Terry Spear - [Shifter 02] by Jaguar Fever Page A

protective,” Maya said.
    Connor meant to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t let that go. “Yeah, like he left you alone and a barroom brawl started over you.”
    Two of the men and a woman at another table looked in their direction. Maya’s cheeks blossomed with color.
    She tilted her chin up and said to Kat, “He came to my protection and even carried me out of there when I slipped on all the broken glass.” She gave Connor an “I told you so” look.
    All conversation at the other tables concerning what the guests had discovered on treks to a nearby cave and the jungle died as soon as the barroom brawl was mentioned. Connor knew Kat and Maya should have had this discussion in one of their cottages.
    Then he began to consider the sleeping arrangements at their home, and before he could stop himself from saying something about it, he asked, “None of the men slept in our bedroom, did they?”
    “Of course not,” Maya said, sounding irritated. “We all slept in my bed.”
    He knew she was kidding because there was no way in hell all of them could have slept in her queen-size bed with her. Not that he would have believed she’d slept with her cousins or David. Wade? Connor wasn’t certain about him.
    Kat laughed. “As if four men could sleep in that bed of yours with you.”
    Maya sighed. “If you must know, our cousins slept on the floor in the living room. Wade took one of the recliners so he could watch David. Poor David had gotten hit in the head by a bottle, and it cut him. So he slept on the couch.”
    One of the male guests was smiling and shaking his head, and another was watching Connor and waggling his brows.
    As dessert was served, Connor saw Maya suddenly look in the direction of the window as if something had caught her eye.
    “What did you see?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “Nothing.” She dipped her fork into her banana rum crepe.
    She looked pale and her heart was thumping hard.
    “Maya?”
    “I… I thought I saw something.”
    “Someone,” he said, knowing her better than that.
    “Okay, someone. After what Wade told me about the hunters, I’m just feeling a little jumpy.”
    “They wouldn’t come to the lodge or the cottages looking for a jaguar,” Connor assured her.
    “One was spotted last night in the jungle below our deck,” a woman at another table said, smiling. “The owner said several guests have seen it. Nothing to worry about, though.” She poked her fork into her dessert and continued talking to her companions.
    It couldn’t have been Wade because he had arrived at the same time as Maya, she knew. Hell. If it was a true jaguar and word got out that it was frequenting the area, that could bring the hunters down on top of them.

Chapter 11
    In the middle of the night, Wade reached the treetop cottages where Maya was staying. He and David hadn’t needed a GPS to locate them. In their jaguar forms, they’d followed Kat and Connor’s scents to the resort. Wade had smelled another jaguar in the area—a female, which didn’t bode well if Bettinger and Lion Mane got wind of her and led the smugglers this way. He wanted to warn Maya and the others that Bettinger and Lion Mane were in on the jaguar-smuggling plans. As jaguar shifters, the men could scent another jaguar and tip off the smugglers who would take the big cat into custody.
    While he suspected that Bettinger and Lion Mane wouldn’t lead the smugglers to a shifter, Wade didn’t like the fact that they could make a move on Maya if they learned she was here.
    The cottages appeared to be suspended in the trees, a walkway connecting each to the next. Wade and his brother roamed through the trees below, listening for sounds of people up and about. Everyone appeared to be sleeping. No talking or laughing, just silence from the human population.
    The jungle noises still cloaked Wade as he searched for the cottage that could be Maya’s. He leaped into a tree next to a deck and smiled his jaguar smile as he