The Cougar's Bargain (6 page)

Sean had barely had time to shower and pull on a pair of jeans and a shirt before Mason grabbed him by the collar and led him across their rain-drenched connected yards and into the house he shared with Ellery and his son Nick. He'd gathered up some paperwork, grabbed Sean by the collar again, and was about to drag him on to the next place when Sean slapped his hand away. “Shit. Use words, man.”

“Fine.” Mason pointed toward Mom's house. “Go that way. We moved the glaring leadership meeting indoors because of the rain.”

“You could just say that instead of pushing me around.”

“I'm just—”

“Making sure I get to where I'm supposed to be.” Sean scoffed and started across the yard. “Right. Because at age thirty, I'm still not trustworthy enough to figure out what's what, right?”

Mason growled behind him, but let him walk on his own.

Sean was used to his brothers shadowing him when they thought he needed to be somewhere important. They'd been doing it since his return after Dad died, because apparently, once a guy ran, he was bound to do it again. It didn't matter that he'd been pulling his weight and then some for five years. They thought he was going to snap and leave them all in the lurch.

Maybe he would.

He plopped into a chair in Mom's kitchen as far from Hannah as he could possibly be, and tried to focus on the words coming out of Mason's mouth. Sean's brain wasn't operating at peak efficiency. He heard everything his brother was saying, but wasn't parsing it well. Also, every time the statuesque blonde in his periphery shifted, he looked at her. Hannah wasn't paying him a damn bit of attention, and that distracted him far more than it should have.

So fuckin' cavalier. Must be nice.

Ego was a nasty thing. He shouldn't have cared how cavalier she was. After all, he'd more or less invited her to take a hike.

At some point, the room cleared out, and Sean didn't notice. His brothers stood in front of him with their arms crossed over their chests.

“Dude,” Hank said. He always managed to pack so much
stank
attitude in a single word.

“What did you miss?” Mason asked.

“What makes you think I missed anything?” Sean leaned his chair onto the rear legs and crossed his arms, too.

“Your energy went blank. It totally just fell off as if you weren't there.”

“Hmm. That's weird,” Sean said flatly. There was probably a lot of shit wrong with him after having been a cat for a period he wasn't quite certain the length of. He hadn't thought to check the date.

Hank leaned onto the table and let out a long, ragged breath. “You need to try to stay conscious. Your aura shrinks when the cat in you is doing the steering. You probably didn't notice.”

“I don't exactly have firsthand experience with this. I've never seen the other side of a curse before.”

“Neither have we.”

Sean waggled his eyebrows. “Wow. I get to be the first to do something for a change. Only took thirty years for me to get a chance.”

Hank rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “For fuck's sake. Hannah's waiting.”

Sean made a
get on with it
gesture. “Waiting for …”

“You need to go.”

“Go where?”

Mason had dragged his fingers through his hair and gave it a tug. “Fuck. I hope you can drive.”

“Where am I driving to?”

“Hannah will tell you. She's got the address.”

“Obviously, when my inner kitty was sitting in on your meeting, he didn't take notes and relay the message to me. Is this a short errand or a long one?”

“Not an errand. A mission.”

Sean snorted. “Are we special ops now or something?”

“It's a
Lola
mission, dipshit. Either you go with Hannah or she doesn't go at all, and the latter isn't an option.”

“Well, damn.”

“I don't know how long you'll be gone, but if you want to pack a bag with a few changes of clothes that's small enough to put on your bike, I think Hannah will spare you the five minutes.”

“You're putting me on a
motorcycle
with her?”

“It's inconspicuous.”

“No, it's
loud
, and an explosion waiting to happen, but I see how it is. You've always been jealous of me for being the baby boy, and now you're taking it out on my hide. Some brothers.”

He knew Mason and Hank weren't playing around when they didn't respond.

His day just kept getting better and better.

Sean packed his duffel, sighing between every article of clothing, then found Hannah in the shade of the barn where he'd left his bike covered.

She didn't greet him, and barely even looked at him. She just fiddled the straps of her backpack and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

All righty then.

He didn't really know what to tell her. Being at a loss for words usually wasn't a problem for him, especially not with women, but none of the other women he'd sweet-talked before had been his fated mate. None of the usual stuff worked on her.

He tossed his duffel to the ground, pulled the cover off the rebuilt Harley, and flinched. The last chick he'd had on his bike had talked a good game and sold him on her supposed fearlessness and love of excitement. The moment he'd gotten them up to fifty-five miles per hour, she'd demanded he pull over so she could barf.

He'd waited with her on the roadside until her brother could pick her up. The next time Sean had heard from her, she'd acted like it had never happened and launched right into an overture for some new adventure. He'd made himself very busy.

It didn't look like he could get away with that ploy with Hannah. She looked like she didn't want to be there in the first place, which made two of them.

He deposited the motorcycle cover inside the barn, returned to the bike, unzipped one of the attached bags, and handed the spare helmet to Hannah without a word. If he couldn't keep his mind clear, she'd need it, because they'd both end up in a ditch with the bike on top of them.

Fuckin' idiot brothers
.

He strapped his duffel to the back and pushed up the kickstand. Moving the bike away from the wall, he said, “I've got about half a tank of gas. How far are we going?”

“Tucson.”

He scoffed. “Oh, that's awesome. I've been on two legs for less than eight hours, and already they've got me on my bike and driving across state lines.”

“I can drive if you're not up to it.”

He stopped walking, and looked back at her with an eyebrow raised. “You're endorsed?”

She shrugged. “No. I don't have official paperwork for everything I'm qualified to do, but that doesn't make me any less proficient.”

“Casual disregard of the law, huh? Isn't your father a cop?”

She shrugged again and looked away, clearing her throat.

He couldn't tell if she was ashamed or proud or anything. He might have been able to if she'd been born Cougar, but for the moment, there was a learning curve to figuring out her energy.

“Well, you know what they say about preachers' kids and cops' kids, don't you?” He pushed the bike to the driveway and swung his leg over the seat. “You need to be watched closer than anyone. You know how to break all the rules and not get caught.” He patted the seat behind him and reached for his own helmet.
Must be nice. I always get caught.

“Just keep the bike upright and we won't have to test how good I am at breaking laws.”

“Tucson's nearly eight hours from here.”

“Yep.”

“Okay. Just letting you know. That's a long time for you to be clenching me between your knees, so I wanted to make sure you got your mind right before I turned the key.”

“Mind over matter. I'm very good at imagining myself in other places when I'm in shitty company.” She squashed the helmet onto her head.

“Oh, that's a good one.” He let down his visor, effectively killing any opportunity for further conversation. It was hard not to take the slight personally, because it was so off base. He'd always been a nice guy. He went out of his way to get people to like him, as much as any Foye male could. His brothers had reputations for being somewhat misanthropic, which wasn't exactly true—they just preferred not having to perform all the time. Sean understood.
Really
he did. He got frustrated just as easily as Mason and Hank, but he was just better at hiding it for longer periods … and when he wasn't so good, he shut himself away.

He started the bike and ground his teeth as Hannah loosely cinched her arms around him. He should have wanted her touch. She was his mate, and Cougars were comforted by touch, but they'd missed their chance to connect. The sparks were supposed to fly in those first two weeks he'd had to win her before the curse set in, but she hadn't let him get close enough to try to set them off.

Now, his inner cougar was ambivalent, and the man part of him wasn't doing much better. It didn't seem right that she'd consent if she were just going to be mean to him and if no one was going to let them have some space from each other.

They were both probably feeling pretty bruised at the moment.

“You should hold on,” he muttered as he lifted his booted foot off the ground.

“Just worry about yourself. You let me worry about me.”

That's the way it's gonna be.

Some mated pair
they
made.

• • •

It was a good thing Hannah had to pee and needed Sean to pull over, because her heart couldn't take any more of his erratic driving. She'd kept herself quiet for four hours as he weaved through traffic, vacillating between stunningly proficient and questionably skilled. It had taken her a while to discern the patterns and to figure out that when his energy was warm, he was focused—clear-headed. When it shrank or flared, the part of him that was beast was the one in charge of the bike, and the longer the ride, the more often she suspected the beast was the one in control.

She squeezed his hips between her legs and pointed ahead to an exit ramp. They could get gas and something to eat, and she could watch him for a while to make sure he had his faculties about him. Perhaps he didn't, and if not, she'd have to figure out some other plan. She hadn't been kidding when she'd said she'd drive. Having three adrenaline junkie brothers meant that she'd occasionally had to move their bikes around for them after they'd hurt themselves or went off and got shitfaced at rallies. She'd never seen the point of getting a motorcycle endorsement. She didn't own a bike and didn't anticipate ever buying one, but she was probably more qualified to ride than ninety percent of the newbies who got licensed.

Sean steered them off the highway and stopped the bike next to a gas pump.

She let herself off, gave her knees a few experimental bends, and peeled the helmet off her sweaty head. “Bathroom.”

He nodded and grunted.

Kitty caveman.

As she headed into the rest stop, she wedged her phone out of her back pocket and opened the text messaging menu. She started a group message to Ellery and Miles.

She waited in the restroom corridor for whomever was occupying the ladies room to exit, and watched the messages stream into her phone display.

Hannah sighed and put her back against the wall.

A young woman carrying a toddler on her hip stepped out of the bathroom, and Hannah hurried in and locked the door.

Hannah didn't respond to Ellery until after she'd handled business. There was a line forming outside, and that rough bunch looked to be the kind that would bang on the door if she took too long. As she exited the restroom, she glanced out the wide window toward the gas pumps and found Sean leaning onto the bike's seat with his head down. He could have been staring at the ground. He could have been thinking. He could have been asleep. If it was the last thing, she was either going to have to do the driving, or force him to rest for a while before they moved on.

Standing in front of the coffee machine, Hannah typed,
HARD TO EXPLAIN SINCE YOU TWO AREN'T COUGARS.

And because Hannah hadn't been a Cougar long enough to understand it all that well herself.
HIS ENERGY HAS A WEIRD FLARE.
YOU MEAN LIKE HE WANTS TO SHIFT?

Ellery might have understood on a rudimentary level what Hannah was getting at. As a witch, she was pretty good at reading energy, even if she didn't know what all the nuances were.

“Nope.” Hannah absolutely did
not
want to talk to her alpha, and especially not about his brother. She'd been in too many humiliating situations in front of Mason already with him being one of the first to see her at the hospital before the plastic surgeon sewed up her cheek and then being the one who'd
finally
forced her to shift so she could start healing. She'd cried. She wasn't proud of that moment.

Without bothering to respond, she tucked the phone into her pocket as Sean strode into the store, rubbing his red eyes.

He spotted her near the hot beverage counter, and headed toward her. “If we press on, we'll be in Tucson by ten.”