His Darkest Hunger (Jaguar Warriors 1)

If he took the wrong exit, well, he’d be screwed.

Familiar scents called to him, and with a grin, his nose led him down the same path Ana, Declan, and Cracker had taken minutes earlier.

He knew it was going to be close, and the adrenaline his body was producing went into overdrive as he spotted the clear night sky up ahead. The concrete ground was slowly elevating, and Jaxon burst through, hearing the motor of a boat as it pulled away from the dock.

Without stopping, still holding Libby firmly in his arms, his long powerful legs carried him forward and he ran to the end of the pier and leapt high into the air. He landed with a jarring force that brought him to his knees, but relief washed over him as Ana revved the throttle and the powerful boat took off like a rocket.

They were speeding up the Hudson River when a massive blast rocked the entire dock area. Fire, debris, and heat rent the air as Jaxon covered Libby, pulling her into his chest. A shriek tore from her throat as several smaller explosions continued to combust.

“Damn,” Declan said. “If we’d have put music to that, it could have been entered in the Fourth of July fireworks contest.”

J

axon shook his head, marveling at the way Declan was able to make light of any situation.

“No, I’m serious. We could have called it, ‘Reign of Fire’ or something like that. It would have won, hands down.”

Ignoring the attempt at humor, Jaxon’s eyes swept the waterfront where his headquarters had lived in secrecy for well over ten years. The beautiful sanctuary he’d built with painstaking care was no more, reduced to a pile of rubble and ash.

His eyes hardened at the glow that swept through the air, and he hoped that each and every bastard who dared to enter his domain had died horribly. He grabbed some blankets and wrapped them around Libby before settling in for the short boat ride.

They were rounding Ellis Island and would reach their safe house located on the Jersey shore in no time. He closed his eyes, shaking his head at the deadly situation he’d been thrust into.

The woman in his arms held the key. Of that he was certain. Somewhere, locked away deep inside her damaged mind, were the answers he was looking for.

He sighed, letting the tension fall from his body and feeling the warmth from hers help alleviate the stress he was under.

Tomorrow they’d be up north and far away from here. He growled softly, as a wicked smile slashed over his features.

Once he found out who the hell them was, he’d be gunning for their asses. Anticipation licked at his insides as the cat relished the thought of a hunt. Bring it on, he thought. Bring it on.

Libby slowly crawled back from the edge of unconsciousness. Her brain was feeling fuzzy, but that was pretty much par for the course. She licked her lips, grimacing at the feel of her thick tongue. Her muscles ached and she became aware of voices, low and stilted, just beyond the fringe of black her closed eyelids afforded her.

Every muscle in her body was screaming at her to stretch, but she resisted, staying as still as she could. She strained her ears, hoping to hear a clue as to her whereabouts. For one brief moment pure, raw terror swept through her body like a flash flood. Was she back with them? Had they come for her?

Images, bits and pieces of emotions, flew at her.

She remembered the tall one, Jaxon, running with her toward a black wall of nothingness, and then there’d been an explosion, great balls of fire erupting into the blackness.

But the images were blurry, incoherent.

A dull ache was beginning to throb at the base of her skull, and the ever near presence of tears threatened to spill from her tightly closed lids.

When would this all end? Wearily, she tried to make sense of the last few days, but it only confused her even more.

A woman’s voice drifted lazily over to her, and Libby’s body stilled as she concentrated to gather as much information as she could.

“Not sure if we should tell her. It could do more harm than good.”

“I’m sorry, Jaxon. I have to side with Ana on this one. She doesn’t know us from shit. So if we sit her down, tell her who she is and what she’s done, it could scramble what little bit of usable gray matter is in there all to hell.”

Libby winced at the analogy Declan used with such obvious contempt, his deep voice clearer than Ana’s soft one. She could picture their faces clearly as memories tugged at her mind. They were fresh, new ones, only hours old.

Her heart began to flutter, and she fought the panic that seemed to forever live in hiding, waiting for the chance to explode. She’d escaped the faceless monsters from her past, but for how long? She wasn’t sure.

This trio confused and frightened her on a different level all together. Jaxon confused her most. He was haunted as much by his past as she was. When he looked at her, his eyes were filled with a whole host of emotions, all of them dark, and they made her ache inside. But it was the other emotions that she had caught glimpses of, the ones he tried to hide from her, that scared the crap out of her. They were incredibly raw and almost animalistic.

“Best bet would be to get her to trust you. Once she relaxes some, she might start to remember and we can finally begin to put the pieces to this puzzle together.”