The Cougar's Bargain (8 page)

She gave him a swat.

“See?”

“Shut up.”

He laughed in spite of himself.

“I hate you, Sean.”

“It's good that you can express your feelings so openly. That's usually the first step toward healing.”

“That sounds like something one of my numerous therapists might have said, but tell me, what in me, exactly, needs healing?”

“Dunno. But with consistent, honest discourse—not only with others, but with yourself—I'm certain you'll see the light and know peace.”

“Idiot. And whom should I be doing that honest discourse with, assuming I actually have problems I need to concern others with?”

“Your friends seem to like you for some reason.”

Her pace slowed for a moment, and her brow furrowed as she stared at the sidewalk.

That was low.
He couldn't let that one stand. He might have been something of an obnoxious tease, but he didn't get any pleasure from hurting people. And certainly not the woman who was supposed to be his mate.

Fix that shit
, the cat in him demanded. He would have done it anyway, though.

“Hannah, I'm sorry.”

She scoffed. “You know what? You're right. I have no idea why Ellery and Miles like me. That's why I try to keep my angst to myself. They get enough of it from me without me sharing it on purpose.”

“We've all got angst. Some of us are just better at disguising it than others.”

“Really? What's got
you
so angsty?”

“Oh, you know,” he muttered, “the usual shit.”

Like being the third son born to a couple who'd
obviously
been ready for a girl. Or being the kid with all the hand-me-downs, and to not even be able to complain about it. Being the one no one paid any fucking attention to because by the time he came along, nothing was extraordinary about having another kid.

He knew his parents loved him, sure. But he was just a widget off the assembly line who looked too much like his brothers and who his mother couldn't even remember the name of half the time.

“It's right here.” He pointed her to an alleyway recently drenched by rain and crowded by a few illegally parked motorcycles.

She scrunched her nose. “Seriously?”

“I promise, they're licensed to serve food and are a lawful establishment.”

“The last place like this I went to turned out to be a gentleman's club. I wasn't happy.”

“Fortunately for you, I'm no gentleman.”

She blinked at him, probably thinking what he'd said wasn't worth a response.

Probably isn't.

“Come on. Trust me.” He pressed his hand to her back and got her moving.

“Don't hold your breath waiting on that.”

“You trust me well enough to straddle my bike for eight hours.”

“Only because I was more awake than you were. I might as well have been the one steering.”

“No need to exaggerate.”

“If you say so.”

He pulled the door open, and immediately the balls-to-the-wall rap music that had been muffled by the closed door smacked them about the heads.

Covering their ears and cringing, they both took a few large steps back, and when the door closed the sound in once more, Sean took a deep breath. “Forgot about that. They have a DJ a few nights per week. Wait here and I'll ask the bartender to get the guy to turn it down.”

“That wouldn't have bothered me before …” She pointed to herself, ostensibly to what she was, that she hadn't been a few months ago. “Before this.”

“No, it probably wouldn't have. You'll find ways to adjust, though. We sometimes carry earplugs just to have on hand for situations like this.”

“No one told me that. No one's really … told me
anything
.”

Sean was certain there was a learning curve, but because he'd been born a Cougar, he hadn't felt it. She'd been thrown right into it with no primer.

The glaring was supposed to help her adjust.
Why haven't they?

She toyed with the end of her braid and looked toward the road.

Because she hasn't let them.

Typical Hannah.

That wasn't fair, though. He couldn't make them shoulder all the responsibility. He had to do his part to get her acclimated, too. It could be a sort of olive branch between the two of them. He was tired of fighting with her. He wanted to be
nice
to her.

“I have an idea,” he said. “You can keep this in your repertoire of shapeshifter tricks.” Pulling up a browser window on his phone, he did a quick search for the establishment's number and dialed in. The guy on the other end of the line could barely hear him over the music, so Sean had to shout it three times. “We are outside. The music is too loud. Could you turn it down so we can come in? I'll make it up to you in tips.”

“Oh,” the guy said.

And suddenly, the bombastic thumping from the other side ebbed to nearly nothing.

Sean stuffed his phone into his pocket and made an
after you
gesture at Hannah.

“I see,” she said, nodding. “Offer people money to make them behave in the civilized fashion they should have been anyway.”

“It's easier than arguing, right? And sometimes, folks'll do it for you anyway just because you asked nicely the first couple of times.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled open the door. “I'll work on that
asking nicely
thing.”

Sean could do with some improvement in that area of his life as well. He'd asked Hannah nicely to talk to him in those two weeks before the curse had taken him, and that had gotten him nowhere. Nicely may have worked well with most rational people, but he was coming to understand that Hannah wasn't always completely rational.

He needed to stop treating her like she was.

Hannah's eyes had barely adjusted to the low light in the pub before a screeching wildebeest flung herself at Sean.

Either his reflexes weren't as great as they should have been, he expected the assault, or didn't
care
.

The wildebeest—actually a shrieking waitress—had her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Where've ya been, Seanie?”

Sean shrugged. “Here and there.”

Hannah vaguely registered that she was cracking her knuckles and raring up for a fight. Not her, rather, but the cat part of her. The beast occasionally hijacked the human part of her brain and muddled her instincts. Plain-old Hannah might have stood and glowered, because the chick
obviously
lacked home training, and Southerners cared about that kind of thing. Cougar Hannah watched to snatch the waitress by the hair and go WWE Diva on her—to bodyslam her against the ground and grind her pretty face against the sticky floor.

She's touching him. Can you see that?
the cat was saying as if it didn't share a set of eyes with the human part.

Why do you care?
We're trying to get rid of him
, she argued with her cat self. Sean was saying some words to the waitress, and the waitress was smiling in his face like she'd gotten the expression surgically fixed there, but Hannah couldn't make out what she was saying. Her pulse thumped too loudly in her ears and his lips weren't moving enough for her to make out any specific words.

Sean set the woman onto her feet, and she tottered off.

Hannah glared at him, not really knowing why, only that she
should
.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“If you say so.” He canted his head toward the bar. “Let's sit over there. I need to chat with the owner while we eat, if he's here.”

“Mm-hmm.”
Maybe Little Miss Friendly could take him off my hands.
Hannah didn't know anything about the woman, but figured it was a good sign the waitress had tried to climb him as if he were a tall, fuckable tree.

That mental image made her shudder hard.

He caught up to her side in a moment and leaned down to whisper, “You smell angry.”

“You're smelling motorcycle exhaust, sweat, and whatever kind of beer that is on the floor here.”

“Don't argue with a born Cougar about what he smells or doesn't smell. You're pissed.”

She climbed onto a stool and pried two sticky menus from the nearby rack apart from each other. “Well, if I were, could you really blame me? There are so many things I could be pissed about.”

He took the stool to her left, but was still leaning into her. “But there are only a few things that would make you so pissed so fast. Is this about December?”

“
What
?”

“The waitress.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

The woman named
December
, of all stinking things, appeared to Sean's left and stepped up onto the foot rail, leaning onto the bar top. “Do you want your usual, or have you developed a distaste for bloody meat in the year since I've seen you?” She made a
bleh
sound and crossed her eyes.

Oh, isn't she cute.
Hannah drummed her fingertips atop the bar hard enough to bend her nails.

He grinned, and blood filled Hannah's mouth.

Shit.

Her fangs had dropped. She clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her tongue across her teeth.
Go back in!

“Oh, I still have a taste for rare meat,” he said.

“With all the peppers, too?”

“Yep.”

De-
freakin'
-cember started walking away, but Sean grabbed her gently by the wrist.

Hannah's inner cat damned near tossed herself on the imaginary floor in her mind and pitched a fit.
Shut up, cat. She can have him.

“Hannah, do you know what you want?” he asked.

December giggled and gave herself a thump to the forehead. “Oh my God, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were together.”

Hannah giggled, too, imitating December's little tittering sound, and tucked the menu back into its holder, keeping her hand over her mouth. She said through her fingers, “I'd like a pint of whatever's cheap, and the bison burger. Medium.”

December jotted it down, her tongue darting out to the corner as her lips as she wrote, as if spelling was a chore.

Okay, next contestant! She's not good enough.

“Okie dokie. Be right back.” December tottered away in her daisy dukes and cowboy boots, and Sean hitched his elbow onto the bar top. “Be nice.”

Hannah rolled her eyes and scooped a handful of wasabi peas out of the nearby bowl. They were questionably sanitary, and the skilled nurse in her screamed out
Nope!
, but Hannah figured it couldn't hurt to put her Cougar immune system to the test. She needed something to do with her hands besides cracking her knuckles, anyway.

“It was just an oversight,” Sean said.

“Because she was so stinkin' excited to see you, right? In my experience, people only get that peppy when they think they're gonna get some.”

A dry scoff escaped his parted lips and one of those deep red eyebrows flew up. “Because I'm such a whore that I'd scout for ass right in front of you, right?”

“That's the reputation you have.”

He rolled his eyes and pulled the peas closer to him.

“So you
know
about that reputation. I don't hear you arguing it.”

“Sure, I know about it. And I imagine that with you bobbing around town in the few weeks I was stalking the desert as a cat, you learned all kinds of shit about me.”

“I did.” She'd started to wonder if there wasn't a woman in her age group in the entire town who hadn't fucked a Foye. The accounts of Sean's and Hank's conquests were probably exaggerated, but there had to be some truth to them.

“I'm sure you'll tell me all about what I've allegedly done or haven't done when you're feeling
extra
sassy, but I'll let you off the hook on this one.”

Hannah groaned and pointed to her fangs. “How do I fix this? I usually have to wait for them to go back in on their own, but that's never been when I'm out like this.”

“Uh.” Sean cringed and raked a hand through his helmet-flattened hair. “That's usually more of Mason's gig. I don't push energy around the way he does.”

“Try anyway!” she hissed.

“Um …” He put his fingers over her lips and there was an odd prickle that numbed her skin and then warmed her face.

She found herself leaning into his hand, trying to increase the contact, but then December returned and set Hannah's beer in front of her.

Oh God
. Hannah dragged her tongue over her teeth of now-normal lengths and willed the burning of her cheeks to recede. Fortunately, Sean wasn't looking at her, anyway. He was looking at December.

December bit her lip and narrowed her eyes at Sean. “So … are you driving?”

“Walking.”

“Well,
whoosh
!
Here's one for you, too.” She left him the other beer she'd held and sashayed away, singing along to the Nikki Minaj remix the DJ was spinning.

Sean put an elbow on the bar top, propped the side of his head against his fist, and smirked at Hannah.

It registered vaguely in Hannah's convoluted head that she should say something, but her mind was a swirling cyclone of
kill, murder, kill!,
and
he hates me,
and
maybe I can set up a match.com account for him
, and
why doesn't he smile at me like he did her?

She was so confused.

Freakin' Lola
.

Drinking was easier than talking, and certainly easier than
thinking
critically, so she took a long slug of beer and let the burn straighten her spine as it went down.

Sean leaned in and whispered, “She's got an unrequited crush on Tito and has been begging me to hook them up for two years.”