Page 4 of A Cougar's Kiss
Chapter 2
She was trouble.
Keller knew it the moment he’d spied her outside the training facility a month ago. She’d been standing by one of the side doors peering in through the circle-shaped window in the center of the steel access, watching him. His first instinct had been to dismiss it, dismiss her and the ripple of awareness his cat felt as her eyes stayed fixed upon him. But that hadn’t worked. Instead of ignoring the sensation, it had grown as well as the frequency in which he’d begun to see her around Assembly Headquarters.
He hated being here, hated being forced to stay here and babysit and hated that this feisty little cat now had the upper hand over him. But not for long.
“Let’s go.” He wanted to grab her by the arm and yank her through the door, out into the hallway, and all the way to the bunker where the sleeping quarters were housed.
But Shya Delgado was the daughter of Lead Enforcer Nick Delgado and Chief Curandero Ary Delgado. In other words, she was the second closest to being royalty among the Shadow Shifters and touching her would most assuredly earn him another punishment from this bunch of rules-obsessed shifters.
So, instead, after he opened the door, Keller used a pointed glare to get her out into the hallway. The corner of her pert little mouth tilted and she walked out with the distinctive air of triumph. He resisted the urge to growl in irritation or to watch the sway of her hips as she moved in front of him. Returning his focus, he closed the door behind him and turned to punch in the code that would lock it.
He didn’t look back at her. “How did you get in here?”
“I know the code. I know lots of codes around here.” She had a sensual voice, one that would not be expected to go along with her slim build and angelic face. He hadn’t forgotten the sound of it since the first day he’d heard her speaking to Nisa Reynolds Canter, the new Lead Enforcer of the Central Zone and mate of Decan Canter, the new Central Zone Faction Leader.
When the lights on the pad all turned bright pink signaling they were activated, Keller turned to see her standing with her arms behind her back, chin tilted, eyes fixed on him. The stance made her high, palm-sized breasts seem larger and more enticing than the low cut of the white t-shirt she wore and his teeth clenched in response.
“How are you getting these codes when you’re not authorized to have them?”
“I know much more than people around here presume.”
The look of impatience that crossed her face the moment those words were out said she wasn’t totally happy about that situation. But Keller didn’t care, he was much more concerned with how and why she’d showed up in that room. As for why she’d made that other ridiculous statement about wanting him, he was just going to leave that alone.
“You shouldn’t know codes to rooms in restricted areas and you shouldn’t be down here in the middle of the night snooping around.” She should be in bed getting her rest or whatever she did around here.
“I’d much rather discuss who you think the Desert Cat is and how Cole knows about him.” She shook her head. “No. I’d actually rather discuss what I originally came down here to tell you, but I’m really good at compartmentalizing.”
She was good at confusing the hell out of him. Keller walked away from her, not to be rude, but because he processed things better when he was moving, walking or running, either worked.
“The Desert Cat is none of your concern.”
She fell into step beside him, the top of her head—the afro of springy curls surrounding her face like a halo was more accurate—at shoulder-level with him.
“If he or she is the one killing indiscriminately above ground, they’re very much my concern. As whatever happens in retaliation for a shifter killing humans will ultimately affect me and everyone else living in Oasis.”
What she was saying made perfect sense, but he didn’t want to have this conversation with her.
She crossed in front of him then, so that he had no choice but to stop walking as well.
“The remaining members of the Ruling Cabinet are out for blood. There’ve been raids on the last known Shadow sanctuaries above ground and the humans that were reportedly helping them have been slaughtered in the street as a warning to anyone else that might be harboring shifters. We’re all involved now, no matter how elite you may think the STT and all their rules and training are.”
Her tone was snappy, irritated, but rational as hell. She knew what she was talking about and he didn’t think it mattered how, only what she thought she was going to do about the situation. She also had the prettiest amber-colored eyes he’d ever seen.
Because his fingers itched with the desire to touch her, Keller lifted his arm and pointed instead. “Conference room.”
She arched a brow and then her lips curved upward again causing a powerful bolt of lust to shoot straight from his head to his cock.
He moved before her and again she followed as he stalked across the glossed cement floor of the training center. Once they were through those doors, it was down another hallway almost fifty feet until it opened into the courtyard which was normally bustling with shifters going about their daily business at Assembly Headquarters. But at this time of night this part of the facility was always deserted but for the cameras that remained operational.
Keller was careful to walk close to the walls which were cast in dark shadows since the lights had been turned down in this area. He moved quickly and was not surprised that she could keep up with him. She was a jaguar after all, speed and cunning were part of their genetics. When he came to the line of doors that marked various conference spaces, he randomly selected the third one and punched in another code to enter the room. Once inside he turned quickly, so fast that he caught her off guard. She gasped when his two-hundred and eighty-pound, six-foot two-inch frame crowded her much smaller form causing her to back against the door she’d just closed.
“What do you know about what’s going on above ground? Have you been sneaking out?”
Nisa had snuck out more times than her father Rome, or anyone else in Oasis knew and if Decan hadn’t caught her that night she’d slipped out of Keller’s bunker, she would have been killed by a gang of rogues. If Shya was doing the same thing Keller was either going to go against his not touching her without her permission rule and shake some sense into the feisty little cat, or he was going to report his suspicions to her father. Considering how he felt about the Assembly leadership at this moment, the latter wasn’t his first choice. But he’d do whatever was going to keep her safe.
She licked her lips and his dick jumped, pressing against the zipper of his jeans as it grew with desire.
