The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (13 page)

Steven chuckled at her sudden change in mood. Maybe it was like she said and she couldn’t help it. The guys were some kind of trigger for her brashness.

She smoothed her brow and muttered, “Oh.”

Steven pulled Mousse a bit leftward so he was close enough to give Belle’s shoulder a tap. He mouthed, “What?”

She covered the mic with her thumb. “He wanted to make sure we weren’t anywhere near the house. They’re all heading out to take a look at the hellmouth.”

Steven cringed.
Glad I’m not there.
“Claude excluded?”

“Let me ask.” She uncovered the phone and cleared her throat. “I’m on Roast back near the old homestead, so not especially close. I can’t even see the hellmouth from here. Is everyone going or just you and some of the Cougars?” She looked at Steven and mouthed, “Everyone.”

“Claude must be done, then,” he whispered.

She nodded. “We’re about a quarter way around, so it’ll be a little while before we’re back at the stables.” She put her thumb over the mic again. “He says
no hurry
.”

Suited Steven fine. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing. “You can give me the extended tour.”

She snorted. “Not much to see besides cacti and empty bunkhouses we let Boy Scouts use sometimes.”

“Show me. I’m curious. I haven’t been in a bunkhouse since I was twelve.”

“As you wish, but you’d better hope there are no snakes in there.” Into the phone, she said, “Call me when we can head back. Steven’s complaining of hunger, and I’d like to try to make up some of the hours I missed at work today.” She ended the call and tucked the phone away.

“I’m pretty sure if you’re short on rent because of your ...
problem
, your family would pitch in,” Steven said.

“I don’t have a problem making rent. I’ve got two roommates, and we live on the wrong side of the tracks. Rent’s cheap. I need the money to
move
.”

“You’re serious about that?”

“Yes. I don’t say things if I don’t mean them. Folks just don’t like what I have to say.”

“Come on, Belle—”

“It’s true. And look, I’ve been planning this move for two years. Moving is expensive, and I don’t want to end up on the other end of an adventure being destitute until I can find a job. I want a cushion.”

“So you’ve got this all worked out, huh? You’re gonna go? And where?”

“There’s a pretty big glaring in Washington State. And yep. I’d hoped to go before I went into heat again. It came out of the blue this time. I avoid intimacy when I’m like this, but ...” She cut him a nervous look. “That’s getting harder.”

“Interesting.” He ground his teeth. He didn’t want to think about her being intimate with anyone. He shouldn’t even have been entertaining the idea of her getting up close and personal with
him
. Alas, he was a serviceman, not a saint.

“Yeah, no one really knows the rhyme or reason to what triggers it. It’s not seasonal in Cougar shifters, and it doesn’t happen to us all at the same time or all of us in general. For those of us who do get it, it’s random as hell.”

“Perhaps you should ask your goddess about the triggers.”

“Maybe I will. I don’t imagine she intends to keep that a secret. I mean, it’s a simple matter of biology. Maybe no one else has thought to ask.”

“Not many people know she’s here.”

“You’re right. I keep forgetting that. I’m blinded by my Foyeness and forget sometimes that we’re privy to access other Cougars don’t have.”

“Yep. Nobody would believe this stuff back at home if I were to tell them. And as much as I want to pretend the unusual shit that happens here is isolated to this little part of the world, knowing what I know now, I just can’t.”

“No turning back, bub. Can’t be a skeptic anymore when proof of the weirdness you never imagined is on the horse right beside you.”

The weirdness had always been there. He’d just written off all the unexplainable occurrences as flukes. Being woken in the middle of the night by things grabbing onto his limbs, and him opening his eyes to see nothing but glimmers—dust in the air, he’d told himself. Or the occasional voices in his ears when there was no one in the room. He’d once made the mistake of Googling his symptoms, and until he’d been sent overseas, believed he was suffering from a combination of Multiple Sclerosis and early-onset dementia. The truth hadn’t eased his nerves any.

She steered Roast into a small pen and waved Stephen on. “We can park ’em here. Grass is pretty good. You said you wanted to see the bunkhouses, right?”

“Yep.” He threw his leg over the horse’s head and hopped down.

“You’re too good at that.”

“Got pretty good riding with my ex.”

“Oh, I see,” she said flatly.

He followed her out of the pen and waited on her to lock the gate. Her brow furrowed and cheeks turned pink, which was easy enough thanks to her ginger paleness.

“Not sure I like that expression,” he said. “All I did was stated a fact, darlin’.”

She stormed past him, muttering as she went.

“Nope. I
definitely
don’t like that expression. You usually try to harm my person in some way right after you make that expression.”

“Less talking. More walking.”

“I swear, I’ll never be able to figure you out.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you shouldn’t try.”

“And why not?” He grabbed her around the waist and pinned her back against the bunkhouse wall. “That’s what normal people do, buttercup,” he whispered. “When they spend time with other people, they try to get to know them. That’s healthy and expected.”

She squirmed ineffectually under his grip, though he could tell she wasn’t putting her full weight behind the effort. She wasn’t doing much more than shifting her body and pawing at him.

“You shouldn’t waste your time,” she said.

“It’s mine to waste in the way I see fit. Who are you to tell me otherwise?”

She rolled her wide-eyed gaze up to him. With the hostility gone and replaced with curiosity, she almost managed to look sweet. He knew better, though. Belle wasn’t sweet. She was unpredictable and sometimes mean, and if he turned his back on her, he’d probably end up hurting somehow.

She cleared her throat and dropped her gaze to his chest, which she gave the laziest of flicks. “Where’d you learn to handle horses? With your ...
ex
, you said?”

He shrugged. “Here and there. They’re not really a big hobby where I grew up, but I had an ex whose daddy had a habit of buying her what she wanted. She wanted horses.”

She looked at his face again and gone was the sweetly neutral mien. The evil cat lady had returned—yellowed-eyed and sharp-fanged.

She hissed.

He sighed and ran his thumb along the line of her bottom lip. “Wrong answer, huh? Kitty cat in you doesn’t want to hear about my ex-girlfriends, I guess. Well, you asked the question. I’m just telling you what you wanted to hear.”

He got her moving toward the bunkhouse door.

She moved somewhat haltingly, stopping every so often to bare her fangs at him, but Hannah did that to him enough that he was long past the point of where the act would frighten him. For a female Were-cougar, it seemed to be just another method of conversation.

“She had a few horses,” he said. “And she didn’t like riding alone. I humored her because she was cute.”

He pressed a hand over Belle’s mouth before she could let the next hiss out. “Come on, puddin’. That was like five years ago. I rarely ever see her anymore.”

Belle pried a couple of his fingers apart, and shouted, “You still see her?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “I mean, it wasn’t a nasty breakup. We just weren’t right for each other. I’m a recovering redneck, and she likes drinking fancy beer out of chilled glasses. We just weren’t compatible.”

“Good.”

“Oh?”

Belle swatted his hand away and yanked the door open. “You should be alone.”

He couldn’t help laughing, because the statement was just so ridiculous and out of the blue, and she couldn’t possibly have meant it, in spite of what she’d said before.

She turned on the light and gestured to the unmade bunks. “Well. Here you have it. It’s the ultimate no-frills sleeping experience.”

Steven nodded as he scanned the room. “Yep. Just you and three of your most desperate friends.”

Four beds, stacked two and two. A tiny kitchenette. A love seat and lamp in the corner. He guessed the door in the back led to a similarly no-frills bathroom.

“Actually, it’s not that bad,” he said. “Remember, I slept in desert tents for a good portion of my life. This is pretty plush in comparison. The walls are solid, the roof looks watertight, and I can’t hear the wind. Also ...” He pointed to the light on the ceiling. “Electricity with no generator, as far as I can hear. Hannah’s dorm room wasn’t much nicer than this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

He punched a sofa cushion, and when a cloud of dust didn’t fog the room as a result, he sank onto it and put his feet up on the coffee table.

He patted the cushion beside him. “Might as well take a load off, daffodil. Not like you have anything better to do.”

“
Daffodil
.”

“Don’t like it?”

She scrunched her nose. “It’s ...
odd
.”

“I’m just trying some things on and seeing what fits. Like dewdrop better?”

She scoffed.

“Sunflower?”

“
Steven
.”

“How about princess?”

She groaned and sat. “Just call me Belle if stark-raving bitch is too much of a mouthful for you.”

“Who calls you that?”

“No one. But they don’t have to.” She sat and laced her fingers atop her lap. “It’s implied.”

“But you feed into it, don’t you? You’re not as cantankerous as you make out.”

“Aren’t I?” She cut a sideways glare at him, but again, she was going to have to try harder to cow him. She hadn’t scared him off yet. His training in perseverance had been too good—he’d grown up with
Hannah
.

“I think you could be sweet as could be if you let yourself.” He picked up the end of her ponytail and brushed it along the edge of her jaw.

She looked at him in that way guilty-looking dogs did when they’d done something wrong and their owners hadn’t yet figured out what it was. “Quit it,” she said quietly.

Her hands didn’t move, though. She made no gesture to push him away. All the same, he dropped it. He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d try his luck after a lady had said no the first time.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she asked, staring forward. “You’re not getting paid for this. In fact, you’re out of vacation time and are probably
losing
money by being here.”

“I keep my promises. I made promises to Hannah and to Mason.”

“But you have priorities. You have a job—”

“That’s right, a job. It’ll be there when I get back, and if it’s not, so what? I’ll get another one. It won’t be the end of the world, and I tend to think everything happens for a reason.”

“Even having the air choked out of you by some unseen thing?”

Just thinking it made his lungs seize and body tense. It was almost like that thing was there squeezing him—trying to get into him.

He squeezed his hands into fists tight enough that he could feel his nails nearly break the flesh, and his lungs expanded. His heart slowed.

Fuck.

“Including that.” He opened his eyes. “If that hadn’t happened, I probably would have been a hell of a lot more terrified at what Hannah had become and of some of the other things you’ve got roaming around here.”

Belle bobbed her eyebrows but kept her gaze forward. “The sheriff doesn’t really know what to do with some of the things we’ve got roaming around here. If anything seems too weird for him, he calls Mason, and Mason’s got enough to do as it is.”

“I guess someone’s got to do it.”

“Yeah. They keep Mason hopping.” She cringed. “I guess we all do.”

“You think you’ll find a better alpha in your next glaring?”

“No. I’m just hoping to find one who’s good enough. My father was a good enough alpha. When he was alive, I thought he was great, but hindsight tends to shave a few style points off a performance.”

“And do you think you’ll find a niche in your next place?”

“I don’t even have one here.”

“I think you do.”

“Really?” Now she did look at him, and the incredulity in her expression was so clear it was almost cartoonish.

“Yeah, sunshine, you do. I may not have been around long, but even I know you’re something of an institution around here.”

“
Me
?”

“Yeah. Folks refer to you as ‘Belle at the Diner.’”

“What folks? Why are they talking about me?”

“Lots of reasons.”

She punched his arm and turned her body toward his. “Don’t hold back! What kind of reasons?”

He couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face. She was so concerned about what folks thought of her, even if she made out that she didn’t. “Lots of reasons, large and small. I guess they can’t think of the diner without thinking of you because you’re always there.”

“Certainly feels like it,” she muttered.

“And of course, the men who aren’t afraid to look in your direction think you’re pretty.”

“No one’s afraid to look at me.”

“Maybe it just seems that way to you. Nobody wants to earn a Foye beat down.”

“My brothers probably aren’t going to beat up everyone who tries to have a polite conversation with me.”

“No, but I’m sure they would object to a few who want a little more than conversation.”

“Men will be men. Can’t expect anything more of them. Men are programmed to put their dicks in things.”

Steven nodded. “True.” That was certainly how he was coded at the moment.

“I guess I can’t really talk. The only difference between them and me is that they’re horny all the time. My affliction comes in fits and starts.”

“You know, there’s probably a pretty easy cure for it.”

“Sure. Childbirth.” She laughed. “Though not one I’m interested in pursuing right now. What am I going to do with a kid? Most forms of birth control don’t work because of nonhuman genetics. Implants get dislodged when we shapeshift. I could think of a couple of ...
temporary
treatments, though.”