For one suspended second, he stopped feeling the ropes.
Stopped feeling the pain in his shoulders.
Stopped feeling the blood pulsing in his wrists.
There was only that enormous body pressed against him, those yellow eyes inches from his face, and the unbearable certainty that his life had narrowed to this one final moment.
He did not scream.
He could not.
The jaguar lowered its head.
Ricardo’s whole body locked.
He expected teeth in his throat.
Instead, the animal pushed its nose against the rope stretched across his chest and inhaled sharply, as if trying to understand him through the fibers, the sweat, the fear, and the scent of the men who had tied him there.
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