Goose and the Ocelot Read online

  She could have felt bad for Creed, because, in the end, his father had an addiction, and it tore the two apart and left Creed with nothing.

  But he’d chosen this route, and seeing how he refused to let her get a word in and certainly wasn’t about to see the truth, Dedra stamped out any sympathy she might have had. He didn’t want to listen to why he was mistaken, so Dedra needed to choose: would she kill the little fucker with her bare human hands or shift into her super-sized goose to beat the shit out of him?

  Ever seen a regular-sized Canadian goose go after someone? It was fucking scary.

  Double the size of that goose? Hahahah, one couldn’t even describe the terror.

  Finally, she stood.

  “What are you doing? Sit. Down!”

  She made a big show of yawning and stretching, having easily snapped the zip ties off her wrists. “Look, baby boy. I’m about done here. Your daddy wasted your inheritance in casinos and racetracks around the world. Go look into his financial records, or ask any of his friends. Also, did you even look into me?”

  “Yeah, you’re loaded. With my money!” In a dumb move, he used the gun to tap his chest in emphasis. Dedra figured this kid had never handled a gun before, which would make him even more dangerous. She needed to make this quick.

  “No, little shit. With my money.” She hissed the words as her eyes narrowed. She knew the anger had darkened her irises, based on the way Creed shriveled back. It was enough to give her the opportunity to snatch the revolver right from his limp hand. “I’m from one of Canada’s oldest mob families, and while we might not be in power anymore”—due to the fact that she was the last one, not counting her brother, who’d been disowned—“you better bet that I’ve been raised with enough of the Goosby fortitude to eat your fucking head for breakfast and make sure no one ever sees a fucking trace of your bloodline.”

  This time he definitely gulped. “I thought your last name was Wakins.”

  “That was my husband’s name, you fucking turdmonger. Do some goddamn research before you go off half-cocked next time.” She popped the cylinder out with care, not like that snap of the wrist they did in the movies; she knew revolvers. She tilted it back to empty the rounds into her hand, feeling their weight and the cool touch of the brass in her palm.

  She pushed the cylinder back into place and then hurled the weapon into the water, since she couldn’t carry it in her goose form. Then, one by one, she took the bullets and tossed them in after it, as if they were skipping stones.

  Their dense, odd shapes didn't skip, but they made a satisfying plunk and little splash every time they hit the water.

  “Will there b-be a next time for me… ma’am?” His fear was increased when a large fish jumped out of the water, attracted by the activity. Dedra couldn’t tell, but it sure looked like the thing’s pointed, gleaming teeth held one of the bullets in them.

  Playing with him, she let her face soften, her eyes returning to their usual grey. When she wanted to, she could look motherly. Even though her touch on his cheek was gentle, he winced. “Oh, Creed, darlin’, you didn’t do anything wrong, right? You didn’t hurt me. In fact, this little cruise has been enjoyable, if I can forget all the wretched bellyaching.”

  Even so, she wanted to make sure the little fucker didn’t come around again. She moved her hand from his cheek to grab his chin in a vise-like grip. “But please don’t fucking test me again. I do not do second chances.”

  And because she was absolutely sure that no one would ever believe him if he tried to talk about it, she shifted. She didn’t strip first—he didn’t get rewarded for his bumbling kidnapping attempt by getting to see her glorious body—which meant she tore out of her bikini and cover-up. Her human body transformed into the magnificent, giant grey and white Canadian goose.

  She did it with her human arms out, which meant her goose appeared with wings spread wide. She kept her eyes on Creed the whole time, watching and reveling in the horror on his face. She let him take it all in for just a moment before she let out a deafening honk and then snapped at his face.

  He screamed and crumpled to the floor of the boat. She was pretty sure he was shaking and crying, but she didn’t need verification. She was done with him.

  So she took flight.

  2

  Ever heard an ocelot laugh?

  How about a crackle’s cry?

  An electric toothbrush?

  It was all about the same noise, and it was the sound Andrés made when he watched Dedra Wakins read a garbage punk for filth.

  Anyone looking in from the outside would be a bit confused to see a four-legged spotted cat curled up in a tree, cackling something fierce. Lucky for him, there were no people around.

  Not so lucky was the fact that his hysterics almost cost him his mission. He was so caught up in his laughter that he wasn’t ready when Dedra took off into the sky.

  On the one hand, he could let her go. She’d likely just return to her hotel.

  On the other hand, if Andrés was able to track her there, then so could the group who was out to get her. It would be better to grab her now, save a little trouble later.

  Quickly, he made a calculation then ran for it, jumping along the best branches and then grabbing just the perfect one. He clung to the end of it, letting it sink lower and lower till just the right moment. He let go, dropping to the branch just below, and then watched the magic happen.

  Ptew!

  Gotcha!

  It shot straight up, nailing his target.

  And my mother said all those hours of playing Duck Hunt on Nintendo were useless!

  Dedra squawked when the branch made impact, and he held his breath as she tumbled, realizing that if he miscalculated, then he might have actually hurt her.

  He worried for nothing, though, because the goose landed on the next tree over, feathers ruffled but otherwise in one piece. As soon as her fall was stopped, she got to her webbed feet and spun around, mad as hell and looking for someone to blame.

  She didn’t have to look far. Her beady eyes locked on him, and she emitted a hiss that Andrés swore echoed through the jungle.

  I ain’t scared of no big chicken.

  That was what he told himself, anyway, as he settled down on his branch, legs and paws tucked under him. It was a pose that was deceiving. He looked comfortable, but really he was coiling his body like a spring, ready to react if necessary.

  The goose made her way down her branch, getting nearer to the neighboring tree. He watched it bow down with her great weight and kind of hoped that it would give way and stop this inevitable showdown.

  A smaller bird, which had been making its home in one of the offshoots, flew up, chirping madly at Dedra for disrupting its nest.

  In response, Dedra shot a wing out, colliding with it and rocketing the pretty blue-winged creature far behind her.

  Gulp.

  Sure, he could transform into his human shape, but where was the fun in that? That was for sure why he didn’t change… it definitely had nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t want his twig and berries anywhere near a snapping, snarling garburator—that was a garbage disposal, for all the non-Canadians—with wings.

  Instead, he tried a different pose, sitting up on his hind ocelot legs, holding his paws down to the side. He liked to call this his meerkat pose. It was outrageously cute. Especially when he widened his eyes. Worked every time.

  Well, almost every time. At that moment, it didn’t seem to impress the goose. She took another step toward him, her branch bowing even more as her mouth pincer grew ever closer.

  Andrés lifted one paw up in the air. I come in peace. She couldn’t hear his thoughts, but he hoped she’d get the message.

  Nope. Another step, this time lowering her neck and extending it in front of her. A clear sign that she was ready to fight.

  For his next trick, he put both paws over his eyes and then quickly pulled them off—boo!—revealing a wide toothy cat grin. Surely that would help her
see that he wasn’t her enemy!

  Still nope. Another step. He was sure that the branch was going to give out and drop out beneath her at any moment.

  She must have been thinking the same thing, because she flapped her wings and made the jump to his branch, landing heavily and making him bounce.

  He jumped, but not out of fear, definitely not!

  Andrés had to work to keep from falling as the branch bobbed and swayed, threatening to catapult him off into kingdom come. He dug his claws into the wood, trying to stabilizing himself.

  Before he could get himself back into some sort of dignified state, Dedra honked at him, lunging with her wings out. Andrés did his best not to flinch. He’d never admit it to the other agents, not in a million years, but it took everything in him to not shield his face with his little kitty arms.

  Canadian Geese are fucking horrifying, okay?

  He could take one out if he needed to, but he would like to avoid hurting Dedra, if at all possible. He hated having to fill out Target Accidental Injury Notification and Testimonies. TAINT forms blew the big one.

  When he didn’t react, Dedra halted and regarded him, cocking her head, on its long neck, to the side. He figured she must be wondering why this wild creature wasn’t running in fear of the terrifying turkey.

  Of course I’m not, bird brain! I’m a shifter, like you!

  Joking time was over. He shifted into his human form, hooking one arm around the branch to keep from falling and using the other hand to cover his most valuable assets. “Hey now, lady, let’s not try to kill a fellow!”

  Not for the first time in her life, Dedra wished there was an easier way to identify a sentient animal. A shifter, that was.

  You know, like a secret handshake or something. It would have been so helpful, growing up, to be able to meet others like herself in the wild.

  That kind of technology did exist. Her family was stringent about using it when the family factory used real goose down. They ensured their down providers were certified dealers who used the tech so they knew they were never accidentally using shifters in their pillows and duvets.

  They never made a version of it that was good for on-the-go, though. Like a laser scanner you could keep on you while you were shifted so you could scan a cat when it was acting like a weirdo. Green for shifter, red for real predator.

  She watched the ocelot turn into a man—a damn sexy one, if she were to take a moment to appreciate what was before her eyes—and once she saw that he wasn’t about to lash out at her, she followed his lead.

  She shifted, balancing with ease thanks to certain bird talents that translated to her human form. She allowed him to take a good look before saying, “Why the hell did you hit me?” It had really smarted, to get whacked by a branch mid-flight. The only explanation she could see was that the cat was responsible. She didn’t often go looking to get into a scrap with another creature, sentient or not, but if it had wanted to start something, she’d deliver. Normally she’d stay away from lions and tigers, but she was sure she could take on a kitten like that.

  Okay, ocelots weren’t tiny or kittenish. She was well aware of how damn ferocious they could be. They fought with disregard for their own safety and could take down animals four times their size. They were the definition of savage.

  But the kitty hadn’t gone into any kind of offensive pose when she turned to face him. It was one thing for him to not run—sure, she could reason that an ocelot would be too tenacious to flee when something like her landed almost on its nose—but anything with an ounce of self-preservation would have at least prepared for a fight.

  Unless it wasn’t a normal wild ocelot.

  Which, as it turned out, was the case. Unless Dedra was dreaming… because the tanned, handsome, tall drink of a man who now crouched in place of the ocelot was something that the best mail-order catalog of her dreams couldn’t deliver.

  He waggled his eyebrows, even though she thought his struggle to regain his composure was more comical and less sexy. “Welcome to my jungle,” he said in a Brazilian accent that delighted her ears. He’d finally found his footing and stood on the branch, showing that his feline talents, at least for balancing, also translated to human form.

  “Your jungle?” She looked around, surveying the dense foliage, and the animals you could pick out if you looked hard enough. “Does the wildlife here call you king, Tarzan?”

  He made a face. “Tarzan is from Africa, xuxu.”

  She ignored the fact that in saying xuxu—which sounded like “chuchu”—he more or less had just called her sexy lady. She’d spent enough winters in the south to know a fair amount of Portuguese, but she didn’t need to tell him that. “It’s Dedra. And if you’re not Tarzan, mind telling me who you are?”

  He tossed his head, allowing the sun to sparkle in his black hair and gleam off his toothy grin. “Andrés Sosa, FUC, at your service.”

  Dedra blinked. “Come again? Fuck at my service?” Had someone really ordered her a mail-order jungle gigolo? Hot damn!

  The man started laughing. So much so that he hugged onto the tree trunk to steady himself while gasping for air. “FUC - eff you cee!! The Furry United Coalition, xuxu!” He dissolved into laughter again.

  “Oh.” Okay, that made more sense. Dedra knew all about FUC. Her family always did their best to stay out of their way. Taking on the shifter underworld was one thing, but having trained super agents on your tail was completely another. “What are you doing here? Are you here on vacation?” Or had she finally made a misstep big enough to draw the attention of FUC?

  “You’re in danger,” he said. His laughter stopped, and his face turned serious.

  He said danger. Not trouble. That was good, right? “What do you mean?” She thought about Creed, down there in his boat. He wasn’t enough of a threat to send FUC to save her. That little dweeb probably couldn’t successfully kill a spider.

  “An unhinged group of animal activists is protesting your company.” He nodded solemnly, as though delivering life-altering news.

  She waited for him to add to it. When he didn’t, she added, “So? What else is new?” It happened all the time. They’d dealt in goose down for generations. Having animal activists protesting was normal. The only odd part about it was that this past year, after her father died, she had stopped using real down and changed everything to artificial fluff, so they technically weren’t even in the down business anymore.

  He seemed to have expected a different reaction from her. His mouth turned down. “This is serious. They’re claiming to be a sect of MUFF, the Merrily United Furry Friends against the unethical treatment of non-sentient animals by shifters.”

  Hmmm, interesting. MUFF only went after shifters, and the fact that her family was shifters was a closely guarded secret. Hence the mob ties. It had always ensured that no one went digging into the Goosby family secrets.

  So what would draw MUFF to them now? “Are you sure? How do you know this?” A ribbon of unease began to unfurl inside Dedra. Why hadn’t she heard about this from her people at the factory? And how big was the trouble if FUC was involved?

  “FUC has a long history with MUFF. We’ve disturbed the hornet’s nest enough times that they like to taunt us whenever they’re up to something. We received an official MUFF DIVE, Disclosure of Intent against Vile Enemies, just yesterday, and it identified you, and your company, as the target.”

  “Shit.” That wasn’t good. That meant MUFF knew she was a shifter.

  More importantly, it meant that they might identify Kailee, her daughter, as well. And Dedra had no way to damage control that.

  Luckily, FUC did. That was one of the things they specialized in.

  “The good news is that now you have FUC on your side. We’ve tracked all of your family down—”

  “Including Kailee?” She cut him off, not meaning to shoot dangerous daggers from her eyes at him. She couldn’t help her protective mama-goose instincts.

  “Yes, Kailee, Grayson, and
Maddox”—her brother and nephew—“but before you fly off the handle, er, branch here, can you listen? FUC is on it, and we’re bringing all four of you to our safe house.”

  “Kailee is in your custody?” Dedra’s heart fluttered in her chest, panic threatening to cut in on this civil conversation and make her shift and fly north right then.

  “I expect she is.” Andrés was dusting himself off, looking like he was preparing to shift. “So, if you’ll follow me, we can fly back to Canada together and you can see for yourself.”

  She’d rather just go herself, but she knew her wings were clipped. She had no recourse to protect her family from exposure by MUFF, and she knew FUC’s reputation well enough to know that if they had Kailee in a safe house somewhere, then she couldn’t be any better protected. Not only that, but she wouldn’t be able to get near her daughter without a FUC agent escort.

  So she agreed to go willingly with Andrés, back to Canada. “How the hell are you going to fly? You some fantasy hybrid cat that sprouts wings or something?”

  “No, duckie,” he said, giving her a wink that was so charming she almost didn’t take offense at being called a duck. “This cat is a pilot.”

  3

  Andrés reminded himself that a good FUC agent was trained for professionalism.

  That meant not getting a boner when seeing a sexy naked lady.

  But he couldn’t help it. Nature was nature, you know? And he figured one could take it as an insult if there was a lack of bodily reaction. His boner was a compliment, so long as he didn’t refer to it or try to use it without permission, right? If he didn’t have wood, wouldn’t she wonder, why not?

  None of that mattered, though. Dedra’s gaze never dipped low, or he at least didn’t catch it doing so. Her loss—so he figured—but in return, he did his damndest to keep his eyes above the collarbone…

  Her sexy, kissable, lickable, biteable collarbone…

  He was glad she’d so readily agreed to leave with him. He needed a reason to stop being tempted to look at and appreciate her damn fine body.