Jaguars' Reward [Impulse 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (3 page)

“Can you manage?”

“Sure. She can’t weigh more than one-twenty.”

Vadim leapt several feet up from the boat to the floating dock with the woman in his arms, carrying her along it with ease. Zayd ran ahead and opened the door for him. Just like all the doors in Impulse, it was unlocked. Burglary was one of the few problems they didn’t have to wrestle with in their community. Vadim took the stairs two at a time and kicked open the door to a spare bedroom. He stripped the woman of her damp clothing, causing Zayd to whistle his appreciation when she was down to her skin.

“Very nice.”

“Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

“Our enemies know you and I urgently need the services of a human mate and have obligingly sent one along?” Zayd shook his head. “C’mon, man!”

“Yeah, I know it sounds farfetched, but—”

“Yeah, I know, you’ve got a bad feeling.”

“I don’t want to be attracted toward her, Zayd. I can sense that she’s dangerous and, whatever her reason for ending up in the sea, it can’t be good news for Impulse. Even so, there’s something about her that’s already gotten to me. When I thought she was dead, that we were too late to save her, I felt like part of me had died right along with her.” He frowned. “Does that sound crazy?”

Zayd was uncharacteristically serious. “Nope, I’m right with you on this one. Don’t ask me why, but it feels right having her here somehow, and we don’t even know who she is.”

The two guys shared a glance. “Exactly,” Vadim said.

Zayd pulled back the covers and Vadim lifted the woman between them. She was either still unconscious, or pretending to be. Vadim didn’t know which. Her breathing was even, but if she really was still out it couldn’t be a good sign.

“What the hell’s keeping Mikael?” Vadim demanded to know. “I don’t like the look of her color.”

“How can you tell, under that tan?”

“Look at her lips. They’re blue and she’s still trembling.”

“Hypothermia, most like. The ocean’s warm, but if she was in there for a while, she has no fat on her to act as insulation.”

“I’m here.” Mikael bounded into the room. “What happened?”

He crouched beside the woman, checking her vital signs while Vadim brought him up to speed.

“Odd,” he said.

“Yeah, ain’t it just,” Vadim agreed. “And I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Oh, I can think of a few things,” Zayd said, eyeing the woman and grinning.

“Will she be all right?” Vadim asked.

“Depends how long she was in the water for and how she got there in the first place. You obviously didn’t see anything.”

“No.” Vadim shook his head. “There was a boat lurking for a while. She could have been on that and fallen off.”

“There would likely be physical injuries—a knock to the head or something if that had happened, and there are none.” Mikael frowned. “Anyway, surely someone would have noticed her missing and radioed a Mayday?”

“
If
it was an accident,” Zayd said, grimacing.

“Right, well right now I’m more concerned about her still being unconscious,” Mikael said. “We need to keep her warm.”

Zayd headed for the door. “I’ll get more blankets.”

At that moment the woman’s eyes blinked open. She groaned and immediately shut them again.

“Hey, welcome back,” Mikael said, checking her pulse. “How do you feel?”

She mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Can you tell us your name?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re safe,” Vadim said, crouching beside her. “We pulled you out of the ocean. Do you know how you got there?”

She looked bewildered. “The ocean?”

“Yeah, the Mexican Gulf.”

“Why am I in Mexico?” Her voice was croaky, little more than a whisper.

“Get her some water,” Mikael said.

Zayd returned with the additional blankets, handed them to Vadim, and went off again to get water. He returned quickly and held a glass to the woman’s lips.

“Take it easy,” he said when she tried to drink it too quickly and almost choked on it.

“You’re not in Mexico, honey,” Vadim said.
“You’re in Impulse, Florida.”

“Impulse!”
She sat bolt upright, a panicked expression on her face. The sheet fell to her waist, revealing her naked breasts. She either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “I can’t be.”

The guys shared a glance. “You’ve been here before?” Vadim asked.

“I…I’m not sure.” She shook her head, as though she thought that might help her to remember. “But I know the name.”

“And the name frightens the hell out of her,”
Vadim pheromoned.

“Yeah, we get that,”
Zayd replied grimly.

“Do you know your own name?” Vadim asked.

“Talia,” she said without hesitation. “Talia Regan.”

Zayd grinned at her. “Nice meeting you, Talia. I’m Zayd Kunda.”

“Thanks for saving me.”

“Our pleasure,” Vadim said. “I’m Vadim Fyre. Were you on a boat? Is that how you got to be in the ocean?”

“I…I can’t remember.”

“Can’t or chooses not to?”
Vadim pheromoned.

“Give her time,”
Mikael answered.

“You need to sleep,” he said to Talia. “I’m gonna give you something that will help you. When you wake up, I expect you’ll remember more.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Talia drank the potion that Mikael gave her without protest and almost instantly fell asleep.

“I don’t like it,” Vadim said as they closed the door on her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Zayd replied. “Those tits looked pretty likeable to me.”

“Rafe and the rest of the council need to know about this,” Mikael said, ignoring Zayd’s lascivious grin.

Vadim nodded. “I agree. Best get them over here. I don’t wanna leave the girl alone for too long, just in case.”

* * * *

Talia woke up, dazed and disorientated. She was in a large room that she didn’t recognize and had no idea how long she’d been there, what day it was, or why she felt so groggy. She was in bed, stark naked. More confused than ever, she sat up, which didn’t help much. She felt hot and cold at the same time, her throat felt sore, and her skin smelt of the sea. Something about being in the ocean, she remembered that much.

Talia wrinkled her brow, desperately trying to figure out how she came to be in this strange house. All she knew was that it had to do with the sea. She stepped out of bed and peered round the drapes. The ocean lapped onto a sandy beach right outside the window and there was a sleek motor cruiser tied up to a private dock. The sky was clear blue, not a cloud in sight. It looked like paradise, but looks could be deceiving. She was highly suspicious of the circumstances that had landed her in this strange place, especially since she couldn’t remember what they were.

It was the weirdest thing. She could remember her name, but absolutely nothing else. They said she’d been in the ocean. Perhaps she’d hit her head, or ingested so much seawater that it somehow messed with her mind. Talia had no idea who she was, knew nothing about herself, but had already discovered that she disliked being out of control. Perhaps there was something in the room that would lend a clue as to her identity. She conducted a methodical search but came up empty. The walk-in closet had a couple of T-shirts in it, some pants, and a robe. Nothing she recognized as being her own, but then how could she know that?

The en suite bathroom was equipped with every imaginable toiletry. Talia’s salty skin felt tight and dry and so she gave in to the lure of the shower. She stepped into it and stood under the hot jets for a long time, groaning with pleasure as they pounded her body with their cleansing heat. She shampooed her hair with something fragrant and scrubbed every inch of her body until her skin burned. Wrapped in a towel, she found a brush and used it to untangle her wet hair. She’d feel more in control if she put something on. Possibly. There was no underwear in any of the drawers, but that was the least of her problems. The T-shirts fit her—after a fashion—but the pants were too large. She found a belt in one of the drawers and then rolled up the cuffs, which fixed that problem.

Clothed, Talia felt a little better. She could hear low masculine voices coming from downstairs but wasn’t yet ready to venture from this room and find out who they belonged to. Instead she pulled the drapes back and sat in the window seat with her knees drawn up to her chin. She stared out at the ocean she’d supposedly been rescued from, wrinkling her brow as she tried to remember. It was as though someone kept opening and closing a door inside her head, allowing her brief glimpses into the room beyond before shutting them off again.

She
did
have vague recollections of being in the water. Of getting too tired to swim anymore and turning on her back to stare up at a clear blue sky and the unrelenting sun burning from it. It had felt peaceful, like she was transitioning from one plane to another and was anxious to get to the next level. Then someone with piercingly golden eyes had pulled her from the water, dragging her away from that serene destination she’d been willingly floating toward.

She sat bolt upright, suddenly remembering something else the man had told her. She was in Impulse. She had no idea where that was, or why the prospect of being there frightened her so much. All she did know was that every instinct in her body screamed at her to get out of there fast while she still could.

Rafe Landon, leader of the Impulse colony of feline shape-shifters, frowned as Vadim retold the story of Talia’s rescue.

“It’s a ruse of some sort,” Vilas, Rafe’s fellow alpha panther, said decisively. “It’s gotta be.”

“I agree,” said Kane, one of the alpha leopards, extending a claw and scratching his head with it. “But how?”

“She can’t remember anything except her name,” Mikael said.

“So you think our enemies have cleared her memory?” Rafe leaned back in his chair, crossed one ankle across his opposite knee, and leaned his elbow on it. “Then dumped her in the sea off our shore in the hope of…in the hope of what exactly?”

“They didn’t just dump her,” Vadim said. “They lurked for a while, knowing we were patrolling and their presence would get our attention. Then they skipped into the Intracoastal and Giron had them in sight. By then we’d figured they were just passing through.”

“But they came back and probably dumped the woman over the side just as they cleared the peninsula,” Zayd said.

“Yeah.” Vadim ground his jaw in disgust. “They played us like a fucking Stradivarius. They obviously couldn’t get too close to our vessel, or we’d have gotten suspicious, so they used the peninsula as cover and then got the hell out of Dodge.”

Rafe nodded. “They took a big chance.”

“You don’t know it all,” Vadim said grimly. “We called Giron as we were heading home and asked him why he hadn’t let us know the boat was coming back our way. He said he’d tried the radio but couldn’t get through, so he sent a pheromone, which I responded to.”

“Yeah,” Zayd added. “But we weren’t on the radio at all, so he should have been able to reach us. It’s not like our channel was busy, or anything like that.
And
we didn’t get his pheromone, much less respond to it.”

“Ah, so we know for sure now. It is our enemies,” Rafe said. “Enemies who can block radio waves
and
mess with our pheromones.”

“Has to be the fucking bears,” Vadim said. “They can do all that shit when they’re within range of us.”

“Yeah, most likely. It could be the wolves, of course, but the bears are more advanced than them with the radio stuff.”

“I’ve just thought of something,” Zayd said. “I’ll be right back.”

Vadim was tempted to admit that he and Zayd had been fucking each other’s brains out while a woman was fighting for her life. He resisted. The bears—if it was them—had played it exactly right. Even if their attention hadn’t been diverted, they were some distance away at the time she must have been dumped and they couldn’t have gotten to her any quicker than they had.

Zayd bounded back into the room clutching the video camera from the boat. At first Vadim thought he was going to play back images of their party for two for all to see. Then he recalled that jolting the boat had taken—a jolting that had nothing to do with the ocean moving for them personally. Zayd had obviously remembered that as well. Hopefully the video would lend some clues as to what really happened.

No one spoke as Zayd fast-forwarded through the footage. He exclaimed when he got to a certain point, turned the screen so they could all see, and explained about the rogue wave.

“See,” he said. “You can just see the bow of the boat coming round the peninsula when the camera rocks. It’s moving at a hell of a rate.”

Vadim pointed to the time stamp in the corner of the screen. “That’s only a couple of minutes before we saw the boat clearing out and Zayd noticed the body in the water. She must have tried to swim for land, got caught in those cross currents where the Intracoastal and the Gulf meet, and run out of steam.”