Weekend Writing Warriors #SnippetSunday The Beast Within

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the weekly hop for everyone who loves to write! Visit other participants on the list and read, critique, and comment on their #8sunday posts. 

I've been posting from my current WIP, Book 2 in my Illuminati series, The Tree of Life.  Today you learn a little more about the hero, Rodrigo, whose nickname  the heroine has found out is Rio. ::Caution:: Tweeked for sentence demands of Blog rules!

             Rio walked deeper into the forest and breathed in the familiar odors, because the other, his darker, more primitive self that he kept locked away deep inside, hidden and almost tamed, was awakening and restless. 
            It was the other who increased his pace into a steady jog, and the other made his skin tingle and itch and his fingertips clench and uncurl and his toes scrunch up and squash within the confines of his boots. He pushed back, just a bit more, and the other squeezed his throat, making him growl, though it came out more a cough in sound. Almost there, he shoved through some interlaced root outcroppings and came upon a small pond.  At last, his shirt was wrenched from his pants and ripped open, and he shrugged it off quickly and let it fall. His pants soon followed, and then it felt so good to tug out of his boots and socks, wading into the water.
            Rio dove down, a few glorious strokes later, he let himself relax,and let the beast free. His skull broadened and his jaw widened, becoming powerful enough for the incisors this other was so fond of to fit in his mouth. He surfaced and breathed; the skin on his body had already been replaced by fine black hair with darker rosettes, widely spaced and dotted with dark spots. Reaching out with a wide paw, he sliced through the water and headed for shore.  Once there, he shook the water from his broad-shouldered, muscular body and stretched, relishing the release from physical restriction and confining domestic habitats the two-hundred-and–fifty-pound black jaguar padded over to Rio’s pile of clothes and raked the ground with razor-sharp claws so that they would remain undisturbed until his return because Rio might try to tame his inner beast, but his other self was king in this rainforest, and knew it.

Black Jaguar

I hope you enjoyed this week's snippet.  Be sure to visit all the other great Weekend Writing Warriors  & wonderful #SnippetSunday Authors. Also, be sure to enter to win a great prize in my The Romance Review's Sizzling Summer Reads Rafflecopter Giveaway & Visit their website for a chance to win dozens of more great prizes! The link is on my sidebar! You might even win a copy of Book 1 in my Illuminati series!

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