She shrugged and turned away from him, walking down the wooden sidewalk toward the grove of cypress trees dipping long shimmery beards of moss into the water. She made no sound as she walked, a graceful, silent sway of her hips so enticing his breath caught in his throat. He was not a man given to shocking, erotic images at the sight of a woman walking, but every cell in his body went on alert and he had the mad desire to leap on her, to pin her under him and devour her. He shook his head to try to clear madness from his brain.

It was his leopard; that was the only sane answer. He’d been injured too long ago and his cat had been unable to emerge. Recently the man he chose to work for, well okay—Drake actually winced before admitting it—his friend, Jake Bannaconni, had arranged an operation for him, grafting the bones of his kind to his bad leg in the hopes that he could someday shift. He wasn’t quite healed, and when he was tired he still walked with a limp, but his cat was growing more restless as each day passed, eager to test out the new material in his leg.

More and more the leopard fought him to surface. He had purposely asked their guide to find a bed-and-breakfast in a remote area with the idea that he might try to allow the animal side of him freedom—it was that or go insane. He pushed down the voice of his surgeon warning him to take it slow. He’d taken it so damn slow he really was losing his mind, and his poor, unknowing, beautiful guide was in danger of being savaged.

He was a man who aumatically noticed everything and there was no way not to watch Saria walk. He felt so damned old and she looked fresh and innocent and so far out of his league it wasn’t funny—but still—she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and the wildness receded even more. He breathed normally now, years of discipline taking over. The small breeze caressed the wispy ends of her sun-kissed hair and his heart stuttered.

Saria turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder, a slight frown on her face, her eyes assessing him. She slowed her pace. “Are you all right?”

He gave her a direct stare, the kind that usually scared the hell out of people. “Why wouldn’t I be?” He was gruffer than he intended but she looked so damn young and innocent and he wasn’t having a great deal of success controlling the images of her naked body writhing under his—and that made him feel like a lecherous old man.

“You’re limpin’.”