The Cougar's Bargain (17 page)

“Oh, we certainly wouldn't want the big, bad Were-cougar to have a tender bum-bum, now would we?”

“Shit, it was tender enough when I was a kid. I was the slowest of the boys, so when we got in trouble, I was usually the one who got the trouble. Dad was old-school, and Mason and Hank were smart enough to stay missing long enough for Dad to forget what the punishment was about in the first place.”

“You got their whippings, is what you're saying.”

“Yep. I used to hate my Dad for it. I felt like I was getting singled out just because I was convenient. I
was a troublemaker, yeah, but the truth was that Mason and Hank were tearing shit up just as much as I was.”

She chewed on her lip for a few seconds and furrowed her brow. “That happened to Steven a few times. He's the middle kid. Well, second-to-youngest, technically. We were like you. Three boys and then a girl.”

“Yeah, so he can probably relate. Belle never got in trouble. I bet you did, though. You've got that look about you.”

Hannah laughed. “I didn't get in trouble so much as have my parents be really annoyed at me for existing.”

“You don't mean that.”
Why not, though?
He'd felt the same way often enough.
Fuck.
He rubbed his eyes and tried to chase the toxic thoughts away with something lighter. He didn't want to be the mood killer when he was just starting to get Hannah comfortable around him.

“It's hard not to feel like it,” she said quietly. “Sometimes, I felt like they took for granted that I needed teaching and guidance. I'm not that much younger than Steven. There's no big gap like between you and Belle, so I think when I came along, they just …” She shrugged. “Gave up.”

“And it confuses them now that you're resentful about it.”

“Yeah. Very much. I used to envy Miles for not having a family.”

“Why? That's a strange thing to envy.”

“Because she didn't have to try to fit in with them. Fitting in is supposed to be easy with family, right? You're supposed to get along with your relatives, and you're supposed to
want
to—like Ellery does with her family.”

Ellery's family dysfunction was a frequent topic of discussion around the Sunday dinner table. Her parents and grandparents couldn't accept her being not just a natural witch, but a user of wild magic. They found the practice deviant, and so she'd been estranged from them for about a year. She wanted to make amends and to get them to understand that there was nothing wrong with using one's inherited gifts for the common good, but they weren't trying to meet her halfway. Mason did his best to make up for it. Her family might have been cold, but he kept reminding her that the Foyes wanted her, and they didn't care if she was a freak because they were freaks, too.

Hannah canted her head toward the bedside table next to Sean. “Is that phone charged?”

He picked up the new, no-contract phone and powered it up. “It's at thirty-five percent.”

“And it's already after three o'clock now. Damn, where did the day go?” She started pacing again, twirling the end of her braid as she went.

He gave up on telling her to stop. As long as she wasn't yanking it, he wouldn't intercede. If she was using it to self-comfort, it didn't make good sense to ask her to stop unless he had an alternative to offer her, besides fiddling with
him
.

“It seems like it would be a good time of day for a person to leave a message. I mean, they wouldn't expect that you'd be waiting for an immediate response,” he said.

“For a normal business, yes, but their advertised office hours aren't bankers' hours. I want this entire thing mapped out to a T before they call me back, and I want every eventuality planned for.”

“There's no way you can plan for every contingency. You've never done this before.”

She stopped pacing, and—finally—stopped tugging her braid. “Steven has.”

“What?”

“Steven.” She turned on her heel and started patting the messy bed covers. “Where's my phone? Are you sitting on it?” She jammed her fingers into the seam between his legs high up on his thighs and pried them apart.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He leaned a bit sideways some she could pat beneath him. “Most men would construe that as a particular kind of overture, blondie.”

“I bet you consider everything an overture. Mason makes almost everything he says to Ellery sound like some sort of invitation to sex, and Hank always looks like he's thinking about it.”

“Sounds like typical male Cougars to me. Sex is our favorite form of exercise.”

“I don't even want to imagine what about it could possibly be so exerting.”

Sean put a hand over his heart and gasped. “Sweet baby Hercules, you need to spend more time on the Internet if your imagination is in such limited supply of fodder.”

She jabbed a finger at his shoulder. “The Internet is for ordering shoes with two-day delivery, reading sensationalistic news articles of questionable veracity, and hipster recipes that proclaim that thick-cut bacon is some new thing.”

“I think I could broaden your Internet enjoyment a little. I know all the best sites.”

“I bet you do.” She reached past him and lifted the pillow to his left, shoving her breasts in his face as she did it. It was probably inadvertent, but that didn't change the effects any.

Oh, gods
. He drew in a long breath, filling his nostrils with her scent as he clutched the mattress for dear life.
I ought to be sainted.

“How the hell did it get there?” She stood, pulling back the sleek silver phone as she went.

His body remained on that
just-in-case
high alert that had his balls tingling and thighs tensed up.
Get it together, dude.
So not going there.

And he wanted to go “there” so badly. It wasn't just the animal in him that wanted to touch and be touched. The man part of him was becoming less convinced that he was going to be able to be
just
her friend or
just
her fellow glaring member.
Whose stupid idea was that, anyway?

The more he talked to her—watched her become undone in that unexpectedly heartbreaking way—the more he wanted to legitimately claim her. And perhaps they wouldn't be so bad together, if they tried to make a go of it.

She sat at the bed's edge near his knees and in a couple of swipes, dialed out. She put the phone to her ear, and said to Sean, “Steven followed Dad's footsteps into law enforcement, but took a different path—oh, Steven? Are you still at home?”

She reached for her braid and Sean tapped her hand. She didn't need to be nervous, so he didn't see a reason for her to pull it.

She covered her mouthpiece. “He claims he's at the airport about to head west.”

“Well, I guess he doesn't make idle threats, then.”

She sneered at him.

“You're so cute when you do that. You're like a kitten who thinks she's scary, but you make me wanna roll you onto your back and tickle you.” He leaned forward as if to do just that, and she pushed him back by the shoulders.

“Tickle me and you
die
.”

“Sounds like a challenge.”
He cracked his knuckles.

Narrowing her eyes, she put the phone back to her ear. “You don't really need to come out here. Sean was purposefully agitating you.”

He rolled his eyes. He'd meant every word he said.

“You're going to come all the way out here to see you wasted the money on the trip, and then you're going to be pissed, but whatever. That's not why I called. I'm—
we're
—working on something. I need to infiltrate a company, and I need to make sure I've covered all my bases. What? No. You don't need to know all that, but can you tell me if what I've come up with so far is sound?”

She leaned forward, pressing her elbows to her knees, and exposed a couple of inches of smooth skin above her jeans' waistband. His hand went to it instinctively and traced along the line. He got almost to her spine before she squirmed, grabbed his hand, and held it. She didn't push it away, though.

“Dangerous? Maybe. I don't know. I'm doing what I can to make sure it's not.”

Sean could hear Steven's protests and incredulity on the other end, and he couldn't blame the guy. He would have been asking all the same questions if Belle had found herself snooping around and concocting cockamamie schemes.

While she argued—distracted by Steven's tit-for-tat rebuttals—Sean moved closer. He freed his hand from her grip and got behind her, sandwiching her between his open legs and pressing her hips between his thighs.

She whipped her head around, her expression stuck somewhere between confusion and annoyance. “Sean—”

“Don't let me distract you. The cat wanted me to get closer.”

“I—”

He tapped the back of the phone she held against her ear. “You'd better talk to him.”

“Ugh. I'm sorry, Steven, what were you saying?”

“He wants to know where you are now,” Sean said. He pressed his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply. She smelled good enough to eat, or at the very least
lick
. So he did.

She squirmed against him, and let out a restrained giggle. She batted at his leg and cleared her throat. “I'm not in New Mexico right now,” she said into the phone. “I'm …”

“In Arizona,” Sean whispered. “You smell like cupcakes, by the way. From here on out, every time I smell frosting, I'm going to think about—”

“I'm on the
phone
.”

“You could stand and walk away.” He nuzzled his nose against the back of her ear and whispered, “I don't see you moving.”

“Well, I'm going to.” She cleared her throat and straightened up a bit.

“You are?”

“Yup. Doing it right now.”

She stayed perfectly still.

She had to know as well as he did that she wasn't going anywhere. If she felt anything like he did at the moment, she
couldn't
go anywhere. At least, not without a lot of effort.

“Why expend the effort if it feels so good?” he asked.

“Hush,” she told him, and into the phone said, “You don't need to come to Arizona. I just need you to tell me what I'm forgetting in this infant of a plan I have.”

“Tucson or Phoenix?” Steven asked.

“You don't need to—”

“Tucson,” Sean projected toward the phone.

“Thanks, dude. Still kicking your ass. I'm flying standby any-fuckin'-way. Might as well see if I can change my destination. Bye, sis.”

Hannah slammed the phone down onto the bed and craned her neck to look at Sean. “Stop. Doing. That.”

“Doing what?”

“Getting Steven tangled up in my problems and instigating.”

“I don't actually think he's going to want to fight me.”

“You underestimate him. Don't make that mistake.”

“Oh, I'm not. After all, I know his sister, and his sister once tried to kill me with a can of tuna fish.”

“I wasn't trying to kill you. I just … didn't … want to be your mate. I still don't. I …”

She furrowed her brow, forced out a ragged breath, and pressed her hands to his knees as if for grips. “I'm going to stand now. Don't try to stop me.”

“'Kay.”

She whimpered, then groaned. “Ugh, you suck. You feel like a warm bath.”

“Do I really?”

“Yes. I should move.”

“That'd be proper, I guess.” He inched her shirt up in the front and slipped his hands beneath. He pressed his palms against her belly and chuckled at her startled intake of air. “You're warm, too. I'm sure you've figured out by now how cats feel about warm things. Even big cats.”

“That doesn't mean anything. I could get the same attention by pushing a chair close to a radiator.”

“A radiator probably wouldn't talk back.”

“And tell me I smell like cake.”

“There's nothing wrong with smelling like cake.”

“Except that it reminds me of how much I shouldn't have eaten it.”

“Why not?” He crept his hands up higher and let his thumbs tickle the sides of her ribs.

“Nope!” She grabbed his wrists and tried to squirm away from his hands without actually managing to give up her seat. “No tickling.”

“It's not my fault you're ticklish.” He scooted back on the bed and pulled her along with him. “And cats don't care if you're uncomfortable, as long as they are.” He pulled her a few more inches, and then some more.

She glowered at him over her shoulder and huffed.

He wriggled his eyebrows. “Grab that remote, will ya?”

“Why?”

“Might as well take it easy, right? Your brother is probably going to call in ten minutes telling you he got a seat on a flight to Tucson, and any plans you make are going to evaporate. So, let's chill. Digest cupcakes and watch bad television.”

He settled against the short, uncomfortable headboard and gave her one more pull by the waist to make certain she knew he didn't intend to let her scramble away. “Now, just scootch down a bit, will ya? This headboard is gonna dig ridges into my back.”

She grumbled, but she did it.

He managed to get comfortable
enough
by putting a couple of pillows behind his shoulder blades.

Sighing, she handed back the remote and shifted a bit sideways. “Dammit, your … thing, your … area is … uh,
pokey
.”

“Feeling aphasic? Pretty sure you've used the word dick at least once in the past twenty-four hours. And I can't help it. I'm a boy and you smell nice. Just ignore it. Maybe it'll go away.”
Probably not
.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Nah. Before today, I'd
never
said that to any girl. That would have been contrary to nature. Guys generally want women to pay as much attention to their dicks as possible.” He turned on the television only to yelp at the sharp pinch to his inner thigh and Hannah's low growl. “Shit. What the hell was that for?”