Feral Read Free

fought to escape a girlish ponytail. He was dying to see her hair loose, to run his hands through it, to tug on it with masculine vigor.
    She glanced away, but he kept looking at her, enjoying the chase.
    “Tell me about this place,” he said, prodding her to engage with him. “Give me the sales pitch.”
    Her gaze found his, even if her voice wasn’t quite steady. “It’s not a sales pitch. It’s home for captive-bred animals that have nowhere else to go.”
    Nervous as she was, her dedication shined through. That made her all the more fascinating.
    She continued by saying, “My grandfather was a large-animal veterinarian, and this used to be his ranch. When he retired, he turned it into an exotic cat rescue.”
    Noah already knew a bit of the background based on what he’d read on the Big Cat Canyon website, but he was curious to know more, especially with her relaying the details.
    He asked, “What motivated him to do that?”
    “He volunteered his services at other rescues, and he realized how grave the need was for more facilities like this. We have an on-site medical-care center that enables us to perform examinations and surgeries without transporting the cats. We provide exercise trails for the animals, too.” She waited a beat. “For our guests, we have picnic areas. We also have a gift shop.”
    Coffee mugs and plush toys didn’t interest him. Nonetheless, he was ready to start the tour.
    It began with the food preparation area, which was impressively spotless, with several employees already hard at work.
    Jenny said, “We prepare nutritionally balanced meat-based diets. They’re flash frozen with no by-products, hormones, antibiotics, or preservatives.” She added, “Felids are strict carnivores.”
    Noah remained deliberately quiet, allowing her to educate him about something he knew far too well. He was part “felid” and he was carnivorous as hell.
    She went on to say, “A felid is a member of the felidae family, which is the biological family of cats, and felids belong to two subfamilies: pantherinae and felinae .”
    Once again he stayed silent. She’d yet to relax in his presence, and he reveled in the anxious sound of her breathing and the pulse that beat quickly at her neck.
    “Sorry.” She made a face. “Sometimes I get carried away. Those words are probably just mumbo jumbo to you.”
    “No, it’s interesting.” He pushed the boundaries of who he was, playing his predatory game. “I’m curious—what are the scientific terms associated with mountain lions?”
    “They belong to the felinae subfamily. Their genus and species name is Puma concolor , but it used to be Felis concolor .”
    Noah considered himself a subspecies. A hybrid, for lack of a better description.
    She tilted her pretty little head. “Are mountain lions your favorite exotic cat?”
    As if he had a choice. “Yes.”
    She continued the lesson. “Aside from the scientific terms, they have a slew of other names. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes them as the animal with the most names. The most common is cougar, of course.”
    “And here I thought a cougar was an older woman who dated younger men.”
    She wrinkled her nose, and they both laughed. Apparently she didn’t like the urban slang definition any better than he did.
    A moment later, she said, “Some of the other names are puma, catamount, mountain screamer, painter, mountain demon, mountain devil, ghost cat, sneak cat, Florida Panther, Indian devil—”
    “Like me?” He made another deliberately bad joke, but it wasn’t intended to be funny and neither of them laughed. “I’m from the Seminole Nation.”
    She studied him. “So you’re Native American?”
    “Yes, but I lived in Mexico for quite a while. I’m fluent in Spanish. I speak the Mvskoke language, too. But it’s been a long time since I used it.” He didn’t fit into modern Seminole society. He didn’t fit anywhere, except for the environment he’d created for