The Lion’s Cross Species Baby

Chapter 2

Once they were out the door, Annie jerked her hand out of his. She fell back a couple of steps to follow him rather than walk next to him. Her anger was clear in her face and in her steps, almost stomps. Cooper frowned, his face turned away from her. Bad way to start a friendship, he thought to himself, and now he’d have to make it up to her somehow.

Mark had not told him about Annie’s beauty, only that she was a shifter and wanted to do her thesis over ancient Brazilian civilizations. Cooper had been excited to have a student at his dig, someone he could teach and share all the fascinating findings he’d dug up with his team. The men he worked with here were merely laborers, not interested in the artifacts themselves but in the paychecks digging for them brought.

They reached the jeep, and Cooper opened her door for her so she could slide into the passenger seat. She did so without a nod of thanks, her anger almost leaping off her to punch him in the gut. He hefted her bag into the back of the jeep and walked around to the driver’s seat.

As he started the car, he said, “I’m really sorry about being late. We made a find today and I was so excited time slipped away.”

Annie sniffed indignantly, but her desire to know about the find overcame her anger. “It’s fine, I understand. What did you find?”

“It’s amazing!”

The excitement in his voice was palpable and catching. Annie’s heart beat a little faster. “So what is it?”

“Annie, you won’t believe it until you see it,” Cooper told her. He slowed to turn onto a blacktop road. “By the way, this is the last blacktop road you will see.”

Annie’s patience, already thin after her altercation with the werewolf, stretched even further. Through clenched teeth, she said, “That’s terrific, Cooper. Tell me what you found!”

Cooper smirked. “We found a set of cave drawings.”

“Really? Oh my God!” To an untrained person, cave drawings didn’t sound very exciting, but to a history major or archaeologist, this was exciting news. “What are they of? Where did you find them?”

“While we were digging earlier this year, we found an underground cave with several artifacts. The entrance had caved in, and I don’t know when the last human was in there, but let me tell you, I’d bet all the money I have it was several thousand years ago.”

“How fascinating!” she exclaimed, then hummed to herself. “You know, I may have to alter my thesis a little now that I’m hearing this.”

“Wait. It gets better,” he teased, looking at her with an eyebrow wiggle she found adorable despite her resistance to like him.

She smiled. “How does it get better?”

“The drawings are s*xual in nature,” Cooper baited.

“S*xual?” Annie asked, frowning. “But no one has ever found cave drawings of a s*xual nature in Brazil, or South America. Not that I’ve ever read about.”

“Exactly!” Cooper declared, triumph on his face. “This is the first archaeological dig in South America to find cave porn!”

“Cave porn!” Annie laughed, shaking her head. “Is it brazen?”

“Oh yeah. Looks like something you’d find on a bathroom wall,” Cooper told her with a laugh.

“I can’t wait to see it!” Annie was nearly bouncing in her seat. She turned to look at the window and gasped. “Wow. Beautiful.”

The blacktop road had slimmed down to a narrow, paved pathway through a rain forest. Up ahead, she could see where the pavement ended and the road became just dirt. The trees around them, tall as skyscrapers, were so green her eyes hurt to look straight at them. Several monkeys followed their slow progress through the verdant forest, their eyes round and curious.

“What breed of monkey is that?” she asked, pointing out the window but not averting her eyes from them. “They’re adorable.”

“Those are capuchin monkeys. They’re cute but very cunning. Be careful if one joins us in camp,” Cooper warned.

“Are there a lot of animals near the campsite?”

“More than you’ll ever see,” Cooper told her. “We maintain a loose watch to make sure no predators come close, but overall the animals leave us alone.”

“How badly has the dig disturbed their habitat?” Annie was a historian, but she very much lived in the present. The idea of destroying a habitat to find evidence of the past was, to her, appalling.

“We didn’t have to do much clearing, actually. You’ll see. This road leads directly to our camp. The dig is a bit of a hike through the forest, about a mile and a half,” Cooper informed her as the jeep hit a deep dip and bounced hard. “Whoa, sorry about that. We have a road, but it’s not in great shape.”

Annie nodded and returned to study the land, hoping for another glance at some animals. She’d almost decided on vet school rather than history, but when she’d volunteered at a clinic, she’d discovered that most animals were skittish around shifters. After a bit of research, she realized that she wouldn’t make a successful vet because her patients would shy away from her. So history had been her choice.

“How much further?” she asked.

“Only about three miles, but it’ll take about twenty minutes because of the road conditions,” Cooper said. She nodded, her eyes glued to the view outside her window. He glanced at her, admiring her profile and hit a pothole so big it nearly took out a tire. “Damn. Sorry.”

“No worries,” she replied, although she’d bumped her head against the window and hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“Mark told me you were a shifter, but not what you shift into,” he hinted.

She looked at him and winked flirtatiously. “You could smell that guy and tell he was a werewolf. Why don’t you smell me and guess?”

Cooper looked at her, a look of interest on his face. “Challenge accepted. Give me your arm, please.”

Annie extended her arm to him, and he took it with one hand and held it to his nose. His eyes remained on the road as he breathed in her scent. His brow furrowed; her scent was unfamiliar to him. He moved his nose to the crook of her elbow, and she squirmed when he breathed. He glanced at her.

“Ticklish?”

Annie chuckled. “Your breath on my elbow tickles, yes.” She took her arm away. “So you’ve smelled plenty. What am I?”

Cooper pretended to think. “Let me see your arm again. I didn’t get a good enough sniff.”