Mateo, a jaguar nagual descended from Mayan shamans, attends the Northern Nevada Con-fur-ence furry convention to hide in plain sight. Who will look twice at a long, black tail and inhuman yellow eyes when there are neon huskies and dancing dragons around? There Mateo meets Dazi, a mountain lion skin-walker who is at the con with friends from his Shoshone-Paiute reservation. They want to find out if the furries are close to stumbling across their tribe of shifters. When these two big cats rub up against each other, their cultures collide in a way neither Mateo nor Dazi could predict. But Mateo has trouble being entirely human around his alluring new companion, and Dazi puts his tribe at risk when he reveals their secrets to an outsider. Can Mateo and Dazi overcome their natural secretive and bestial instincts to find their purr-fect ending?

Beasts Like Us

“I’m coming in,” his stalker said. “Don’t be scared, and don’t eat me.”


A belt buckle jingled, fabric was drawn over skin, a shirt fell to the floor and was joined by jeans pooling around the pair of shoes, a pair of gray boxers still inside them. His stalker shuffled out of his shoes, leaving his pants behind as well. Then the face Mateo had dreaded appeared, along with arms and a torso as the naked man crawled under the door. Mateo couldn’t remember being this scared or confused, but under his fear there was fascination. The man had jet black hair long enough to brush the tops of his ears, smooth tanned skin, and dark smoldering eyes above a long straight nose.


Chapter 5