An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt (7 page)

Perhaps the rich musk of the cat’s pheromones called to Shane across the gulf of the forest floor between them. The tang of the cat’s sweat stirred Shane’s blood, and his mouth watered at the rich, lingering perfume of their sex. Even hurting as badly as he was, the desire to drop to all fours and lift his ass in offering rocked him.

Probably Shane’s lust would’ve swamped him just at the sight of all that agile power sculpted into the gorgeous puma. Competitors registered for the Hunt and endured the lengthy screening process in hopes of experiencing sex with the elusive cats. Most entered arenas for business purposes and for their own selfish reasons as Shane and Fallon both had, but a few wished only to be fucked by the most sinuous and skilled lovers in the explored worlds.

Why arousal burned through him like fire wasn’t important anymore, though. Nothing was—not Shane’s training, the cat’s mating pheromones, or even the puma’s dangerous beauty.

What mattered was the instinct demanding Shane belonged to this cat. That compulsion annihilated everything else: Shane’s determination to maintain a careful distance, the hurts shrieking through his body, the stupidity of making the cat’s quest so effortless.

He
needed
. And so needing, he surrendered again.

On unsteady feet, Shane stumbled toward the puma despite the scent that would both drug and inflame him. His stare never wavered from the stony gaze of his mate. The lack of welcome didn’t slow him. Rather it encouraged him to breach the distance between them all the more urgently. He must reach his cat. He must tremble under the cat’s touch, melt at his caress.

Shane licked his lips.

He must taste the puma who had mated him.

He halted when they stood a scant breath apart, when the cat’s lightly furred chest brushed Shane’s nipples with Shane’s every ragged gasp.

“Precious,” the cat said and leaned forward, angling his head. Shane longed for the cat’s kiss, but instead the cat bent to nip Shane’s chin. “So mine. And so
hungry
.”

A fervent moan escaped Shane’s mouth. The cat was in his prime, old enough to have been in other Hunts, and knew better than Shane what his hollow and hurting body required. It was an unfair advantage, but what could he do?

The cat lifted a palm and threaded his fingers through Shane’s hair to cup his scalp. He tugged, drawing Shane in, and Shane let him. He wanted this, wanted to feel the heat of the cat’s body, the solid weight of muscle against him. When the cat dragged Shane’s face into the crook of his neck, Shane shuddered. “Breathe me in,” the cat whispered.

Trembling, Shane sucked in air through his nose and groaned at the musky fragrance of last night’s sex still thick on the cat’s fur. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the familiar comfort of the cat’s silken body and that amazing scent. He nestled closer, dick hardening at the responding purr and the hand that dropped to Shane’s sore hip, nudging him squarely into the V of the cat’s thighs. Gods, it felt decadent. Shane rubbed his cheek on the short, satiny hair at the cat’s throat and was rewarded with a chuckle.

“Stubborn,” the cat said, voice husky with approval. “But affectionate.”

Shane didn’t have an affectionate cell in his body, but this felt so pure and right. He stroked his cheek against the cat’s fur again, shifting slightly away to part the pelt covering him so he could plaster his naked skin against the warm cat head to toe. “Cruel.” Shane sighed blissfully. “But seductive.”

Laughing, the cat bent to brush a quick kiss over Shane’s lips, and while Shane blinked in astonished yearning, the cat slung him over one silky shoulder. Air left Shane’s lungs in a whoosh. The cat crouched and then jumped, launching them into the trees. Fighting for oxygen, Shane watched the ground grow distant beneath them, luck more than design securing the pelt around him. Caught under his weight, the fur mostly stayed around him so he wasn’t lashed by twigs and stray branches. He grunted as the cat sprang from limb to limb. Higher, into the canopy. The ground disappeared to a dizzying vague smear of brown between vibrantly green leaves.

They crossed territory quickly in the upper reaches of the forest. Every jump jarred Shane, but he was a big boy. The cat wouldn’t be easy until he’d separated his new toy from the threat Fallon had represented the moment the other man had tried to touch him, so Shane wouldn’t complain. He didn’t truly relax until the puma dropped lower, though, returning them to the forest floor.

Back on solid ground, Shane looped his arms around the cat’s neck. He slid to his feet, finding his balance on shaky legs while he relished the luxurious treasure of the cat’s hair between his fingers.

Still wary, the cat hadn’t taken him to a mating den in the treetops.

Perfect.

Exhilarated, a little scared, and a lot turned on, Shane tipped his head back and stared into the cat’s odd, slanted eyes. “Kiss me again.”

Those eyes darkened.

A scream shattered the hushed morning birdsong—a human scream that abruptly cut off, followed by the reverberating thunder of a snarl that liquefied Shane’s bones.

Fallon! Something had cornered Fallon.

Not a cat, either. No cat had ever made a noise like that.

Shane’s cat whipped his head in the direction of that sound. His clawed fingers briefly dug into Shane’s biceps before releasing and pushing him away. “Run.” The cat leaped up and into the trees, racing toward the screams as Fallon’s next shriek pebbled gooseflesh on Shane’s skin. “Run! Then climb. I’ll find you.”

Pulse rocketing at the crack of splintering wood that signaled battle in the direction of the camp abandoned moments ago, Shane obeyed. He didn’t have claws like the cats or other competitors in the Hunt. He had no weapon or the innate grace to jump from tree to tree. Nor was he familiar with the predators that stalked the untamed woodlands of Mariket, but Shane didn’t need to be told that a human fighting whatever had breached the arena’s security shield was suicide.

Fallon’s piercing screams spoke eloquently.

Heeding that wordless warning, Shane sprinted. As far and as fast from the growls as he could.

Tripping over the bottom edge of the fur pelts, which caught on thorny branches, Shane released the only covering he had. Speed was more important. Wearing only his mocs, he ran until his chest heaved, laboring for oxygen. He paused to look for branches low enough to grab.

A sleek, heavy weight flattened him to the ground. Rocks and twigs beneath a thin layer of forest detritus gouged into him. His panted breath fled his lungs.

A cat.

Every sense in Shane sprang to alert at the scent, similar to the cat who had fucked him, but different.

Soured.

Wrong.

Another
cat.

He lashed out, kicking the cat pinning him. “No!” he shouted, despite the enormous body pressing down to make inflating his chest with oxygen almost impossible. His feet connected with the cat’s legs, but his flailing fists barely skimmed over dense muscle. “No!” he screamed louder.

Snarling, the cat captured Shane’s left wrist, then his right. He stretched both over Shane’s head and pushed them painfully down through crisp leaves and into flat, unyielding rock. Shane screamed again, bucking to shake the cat loose, but it was no use. This cat was
huge
, strong. His head spun at the foul, wretched stench, his stomach rolling with helpless nausea, but he squirmed and wriggled under the cat. Because this cat didn’t respect the mating bite on Shane’s shoulder or the smell of the first cat’s sex on him. No, this cat’s claws dug into the meat of Shane’s wrist with a growled warning that vibrated against Shane’s spine. “No!” Shane yelled again. He shrieked when the cat’s other hand worked down to Shane’s bucking hips to sink claws into him. The pain of the fully extended talons stabbing like daggers fogged his head.

Shane wailed, desperation renewing his struggle, but that only made him hurt worse. The claws holding him dug deeper. The cat’s grip on his wrists tightened, pulverizing bone. Excruciating. He contorted his body to try to get away despite the burn of torn muscle as blood streamed over his groin from his punctured hip.

The weight holding him down abruptly tore free.

Shane flinched and scrambled from the deafening snarls that still resounded too close to his ears, making them ring. He pushed up on his arms to crawl away, then face-planted into the ground when his ruined wrists twisted sickly, refusing to support him. Ignoring the shrieks and lashing claws of the cats, he shoved himself forward on elbows and knees. Once he cleared spattering blood and the thuds of blows landing, he lurched to his feet. Wobbling, heartbeat roaring in his ears, he stumbled away, just one step. Then another. And another.

He ran.

He couldn’t breathe again, this time because of his own screaming, but he couldn’t stop. The stink of the cat, the twin agonies of his shattered wrists… Cats fought over territory and potential mates, but once those mates had been marked— Shane tripped. He plummeted to the ground, grateful that the fall knocked the breath from his lungs. His mindless screams died. He grabbed at vines coiled around a thick tree, frantically grasping in spite of his clumsy fingers. Blood from his torn hip smeared the tree trunk, leaving a blatant trail to follow, but it couldn’t be helped. He yelled again when he tried and failed to wrench himself painfully up, his wrists throbbing. He couldn’t hang on. Instead, he somehow forced his legs to push him to his feet.

Weakening, consumed by agony, he shuffled a few more paces before he fell again. He ricocheted off another tree when he collapsed to the ground. When his aching body slammed into the leaves and the dirt, he stayed. His wrists were fiery miseries. He shivered at moist air cooling the hot blood that slicked his hip and sheeted down his thigh.

Shane couldn’t figure out what the hells had gone wrong.

He couldn’t run anymore. With his broken wrists limp and useless, he couldn’t climb either. Winded, in shock, the best he could manage was sweeping his arms to use leaf cover as camouflage.

A dark shape darted from the canopy. It scooped him against a warm and lightly furred chest. Shane cried out as his world shifted, the cat leaping high into the trees, and then relaxed as the cat murmured, “Precious.”

The cat who’d marked him had won this fight.

He wasn’t so sure of the other battle near camp. Shane didn’t know what had gotten to Fallon, or if the other man lived or died. Arenas were cleared before the Hunt, each perimeter examined to seal off tunnels circumventing the security shield and any opening in their defenses that might be used by Mariket’s most lethal predators. They should’ve been safe—Fallon from predators and Shane from other cats while the first cat’s marks still grooved Shane’s back.

Instead, even in his cat’s tight embrace, Shane felt like he was coming apart. He wrapped his clumsy arms around the cat and hung on. He grunted as they left the tree canopy, the thump of their landing on the forest floor jarring through Shane like a slap. The cat broke into a lope through thinning trees. “He touched me,” Shane said. Stupidly. His skin pebbled, revulsion and blind terror welling up inside him anew. Grief too. He clung to the cat, rubbed against the soft fur, but he couldn’t get the sour, twisted smell out of his head. “He touched me.”

The cat jumped.

When they splashed into warm water and sank like a stone, Shane shouted. Water filled his mouth and poured into his nose, but the cat bolted up, breaking the surface of the pond. The rich mineral scent of the water overwhelmed everything, including the smell of his cat’s sweat. Shane jerked, crushed by the loss of his cat’s scent, but the cat was strong, anchoring Shane against his chest. When Shane’s pulse stopped pounding in his ears, he finally heard the cat crooning to him. “He’s gone. Dead,” he said on a husky purr. “You’re safe. No one will touch you again.”

Shane groaned in agony, in protest—no one should have touched him in the first place.

“Breathe me in, Precious.” The cat nudged Shane’s head to the crook of his neck and shoulder. The scent was stronger there. Not sweat. The pond had washed that free of them both. Shane couldn’t detect the stench of the foreign cat now, and that was good, very good. Shane could still smell blood, though. His own. And he wasn’t sure he’d ever scrub the memory of the other cat’s stink away. While his hip remained underwater, turning the pond cloudy crimson, the punctures in his damaged wrists seeped. So close to the cat, mostly what he smelled was the cat’s lavish mating musk. More concentrated now. Intense. “Just breathe.”

Trembling, hurting—bleeding—Shane obeyed. With those arms and legs locked around him, the cat’s tail whispering along his back under the water, he didn’t want to fight anyway. Blood loss and shock dizzied him, but the cat steadied him. He sucked in air, clenched muscles slowly loosening.

Shane couldn’t stop shaking.

Oh gods, he hurt.

The cat slipped gracefully through the water, kicking them to the pond’s edge. Shane gasped as the cat hoisted him gently onto the moss-covered bank. A pink mixture of blood and water sluiced over his skin as the cat snatched clumps of moss from the rock and pressed fistfuls against his wounded hip. “To stop the bleeding,” the cat said and then heaved from the pond. He shoved Shane flat and hovered protectively over him. “Stay away from him,” he hissed. “Get back!”

Sick, confused, Shane tried to hold on to his cat but couldn’t make his fingers work anymore.

“He needs help, Lore. He’s losing too much blood.”

“He’s been attacked!”

“We know. He needs medical attention.” The voice was pitched low, calming. “Not an evac, I promise.”

A med tech in Arena 4’s blue jumpsuit rushed too close.

The cat’s—Lore’s—muscles bunched. “You’ll take him. When I’m dead.”

Head swimming, chills racking his body, Shane stared up at his cat.

Oh fuck.

He was a victor.

No!
He couldn’t be. Not this fast. It didn’t make any sense.

Hurt, dying, Shane didn’t understand what was happening, but the fight hadn’t been knocked from him yet, not completely. He squirmed, trying to force his useless wrists to…shove the cat away? Pull him closer? Gods, he couldn’t think through the pain, and his skin still crawled at the phantom grip of—