Jaguar Night by Doranna Durgin Page B

Only long enough to orient herself. To accept that the man himself had touched her, and not just enhanced herbs and a shared near-death experience. To give in to instinct and drive and want, and run down into the scrubby tangle of foliage and rugged terrain.
    To run for Dolan.
    He’d stalked the hills, moving around in darkness when he would have preferred twilight. He stretched hismuscles; he leaped from outcrop to outcrop, testing himself. He felt strength returning by the moment. If he was smart, he’d leave this place here and now and return to his mission.
    Except it was about more than that now. This ranch had come to the attention of the Core…and for the first time in his bitter rogue’s life, Dolan felt the impulse to let something come between himself and his primary goal. To think about more than that narrow mission focus. He’d continue to look for the manuscript, but he also had to make sure these people were safe. Until the Sentinel team finally arrived, he had to stay close to Encontrados. For if the Core was circling this ranch, Meghan was surely their ultimate target. She was the one who’d slapped their first probe down…the one who’d drawn attention.
    He easily found the best vantage point in the area, outcrops jutting over the hill so profoundly as to create hollow, protected places beneath. He rubbed his face against the stone and then leaped lightly to the top, stretched out with his tail idly tapping the accumulation of leaves and debris over hard rock. Not Sentinel, not Dolan…just the jaguar, mind emptied of everything but the terrain around and below him.
    But thoughts of Meghan constantly tickled his mind; he found the lack of her a bane, one that waxed within him until the landscape no longer had his attention and he lifted his lips, tipping his whiskers in a silent snarl. His tail gave one violent lash before he forced himself to stillness. He would have cursed what she had wrought between them, but he no longer had the heart. He could no longer wish she’d never cometo him that night—not now, not having felt her lips and her body.
    And there went his tail again, slapping rock. Not cool. He glared at it as though it were a separate entity, offering it its own silent snarl of warning. Big, tough Sentinel, tail out of control.
    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 herpath, 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