Panther's Claim (Bitten Point #2) (17 page)

I
t didn’t take
as long as expected to make it back to the B&B, especially since they had a bright beacon to follow in the sky. The hardest part was realizing they’d have to appear naked.

However, that fear proved groundless because Daryl sent Constantine ahead, and the big man snagged them some clothes.

Not much was said during that trek. What could they say? Harold had escaped. The tunnels had collapsed, and the only clues they had to where Aria went were gone. But where? And why?

Questions for the moment that would go unanswered, but other things might come to light. With the murder and the fire at the B&B, this time there was no hiding what happened.

According to the cops who’d witnessed the blaze, the fire seemed to start somewhere under the house. Nobody knew how, but the result lit the sky for hours. And everyone in town knew the place burned.

Everyone who could give a hand fighting the flames showed up, but there was no saving the structure.

Luckily, everyone made it out of the house in time, except for Sheriff Pete. No one had seen him since the inferno began. His men surmised he’d gotten caught in the blaze, but Cynthia—who now had a much closer relationship with sin because of Daryl—figured Sheriff Pete had set it to cover his and Merrill’s tracks. Then he’d disappeared, just like Harold, the dog guy, disappeared. She’d like to think they all burned to a crisp, caught by the flames, but even she wasn’t that naïve. Evil did like to flourish.

According to the fire chief—and Constantine confirmed—it would be days, if not longer, depending on structure damage, before they could venture into the ruins to look for bodies or to even try and venture into the tunnels leading from the house. The chances of it remaining unscathed, or even navigable, were pegged as unlikely. Whatever the tunnels hid below would stay that way, leaving them with more questions than answers, the biggest question being, was Aria still alive?

It annoyed her that they might never know what had happened. The fire obliterated any clues. Ashes to ashes. Secrets to dust.

From the ruins of disaster, though, rose hope. While Cynthia might not know where Aria was, she wouldn’t relinquish the belief that her best friend lived and would find her way.
She’s been through too much in her life for it to end so soon.
And Cynthia truly believed her friend was around Bitten Point somewhere, which meant Cynthia would stick around, too. But Aria wasn’t the only reason to stay.

I am not going anywhere unless Daryl goes with me.

Since the human world couldn’t know of their involvement in the fire at the B&B, it was thought best that Daryl, and Cynthia, vacate the area. Despite the cover-up in their presence, she did have to field one frantic call from her mother.

“Thea, baby girl, thank goodness you’re alive. When we heard about the fire, your father went grizzly.”

“Tell Dad I’m fine.” More than fine, she was going home with Daryl. Home, oddly enough, being wherever Daryl took her.

“Ask your parents what hotel they’re at.” Daryl didn’t turn his head as he asked.

A frown creased her brow. “Why?”

“So I can drop you off. You and your folks should leave town.”

“Mom, I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and stared at him. Poor Daryl seemed tense since they’d left the fire. He clenched the wheel of Constantine’s truck that had survived the explosions from the propane tank alongside the house with only a few new dents. His friend said he’d catch a ride with one of his firehouse buddies. Daryl didn’t argue, but Cynthia did make a mental note for them to score some wheels. With her car destroyed, and Daryl’s on loan to Caleb, they would need transportation. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me.”

“So why are you trying to dump me on my parents? What happened to hanging out to see where things were going?”

“That was before you almost died. Again!” He slammed his hands off the steering wheel, the jolt sending them swerving before he got control again.

“But I didn’t die. Neither did you.” And neither did Aria, she hoped. “The only people who have come to an early end are the bad guys. And I say good riddance.”

“What if they didn’t perish? What if they’re still out there?”

She gaped at him as she realized the problem. “You’re worried about me.”

“Of course I’m fucking worried about you.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re adorable, kitten?” She intentionally teased him.

“Don’t call me kitten. Or adorable.”

“Why, does it make you think of your mommy?”

She could practically hear the air hissing through his clenched teeth. “This isn’t amusing, Cyn.”

“If you say so. If you’re done whining—”

“I am not whining.”

“Says the man who needs a baguette and cheese.”

“You’re driving me insane, Cyn.”

“Good,” she retorted as he pulled to a stop by his building. She hopped out of the truck and went skipping up the fire escape. He followed close behind.

This time, nobody waited for them outside or inside. She no sooner entered his apartment than the soot-stained shirt she wore went flying and hit the side of the garbage pail in the kitchen. Close enough.

“Cyn, what are you doing?”

“Getting these smelly things off.”

“Then you need to get them right back on because, as soon as I grab some cash, I am putting you on a train back to the city.”

“Good luck with that. I am not leaving.”

“And I say you are. It’s too dangerous for you here.”

“It’s dangerous for our kind everywhere.”

Daryl scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Why must you be so stubborn? I don’t want you getting hurt. Dammit. When I realized you were gone…”

Ah, how cute. The big, bad kitty was worried about her. Silly guy. Didn’t he understand yet that sending her away wouldn’t fix the problem? Perhaps she should point that out.

“So you think putting me on a train, by myself, that will drop me at a huge station downtown, again, by myself, is safer than me staying here with you?”

He blinked. Opened his mouth. Shut it. “There are no murdering dogmen or dinos in the city.”

“No, there are crazy taxis and gangs and any number of other bad things that could happen to me. Unless this is your way of saying you don’t want me.” She thumbed the waistband of her pants and eyed him, wondering if she was misreading things. After all, what sane man would want a girl smelling of smoke and muddy swamp, with hair sticking out in crazy directions?

She wiggled her hips, and while her yoga pants did move down a little, it was on her bare, jiggling breasts his gaze focused.

“I’m getting naked,” she said, pushing the fabric over the swell of her buttocks.

“I see that.” His fists were clenched tight to his sides, his face even tauter. Yet for all his attempts to appear unaffected, he couldn’t hide the heat in his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I’m dirty, Daryl. So very”—shimmer—“very”—shiver—“dirty.” Her pants landed in a pool of fabric at her feet, and she stepped out of them. “I’m also very, very much in love with someone.”

“You are?”

“Very. And I think he loves me, too, which is why he’s so freaked out and trying to send me away.”

“If he said yes, would you leave?”

She strode toward him, hips swinging, loving how his gaze locked with hers. She stepped right into him, and he laced his arms around her.

“I’m not leaving you, Daryl. I bit you for a reason. Because you’re mine.”

With those words, she broke free of his embrace and skipped to the shower. She didn’t enter the warm spray alone. Daryl was right behind her.

He spun her under the hot water so he could plaster his lips to hers in a searing kiss. His mouth said what he couldn’t. His body spoke the words he didn’t know how to say. But she was all right with that because actions were what mattered.

As the water sluiced them clean, wiping the traces of their adventure, she molded herself to him. The heated hardness of his erection pressed against her lower belly, pulsing with excitement. Her sex throbbed as well, arousal already running rampant through her. It took only a touch from Daryl to ignite.

“Take me. I need you,” Cynthia gasped in between pants.

“What if I want to go slow?” he murmured in between nibbles of her lower lip. “Maybe I want to take my time for once. Explore every inch of your luscious body. I think I need another taste of your cream. Maybe spend some time sucking those hard little berries of yours.”

“Great ideas, for later,” she growled. She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her mound. “Right now, I need you take care of this.”

A groan left him the moment his fingers touched the slick folds of her sex.

“I want you,” she whispered into his mouth.

Those words proved his breaking point. Daryl spun her around until she faced the tile wall. She braced her hands against it as he grabbed at her hips to pull her bottom back.

Without being asked, she spread her feet and tilted her butt to tempt him. The hard head of his cock rubbed against her, spreading the petals of her sex, dipping in enough to wet him with her juices.

He was going slow, so slow. She wiggled her bottom, pushing back and not above begging. “Please.”

His hands gripped her waist as he pushed himself deeper. She couldn’t help clamping down on him, squeezing his cock tight. It seemed to take forever before he was fully seated inside her, and then he paused.

She might have growled. She definitely pushed back against him, wiggling her bottom to seat him more deeply.

His fingers dug into her hips, and she heard him suck in a breath and then lose control. The withdrawal of his cock was only so he could pump her, slam her, thrust into her willing sex fast and hard. The sound of slapping flesh went well with her moans of pleasure.

Then he stopped.

She made a sound of protest, one he swallowed as he turned her around to face him.

“Put your leg around my waist,” he ordered, and grabbed her thigh, bringing it up and, at the same time, exposing her.

He slid back into her, his long cock filling her, his lips finding hers under the warm spray of the shower. Everything was slick and wet.

Faster. Faster. His hips pistoned as he drove into her, each hard slap of his body bringing her pleasure higher. His lips trailed from hers along the line of her jaw, nibbling as he continued to thrust.

As her channel squeezed tighter and tighter, on the cusp of ultimate bliss, his lips feathered across the vulnerable skin of her neck.

Her breathing came in frantic pants. His mouth sucked at her skin. As she let out a low moan of bliss, her body trembled then shuddered as she came and came with violent intensity, as not only his cock spurted hotly within her but his teeth clamped down on her skin to mark her.

Claiming me.

And she couldn’t be happier.

Only once they were snuggling in bed awhile later, skin still damp from the shower and flushed from lovemaking, did she let her fingers trace her newest mark on her neck.

“You bit me again,” she stated.

“Yup.”

“Why?”

He rolled her on top of him, anchoring her with his hands on the cheeks of her ass. “Because this time I knew what I was doing, and I wanted everyone to see it.”

“What are you saying?”

He groaned. “Are you going to make me explain this out loud?”

Her eyes crinkled as she smirked at him. “I am so that there’s no mistake.”

“Fine. Think of the chomp as my panther claiming you.”

“What of the man?”

His lips stretched. “The man wants to live Cyn-fully ever after with you.”

What luck, so did she.

W
hir
.
Scratch
.
Scratch
.

Cynthia awoke to find her mother leaning over her, measuring tape in hand, and a pencil clenched between her teeth.

Used to her mom’s weirdness, she didn’t make a peep, but Daryl let out a very unmanly “Eep!”

“Don’t mind me. Just taking a few measurements.” Her mother let the tape suck back into the reel while she jotted down some notes in a binder she’d placed on the nightstand.

Curbing her amusement took Cynthia biting her lips, but she failed to completely muffle a snicker as Daryl made sure the sheet was tucked higher on his chest.

“Measuring what?” he dared ask.

“Uh-oh,” Cynthia muttered. “You shouldn’t have gone there.”

Mom slotted her pencil above an ear and beamed at him. “I am measuring the surface area of the bed and the surrounding floor. I already calculated the swath of space from the front door of your place to the bedroom. I do assume you will be using the front door and not the window again when you bring her back?”

“Bring her back from where? And what exactly do you need all those measurements for?” Daryl straightened to a seated position in bed, his eyes acquiring the wild look she’d noticed more than once in the early images of her dad taken with her mother. Poor Daryl had the look of a big cat caught in crosshairs. No escape.

“It’s for the rose petals, of course. I figured we’d have them flutter on the floor in a straight line from the door leading to the bed. Which I’ve already ordered new linen for. White, of course, so the petals contrast nicely.”

“But I like my sheets,” Daryl exclaimed, clutching them tighter to his chest.

Her mother sniffed. “Those are bachelor sheets. Once you’re married—”

“Married?”

“We’ll also look into upgrading your living arrangements. Maybe we’ll do it together.” It was almost painful to watch the sudden idea bloom, especially since Daryl didn’t know any better and had no time to brace. Cynthia bit her inner cheek as Mother dropped her biggest hit yet. “It’s time Larry and I relocated somewhere new. I hear there’s some nice housing available in town. Perhaps we can find two on the same street or, even better, side by side.”

A sane man might have leaped from the bed—naked parts swinging—and run screaming into the bayou. But Cynthia hadn’t fallen for Daryl because of his mental stability.

Her bad kitty got a look Cynthia didn’t trust, especially since he smiled. No sane man would smile in the face of her mother’s machinations. “That all sounds fantastic. We should have you close for when we start popping out kids.”

“Kids?” Her mother breathed the word.

“At least a couple. And given you’ve got the marriage well in hand, I think Cyn and I should get working on that while you scout the local schools.”

“Nothing but the best for my grandbabies,” her mother crowed as she dashed from the room. “Wait until I tell Luisa we’re going to be grandparents.”

Cynthia didn’t move until she heard the door slam shut. Then she turned on him and exclaimed, “You just told her we’re going to have kids. Are you on catnip?”

“No, I’m in love. With you.”

And that was all that really mattered.

Life in Bitten Point sucked Cynthia in, and over the next little while, though they didn’t find Aria, her friend managed another phone call, a strange one where Aria said, “Don’t look for me. I’m fine.”

As for Cynthia, she was more than fine. She was in love, and gangster, especially when she got Renny to draw a permanent marker tattoo of a kitten on her butt.

S
tupid swamp
. It sucked at her limbs when she tried to rest. It coated her in a slimy second skin that reeked. But at least it hid her from the trackers.

She knew they were out there, searching. Hunting…

Hunting for me so they can drag me back to that place.

Never.

She’d been running and hiding for hours, and still, she didn’t feel safe.

Knowing what she did, would she ever feel safe again?

An ululating shriek came in the distance, an eerie sound that echoed and froze the breath in her lungs.

They unleashed the hunters.
She’d hoped to clear the swamp before that happened. Hell, she’d hoped to make it to a certain safe house before nightfall. However, the bayou hadn’t cooperated, and now that nightfall had arrived, the chase was truly on.

As the primal scream came again, she didn’t move for a moment, just remained crouched in the mud and weeds, hoping against hope the hunter wouldn’t spot her.

For a moment, a shadow appeared against the moon, a rapier-gazed creature aloft on leathery wings.

Did it see her? Would it dive? Would it—

Shrieking in annoyance, it banked and flapped away.

A few dozen heartbeats later, she dared to breathe again and face forward, only to blink at her newest predicament.

Grrr
.

The vicious sound came from a beady-eyed creature, muzzle curled back to reveal tiny teeth.

Seriously? She’d eaten squirrels bigger than this for snacks.

But, of more concern was the shadow that rose above them both that said, “Well, well, Princess, what do we have here?”

“Trouble if you don’t get out of my way.” Aria glared at the big dude through a dirty hank of hair. Even she could admit she lacked an intimidation factor, yet when he dared to laugh, she didn’t think twice before acting.

The handful of mud hit the behemoth square in the face with a satisfying splat.

“Did you seriously just do that?” he asked with clear annoyance as he wiped the mud from his face with a hand.

“Get out of my way.”

“Or what?”

Perhaps flinging a second handful wasn’t the most mature response, but before she could claim he deserved it, Princess attacked.

Be sure to check out the next story, featuring Constantine:
Python's Embrace
.