The Cougar's Bargain (33 page)

“Hannah,” he whispered against her lips.

She couldn't tell if it was an objection, but just in case it was, she kissed him again. “Don't be mad at me. People are always mad at me.”

“Not mad at you.” He put his hand to the back of her head and pulled her in closer. With his arm slung around her waist and his chest crushing hers, he nipped at her lips, lashed at the small stings with his tongue, and teased her mouth in gentle thrusts and flicks that reminded her so much of what he'd done in that Tucson motel room.

She wanted more of him, wanted to just let go and be consumed for once, but there wasn't time for that. She just wanted to make sure he knew that she wanted him.

His energy burned at her aroused flesh as if a torch were being passed over her skin, and like the flame was not only trying to sear her outside, but try to make its way into her.

His cougar
, she realized. “What is he doing?” she asked on a gasp.

Sean worked his hot, calloused hands up the inside of her shirt and pressed his palms over her breasts as his talented mouth marked her neck.

He pulled back long enough to say, “I think he wants to see his mate.”

“I'm right
here
.”

But she wasn't. It took her a moment, but she realized that wasn't what the cat wanted.

Sean brushed his thumbs over her swollen nipples and she thrust her chest forward to encourage him, then realized she
couldn't
.

They couldn't allow themselves to lose control, even if they both needed to so badly.

She encircled his wrists and slowly pulled his hands free of her shirt, leaning forward to kiss him to ease the refusal.

“Watch me,” she whispered. She set his hands onto his lap and started undoing her shirt buttons.

Sean's hungry graze tracked down from her throat to every new inch of exposed skin she revealed all the way down to her waistband.

He held out his hand for the shirt, and she gave it to him, then her bra.

And he was looking. He wasn't even going to pretend he wasn't interested and she loved him for it. Even with shaking hands and cheeks burning so hot she worried she might fry her brain, she managed to take off her shoes, too. Then came her jeans, though she took longer with those, psyching herself up to it.

He'd only seen her in the dark, and now he was going to see her in the light.

Do it.

She handed them over, tossed her panties at him, and wrapped her arms around herself. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled in a bracing breath.
God.

She heard him move—
felt
him move. She could discern his position in the room even with her eyes closed not just because she had a predator's senses, but because he was her mate and he was supposed to be nearby.

A moment later, he was behind her, pulling her against him. Her shaking body was against his hot flesh, his lips to her ear. “You're beautiful.” He skimmed his hands down her quivering belly and let them rest at her hips. He was being such a gentleman, in spite of everything, and he didn't have to be. He couldn't hide his arousal. It was there and against the small of her back, and at some point she knew she was going to look, to touch.

Just not right now.

“Go ahead,” he whispered. “I'll be down on all fours right after you.”

She opened her eyes and fixed on Lola's bright dress in the distance and tried to convince her body to let the cougar inside to take lead. But she couldn't talk herself into pulling the trigger, because it was going to hurt, and she wasn't good enough at shifting to ignore the pain. It was like she'd told the Foyes. People weren't always rational when it came to their bodies and being in pain.

“Do you want me to pull her out?” Sean asked.

She nodded and closed her eyes.

He pulled her tighter against him, putting his hot-as-the-sun body against her and forcing the part of her that was a beast to push at Hannah's seams. She wanted out. She wanted to claim what was hers and Hannah was in her way.

Get out of my way
, came that strong, clear voice from the other side of her consciousness she'd been having such a hard time hearing.

Get out of my way
.

Hannah drew in a breath, and on her next exhalation, raised the figurative gate.

It felt like her bones were shattering and skin being ripped from her flesh, and she was so hot she thought she'd fry, but as she writhed and bit down on her screams, in the back of her brain was Sean's calm voice.

“It's all right. I'm watching you. You can be afraid in front of me.”

And she was afraid—not just because of what she had to do and because everything in the glaring was so uncertain—but because she didn't like being out of control. She'd been criticized for that so much growing up and she'd become unable to discern nuances. What was normal? What wasn't?

She didn't know when she'd hit the ground, but Sean knelt in front of her, and she couldn't speak because her voice box wasn't the same.

He smoothed the fur over her brow with his thumbs, and rubbed behind her perked-up ears. “Of course you'd be a pretty cat.”

She didn't know what he saw—she hadn't seen herself in that form—but hoped he was telling her the truth.

“You're going to have to help me shift back after this,” he said softly. “If I can't do it myself.”

She gave him the closest thing to a nod a cat could do, and watched him shift with silken, silent, practiced ease to the cat she'd seen so many times before, but not like
that
.

They were the same now.

He walked around her, rubbing the side of her body against his larger one, and flicking his tail at her.

Hello, kitty. I'm going to devour you when all is said and done.

The cat was at the forefront of her consciousness. The part of her that was just Hannah cringed at the brazen creature.

If you won't, I will. He's mine.

Hannah bowed out of the internal debate and let the cat steer the ship. There was a van coming down the ranch road, and she would have bet an inch or two of her tail that Lola was about to give them all a hell of a show.

• • •

Sean was having a damned hard time figuring out who was who, and not just because half of them were wearing fur. Hannah was obviously easy enough to spot in a crowd—he'd recognize that beautiful, golden cat anywhere—but of the folks he recognized, he couldn't be convinced they were in their right minds at the moment. Lola was hopping from body to body as convenient for her, putting her pawns in place, and they complied because what choice did they have but to do their goddess's bidding?

Mason—actually Lola in his skin at the moment—leaned over the gazebo railing as the group of men from the van strode toward them.

“Can I help you?” Lola-Mason shouted.

Miles crouched between Sean and Hannah in the shadows of the barn and whispered, “I think the plan is to lure them out closer to the hellmouth. A few of the ladies from the glaring are out there pretending to be oblivious. They're probably going to think they're easy pawns.”

Sean couldn't say anything in response, but he got the gist.

“If they try to present this as Coyote business and try to shift, we've got about ten cats dispersed throughout the property who'll herd them beyond the pasture toward the ladies. You've got to make them think they're winning, so you have to put on a good show of it so they'll think it's okay to snatch the girls as bargaining chips.”

Sean tipped his head toward the hayloft. Miles nodded and headed toward it. She was Lola's mouthpiece, so Miles couldn't hide herself away, but she wasn't equipped to be in a fight, either.

She climbed up into the loft and pulled the ladder up after her.

Just in time, too. The guy who'd met with Hannah at the coffee shop stepped forward and got into Lola-Mason's space. A move any alpha would have construed as disrespectful. Lola-Mason responded accordingly and gave the guy a shove backward.

As predicted, the men started to shift—all but the one in front, who leered at Lola-Mason and said something about how he'd asked for it and there was some nonsense about claiming land and so on.

Six “Coyotes” and one man stared Lola-Mason down.

Ellery, who'd been clinging to Mason in the way scared women in thriller movies did to their guys, made convincing noises of fear and dismay.

The guy in the front grabbed for Ellery, and that was Sean's cue. He got to his feet and stalked not-so-discreetly to the gazebo.

He had a “Coyote” on him in a flash, but Sean dodged him, took a couple of lazy swipes at him, and then ran—playing the coward. He hated the role, but he had to do his part of the plan. He needed to draw the attentions of
Los Impostores
toward the hellmouth.

And there went Hannah streaking past him, doing her job, too. She'd run ahead to put herself between the women and
Los Impostores
, not just because that was the plan, but because she was the glaring's avenger. Orchestrated chaos or not, they couldn't let those women get hurt. It'd be irresponsible of them, and their job was to protect the glaring, not trigger upheaval.

More and more cats joined Sean on the run, all chased by the pretender Coyotes who were so driven by one-track minds that they couldn't even see the trap that had been laid for them. Greed was funny that way.

When Hannah reached the ladies, she got them moving—out of their leisurely “hike” and out of the circle of magic the cats had drawn the other shifters into.

Naturally, they tried to follow, but the Were-cougars were done with playing the roles of cowards. They turned on the coyotes and pushed them back. They circled them, ten to six, and Mason—whom Sean wasn't sure was Lola anymore—made eleven.

So, where's Ellery
?

Sean stopped lunging at the
Impostore
he was chasing long enough to make sure Ellery had gotten away from that guy, and quickly enough, he found the little witch walking calmly into the circle and dragging the flailing man behind her.

He seemed to be trying to shift, judging by the way his skin rippled and body contorted, but everything he tried to push out stayed inside.

He was being
prevented
from shifting.

That confirmed it for Sean. That wasn't Ellery
,
but Lola.

She dropped the man onto the dirt and brushed her hands clean on Ellery's shorts. “Out,” she said simply.

Every Cougar in the circle fled. Their opponents were slower on the uptake. They must have figured out that something was up, because they started to follow, but Lola-Ellery swiped her arm in a wide arc and suddenly, the canines froze.

The Cougars waited at the outer rim of the circle in a cluster, watching. Mason shifted back to his man shape first, and Sean and Hank followed his lead. Tito came next.

Sean looked down at the golden cat nudging the back of his thigh with her nose, and he realized what he'd done. “Yeah, I shifted back, huh? I guess I'm fixed.”

Hannah strutted away, weaving through the mass of cats, probably looking to find herself a better view.

Tito said low, “Glad I talked her out of doing this in her true shape. It didn't seem like a good idea having too many people know she's out and about.”

“This way, they just think the glaring has a powerful witch,” Hank said.

“Yeah. Not a bad thing to have people think.”

“Is she going to fry them or what?” Sean asked.

Tito shrugged. “Dunno, man. When she gets like this, she kind of changes her plans as she goes along. She always has more than one reason for doing things, though.”

Hannah moved behind Sean—this time on two legs—and pressed her body against his backside, peeking around his left arm.

“You don't have to hide,” he whispered. “These idiots aren't going to look.”

Mason, Hank, and Tito gave synchronized shakes of their heads without once taking their eyes off the spectacle of “Coyotes.”

“All the same, I'll just stay here,” she whispered.

“You're going to have to start burying clothes all over the property to have something to change into when you shift back.”

“I'm hoping I'll eventually become desensitized to it.”

And Sean hoped she didn't have to shift unless she wanted to. It wasn't easy for her—that was obvious—and he didn't think the pain was worth it, avenger or not. He gave her wrists tender squeezes when she wrapped her arms around his waist.

Stay right there. That's where you belong.

Her heart was thrashing against his spine and her hands a little clammy, but he didn't think she was scared, at least not of what was happening in the desert, but what was happening between the two of them.

“It's okay,” he whispered. “I'm scared of that, too.”

She sighed.

Lola-Ellery strode calmly to the circle's perimeter and stepped over it, looking back once at
Los Impostores
. She muttered something in some tongue that was neither English nor Spanish—weird words coming out of a mouth that looked like Ellery's—and then she waited with her hands folded primly against her belly.

They waited so long that Sean wondered if anything was going to happen.

Obviously, Hannah did, too, because she cleared her throat and drew Lola-Ellery's attention over to the Foyes.

“Is there something we can help with?”

“No. Either he'll turn up or he won't. If he won't, I'll—as Agatha might say—take care of his garbage for him.”

“Who?”

Sean was glad Hannah was asking and not him. Lola wasn't going to smite her own avenger.
You keep on clinging, baby.
He held her a little tighter.

“My brother. He is benefactor to these things, as you might remember. He turns his back while they misbehave, and if he doesn't want to pay attention, I'll relieve him of the responsibility. I doubt anyone else would care. Who knows what sorts of vicious things these creatures have been whispering into the ears of alphas who thought they were trusted lieutenants and advisors? I would bet gold the local Coyotes wouldn't have been so bold if it weren't for them.”