Because it wasn’t thunder at all. A shadow lurked in the brush, black fur with two yellow eyes. White teeth bared, then snapped. A growl swelled, emanating from the darkness.
“Tell me that’s not a jaguar,” Fletcher said as if it weren’t Very Obviously a Jaguar.
A black cat trigintuple the size of barnyard kittens stalked out of the undergrowth. Naya peeled her ears back and crouched on her haunches, ready to pounce. Her body was pure muscle. Lean but powerful. Poised to strike.
“Get behind me.” Waylon’s voice was stern. Commanding. Sexy? No, now was not the time for sexy.
Fletcher moved as told, only barely refraining from gripping the back of Waylon’s shirt. And she was glad she hadn’t because Naya’s hunting gaze followed her every motion. Protective and territorial. Eager to sink her teeth into Fletcher’s skin. Fletcher was, admittedly, already more of a dog person to begin with, but getting ripped to shreds by a jaguar would really seal the deal.
Impressively, Waylon stood his ground. Not a single bead of sweat trickled down his neck. (Shocking, given the moisture pooling against the underwire of Fletcher’s bra.)
Her thoughts scrambled like Times Square tourists. There had to be a way out of this. Trees? No, cats could climb better than Fletcher,and there was no hot firefighter to rescue her when she inevitably got stuck. The river, then. Cats hated water, right?
“Come on, we have to go—”
Before Fletcher could make a break for it, let alone finish her sentence, Naya’s teeth flashed in warning. Waylon wedged himself between them, one hand outstretched toward Naya, the other shoving Fletcher farther behind him. That cat was going to tear him limb from limb. And then her. And then, their respective limbs would be left there in such a haphazard heap that thousands of years from now, archaeologists would hypothesize that Lydell Island had been so biologically isolated that a subclass of four-armed humans had evolved.
Naya lunged.
All Fletcher could do was shield her eyes. She’d seen enough blood for a lifetime. Which made sense since her lifetime was about to be over as soon as Naya’s teeth ripped out their jugulars.
Except Waylon wasn’t screaming.
Slowly, Fletcher pried her hands away from her eyes. Naya wasn’t gnawing at his leg, licking her lips. Her massive head nudged into Waylon’s open palm. And she was…
Purring.
The cat lifted onto her legs, front paws resting on Waylon’s shoulder as she nuzzled into his neck, her nose running over the last reaches of his scruff. Like a house cat. A giant, saber-toothed house cat.
Cold flooded Fletcher’s system. Relief and confusion and a secret third thing that felt an awful lot like affection. A nervous laugh bubbled out of her. Whether it was from the close encounter with the jungle cat or the loving way Waylon scratched at Naya’s chin, she couldn’t tell.
“Is thisyourcat?” she asked.
Naya’s purrs halted. For two blissful, uneaten seconds, the cat had forgotten Fletcher existed.
That was over now.
Naya glared like Fletcher posed an imminent threat to Waylon’s safety, despite the fact he could bench-press her with two fingers.
“Easy, easy.” Waylon guided the feline back down onto all fours. He patted her head as if she were nothing more than an ornery tomcat. “I think it’s more like I’m her person.”
Judging by the way Naya’s claws extended when she refocused on Fletcher, she clearly took her role as Guard Jag seriously.
“When I was seventeen, my dad brought his buddies out here, and I tagged along. Didn’t know what I was getting myself into. He handed me a gun, told me to hunt. I am a man of many talents, but hunting is not one of them.” A soft, sad little grin rose to Waylon’s lips as he ran his thumb along Naya’s jaw. “Naya found me before I knew she was there.”
“And didn’t eat you?”
“I’m sure she would have tried if she’d weighed more than a couple pounds,” he said with a laugh. “She was just a cub. One of my dad’s friends had poached her mom already.”
Fletcher realized. “Right. The jaguar room.”
“Naya knew how to be a cat about as well as I knew how to hunt one.”
He didn’t finish his story, but Fletcher filled in the blanks. A peach-fuzzed Waylon with a tiny shadow that turned into a much-less-tiny shadow. A protective friendship that went both ways.
“Pretty brave for a guy afraid of a bush baby.”
“First of all, I was sneak attacked. And secondly, animals with opposable thumbs are objectively terrifying. Ask anyone.”
