She smiled up at Tom. “I have to admit I thought I’d made the biggest mistake, shopping at that butcher shop.”

“Sometimes our worst mistakes can turn out to be the very best thing for us. I know your being in my life has been the very best thing for me.”

Elizabeth couldn’t believe her half brother and uncle were dead, and she had nothing to worry about in returning to Colorado, all because Tom had been there for her. She loved him.

And she knew from Tom’s expression that he was ready to skip the steaks and prove just how glad he was that she’d come back into his life. But she wasn’t giving her steaks up for anyone or anything this time.

“Steaks first. Dessert after,” she said.

“Did I ever tell you how hard you are on me?”

“Once or twice,” she said with a smile. “And you love me for it.”

“Damn… right.” He quickly tossed the food on the plates, gathered her in his arms, and started kissing her—and she was reminded of that kiss on the slopes when they’d become a video sensation for the whole pack.

Except for the cool Texas breeze and one coyote witness off in the distance, this time they were alone. And she decided that life was too short.

She wanted dessert first so she dragged him toward the house, plates in hand.

“What about our steaks?” he asked.

“Priorities change,” she said, smiling up at him. “Some things just won’t wait.”

“Amen to that.”

Read on for an excerpt from Jaguar Hunt, the upcoming book in Terry Spear’s action-packed and sizzling-hot jaguar shape-shifter series

David Patterson parked his car and headed into the Clawed and Dangerous Kitty Cat Club, a Dallas-based social gathering spot for jaguar shifters. Humans didn’t know that the shifters even existed and the shifters meant to keep it that way. The owners of the establishment didn’t restrict humans from frequenting the place. More business meant more money. David wasn’t there to support the club; his current task as a Special Forces Golden Claw JAG agent was to follow two unruly teens—jaguar shifter twins Alex and Nate Taylor—and bring them into the JAG branch if they violated one more law—jaguar shifter or otherwise.

This was not the kind of mission JAG agents normally took on—unless the organization felt the teens were at risk or that they could be a welcome asset to the branch and the agent was between assignments.

Neither of the boys was supposed to be in a club that served alcohol, which he would let slide if they were only there to watch the dancers in their skimpy leopard-skin loincloths and micro-bikini tops.

The place was more crowded than David remembered the last time he was here. One rowdy group caught his attention. They looked…different. Many were in great shape—almost as if they were shifters in the Service. But they were speaking in a smattering of foreign languages —Spanish, Russian, Chinese—and some of them wore clothes that were…unusual. Tights, sparkly tops, and ballet slippers that looked less like club clothes and more like what a Las Vegas entertainer would wear. The air conditioning blew their scents to him. Not jaguar shifters.

They smelled of elephants, horses, camels, lions, tigers, and dogs. The circus? Had to be from there.

He wrinkled his nose. That was the problem with being a shifter—their enhanced ability to smell odors. He noticed other patrons glancing their way, wrinkling their noses. Must be shifters, too.

The jungle music beat shook the floor and tables as conversations hummed all around him. A few couples danced on the floor, while others were just drinking and talking. Piped-in sounds of parakeets and parrots twittering and an occasional monkey’s howl made the silk leaf jungle sound more like the real deal.

David’s attention returned to Alex and Nate. Though not as muscular, they were both as tall as David. Alex’s hair was blond, his eyes dark blue, while Nate was less tan, and his light brown hair shaggier.

One was dressed in camouflage pants, the other blue jeans, both wearing black T-shirts with pictures of jaguars screen-printed on the front. The words Panthera onca—the scientific name for jaguar—announced that they were jaguar shifters, though only their kind would realize that’s what they were saying.

When David had been that age, he’d felt the same way. He’d wanted to shout to the world that he was a jaguar shifter and damned proud of it, instead of hiding it from everyone who wasn’t like him. Since there were more human females than female jaguar shifters, he’d wanted human girls to see him as someone truly special. He’d often fantasized that girls he’d had crushes on were of his kind and not strictly human. Most of his kind were born as jaguar shifters, but some ended up turning a human, which was not the best of ideas. Though his brother’s wife, Maya, had turned her brother’s wife-to-be and that had worked out well, despite the trouble it could have caused if Kat had had family.

So he could definitely commiserate with the twins.

The boys grabbed chairs at a table and David sat at another close by. Nate flagged down a server wearing a skimpy leopard-skin dress, cut high on the thighs and low on a very well-developed bust. Red curls bouncing about her shoulders, she smiled brightly at the boys as Alex whispered their drink order.

Grinning, the kids focused on two women who were dancing, breasts jiggling in their teeny bikini tops. David shook his head. The boys were so much like him and his twin brother, Wade, at seventeen.

The server returned with the boys’ red-colored drinks topped with lime green paper parasols, the toothpicks seated in cherries.