The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards)

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright © 2016 by Holley Trent.
All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

Crimson Romance

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.crimsonromance.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-9302-7

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9302-4

eISBN 10: 1-4405-9303-5

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9303-1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Cover art © 123RF.com/Ljupco Smokovski.

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• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  
• About the Author
  
• More from This Author
  
• Also Available
  

Belle Foye ran faster, harder toward the sweet, childish voice emanating from the open portal to hell on her mother’s ranch. The increasingly fervent pleas had been needling at her for weeks, and she knew without question that if she couldn’t quiet that voice, she’d lose her mind. With her being in a Cougar’s heat, her mind was already halfway shot anyway, so she really didn’t need an extra boost.

“Belle!
Help
!”

She slowed enough to kick off her sneakers and shuck her clothes. She’d move faster if she shapeshifted to her cat form. The fact she was a Were-cougar was the reason she was so damned sensitive to the beckoning coming out of that hellmouth in the first place. Shifters could see, hear, and feel more than the average person, and Cougars were the most perceptive of all. She figured she might as well deal with the problem—whatever it was—in the right body.

She and her family had been problem solving with that portal for a year since it had opened up without warning. But in that year, they’d been exhaustingly pushing demons and spirits back through it and
not
purposefully trying to enter it like Belle was doing at the moment. She’d managed to make it just inside the portal about a month prior. However, the amount of energy she’d expended passing through the glowing rift between the realms had prevented her from going farther. It was a wonder she hadn’t passed out and been dragged in deeper by some vengeful entity.

 Her family had been too slow in preventing her from going in, but with some help from her brother’s witch mate, they’d freed her from the portal. They’d demanded answers, but she didn’t have any.

Not
yet
, anyway. Belle usually wasn’t a woman who’d hold her tongue, but there was an old saying among Cougars: a call heard by only one was
meant
for that one ... until it wasn’t. It was up to her to decide who was worthy of helping her bear the burden, but she couldn’t do that until she found out what it was.

Looking over her shoulder, she swore.

A single headlight illuminated the car she’d parked on the roadside, and if the motorcycle rider caught up to her, he was going to get in her way. Steven Welch had been persuaded by her overbearing big brothers to keep an eye on her because she kept running toward the hellmouth. Being twenty made her stupid, apparently. They refused to trust that her movements had purpose—that she wasn’t reckless and irresponsible. Her three brothers had tried to prevent her from visiting the Double B ranch or even stepping foot onto her mother’s property. Try as they and the rest of the Were-cougar group—the glaring—might to block her attempts, they couldn’t be at her back all the time.

No one was that good, and she’d counted on that. Perhaps she shouldn’t have. Someone was always at her damned heels. For once in her life, she wished they would all trust that she was in control of her faculties.

She shifted into her animal form between one step and the next, ripping her bones apart and into their feline configuration quickly.
Too
quickly. The lady inside the cat screamed in agony as the cougar found her footing.

She’d probably be feeling that pain for days, but she didn’t see where she had a choice. She might have been fast on two legs, but on four, she was uncatchable.

That hellmouth called to her—that tiny voice beckoning and convincing her that she’d regret it if she didn’t listen.

Belle didn’t want regrets. Regrets were like poison and kept people from acting when they needed to. It made them second-guess, and in a culture where shifters were constantly fighting for dominance and territory—where the smallest slights could turn into long grudges—she needed to
act
, not wait.

The engine roared behind her, and Steven flicked the headlight of his bike repeatedly.

Okay, damn it, I see you.

She kept running.

The iridescent glow of the hellmouth was maybe ten seconds away at her current pace, and she could get there if she only kept running.

She put her head down lower and pushed her feline body to run faster over the scrubby desert soil.

“
Belle!
” that baby-sweet voice pled, bolstering Belle’s righteousness. Dirt and gravel struck her face as Steven sped the bike beside her.

She closed her eyes and ran blindly through the cloud of dust, keeping her route straight and sure. He wasn’t going to run her over, and she knew that. No matter how close he got, he wasn’t going to harm her, so she kept running.

Had to.

But then his position changed. She sensed the slight shift in his direction—more toward her—and opened her eyes a bit too slowly.

He cut a hard left to block her, and digging her paws into the ground, she stopped hard.

Go around.

She ran in a zigzag, which increased her distance to the portal, but was so much harder for him to maneuver, even on a bike customized to take sharp turns. He’d towed that thing to New Mexico when he’d brought his sister—the mate of Belle’s brother Sean—her SUV.

Belle would have grinned if she’d been wearing her human face at the moment, but it was a good thing she couldn’t. She kept forgetting that though perfectly human, Steven had the brain of a predator.

She must have paused too long, or zagged past a cactus when she should have zigged around a rock, because he caught up to her again, getting right beside her.

With the bike still moving at that dangerous speed, he threw a leg over the seat, and the next thing she knew, he was on top of her, and they were rolling.

No!

She pawed at him and growled, and he growled right back. Apparently, he didn’t have to have a cougar’s body to do that. Anger and pain were enough.

He pinned her to the ground, his ass atop her haunches and his rough hand against the side of her head. “Getting real sick of this shit, gingersnap.”

She writhed beneath him and forced out a hiss when he pressed a square of silver to her neck, triggering an allergic reaction that had her convulsing and screaming.

The scream shifted from a cat’s angry screech to a woman’s cry of pain as her body transformed on its own, and she slapped his hand away from her human throat. “Get it off me!”

“Are you going to be still?” He kept the side of her face pressed against the desert soil and kept the silver close to her eyes as if to be sure she could see it.

“No,” she said through clenched teeth.

“
Belle
,” he warned in that
you’re being childish
tone so many of the men in her life enjoyed employing so damned much.

“Steven, let me
go
!” She writhed beneath him, and surprisingly, he got up.

She didn’t pause to ponder it, but got up and ran.

Didn’t matter.

Strong hands grabbed her by the upper arms and yanked her back. Not Steven’s—the energy was wrong. It was
Foye
. The hot wave of it pushed her down onto her knees and made her hang her head. Her alpha—and oldest brother—Mason didn’t have to use much force. The psychic bombardment of his will was enough to make her shudder and hiss. It was
almost
all she could do. “Fuck,” she spat.

Her mouth worked fine. The rest of her was like unyielding lead. She could hardly draw in a good breath and wouldn’t be able to unless he backed away.

Mason knelt in front of her with his forehead furrowed and mouth fixed in a hard scowl.

For a long while, he didn’t say anything, just stared at her. She knew he was struggling to hold his temper in check, because his energy pulsed hot and hard. It stifled her. Agitated her, as it likely did to most of the females in the Cougar glaring. It was the way they were built—to give their males hell. Pushing back against them was supposed to keep the dynamics healthy and balanced, although at times, it seemed like all they ever did was fight.

Mason usually did an admirable job of keeping his alpha energy pulled in close to his body. It was the psychic equivalent of not throwing his weight around. Apparently at the moment, he was having a hard time managing the job.

With a great deal of effort, she picked up her heavy head and watched his pupils alternately narrowing and rounding, his irises shifting back and forth from their usual hazel to a cat’s yellow green.

If he let his cat out, she was toast. Giving her brother a hard time when he was on two legs was one thing, but on four, she’d be powerless.

“How long did it take you to realize she was gone?” he asked Steven.

Steven, who was studying the bleeding scrapes on his elbows through the open visor of his motorcycle helmet, said, “About five minutes. I went to take a piss after it looked like she and her roommates had gone to bed, and then I walked back and saw that her car was gone.”

Mason forced out a ragged breath and raked a hand through this uncombed hair. “You know what this means, Belle?”

“Why bother asking?” her middle brother, Hank, asked as he walked Steven’s abandoned motorcycle toward their little cluster. “She already knows.”

She rolled her eyes, because she
did
know.

“We told you it was going to happen,” Sean said.

The assholes seemed to have materialized out of thin air, but Cougars were good at not being seen until it was too late to stop them from pouncing.

“We told you that if you tried this shit again, we’d put an even closer watch on you. We tried to give you space.”

“Well, given how often I keep seeing this guy walking past my house, you sure did a shitty job at
that
.” She cut a glare toward Steven, who’d taken off his helmet and glared right back with those dark, penetrating eyes.

It was his ex-Marine/current cop stare, and thanks to her Cougar heat, it somehow managed to be both demoralizing and incendiary at the same time. She wanted to pounce on him, all right—and not to fight. When she was in heat, any man would do in a pinch. But she didn’t “do”
anyone
when she was in heat. She’d get attached to him, at least for a little while, and she sure as shit didn’t want to get attached to anyone who talked to her in that “silly little Belle” tone. The heat would pass in a few weeks whether she’d pounced on anyone or not, but if she were lucky, he’d be gone before it ended. It was only going to get worse before it went away.