It was useless to hide from her in animal form. When he looked into her eyes there was no horror at his revelations. He could read sadness mere. Rio shifted back to his human form and sat on the floor beside the bed. “I’m neither human nor animal, but a mixture of both. We have traits of both species and some of our own.”
“Gan you assume another form?”
He shook his head. “We are both leopard and human at the same time and only take one form or the other. This is who I am, Rachael. I’m not ashamed of what I am. My people are few, but we play an important role here in the rain forest. We have honor and commitment, and our elders are wise in things beyond modern science. While it’s true we have to be careful to remain undiscovered for obvious reasons, we contribute to society in many ways.”
There was pride in his voice, but she could see wariness in his eyes. “Tell me what happened to your mother, Rio.” She could live with, be friends with and be the lover of a shape-shifter, but she could not live with a man who murdered people. She’d done that, and she would never do so again under any circumstances.
He raked his fingers through his hair, wreaking havoc so that his shaggy hair was more tousled then ever. Locks fell persistently over his forehead, drawing attention to the brilliance of his eyes. “I thought you’d run the minute you knew what I was.”
Her smile was slow and more sensual than she knew. It nearly stopped his heart. “Well, I might have, but I can’t exactly win any races at the moment.”
Her smile was contagious, even then, when she could rip the heart out of his chest and change his life forever. He found an answering smile tugging at his mouth. “I’ll admit I thought of that when I decided I’d better tell you. It stacked the odds just a bit in my favor.”
“Smart man.” Rachael stroked back the strands of hair falling across his forehead. “Tell me about it, Rio. Tell it to me the way it happened, not how other people saw it.”
Rio felt the familiar pain, the anguish rising the way it always did when he thought of that day. He rubbed his suddenly pounding temples. “She loved the night. We all do. It’s beautiful, the way the moon plays over the trees and the water. We’re so much more alive. All the cares of the day disappear when we take the form of the leopard. I suppose
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it’s a form of escape, running along the branches and playing in the river. Our people love the water and we’re all good swimmers. She went out alone that night because I was working on the house.”
“Where was your father?”
“He died years earlier. It was just the two of us. She was used to being alone. I’d been gone on and off for a few years getting an education, so neither of us gave it much thought. I heard the warning first, the animals, the wind. You’ve heard it, you know what I’m talking about. I knew immediately it was an intruder. Human—not one of our people. Few people come this far into the interior unless it’s a tribesman and I could feel from the animals it was someone different, someone dangerous to us.”
Rachael eased her leg onto the floor, needing to stretch out. Immediately Rio helped her, his hands gentle as he took her foot carefully from the bed. To Rachael’s astonishment, his hands were shaking. “Thank you, that feels better. I’m sorry, please keep going.”
Rio shrugged. “I raced after her, but it was too late. I heard the shot. Sound travels a great distance” at night. When I reached her, she was dead and already skinned. He’d taken her pelt and left her like so much garbage on the ground.” He closed his eyes but the memory was there. Already the insects and carrion were moving in. He would never forget the sight as long as he lived. “We can’t take chances with the bodies. We burn them and scatter the remains over distances. I did what I had to do and all the while I could feel the black rage in me turning ice cold. I knew what I was going to do. I planned it carefully while I took care of her. I couldn’t bear to think about what I was doing, the burning of her body, so I planned out each step as I worked.”