THE COUGAR'S BABY - 4

C H A P T E R F O UR - - - D A N I E L L A

Great. This was what I was looking for in my evening.

Dani murmured quietly when she awoke, falling back and forth on a bench, her head throbbing in pain and her wrists zipped together in front of her. At the very least, they'd buckled her seatbelt.

"Good morning, sunshine. Enjoy the view, I hear it's the greatest drug nation has to offer," someone said from the front seat, blue and gold eyes flickering in the rearview mirror at her.

"Fuck you," she murmured groggily, laying her head on the headrest and instantly regretting it.

The smooth bounce of the armored vehicle as it moved over the forest floor made her sick, though her gaping head wound and the low end of her adrenaline high certainly helped. It took her a second to get her bearings and clear the first traces of hysteria from her mind.

The Silk Slayers were not among them. These were fighters. It didn't take more than a quick glance to notice. They were dressed in jungle camo gear, drenched in perspiration, and filled the small area with manly odors that made her jaguar sniff at the air hungrily.

Shifters. Big, powerful shifters. Shit.

Therefore, it was going to be difficult for her to escape this predicament. Her thoughts were racing, and she attempted twisting her wrists in the bonds. Tight but not overly so. They did not want to stop her blood flow. It must not have been completely lost. Though she couldn't quite hear it, she could definitely feel something hum in the air. Something that nearly caused the air around her to crackle

She quickly understood as she opened her eyes once more and saw the man sitting next to her with a deep, almost obscenely golden look. A single blink caused the gold in his eyes to vanish in an instant and be replaced by a gray and blue that was as alluring as the whirling depths in front of them. She could sense his hyperawareness of her presence because the hairs on the back of his arm sprang up when he turned his head away and looked out the window as though she didn't exist.

She spotted yet another jaguar. She felt a part of her light up with eerie interest.

They weren't typical shifters, particularly not in the military. They were loner types who enjoyed working alone and didn't enjoy group dynamics as much as, say, lions did. Dani knew they were fierce and unbeatable once they joined forces, though. But considering the circumstances, it seemed strange to see another person of her type crammed into a little car alongside her.

"You want to tell us who you are, or is that something we really must know? " The driver made a joke, his eyes glistening with laughter that no one else in the car seemed to be experiencing.

She paused to assess the circumstance. The sun was already risen when the driver made his way through the bush on a crooked path. She wasn't very drunk, but she knew she had to have been out for at least an hour. She was also unfamiliar with the areas of the bush they were walking through. She had no clue where they were going at the moment, but perhaps if the window had been open and she had been able to smell them, she might have known.

The passenger seat was occupied by a man who appeared to be recording the events and was broadly formed and strikingly composed. In their right ears, she could see unremarkable communications equipment that was completely opaque. She could not identify them because of the lack of insignia or other distinguishing features on their clothes. She did, however, notice dog tags straining beneath their shirts, off their muscular chests and against the cloth.

Also strongly identifying them as Americans was the driver's mild Creole accent. Dani wasn't sure if she was being driven to death or merely taken on a joyride, but at least that was a comfort. She was berating herself for her careless choices, or she was blaming herself.

You had the option to board that vehicle. You would have been more accurate. You've now completely ruined the plan.

There was a lot of truth in that, but she knew in her heart of hearts that she couldn't truly curse herself too severely. It was a reflex and automatic. Dani had no doubt that Ron had put his revolver to his shoulder and was ready to shoot the man in the face. Despite the fact that she was unsure of the identities of the guys, their weapons and digital forest camouflage made it unlikely that she could deny that they were at the very least more capable men than the twerps she was running with. She had done what needed to be done because she didn't want blood on her hands, even if they weren't the good folks. if only for a moment, taken out Ron and received a punch to the face from Louie as a result. Everything was fair; she had earned it. The most terrifying aspect of it was that she had not in the least expected to survive it. The objective in this situation was meant to be survival.

Finally answering with the most girliest grin she could muster, Dani said, "I believe it's more fun if you guys guess."

The driver laughed, and if she had wanted to, she could have read amusement in the man sitting next to him's expression. She was seated next to a man, but he said nothing and gave her no attention. She caught a glimpse of his fingers ticking nervously on his knee out of the corner of her eye. She made a little frown. Nothing about him suggested that he was the restless sort, yet that one clue gave her more information than she may have needed to know.

She batted her eyelashes and said, "How about you show me yours and I'll show you mine?" She definitely couldn't really count on employing her feminine cunning while blood was gushing from her forehead.

"Miss," the driver said, "I think you're mixing up who caught whom here."

Chatty, isn’t he.

Dani chose to remain silent while gazing out the window because no one else tried to pull anything more from her. They couldn't have given any thought to what she saw because they hadn't covered her eyes and she wasn't hidden in a trunk. That indicated that they had plans to either murder her or later relocate her to a safe location where she couldn't create any issue. She bit her lip carefully and attempted to determine if she had any role to play in this predicament, but it had left her feeling relatively comfortable about her current circumstances.

Before the automobile abruptly came to a stop, appearing in the middle of nowhere, it was another thirty minutes. Dani could hear rustling and things being dragged out of the rear of the large armored vehicle as the guys filed out. After that, a door was opened, and the man who avoided her look bent over her and unbuckled her seatbelt.

As his hand glided up her calf to loosen the belt, she couldn't help but exhale as their bodies met. The jolt ran like a ball of lightning from her knee to her toes and then to the top of her head, warming her all over, as if someone had tased her. She glanced at him with big green eyes, and they both momentarily stopped moving.

He was so cute, fuck.

Darkness and rough lines, all at once beautiful and ominous. His canine badges briefly protruded from his sweat-stained dark gray shirt as he halted over her, his lips unnaturally near. Square, enormous shoulders dug into her. He had a stiff jaw that gave the impression that he was clenching his teeth, and his lips were thin but had a deep Cupid's bow. Dark brows, a strong Roman nose, and eyes that made her feel like the hunted, not the hunter, for the first time in her life.

Finally, he murmured, "Come on," reversing and opening the car door widely to give her some space. "We have to leave."

His voice was flawless, even. Growly and raspy, as though he had smoked too much, yet it just improved it. Dani had spent a significant portion of her adult life around every macho male cliche she could think of, so the fact that he smelt like a genuine guy was significant. But this man? The genuine stuff, he was. Quiet, dignified, and radiating power. She was certain that they would be fucking by the time the clock struck twelve if she had met him at a pub.

Shaking her head, she got up from the chair and waited for him to shut the door and thrust her in front before moving. A voice in her brain urged her to go, but it seemed more interested in how long it would take this huge wall of a man to catch her than in whether she would succeed in doing so.

He led her to a door that was hardly more than a hatch in the underbrush. She could see the other two men securing the car as she peered over her shoulder. She could make out another mound about a hundred feet to the right, which to the inexperienced eye appeared to be dense vegetation, but she could infer that there was a similar automobile below.

He opened the door and took her down a narrow, dark staircase, lowering her into the depths of the night. The lights flashed on as she walked down the last step, making sparks dance in her field of vision as she had been acutely aware of his presence behind her the entire time.

They were in a modestly sized yet roomy bunker. Doors leading to numerous adjacent rooms were visible to her. It had a musty, stale scent that suggested it had been abandoned for some time and had just lately been used. Dani was about to spin around and make a sassy remark about whether this was the guy with her's strategy for first dates when she was stopped short by a gurgling growl from the rear.

He pointed in the direction of the sound and said, "That way."