Hester counted to ten and unfolded her tightly clenched fingers, flexing her claws. Douche bag. Double douche bag!
Handsome douche bag purred her treacherous and obviously insane inner cheetah.
Ugh. No, no, no, no! She did not find kidnapping sexy – there was no way. Just because there happened to be a sexy guy doing it, it was not romantic! Romance meant… ummm, well, it entailed… Hester was stumped. She’d dated more than her fair share of guys, but not one of them had ever tried to romance her.
Well, there was that time Derrick bought her flowers. Except they were actually the flowers he bought for his secretary who turned out to be allergic – the secretary he had been boffing on the side. Grrr.
Okay, so maybe she had no idea what romance was. She was used to shifters who thought a sexy come on was ‘drop your panties and bend over’.
Woo her indeed! Hester paced her room. No, there would be no wooing. There would only be escaping. Away from his suffocatingly delicious scent and twinkling eyes.
Hester noticed that their guest house didn’t contain any phones – the jaguars weren’t quite that stupid – but the windows didn’t have bars. On their tour, she also noted that while this was called a compound, it was hardly a maximum security kind of deal. Basically, there was just a wall around the area – not even a particularly high one. Clearly, they didn’t think anything more extravagant was necessary. Perhaps crime was virtually non-existent on the mountain. Perhaps the males thought they were so irresistible that none of their kidnapped brides would make a break for it. Then, she would be the first.
The house was as the back of the compound, she could slip out, over the wall and Bob would indeed be her uncle.
Against the agitated murmuring of her beast, Hester flung open the window and took a peek outside. She was on the second story, but there was grass below. If she climbed out in her human form and shifted mid-drop, she’d probably be okay. Probably. Hester was a fast enough runner – even the curviest of cheetahs could run fast – but she’d never been a great climber. Her mother had never considered anything like tree houses ladylike enough for Hester and had always worried about her breaking her neck. She was tremendously overprotective, and things only got worse after her dad died.
Hester allowed a moment of sadness before shimmying out of her clothes – lest she become tangled mid-shift – and carefully clambering out the window. No point in delaying, the longer she thought about this, the more she’d want to change her mind.
All she had to do was run to the nearest town, house, outhouse – whatever the hell they had in this backwater hell – and beg for help.
Hester gently lowered herself until she was clinging to the window frame with her fingertips, gritting her teeth as she felt the rough brick of the house against her bare skin. Perhaps she should at least have left her top on. Her girls were not meant to be treated so roughly. They were meant to be caressed, suckled, loved… by Antonio.
Hester let out a curse. Stupid male!
As if he knew she was thinking of him, he chuckled, and too late she scented his presence.
“Need a hand?” he offered more than a little smugly.
“No thanks,” she hissed, hideously aware that she was currently dangling from a window, bare-ass naked and sweating up a storm.
“Okidoke,” came the laconic reply.
Hester ventured a peek under her arm and found Antonio leaning against the house, sporting a pair of sunglasses and folding his arms as though he had nary a care in the world.
She groaned and tried to lift herself back up into her room. Easier said than done; all her efforts just resulted in jiggling of certain body parts. A sight that had Antonio biting his lip to stave off the laughter. Great, this would be how he saw her naked for the first time – with her biggest asset staring him in the face. Not that there would be a next time!
“Having fun?” he asked.
“Sure am,” she panted. “Best way to get an all over tan. I love the sun.”
“And it loves you,” he murmured, his gaze inscrutable under his glasses.
The seconds ticked by as Hester became increasingly uncomfortable – even more uncomfortable than she naturally was. She could drop and shift, but in the time it took her to do that, Antonio would be all over her. Plus… the ground looked a lot further away now that she was in imminent danger of meeting it and her cheetah was having cold feet about the whole plan.
“Fine, help me,” she muttered.
Without even a smirk, he stripped out of his t-shirt, making her jaw drop, and then proceeded to help her. He reached and grasped one of her dangling ankles.
“Let go.”
“Yeah right, can’t you get a ladder?”
“I don’t need one. Let go, I’ll catch you,” he told her firmly.
“Are you – oof!”
He tugged at her ankle. It was a gentle tug, but it was enough to dislodge her tenuous grip on the window frame, and the next thing she knew she was tangled in his arms. Before she could even snarl, he had her on her feet, and he was pulling his shirt over her head.
His hands gripped her shoulders, for which she was grateful. Without him, she might just turn into a puddle on the ground.
“Okay?” he asked, smiling lightly.
“Fine,” she grumbled. His thumbs started rubbing circles, and she felt a fluttering in her stomach and a rumbling of her beast that definitely should not be happening.
Hester shrugged out of his hold and hissed. “As fine as I can be considering!”
Antonio nodded and stretched his arms over his head, displaying his long, muscled form to perfection. Bastard.
They stared at one another for a few beats, and the atmosphere was almost awkward. Hester was aware that this wasn’t how normal kidnappings went.
“I know this is a difficult situation,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think…” Hester’s eyes narrowed challengingly. She’d never been one to shy away from males or back down, one of the reasons that so few of the males in her cheetah coalition had ever been interested in her. They liked cute little submissive cheetahs – not bitches.
Antonio had the decency to look uncomfortable, even if it only lasted a second. “But I would think you above all people would understand about tradition.”
Hester thought of her own cheetah coalition and their damned rules. Like the one where it said every mating must produce a cub within at least two years or the mating would be considered void. Yeah, she knew about stupid rules. She knew about the weight of ridiculous traditions and the ingrained need to adhere to them. Honestly, she had no idea why she didn’t just turn around to her coalition prime and give him a perfectly manicured middle finger. Her cat meowed. Okay, maybe she did know – it was because she knew that without the coalition she would be bereft. Shifters naturally craved being around other shifters. But that didn’t mean she had to like all the dumb rules. Especially the one about how she needed to be mated before she turned thirty.
Yes, and time was running out. She needed to search for a mate.
What about the muscled perfection in front of us? Her cheetah was all but winking. He wants to be our mate.
Hester wouldn’t bother denying the attraction. He was hot. Hottest guy she’d ever seen. But he was downright annoying, and she didn’t know if her stubbornness would allow her to get over her hang ups and actually want to be with him. Hester had a lot of pride. Pride that wouldn’t allow her to forgive her high school boyfriend for making out with a cheerleader when he was drunk. Pride that couldn’t get over the fact that her college boyfriend landed the same job she wanted – just because his uncle was a partner in the firm. Pride that stopped her from being friends with the daughter of the woman who slept with her mother’s third husband, even though she and Kayley had grown up together.
Maybe her pride held her back sometimes, but it was part of her and who she was.
“I understand tradition,” she said finally and grudgingly.
Antonio looked almost relieved. “Perhaps you can help the others understand, too.”
“I understand, but I don’t condone it, and I won’t let you manipulate me into forcing those other girls to stay here.”
He gave her a patient smile. “I bet your coalition has some crazy rules, too.”
“No comment,” she growled.
“And because you can scent that people aren’t lying when they tell you they’re happy here…”
Yes, the people here did seem genuinely happy. Though there was kind of a Stepford vibe going on. Her coalition may be sexist in some respects, but it appeared in the leap that all the women were homemakers. She might be wrong about that, and hey, it might be their choice if she was right, but she still got a bad feeling about it.
“No comment,” she repeated.
His expression warmed, and her cheetah panted. “You can see the other human women aren’t forced to stay here, and the cubs are well cared for.”
“Maybe,” she bit out.
“The females we’ve brought here are happy. Maybe, you could be happy, too.”
She pressed her lips together
“You know that by running out of here and going to the cops will bring a heap of trouble down on a lot of innocent people. Surely, you don’t want that.”
Hester’s upper lip curled as irrational anger flashed through her. “Here I was thinking you were trying to sell me on this place. You’re just trying to make sure I don’t get you in trouble.”
Antonio held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Hessie, come on, you know that’s…”
It was too late. She was already overreacting, and nothing could stop her now. He hadn’t said much really for her to take offense at, but she had. She felt an unreasonable amount of hurt at the fact that he was only sweet talking her to make sure she didn’t go to the cops. For a moment, she’d actually believed he was sweet talking her because he wanted her to stay. For a second she got the feeling that she was special; that he had brought her here because she was special. But no, if it didn’t work out with her, he’d just find someone else, and the pain at the thought of that had to be covered by blustering rage.
“You don’t care about me at all! You only care about not getting arrested. It could have been any woman you abducted, couldn’t it? I was just some random woman you found!”
His eyes flashed in matching anger, but she wouldn’t let him get a word in.
“Well, you know what, fine, I won’t go to the cops. Wouldn’t want to take your precious freedom away from you. And you know what? I’ll even stay here for the damn two weeks until I finally get the satisfaction of telling you where to stick your mating claim!”
Antonio sighed, but he didn’t look particularly put out. Talk about throwing gasoline on her fires!
Hester pulled the t-shirt over her head and threw it at him. His eyes took on a slightly glazed look as he took her in naked body, and she may have sucked in her stomach. But only a little.
With her head held high, she marched round to the front door of the guest house, ignoring the appreciative whistles she garnered.
It was only when she’d managed to reach her temporary bedroom that she realized what a huge mistake she made. In her ill-conceived fury, she agreed to stay for the entire two weeks. No wonder he hadn’t been put out by what she said. She’d just given him what he wanted.
Hester buried her face in her hands, avoiding listening to the yips of her animal.
Of all the times to have a temper tantrum!