wound and stained the white snow crimson. Turning away from the scene, he loped toward his cabin. In an instant, he shifted, not knowing what would be worse—to be shot by a hunter while in lion form, or to be seen naked running through the forest as a human.

He made it back to the cabin with blood running down his bicep. It had been a grazing blow. The bullet only nicked him. If it had been a few inches to the right, it would have pierced his heart.

When he reached the overhang, he pulled on his clothes and stormed inside. Makayla sat on the bed wrapped in blankets and towels. Her wet clothes hung, draped over the back of a chair in front of the fireplace.

"You're bleeding!" she exclaimed. She had an astonishing way of stating the obvious. He ignored her and went to his work counter. Using a similar poultice as he had with Makayla, he cleaned and patched up the wound on his arm. It ached, and it pissed him off. He'd run from the hunter like a coward. He should have gouged his eyes out.

Part of him wanted to find the hunter and surprise the man with an up close shift, grab his neck, and watch the life fade from his eyes. But Ronan was no murderer. Killing a human was a far cry from killing a rabbit or deer. No, he would sit in the cabin and seethe.

"What happened?" Makayla asked behind him. The whining tone of her voice grated his nerves. The sound pressed against him as if the walls were closing in. The cabin felt stifling and small. Trapped inside like a rabbit in its den, Ronan had never felt so powerless, or so angry.

"Nothing," he barked.

"I'm just concerned about you. You don't have to be a jerk. If you get hurt, I'll never get out of here."

He let out a deep breath. It wasn't her fault. He turned and looked at her, his mood still dark.

"It's a flesh wound. Nothing to be concerned about."

"Can I help?"

"I doubt it. Just stay out of the way."

She made and exasperated noise and rolled her eyes. "When will I be able to leave this place? My ankle hardly hurts at all anymore. I walked across the cabin with no problem at all. I need to get home. People will be looking for me. I have responsibilities."

"Believe me. I don't want you here a minute longer than necessary, but I doubt you can walk back in this snow."

"Do you think I'm weak?"

"I know you aren't accustomed to trudging through deep snow. I know you have only tennis shoes. I know that your ankle will give out after about a mile."

"Then go for help. I don't want to stay here any longer."

"I can't."

"Why? You can walk, or prowl, or whatever you do."

Ronan's heart thumped. What did she say? Did she know?

"What are you talking about, Makayla?"

"I saw you. I saw you outside in the snow, fighting with the other mountain lion. You hurt it and then shifted into human form. I thought maybe I was hallucinating from the head wound, but now I know it was true."

"How?"

"That's a bullet wound. I'm not so much a city girl as you think. Why would someone shoot at you? Either there is a terribly unlucky hunter out there, you're on the run from the mafia, or what I saw outside was real."

"Aren't you terrified?" he asked. He wanted to run away in anguish because his secret had been revealed to a human. Mocking her was the next best thing.

"Not particularly, no. I was at first. I thought you might eat me. But then I realized if you were going to eat me, you would have done it already."

"What makes you think I'm not just keeping you around for an easy meal?"

"Don't be disgusting. You aren't a murderer."

"How do you know?" he asked, letting his eyes glow yellow and his fangs protrude from his mouth. Her face contorted in shock and fear. She recoiled further into the corner of the bed and pulled the blankets around her neck.

Her reaction reminded him of a cornered animal; it excited him. He wanted to pounce. But the lion inside him did not want to sink his teeth into her skin in order to tear her apart. No. The lion wanted to sink inside her to bring her pleasure. He turned away, making his animal-self fade.

He was ashamed of frightening her. It had been a baseless game. They were both trapped together in the cabin. Fighting with the woman or terrifying her would lead nowhere good.

"I'm sorry," he grumbled.

"How? How did this happen to you?"

"What?" he asked.

She bared her teeth and made a clawing motion with both hands. His mood shifted at the ridiculous sight. He made a grunting laugh at her lion impersonation and sat down at the table to face her.

"I was born this way."

"Are there others?"

"Many. The lion you saw yesterday was my brother Ashton. He is the reason you ran off the road. He has a sick sense of humor. I have no idea where he gets it. Our parents are serious people."

"People?"

"Shifters. Mom and Dad are both mountain lions. There is a whole community of shifters and other paranormals over in Mystic Harbor."

"Why doesn't the world know about them?"

"The human world believes what it wants to. Our kind can stay hidden in plain sight."

"What am I supposed to do now?” she whined.

"Sit. Stay. Don't make a mess. Stay out of my hair."