"Give itback," Javic snapped.
Max flipped over the photo, but there was nothing written there. She tucked it back into its protective holder and put it back in his pocket.
"See?" she said. "We're not your enemies and we didn't bring you here to hurt you."
Javic gave the wire an eloquent tug.
"There's good reason why we can't just let you run around loose, and you know it," she pointed out. "After we eat, we'll bring some over for you and then we'll talk. How does that sound?"
Javic sighed and rested his head against the tree. "You're the boss."
She didn't trust the capitulation and thought about putting the gag back on him, but she also didn't want to risk driving him into absolute refusal to talk. The little clearing was starting to fill with cooking smells, and dusk had begun to cloak the desert landscape with blue and purple.
Before she returned to Gio, Max went behind the trees to give herself a little privacy, slipped out of her clothes, and shifted. Abruptly the evening was full of vivid smells, and the growing dusk became perfectly clear to her feline eyes. The hill that had seemed so steep was now a perfectly nice angle for climbing, and she did that, bounding from boulder to boulder until she reached the top of the mesa.
A quick examination with her keen senses of smell, scent, and hearing showed nothing to worry about. If anyone came by, she doubted if they would notice the tracks turning off the road. Just to be safe, she shifted back, shivering in the cool evening air on her naked body. Swiftly she brushed out the most noticeable Jeep tracks and threw handfuls of sand over them, making it look as if they had been weathering for weeks.
That done, she shifted back and trotted down the old road to their campsite, not seeing any reason to hide. Gio rose to his knees in surprise when he saw her, but then he said, "Max?"
She was pleasantly surprised that he recognized her. Being able to examine him with her feline senses was fascinating. His smell was intoxicating. She wanted to rub all over him, roll over and wave her paws in the air. She managed to suppress the urge with some effort, but she couldn't stop herself from coming closer to sniff at him.
Gio cautiously stroked her fur and rubbed behind her ears. Max leaned her head into him and wished that jaguars could purr. Long ago, in happier times, her jaguar would sometimes purr internally because Max liked it, but in the real world, big cats' throats simply weren't structured for it. She made a soft growling sound instead, the closest she could come, and hoped he would know what it meant.
"You're very beautiful," Gio told her. He gazed at her in wonder as he went on petting her, and Max could feel herself beginning to melt in his hands.
She made herself pull away before she really did dissolve into a feline puddle and rub all over his legs. Before going back to her clothes, she padded over to Javic, who drew back against the tree.
"Nice kitty," he said warily.
Max sniffed at him. He didn't smell nice like Gio, but he smelledstrange. As well as the scent of the charred patches on his clothing, there was an undertone of something like campfire smoke, but more elemental. She had never encountered anything like it before.
Javic clearly looked like he thought she was going to rip his throat out with her teeth.Whatever else he is,she thought,he's not used to shifters.Also, dinner smelled very good, and she wanted to eat it as a human rather than a jaguar. Her jaguar would much rather have fresh meat than cooked.
She padded behind the trees to change back and got dressed, leaving her boots and socks off because she had liked the feeling of the sand on her bare cat feet so much. She ran her fingers through her hair to sort it back into some kind of order and twisted it into a fresh ponytail before she came out.
By that time, Gio had dished out two bowls. He handed a bowl to her, and his fingers brushed over hers. She couldn't help thinking of how wonderful they had felt in her fur, playing with her ears. She wondered if Gio was thinking the same when his fingers lingered and then he suddenly pulled them back.
"There are only two bowls that I could find," Gio said, turning to fuss with the dinner preparations instead. "There's not one for him."
"That's okay, he can use one of ours when we're done."
"Like I can trust you won't poison me," Javic said loudly from his tree.
"Oh, stop it." Max got up on her knees to search through their supplies and see whether she'd tossed in the loaf of bread; she had been in too much of a hurry to remember. "What's the point of going to all this trouble when I could've just shot you through the head as soon as you showed up?"
Javic fell silent. She wasn't sure if he was intimidated or thinking it over.
Gio had made plenty of stew, which was good, since Max was also starving as her body healed the damage from the fight. She ate her fill and then scraped the rest of the cookpot's contents into her bowl for Javic. Gio had set up one of the LED lanterns to eat by. She found another one, and took that and the bowl of stew over to Javic.
He tugged his bonds pointedly when she crouched beside him. "Are you planning to spoon-feed me?"
"No, I was going to make you lap it like a dog," she said. He looked horrified. "Oh, come on. We're not trying to hurt or humiliate you."
She looked at him critically. He hadn't said anything about it, but the position she had tied his hands in must be getting very uncomfortable on his shoulders. Max set the bowl and lantern on the ground. She pointedly made sure he could see that she was carrying a gun.
"I'll cut you loose so you can eat," she told him. "But first I want your word that you won't try to escape."
"You'd believe me?" he asked warily.
