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  Without knowing how long it took for her breathing to even out, for her shuddering and quivering to stop, Zach did something he’d never done before. He thought of someone else. He gently cared for her, tended to her until she quieted again. His cock was still hard, his balls still ached, but this wasn’t about him. It was about her, this hard woman who drove him insane. He smiled against her thigh, not really caring that his legs were falling asleep. This was something new and exciting and unbearably sexy. It was intimate and theirs.

  When he heard a delicate, unexpected sound, he lifted his head from where he’d rested it against her mons, breathing in her scent, reveling in it. A guarded glance showed her eyes were closed, her face relaxed. Sleeping. She let out another soft snore. Zach frowned down at her. Should he be insulted she’d fallen asleep? Offended? Flattered?

  He chose the latter. She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d let her guard down for just anyone. She had the suspicious squint and quick trigger finger of someone who shot first and asked questions later. So yeah, he was going with flattered that she could sleep with him here, that she’d let him touch and taste her until she couldn’t take any more.

  Zach glanced at his dick, still hard, still hopefully pointed at the object of his lust. “Sorry,” he muttered to the poor, neglected shaft.

  Shaking his head at himself, he stood, stifling a wince as the blood returned to his calves and feet. He must’ve gorged himself on her for— He looked for a clock and winced. Nearly an hour. He’d gone down on her for nearly a whole hour, wringing orgasm after orgasm from her with little care for anything but tasting her. A grin tugged at his mouth and if anyone else had been in the room with them, they would’ve seen his chest puff out just a bit. Yeah, he was damn proud he’d eaten this hard woman into a near coma.

  She didn’t move a muscle when he scooped her into his arms, lifting her with no problem. Her limp body settled against his chest, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. All that silky blonde hair floated over his naked skin, trailing down to tickle his ribs. As tough as his Colette was, she had some soft spots, he was coming to realize. Her long hair, her painted toenails, smooth, silky skin that smelled like rich vanilla and spice all pointed to a woman who was more than the gun she wielded. Even her home was softer than he would’ve imagined.

  Now that he wasn’t blinded by lust, he saw she’d decorated it with flair and drama using bright, bold colors completely at odds with her camouflage-wearing self. The scarlet sofa was the focal point of the entire living room that had dark mahogany bookshelves packed with paperbacks, a blinding-white love seat, abstract paintings all made a living area that looked as though it belonged in an apartment loft in a big city, not in the swamp.

  Interesting. His tiger wanted to explore more, but first he needed to get his tired female to bed.

  Zach carried his light burden down a door-lined hallway. He felt absolutely no shame in opening each door to see what kind of room it guarded and to sniff each one, making sure it didn’t conceal another male’s scent. What he found was a guest bathroom, two guest rooms and what was obviously Colette’s hunting room. She had three gun cabinets lining one wall, a desk opposite with maps nearly wallpapering the room. Zach had no doubt if he opened the closet, he’d see nothing but camouflage. Strange how that turned him on. He eyed her speculatively, wondering if she wore camo undies when she went hunting. His cock definitely liked the idea. A cute camo thong and matching bra he could tear off with his teeth before he fucked her against a tree. He swallowed a pained whimper as his dick gave another pulse of want. He ignored the ache, nearly running out of the room of temptation.

  The last door though, the one at the end of the hall, was the one that made his tiger purr, made him want to roll over the bed to capture her scent on every inch of his skin. But her bed didn’t look big enough for him. He’d have to see about fixing that, but until then, they’d just have to get real close. He placed her in the center of the queen-sized mattress and pulled the cool sheet over her body. She sighed softly, turning on her side toward him, curling into a little ball. He looked around at the blatantly feminine room, at the pale-pink touches that almost matched her nipples, at the lingerie spilling out of her dresser drawers. He gulped down deep breaths of her spicy-sweet scent. Colette was a definite surprise. One he couldn’t wait to explore.

  Now that he had her settled, at least for a little while, he began to poke around her house, exploring everything about Colette. The pictures on the walls and shelves in every room spoke of a woman who loved her family. The diplomas on the walls left him feeling like an idiot. This woman who spoke with a flat Cajun accent, who hunted and conducted tours in the swamps, had graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University with a Bachelors of Science degree. And as if that wasn’t enough, there were awards for marksmanship. The woman could’ve killed him if she’d wanted. She knew anatomy and could shoot the center of a dime out at fifty yards. That she hadn’t was all the evidence he needed to prove she liked him.

  The thought left him with a bounce in his step as he continued exploring the house. He peered in her fridge to see she had nothing in it. He frowned, recalling the ladder of ribs he’d felt under his hand as he carried her to her bedroom. She didn’t eat enough. A quick peek in her cabinets showed boxed foods and her freezer held frozen dinners he wanted to toss in the trash before she could heat them up. He shook his head in disgust even as he admired her beautiful range. It was brand new and looked as though it’d never been used. Going by the lack of raw ingredients in her kitchen, it was obvious the woman needed someone to take care of her.

  He returned to her bedroom to see her sleeping peacefully. He had enough time to put his plan into motion before he woke her up. He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, inhaling her scent. “Don’t go anywhere,” he whispered as he straightened next to the bed.

  Feeling absolutely no shame, he took her keys off the rack next to the door, discovered which one went to her house, locked up and shifted with the keys in his mouth. He then spent a good twenty minutes marking his territory. Only when the whole area was saturated with his scent did he leave. The half-hatched plan in his mind solidified as he hurried back to his car and the box of condoms he kept in his glove compartment.

  When Colette woke, she wouldn’t know what hit her.

  * * * * *

  “I told you she was nothing but trouble.” The sulky words, accompanied by a full pout by a grown man were enough to make him grimace.

  Once he left Colette’s house, he’d met up with the Schumacher brothers at some hidey-hole they had in the swamp. At first Roscoe thought the meeting would be in the coveted ceremonial area, except he was doomed to be mightily disappointed tonight. He should have known better. He would’ve preferred meeting directly with the big boss after all this time, of putting a face with the voice he’d taken orders from for the last four months, but instead he’d been stuck with these morons.

  They had nothing worth saying, nothing of note to give him other than ignorant observations they made. They’d contacted the group via a convoluted chain and somehow gotten to the right person, which meant the boss told Roscoe to come out here. In the middle of fucking nowhere, yet he was strangely okay with that because he had a feeling everything he’d been working for was coming to fruition. He’d finally take part in the hunt.

  He just had to get through spending time with Antoine and Vernon. How he’d ended up working with this pair of idiots was beyond him, but here he was, following orders as usual. He forced his eyes away from the sullen faces of the Schumacher brothers, his wolf insulted to be near them. It was a proud animal and it was also a very pissed-off animal after that fight with the tiger. Yet another disappointment he’d have to get over tonight.

  He considered the brawl a draw. Later, when things weren’t so urgent, he’d go back for a rematch. But right now he had things to do, a woman to draw into a trap and a point to prove to the world. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw as he recalled his last sight of C
olette Robicheaux. She didn’t fit the description he’d been given before he ever arrived in Pointe-Aux-Chat Parish. She wasn’t some veritable Amazon, some beast of a human female who stood eye-to-eye with male bear shifters, a woman with leathery skin and hair like straw from a life of working outside the way he’d been told.

  She was none of those things. Colette was barely five foot two. Her hair was pale, but not white with age. Her skin was dark from genetics, but glowed with health and youth. Her eyes were eerily pale, but then so were his. And she had a nice body. He’d gotten a very good look at her body from his spot on the ground with her standing over him. If circumstances were different, if his purpose here were different, he might have approached her for something other than his plan. He might have tried to tempt her to play with the big bad wolf.

  But he did have a plan and it didn’t involve finding out if the Cajun woman liked it doggy style.

  “She’s the one?” he asked the idiots who’d called his boss. “That little woman?”

  Vernon, the smarter of the Schumacher brothers, which wasn’t saying much, growled, his muddy-brown eyes glowing yellow for a brief moment. “She ain’t what she seems.” He muttered something in French under his breath. “She’s a hunter,” Vernon said when Antoine nudged him.

  And with those words, the jackal shifter sealed Colette’s fate. While he might doubt her danger to these two idiots, even the man known as Roscoe could see there was something dangerous lurking under the small human’s skin. It was in her witchy eyes and the way she walked, as though she didn’t fear anything.

  Unfortunately for her, Roscoe was something she needed to learn to fear.

  Because with one phone call, the call he was making right now, Colette Robicheaux’s life would change and it wouldn’t be for the better.

  Chapter Seven

  The smell of food and the insistent growling of her stomach dragged Colette from the hottest, most erotic dream she’d ever had. It blew all the others out of the water with its attention to detail. Zach, if her fantasies were to be believed, had a very talented tongue he enjoyed using on hapless females. Her body ached and throbbed with desire, but it was muted, as though she’d come so many times her hormones were overworked and fully sated. Like a tick about to burst.

  Colette’s eyes popped open. A glance around told her she was in her bedroom and everything looked exactly the same, but the delicious aroma wafting from the doorway beckoned. Had she left something in the oven overnight? Or had someone broken into her house to…cook? She shook her head. Impossible. She would’ve heard it if someone broke in. Maybe her mom had brought her breakfast? She glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even midnight yet. No way in hell would her mom be out so late. Her heart skipped several beats as another possibility intruded. One that involved a man with sultry gold eyes and a body to die for. No, it’d been a dream. There was no way Zach was in her house cooking. There was no way he’d buried his face between her legs and feasted on her like a starving man until she’d passed out. No way.

  But thoughts attempted to surface along with realizations. Like, she was completely naked. There wasn’t a stitch of clothing between her and her sheets. That meant nothing, she rationalized. She sometimes slept naked, especially when she got sunburned, but she hadn’t been burned yet. That would happen over gator season. The next thing that caught her attention was her hair. It was loose. She never left it loose when she slept. It was so long and got so insanely wavy, she had to braid it before she went to bed to avoid tangles. Yet, she hadn’t done that tonight. And she didn’t remember coming to bed at all. All she remembered was— Her eyes widened.

  Had it been real? She let out a breathless laugh and shook her head. No, of course not. Men didn’t just eat a woman out until she fell asleep and put her to bed without getting anything in return. Except when she bolted up in her bed and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, her thighs screamed. But her inner muscles didn’t feel stretched or sore. The discomfort was isolated to her inner thighs, which didn’t fit with full-on hard, fast sex. A flash of memory, of her sprawled on her sofa with her legs spread wide, her hips propped on the sofa arm, nearly fired her circuits. Heat scorched up from her womb straight to her face. She slapped her hands to her cheeks and closed her eyes.

  “Oh. My. God,” she whispered into the quiet of her room.

  “If you want to eat while it’s hot, you should come on out,” someone, a man, called from the direction of her kitchen.

  Colette paused, every muscle in her body tensing at the unexpected sound of someone else in her house. No, not someone else. A man…Zach? She didn’t know. She hadn’t heard him talk enough to know his voice right off the bat, but whoever he was, he hadn’t been invited. Habit had her reaching out to the .40 caliber she kept in her nightstand. The sheet threatened to take her to the ground when she stood, so she tossed it off and crept across the room to the basket of clothes she hadn’t gotten around to folding and putting away. She placed the handgun on the pile so she could clothe herself, grabbing the first thing that came to hand. Luckily it was one of her cousin’s old shirts and fell to mid-thigh when she pulled it over her head.

  Partially clothed and ready to take care of whomever might be in her house, she picked up the gun again and slipped down the hall. The door to her hunting-slash-home office was ajar, but she didn’t sense anything suspicious. It should have pissed her off. Normally it would have, except judging by the way her heart skipped several beats and her breathing quickened, she wasn’t angry so much as excited. She almost snorted at herself. Excited. Yeah, that was an understatement. If that was Zach in her kitchen, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Fall to her knees in worship for the amazing orgasms? Shoot him for real this time because he’d ruined her for any other man? Maybe throw herself in his arms and declare her love?

  She stopped just a few steps away from the end of the hallway where it met the living room. The man moving around her kitchen made no attempt at disguising his sounds. There was the soft clang of something being placed in the sink. The quiet rasp of skin over hardwood floor as he moved from the cabinets to the fridge and back again.

  “Well? Are you coming or not?”

  There was a taunt in the voice, clear as a bell and without even turning the corner Colette knew she’d see Zach rummaging around her kitchen. She tugged on the hem of her t-shirt with her free hand, sucked in a deep breath before straightening her shoulders and rounding the doorway. But he wasn’t rummaging in her kitchen. Instead, he leaned against her counter, his arms crossed over his chest, which did nothing to hide his erect cock and muscled body.

  He should have looked funny standing in her kitchen, naked as the day he was born, but even though he wasn’t dressed in his chef’s coat, didn’t have his longish hair hidden by a bandana, wasn’t surrounded by assistants and his stainless-steel appliances, he looked as if he owned the space. The sexy smirk on his face, the one she’d known was there, faded when he caught a glimpse of her and his arms fell to his sides as he pushed away from the counter.

  “Do you go everywhere with a gun?” he asked as he stalked toward her. “I know you don’t sleep with one under your pillow.”

  Her heart didn’t skip a beat. It flat out stopped and she felt the color leave her face at the realization that he had been moving around her house while she slept. Around her bedroom. The color she’d lost returned in full force. He had to have seen her toys. The many toys she’d purchased and enjoyed over the years were carefully placed in areas where they wouldn’t be immediately seen, but Zach was a tiger and she imagined he had a cat’s curiosity.

  Colette was so lost in her horrified thoughts, she didn’t realize Zach was next to her until he plucked at her baggy t-shirt. “Do you like this shirt?”

  She shook her head and blinked. “What? Yes, of course I do. I’m wearing it, aren’t I?” He circled her, but she spun around to keep him in her sights. It wasn’t much of a hardship considering a naked Zach in motion was the sexiest thing
she’d ever seen. But that wasn’t important at the moment, right? She totally needed to ignore the tingling in her pussy and find out what he thought he was doing in Bayou Ange. In her house, more specifically. Dragging her admiring gaze away from his flexing ass, she looked into his face. “Why are you here?”

  Gold eyes scanned her bare legs with appreciation. “I’d think that’s obvious.”

  Gawd. Her face felt as though it were going to explode from the force of the blood rushing to it. She was embarrassed, turned-on and a little pissed. She drew herself to her full five foot two and a half inches and planted her free hand on her hip. The other still clutched the gun, although she kept it pointed at the floor. For now.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Colette demanded in a near growl. If he thought just because she’d…let him give her a half dozen orgasms in one night that it meant he could expect to get full-on sex…well, he was probably right. But it would have been nice if he—

  “I was cooking,” he said, breaking into her internal rant. He spoke it so simply, as though it were perfectly natural for him to cook for the women he’d tongue-fucked into a coma that she didn’t know how to respond. He plucked at the sleeve of her shirt again. “Where’d you get this?”

  She slapped at his hand with a frown, still slowly turning to keep him in her sights. She was starting to get a little dizzy, but it was better than having him at her back. Even if part of her wanted him to toss her on the table and fuck her hard and fast. Her stomach gave a slow, hungry clench that had nothing to do with the delicious smells in the kitchen and everything to do with the tiger shifter eyeing her like a wounded gazelle.

  “My cousin left it here after we went froggin’ one night. Why? You have a problem with it?”

  But he seemed to lose interest in the shirt because he shrugged, ending his circuit around her by heading for the stove where pots and pans she hadn’t even realized she owned sat on burners. “Sit down so you can eat,” he said over his shoulder.