Cover

Praise for Christine Feehan’s Leopard Novels

“Heart-stopping action. Crazy sexy-time scenes. Tender emotions . . . [A] little bit of something for everyone who enjoys a solid paranormal romance.”

—Harlequin Junkie

“With a Feehan novel you know you will get well-developed characters and an engaging plot, so when you add a dose of sizzling sexuality, you have an unbeatable mix.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Heady, passionate, seductive . . . Ms. Feehan does a fantastic job of building up to the climax for a smashing finale that leaves you breathless and satisfied.”

—Smexy Books

“Readers . . . will be seduced by this erotic adventure.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Another wild ride . . . enter the lair of the shapeshifters.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“A passionate, jam-packed adventure.”

—Fallen Angel Reviews

“The passion runs high and the sex is hot!”

—The Romance Readers Connection

“Sizzling and exciting . . . surprises erupt at every turn.”

—Fresh Fiction

“A phenomenal story . . . Christine Feehan knows how to weave a tale of action, suspense and paranormal passion that has earned her so many fans and keeps bringing new ones.”

—Romance Junkies

Titles by Christine Feehan

SPIDER GAME

VIPER GAME

SAMURAI GAME

RUTHLESS GAME

STREET GAME

MURDER GAME

PREDATORY GAME

DEADLY GAME

CONSPIRACY GAME

NIGHT GAME

MIND GAME

SHADOW GAME

HIDDEN CURRENTS

TURBULENT SEA

SAFE HARBOR

DANGEROUS TIDES

OCEANS OF FIRE

LEOPARD’S FURY

WILD CAT

CAT’S LAIR

LEOPARD’S PREY

SAVAGE NATURE

WILD FIRE

BURNING WILD

WILD RAIN

FIRE BOUND

EARTH BOUND

AIR BOUND

SPIRIT BOUND

WATER BOUND

SHADOW RIDER

DARK CAROUSEL

DARK PROMISES

DARK GHOST

DARK BLOOD

DARK WOLF

DARK LYCAN

DARK STORM

DARK PREDATOR

DARK PERIL

DARK SLAYER

DARK CURSE

DARK HUNGER

DARK POSSESSION

DARK CELEBRATION

DARK DEMON

DARK SECRET

DARK DESTINY

DARK MELODY

DARK SYMPHONY

DARK GUARDIAN

DARK LEGEND

DARK FIRE

DARK CHALLENGE

DARK MAGIC

DARK GOLD

DARK DESIRE

DARK PRINCE

Anthologies

EDGE OF DARKNESS

(with Maggie Shayne and Lori Herter)

DARKEST AT DAWN

(includes DARK HUNGER and DARK SECRET)

SEA STORM

(includes MAGIC IN THE WIND and OCEANS OF FIRE)

FEVER

(includes THE AWAKENING and WILD RAIN)

HOT BLOODED

(with Maggie Shayne, Emma Holly, and Angela Knight)

LOVER BEWARE

(with Fiona Brand, Katherine Sutcliffe, and Eileen Wilks)

FANTASY

(with Emma Holly, Sabrina Jeffries, and Elda Minger)

Specials

DARK HUNGER

MAGIC IN THE WIND

THE AWAKENING

Dedication

For my beautiful, courageous granddaughter Shylah. You face every situation with courage and grace, and I’m always so very proud of you! This one’s for you.

For My Readers

Be sure to go to christinefeehan.com/members/ to sign up for my private book announcement list and download the free ebook of Dark Desserts. Join my community and get firsthand news, enter the book discussions, ask your questions and chat with me. Please feel free to email me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you.

Acknowledgments

With any book there are many people to thank. In this case, the usual suspects: Domini, for her research and help; my power hours group, who always make certain I’m up at the crack of dawn working; and of course Brian Feehan, who I can call anytime and brainstorm with so I don’t lose a single hour. Thank you to Denise Tucker for all her hours of hard work researching and putting my website together. You’re much appreciated.

1

“DAMN it, Evangeline, you need to come back home.”

Evangeline Tregre shook her head and took a slow look around the bakery. It wasn’t exactly thriving, but it was still afloat and becoming more popular every day. The walls were painted a soft blue. She’d done that herself. Every cupboard, every placement of the display cases, every single thing from the lettering to the floor—she’d done it. The dusty old, torn-up space had been renovated by her. It was now cozy and inviting with the tables and chairs. She loved the way the bakery smelled. Every single morning when she got up to bake, she looked forward to the day. Back “home” she detested her very existence.

“This is home, Robert. I love it here and I’m stayin’. It’s more home to me than that place ever was.” She kept her voice quiet. Low. She was used to being silent. She didn’t argue, nor did she like arguments. She especially didn’t like Robert Lenoux coming to her hard-won business and insisting she return. “In any case, I thought you were travelin’, going to the Borneo rain forest.”

She knew all about Robert, although she’d never actually met him until he’d walked into her bake shop. He had been sent away in disgrace, had served a brief jail stint, but got out of a real sentence from the law by turning evidence against his friends. Murderers. He’d participated in beating and robbing the elderly in their homes, in raping exotic dancers. He had committed countless crimes against his lair, and looking at him, she knew he didn’t care about anyone but himself. Especially women.

“Fuck that,” Robert spat. “I’m not goin’ to be sent away from my home by some outsider who thinks he can order me around. The entire point of goin’ to Borneo is to bring home a woman. You’ll do just fine. I don’ care that you aren’ a shifter.”

Her stomach lurched and then tied into knots. She took a deep calming breath. She’d left that world behind. She wasn’t about to allow a bad-tempered, evil male leopard, one who no doubt didn’t mind hitting a woman, into her life.

“The answer is no. I am never goin’ back there.”

“You have a duty to the rest of us.” Robert reached out, settled hard fingers around her upper arm and yanked her close to him.

Alarm skittered down her spine. She took a step back but his fingers only tightened into an iron band. “Let go of me, Robert. Now.” She hissed the word, letting him see she wouldn’t stand for being pushed around by him. By anyone. Not ever again. “I want you to leave. This is my shop and I’m askin’ you politely to leave.”

The bell over the bakery door tinkled merrily, at odds with the tension in the room. Both turned their heads toward the sound. Evangeline’s breath caught in her throat. She’d grown up around dangerous men. Criminals. Horrible, cunning, viciously cruel men. She knew criminals. She had a radar for them. No one needed radar to know without a single doubt that the man walking through the door of her bakery was dangerous. Terrifyingly so.

He glanced around her beautiful little shop and saw every single detail, yet he didn’t see it because there could be no appreciation. None. There was no emotion on his face or in his flat, cold, dead eyes. Beautiful eyes. Gorgeous eyes. A shocking blue. Like the blue ice of a glacier. His lashes were long and as black as night, framing those icy blue eyes. But there was not a single hint of emotion, not even when his gaze settled on Robert’s hand on her arm. Absolutely nothing. He walked. He breathed. He probably killed people. But if he did, he did it with absolutely no emotion. And he’d heard them arguing. She could tell by the way he looked at Robert’s fingers wrapped around her.

He was very tall, ruggedly built, all roped muscle, and he looked absolutely invincible. She was used to men with muscle, but he was a fighter, through and through. The way he moved—the control, the containment, smooth, fluid, easy, as if he glided or flowed across the floor rather than walked. He did that in absolute silence too, as if his very expensive Italian leather shoes didn’t actually touch the floor.

His suit looked as if it had cost as much as the renovations on the bakery space and been custom made for him—which it probably had been. His icy gaze remained on Robert’s fingers digging into her bicep. She’d all but forgotten he was gripping her so hard until fear sent a chill arrowing through her.

Robert must have felt it too. He was leopard. A shifter. She knew from gossip he had a nasty temper and was as strong as an ox. Like most shifters, he didn’t fear much. His leopard would shred an enemy in seconds if he were threatened. Still, he let her go and stepped back away from her. Away from the newcomer. Subtly putting her between them.

“Can I help you?” Evangeline asked. Her voice sounded different, even to her. Her accent was deeper, a soft sultry lure she hadn’t meant to throw, but really? Every single cell in her body was aware of him. The bayou came out in her voice more than it ever had before, and it sounded like an invitation to spend the night floating down a lazy canal together under a starlit night.

She wasn’t the type of woman to flirt with a man, let alone speak to him in a voice like that. She knew better. She knew danger when she saw it, but she came alive the moment he entered her bakery. Her body had been asleep but now it was wide awake and very aware of every inch of the Iceman. She’d already nicknamed him and thought of him as her Iceman, even if it was just in her fantasies.

His eyes focused on her. He looked at her through a blue glacier without once blinking. “Coffee. Black. A piece of your cinnamon cake.”

His voice was deep. Dark. As cold as his eyes. As cold as Siberia—the dead of winter in Siberia. At the same time, it was low and sensual. She couldn’t stop the little shiver that ran through her body at the sound of it. Heat pooled low and wicked, and something wild and feral deep inside her stirred. She had an unexpected urge to take all of that molten heat spreading through her and see if she could unthaw the Iceman’s cold.

He spoke with a heavy Italian accent. For some reason that shocked her. She didn’t expect Italian. More . . . Russian. Maybe because she associated him with Siberia. She couldn’t get that out of her mind. To her, he would always be her Russian Iceman.

Evangeline nodded and turned away from his male potency. He was definitely out of her league. Out of her world. Her universe. This was not a man any sane person would want in their life. Her hands trembled as she poured the coffee—her special all-natural brew customers raved about. The pieces of the cinnamon cake were generous and she arranged one on one of the oblong-shaped plates with her fancy gold logo on it. The E for Evangeline running through the center of it.

He took it without a word. He simply nodded at her, those icy blue eyes never lighting up, never registering life in them at all. No emotion. No nothing. He certainly wasn’t feeling the electrical attraction she was. He turned away and moved across the room. He pulled a chair around so that his back would be to the wall facing the plate-glass entry. He dragged a small table in front of him, put the coffee and the plate on the table and then went to the small stand where the napkins and silverware were.

Evangeline took a deep breath and let it out. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—stare at him. Robert stepped close again, leaning into her, so that his breath puffed into her ear, an intrusion that annoyed her. She’d been so aware of the Iceman that she’d all but forgotten Robert.

“We aren’ finished, Evangeline. I’m takin’ you back with me.”

“I asked you to leave,” she said equally as quiet. “And please don’ come back.”

Robert hissed at her, his eyes going sheer cat, his temper rising at her defiance. She stood her ground, her heart suddenly pounding. She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but it was impossible with him standing so close, scowling fiercely at her. He was deliberately trying to intimidate her. She barely knew him, only what her friend Saria Boudreux—now Donovan—had told her about him, and none of it was good. Saria knew everyone, and Robert Lenoux was from one of the seven shifter families leasing thousands of acres in the swamp.

Robert stepped even closer, deliberately towering over her smaller figure. Once again his fingers bit into her arm, this time hard enough to leave bruises. There was the softest of rustlings and they both turned to see the Iceman standing a few feet from them, one great big fist encased in a very expensive leather glove, shoving a napkin into the trash can. His eyes were on Robert’s face and they were colder than ever. The blue in them appeared to be glowing, a flame beneath all that ice.

Evangeline’s breath caught in her lungs and everything in her stilled. He was leopard. A shifter. It seemed impossible there in San Antonio, a place far from where she grew up. Shifters were rare and to find one in a city . . . Impossible, but there was no mistaking those eyes. Exotic. Terrifying. Totally focused on Robert.

“Let. Her. Go.” Each word was soft. Spoken in a low tone. Ice dripped from the voice. The Iceman didn’t look at Evangeline, his entire focus on the man hurting her.

Robert couldn’t fail to see those eyes, read death in them and know what the Iceman was. He hissed a curse word, let go of Evangeline, turned and stormed out, slamming the door. The Iceman turned back toward his table.

“Thank you,” Evangeline said softly. Meaning it. She’d left all that behind her and she never wanted to go back. It didn’t matter that this man clearly was a criminal. Or far more dangerous than Robert could ever be. Or that Robert ran like a rabbit from him when his leopard had to have been raking and clawing for a fight. He’d stepped in when he didn’t have to, and she was grateful. He deserved to know it.

The Iceman turned slightly, looking at her over one broad shoulder. His glacier-blue eyes swept over her and then he nodded slightly before turning away.

Evangeline let out her breath slowly and turned back to straightening the baked goods in the case. She got up at three A.M. every morning and baked the day’s goods so they were fresh. She couldn’t afford to hire anyone else to work in her shop, so she did it all. The baking, the coffee, the dishes, the cleaning of the shop, all of it, and she took pride in her work. She was getting by, managing to pay the bills each month, and that meant she could keep her independence. She was determined to make it on her own.

She snuck another quick look at her Iceman. He wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention. Not. At. All. She knew she was easy on the eyes. Since coming to San Antonio, men had flirted outrageously with her. She had no idea what to do with their attention, nor did she want it, but she’d come to realize all the things Saria had tried to convince her about her looks might actually be true.

She wasn’t quite five foot four, so she didn’t have those long legs that attracted men, but she had generous curves and a small waist to emphasize them. Her hair was long and very dark, her eyes a true green, like emeralds, a startling color surrounded by long, thick, black lashes. She had great skin, a luscious mouth and a small, straight nose. All in all, she wasn’t hard to look at. But he wasn’t looking.

Fortunately, so she didn’t make a complete fool of herself, customers began to trickle in. She knew when he got up and left that he didn’t look back.

Over the next week, her Iceman came in three more times. He tried something different each time by pointing or jerking his chin, not speaking. She noticed he preferred things with cinnamon and he liked apples. He always took his coffee black and all three times he indicated he wanted a refill. Each time he came in he rearranged her tables so he could sit with his back against the wall. After the third time, she moved the table herself and left it there permanently for him. He didn’t acknowledge that she’d done it, and in a way she was glad. She needed the business, but she didn’t want a relationship with him.

She’d thought with time he would become less scary, less intimidating, but she was wrong. He was more so. An aura of danger clung to him like a second skin. He never laughed. He never smiled. He barely acknowledged her, yet he was aware of everything, every movement, in her shop and on the street. She was certain he was armed to the teeth and sometimes she was afraid the few cops who frequented her shop would come in at the same time and there would be a shoot-out or something equally as awful.

Two months passed and he came in three times a week, sometimes four, but he never spoke beyond placing his order. She found herself watching for him. Smiling at him when he came in. He never smiled back, but he did stay longer. At least a half an hour longer than he had before.

A few others dressed in Italian suits came in over the third month, never at the same time as her Iceman, but she knew he’d sent them her way. Business seemed to pick up even more after that, as if seeing people in her shop brought in even more customers. That meant she had to work harder, baking more goods, but she didn’t mind; she was finally making it.

She’d all but forgotten Robert. He was waiting for her to open on a Thursday morning, a day her Iceman rarely came in. That told her Robert had been watching the store, probably looking for a pattern. Her heart stuttered when she saw him come through the door. He casually reached over and turned her sign from open to closed.

She reached for her cell phone. He leapt across the room the way leopards could do, jerking it from her hand and flinging it onto the floor a distance away. It shattered, pieces scattering. Evangeline took a deep breath and moved out from behind the counter, not wanting anything to get broken.

“You bitch,” Robert bit out. “You aren’ gettin’ away with this.”

“What are you talkin’ about? I’m not tryin’ to get away with anythin’.”

“You told Saria I wasn’t in the rain forest. You couldn’t just let it go.”

She frowned, shaking her head. “I haven’t spoken to Saria in months. I’ve been too busy.” She should have. Her friend would be worried about her.

Robert stalked her across the room, and she couldn’t help herself. In spite of her determination not to give ground, she did, backing up almost to the door.

“Fuckin’ liar. Tryin’ to get me in trouble. I was goin’ to let it go. The last thing I want is a woman who can’t shift, but now you’re goin’ to pay for tryin’ to get Drake and the others to come lookin’ for me. This is the way it’s goin’ to be. I’ve been stayin’ in a room in town but now I’m goin’ to be stayin’ with you. Hand over the keys to your house. And I need money. I know you got it, and you can give it to me.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m goin’ to let you move in with me. I earned any money I have and it goes to payin’ bills.”

He backhanded her. Hard. Her cheek felt as if it had exploded. Her eyes teared up and she found herself on the floor. He was strong, incredibly strong, and his leopard was close. She could see it in his eyes, those yellowish-green eyes glowing with menace at her.

Deep inside her, wildness woke a feral, dark creature; furious, raging even. The skin raised along her arms and legs, an itch heralding the arrival of her other.

No, Bebe, she said sharply. He can’t know about you. She’d take a beating before she’d ever expose her best friend to such an abomination of a shifter.

Robert came at her again, deliberately using the stalking motion of the leopard. When she tried to get up off the floor, he hit her again, striking the same side of her face. The pain made her feel sick to her stomach.

She heard the bell over the door as if in the distance, and then, blinking to clear the tears from her eyes, she saw Robert doubling over, grunting, his breath a sob. Her Iceman was standing over him, his big, gloved fist hitting hard, over and over. She heard ribs crack. Heard them. A short uppercut to the chin staggered Robert and he went to his knees. The Iceman caught him around the waist and half walked, half dragged him out the door.

Evangeline tried to pull herself up by using the wall, all the while staring out the window. There was a black town car with darkened windows parked in front of her bakery. A man in a suit held the door open while the Iceman thrust Robert inside and then climbed in after him. It wasn’t more than thirty seconds at most before he emerged, looking exactly the same.

Through the open door of the car she caught a glimpse of Robert slumped on the seat, his neck at an odd angle. She shivered as her Iceman spoke briefly to the driver and then slammed the door. He waited until the car drove off, spoke briefly into his phone and then returned to the shop.

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