Black Fire [Panther Key 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Panther Key 2

  Black Fire

  Abby Walker dreams of helping endangered animals in her new career in South Florida. But wandering around the sweltering Everglades with alligators and pythons isn’t exactly what she had in mind.

  Brad and Bryce Dawson are happy for their cousins, who found their mate in the form of a legendary black panther shifter, but they aren’t anxious to join the ranks of the permanently mated. When they meet the one woman their own cats can’t resist, however, they know their days of bachelorhood are over.

  Abby has no idea she’s the centerpiece of a plan that could change the shifter world forever. When an ancient being kidnaps her, Abby learns things about herself she never could have imagined.

  Brad and Bryce race to rescue Abby. A black panther stalks Abby’s mind. Family secrets unravel. And when Abby is backed into a corner, everyone finds out just how hot it can get in South Florida.

  Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among siblings.

  Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 33,711 words

  BLACK FIRE

  Panther Key 2

  Scarlet Day

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  BLACK FIRE

  Copyright © 2012 by Scarlet Day

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-650-9

  First E-book Publication: November 2012

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Black Fire by Scarlet Day from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Scarlet Day’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Day’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To my son, the light of my life, who is not allowed to read my books but would die of embarrassment if he did.

  BLACK FIRE

  Panther Key 2

  SCARLET DAY

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter One

  Abby Walker pressed her lips together, refusing to scream. Clenching her legs, she held on to the writhing mass of muscle between her thighs and fought her rising revulsion. Halfway through her first day as a real environmental scientist, she was convinced she’d lost her mind.

  What the heck had she been thinking when she told her college counselor she wanted to change her major from business management to environmental science? It had sounded so glamorous back then. Moving to the beach, year-round sunshine, saving the environment. She’d had visions of ushering baby sea turtles toward their first dip in the ocean.

  Now, as she tried to blow a strand of wet, matted hair out of her eyes, she felt like she had been dropped into the middle of purgatory, instead of the idyllic paradise she had imagined.

  “Almost got it,” said Brad Dawson, her new boss and the only thing between her and the head of the huge python she was sitting on.

  Brad maneuvered the snake’s head into a cloth bag, but the snake apparently wasn’t in the mood to go along with the plan. Fighting against Brad’s efforts, its body twisted and coiled around Brad’s arm. While Brad wrestled with the front end of the powerful snake, the muscular tail wrapped itself around Abby’s left calf. Not wanting to out herself as a girlie girl and run screaming back to the truck, Abby firmly gritted her teeth together and kept her mouth shut.

  Brad finally shoved the head into the bag and jumped up, pulling the snake with him and hefting its thick body into the bag. Abby rolled sideways and untangled her leg from the muscular tail as Brad lifted the rest of the snake into the bag and quickly tied the opening into a knot. Gasping for breath, Abby stood and bent over with her hands on her knees. She wondered whether there were any desk jobs for environmental scientists.

  “Not bad for your first python. The last girl I trained ran screaming back to the truck the first time she saw one of these.”

  Abby looked up through her soggy hair. Brad eyed her with a lopsided grin and one cocked eyebrow, almost like he knew she’d been seriously considering doing exactly that and was challenging her to finally break into hysterics.

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, snakes are no big deal.” Never mind that the closest she had ever gotten to a snake, other than the ones behind glass at the zoo, was a small garden snake in her parents’ yard. And she had run screaming from it.

  “So, what’s that other girl doing now?” She tried to sound like she wasn’t that interested.

  “She handles permits for the Department of Environmental Protection. She never gets out in the field anymore.”

  So, there were desks jobs to be had. Abby filed that information away for future consideration. Just in case.

  Of course, it didn’t help that Brad had hardly lost his breath during the whole python ordeal, while she was dripping in sweat—yuck—and breathing so hard she thought she might burst a lung.

  The fact that Brad was the most drop-dead-gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on didn’t do anything to boost her confidence. With his sandy-blond hair, high cheekbones, and a perfect little dimple right in the middle of his strong chin, Brad looked like one of those airbrushed characters right off the front of a romance novel. Not that Abby ever read those�
�much. Brad’s sky-blue eyes and full, kissable lips just added more confirmation he was way out of Abby’s league. If the way his shirt and jeans molded to his wide chest, tight butt, and long legs were any indication, she would bet her first paycheck she had finally met a man who would make her weak in the knees.

  * * * *

  Brad tried hard to suppress a smile. His new employee probably thought she was being covert as she checked him out, but he felt her gaze travel over his body just as easily as if her hands were doing the roaming. That thought almost made him groan. He’d been fairly uncomfortable from the moment she climbed into the truck with him, thanks to the hard bulge in his jeans. He had been battling his instincts ever since he caught her undiluted scent in the hot confines of the truck.

  The sight of the massive python they had just caught struggling between Abby’s thighs had almost caused him to embarrass himself. Never had a female brought out that kind of instant, overwhelming, let-me-fuck-you-till-we-both-scream reaction in him. Oh, he’d made plenty of females scream, but he’d never found one that sent him into overdrive the way this one did. This innocent-looking girl made him want to stake his claim and dare any other man to come within fifty feet of her. He knew the snake had her practically screaming in fear, but she had swallowed that fear and held her own. Her determination, bravery, and self-control made him swell with admiration. Even though she was covered in dirt, Brad couldn’t help but notice the way her sweat-soaked shirt clung to her breasts. He could almost imagine feeling them in his hands. Her jeans, though filthy, shaped the curves of her ass and thighs so well Brad wanted to walk behind her for the rest of his life. He’d never cared much for females who starved themselves into stick-figure shapes. From what he could see, this female had all the right curves in all of his favorite places.

  It was going to take all of his self-restraint to make it through the rest of the afternoon without tossing her in the back of the truck and taking her like the animal he was. He turned and trudged back toward the truck. It was going to be a very, very long afternoon.

  Chapter Two

  Landing a job with an environmental consulting firm right out of school had been a major coup for Abby. Many of her classmates graduated without jobs or were interning and still living with their parents, even the ones with master’s degrees, like herself. Okay, so the fact that Abby’s cousin, Kate, knew the owner of the firm had helped. A lot. She was just happy her job had been locked in before graduation. All she had needed to do was nail her final exams, pack her limited belongings, find a place to live, and move halfway across the country.

  Miami was a real eye-opener for a girl from Austin, Texas. After settling in to the small, efficiency-style apartment she had somehow managed to find near the beach, she had headed out to explore her new city and soak up some sun. One excursion to Miami Beach had made Abby realize she was way out of her league.

  Wearing her standard, one-piece swimsuit, she’d found herself surrounded by some of the most tan, lean, and overexposed bodies she’d ever encountered. The women, from the back, hardly looked like they were wearing swimsuits at all. Men wore tiny, little spandex numbers that left nothing to the imagination. Everyone around her looked like they’d been nipped, tucked, and sucked to achieve darn near perfection.

  Abby’s parents hadn’t been thrilled by the job offer so far away from home in a city they considered to be highly dangerous and morally delinquent. They had watched enough cop shows and reality television to know what really went on in a place like Miami. Abby was still trying to convince her mother that she could absolutely not call up the Miami Police Department to request a personal escort to and from work.

  Abby’s mother was already having difficulty accepting that Kate was staying in Florida, despite begging and pleading for Kate to move back to Austin after Kate’s mother died. Abby’s mother and Kate’s mother were sisters, and the death of Abby’s aunt had hit her mom hard. Abby’s twin sister, Emma, wasn’t thrilled with Abby’s move either, mainly because she was the only one left at home to feel the brunt of their mother’s overprotective streak.

  * * * *

  After a long, hot shower, Abby was starting to feel human again. She settled in to watch the evening news and eat the shrimp pad thai she had picked up for dinner—a reward to herself for not getting eaten by a giant snake on her first day of work. She chuckled as she recalled the look on the face of the guy working behind the counter when she walked into the little Thai place down the street. Considering she’d been covered in what felt like half the dirt in Miami-Dade County, the poor guy was probably still mopping the floor.

  She yawned repeatedly through dinner and decided to turn in early. She put her dishes away and then settled into bed, exhausted after her first day as a post-college, working adult. And she had thought college was hard!

  She had performed fieldwork in Texas as part of her environmental classes, but that had mostly involved collecting water and soil samples on vacant lots about to be developed. When Brad had driven her out into the Everglades that morning, she had realized South Florida was a completely different world from the one she had grown up in.

  Water-filled canals had been dug along both sides of the road, followed by endless vistas of tall grasses standing in the shallow, slow-moving water of the Everglades. The number of alligators sunning themselves on the banks of the canals in the blazing Florida sunshine had startled Abby. She’d known there were alligators here, but some part of her brain had conveniently ignored the idea there wouldn’t be any fences between her and the prehistoric-looking beasts. She had never actually imagined coming face-to-face with something that had that many large, dangerous teeth.

  Huge flocks of birds, from snowy-white herons to flamingo-pink roseate spoonbills, had covered the trees that grew on the patches of higher ground dotting the landscape. The sheer vastness of the Everglades was awe-inspiring, and Abby had fallen in love with it immediately.

  The thought of wildlife brought Brad into the front of Abby’s mind. There was definitely something primal and animalistic about him. Abby had never met a man who seemed so sure of himself and his abilities. He moved like a predator, cunning and stealthy. A shiver shot down Abby’s spine, and her sex clenched with desire.

  Abby’s friends often teased her about being a virgin at twenty-five. They thought seven years of college should have cured her of that little barrier. She wasn’t old-fashioned and didn’t have anything against having sex. She’d gone on plenty of dates in high school and college and had even kicked around the idea of doing it just to get it over with. At least, that’s what her sister Emma kept encouraging her to do. But Abby had never been physically attracted to anyone enough to want to have sex before.

  Until Brad, that is. For the first time, she thought she’d found someone she felt actual attraction for. As she thought of Brad taking her body and making her his, a wave of heat washed over her, starting at the top of her head and slowly working its way down to her clit. She trembled. Oh yeah, definite attraction.

  Her legs tangled in the sheets as she imagined Brad’s hands moving over her body, his strong fingers delving into her wet channel and stroking her aching bud. Even her previous attempts at heavy petting had never made her burn the way she did just thinking about Brad. With a groan, Abby reached into the drawer in her nightstand and pulled out her trusty vibrator. Getting a little relief was the only way she was ever going to get any sleep tonight.

  * * * *

  They were out there, looking for her. They wouldn’t stop until they found her. She prayed it would be soon. Darkness surrounded her, pressing against her like a thick blanket. Cold air, like an ice-cold hand, caressed her skin and sent goose bumps across her bare arms and legs. Drawing her legs up, she wrapped her arms around them and curled into a ball. A low chuckle sounded in her ear, and a cool breath blew across her nape. Jerking backward, she pressed herself into a corner. Fear gripped her and threatened to squeeze the breath out of her, but she refused to scream. Her ca
ptor wouldn’t get the satisfaction.

  “I can smell your fear, my dear, even though you refuse to give in to it.” Spoken in a whisper, the breath tickled her ear. She still refused to move or scream.

  “We shall see how long you can keep up the brave façade.”

  Emptiness surrounded her once again as the presence of her captor departed. Numbness crept up her cramped legs, but she remained still.

  Angry growls and viscous snarling tore through the night air. Relief flooded through her, and she hurled herself off the ground and toward the sound. A door flew open, and the moonlight silhouetted a huge cat standing in the doorway. Launching herself at the shape, she wrapped her arms around the neck of the beast. Burying her hands into the beast’s silky fur, she felt him change. Strong arms picked her up and wrapped her close as tears filled her eyes and her mind slipped into darkness.

  * * * *

  Abby awoke from the nightmare with a start and practically threw herself out of bed. Unfortunately, her legs tangled in the sheets, and she dove headfirst into the floor. Rolling onto her back on the floor, she panted from the adrenaline rush and rubbed the knot quickly forming on her forehead. She decided that pythons, Thai food, and self-induced orgasms were not a good combination.

  Her brain struggled to make sense of the fleeting dream, but the only thing she could get a grasp on was the shape of the cat and the sheer joy she’d felt when she saw him. Shaking her head, she laughed at the thought of anything that big and scary-looking making her happy.