Wild Hearts in Atlantis Read Online Free PDF Page B

arousal.
    All because of the man—no, the
Atlantean
—following her into her house.
    And she couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t like she’d never seen a sexy man before. Ethan, for example, was flat-out gorgeous. If you liked your men long, lean, hard-bodied and arrogantly alpha, that is.
    She had a feeling her tastes ran more to the poetic warrior/ambassador type.
    She groaned. “I’ve gotta get past this.”
    “Excuse me?” Even his voice was killer. Low and sexy, with a lilting cadence that sounded a bit like a distant cousin to the Gaelic she’d often heard spoken by park visitors from Ireland.
    Squaring her shoulders, she turned to face him. “I have to check on the cubs. I’ll be back in a moment.”
    It’s not running away when I really do need to check on the babies. It’s not.
    She kept repeating that to herself all the way down the hall, hoping that soon she’d believe it.
    Bastien dropped his bag on the floor near the overstuffed couch, wondering what he should do next. She probably wanted some space from the crazy fool he’d acted like in the car. He couldn’t blame her.
    He looked around at the small but cozy room, noting the pictures of what must be her family on a bookshelf. He crossed to it and picked up a frame, recognizing Kat’s strong features and height in the man who stood with his arm around a fragile-looking woman who held a baby. Baby Kat, maybe? The woman had Kat’s golden coloring, but was a tiny thing. Quinn had said Kat’s mother was human. Wonder how hard that had been, growing up as the half-breed kid of the alpha?
    A muffled shriek from the back of the house jolted him to attention, and he shoved the frame back on the shelf and took off at a dead run down the hall, automatically reaching for the daggers he wasn’t wearing. He’d stashed them in the duffel bag in deference to his hostess; that little courtesy might get him killed. No time to get them now. She might be—
    “Kat?” He hit the end of the corridor and burst into the doorway with light spilling out, only to see a totally unexpected sight: Kat sat on the floor, laughing, while four clumsy panther cubs crawled and rolled all over her. Bastien stared at her and felt the breath leave his lungs.
    Serious Kat was beautiful.
    Laughing Kat was a goddess.
    She looked up at him, still smiling. “I’m sorry. Did you hear me yell?” She held up the largest of the four, a male. The cubs had cinnamon-colored reddish coats and white undersides and a funny kink in the end of their tails. “He’s trying to prove he’s fiercer than his three sisters, and nipped my finger pretty hard, didn’t you baby?”
    When she bent her forehead to rub it against the cub’s, Bastien suddenly understood exactly why the creature started purring. He’d purr himself if he could get her to rub his belly.
    “They’re beautiful,” he said, and meant it. “I’ve never seen panther cubs before. Are they—I mean—”
    She laughed again, but this time her laughter held a note of bitterness. “No, they’re not shape-shifters. These are full panthers. And for a while, it was touch and go whether
anybody
would ever see a Florida panther cub again, the way the humans were murdering them.”
    “Poachers?” He sat on the floor, cautiously held out a hand to the two cubs nearest him. One of them ignored him completely and began to wash her face with one tiny paw, while the other slunk into stalking mode, jumped on his hand, and ferociously attacked his shirt sleeve.
    “No, not poachers, although we have to fight them now, too. Believe it or not, it was perfectly legal to hunt these incredible animals as recently as 1967, when the U.S. Department of the Interior listed them as endangered. Damn near too late, too. They were hunted to near extinction by around 1955.” She leaned back against the wall and stretched.
    Bastien tried not to be distracted by how long her legs were. “But they’re doing better now?”
    She nodded, face still