The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (4 page)

“The portal is. What I’m doing with it isn’t.”

“What are you doing with it?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, okay. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that. I think there’s something wrong with you just like Mason said. You don’t want to talk about it? Okay.” He was long overdue for a shrug, so he did one. “But let me tell you this. I know how it is to not want to talk about the stuff that’s wrecking me. It’s easier to be silent, right? To keep your lips pinched and your thoughts to yourself because you think no one’s gonna get them? Honey, someone is gonna get it, just like you’re going to get whatever it is in the hellmouth that’s got you so pissy.”

The room may have been nearly dark, but he caught her flinch—her
surprise
.

“That’s it, right? You ain’t running to that hellmouth because you think us chasing you is fun. I hope you don’t, because beating girls in footraces stopped being fun for me around sixth grade or so.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said softly.

“So give me some words so I can figure you out. I’m trying to help you. I’ve been doing the reading, learning everything I can about this paranormal stuff. Everything your goddess has put under my nose and everything else I can get my hands on, too. I like knowing what I’m dealing with.”

And he wanted to know what that thing was that had grabbed him in Afghanistan. Lola and another goddess—an ancestress of Hannah’s witchy friend Ellery named Agatha—had been trying to find out, but they didn’t have many contacts in that part of the world. The fact the thing hadn’t followed him home was a good sign, though, they’d claimed. He didn’t know if he bought it.

“Just hang in there for two days, puddin’, until they can seal that thing,” he said, “and then you won’t have a worry in the world.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so, but it’s nice to have your compliance for a change.”

“Does it turn you on?”

“Honey, nothing about you turns me on.”

He could lie like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He’d learned that trick from his brothers, though it seemed to come a little more naturally to them. Lying was a pathological defect of theirs. It was their gift kind of in the same way Hannah’s gift was having precognitive dreams. They were born to do it.

Clearing his throat, he added, “I don’t even plan on looking at you for another ten years or so. Maybe by then, you’ll have grown up a little.”

She chuckled low—a sound that made his skin tingle and his nuts call him a liar.

“Says the man who wears boxer shorts with cartoon characters.”

He pointed at her. “Hey, now. They’re not cartoons. They’re
mascots
. Excuse the hell out of me for having some team pride.” He started for the door yet again and, yet again, stopped. “And when the hell did you get a chance to see what was or wasn’t on my boxer shorts?”

She slipped farther under the covers with a low, throaty laugh, effectively dismissing him.

“You’re just trying to get my dander up, aren’t ya?”

“If you say so,” she said sweetly.

There wasn’t anything sweet about Belle Foye, and she obviously wanted him to know that.

“If you like,” she purred, “you can show me now, and convince me those little wolves aren’t cartoons. Come closer so I can see really, really well.”

“Nah. Only stupid people walk closer to hissing cats and expect not to get scratched up.”

Some men liked getting scratched up. He did on certain occasions, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I’m not going to scratch you. I’m not even going touch you. Chicken?”

“Nope. Just smart.”

“I think you’re chicken. You’re scared of a woman you’ve got six inches and probably sixty pounds on.”

“Nope. I’m just damned good at discerning when someone’s trying to entrap me.”

“If you know what I’m trying to do, then you won’t be susceptible to it. Come on. Show me your cartoons, and I’ll tell you a secret.” Her smirk looked like she held the clues to ancient mysteries of the world. He shouldn’t have fallen for it, but he wasn’t going to let the woman think she’d challenged him and won, either.

He strode to the bedside, unfastened his belt, opened his fly, then dropped trou. “There you go,” he said, smirking, too, as hers fell away.

“Jerk.” She settled back onto the pillow, and he zipped up his pants.

“Haven’t had a chance to do laundry in the past couple of weeks. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do a load and start wearing drawers again.” He bowed low and tipped his hat to her. “And with that peep show, I’ll bid you good night. Keep your secret a little longer. I know you’ll need a moment to process what you just saw.”

He padded to the door and said over his shoulder, “It’s okay to be confused and disoriented. It has that effect on most women. The feeling will pass in time, as long as you stay away from it.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

He stopped.

Then he got moving again. She was just fuckin’ with him because he’d gotten into her head. That was all.

Belle was usually pretty good at ignoring distractions at work. She had to be, if she was going to multitask at a proficient enough level to earn good tips. Normally, she could pick up a 20 percent tip with little effort, but that damned country cop at the diner counter digging into his second plate of pancakes and third cup of coffee was commanding nearly all the attention in the room, including hers.

Folks weren’t ordering, and weren’t eating, because they were too busy listening to Steven recount his good ol’ boy exploits.

Growling, Belle tucked her towel into the ties of her apron and strode to Alex, who was leaning onto the counter in front of the man of the hour.

Alex straightened up, and her flirty smile waned. “Oh, God, what’s wrong now? Did a Cougar I don’t know walk in and aggravate your inner kitty?”

Nope, the guy at the counter is doing just fine with that.

Belle twisted the bottom of her apron and ground her teeth.
Damn it, why him?

As much as she hated to recognize it, she knew why—at least in part.

She’d come so close to spilling the beans about that voice in the hellmouth, and she would have been
relieved
to tell someone, but she’d clammed up. It was as if he were a Cougar she needed to repel and not a plain-old human who was just fun to tease. She hadn’t been able to get the words out.

Alex pushed up both eyebrows at her.

Belle stuffed her hands into her apron pockets and straightened her spine. “It looked like maybe you needed something to do, and I was going to help you find something. The back counter’s a little greasy. Maybe you could scrub it.”

“Or maybe
you
could scrub it. You obviously need to let off a little energy. Put your back into it. Productivity will do wonders for your demeanor.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my demeanor.” Nothing wrong that getting out of heat wouldn’t fix, anyway, going by her previous four heats.

They didn’t come on a predictable schedule. She’d had her first soon after turning eighteen. The second came about a year later. Number three threw her for a loop nine months after that. The fourth one came probably six weeks after the third. Now she was in number five and had barely had time to forget how ugly the last one had been.

She was about a week into her heat, and it was only going to get worse. Instead of peaking and tapering off, her sex drive would get more and more intense right up until day twenty-one, and then it would just
stop
. Each heat was a little worse and the drive to procreate was harder to ignore.

Being a female Cougar, she’d be plagued by the damned things until menopause. She could make the symptoms—if not the condition—go away if she just found a nice guy willing to let her climb him ... but the tradeoff would be that pathetic, clingy attachment to him immediately afterward. She was biologically encoded to keep the guy around until she knew for sure if she were pregnant—two or three weeks at the very least. It didn’t matter if a condom was in play. That didn’t shut off the drive to grasp him.

Freakin’ throwback genetics.

Most of the women in the glaring didn’t go into heat, but Belle was a Foye. The Foyes might not have looked like it anymore, but they were descended from Lola’s first Cougars, and those Cougars hadn’t been pasty redheads. They’d come out of the jungles of Central America and made their way north.

“Kitty zoning out again?” Alex asked. “I swear, I’m going to get a spray bottle and start spritzing your face every time you’re rude.”

Belle sighed and pulled her hands from her pockets to tighten up her loose ponytail holder. “Really, Alex. I’m
fine
.”

“Yeah? Because I’m pretty sure you told your goddess when she came in for her morning oatmeal to take a load off and that you’d get to her when you got to her. And then you never got to her.”

Belle gaped, appalled. “I did
not
say that!”

“You did.” Steven’s scoff segued into a sexy, low chuckle.

“I don’t remember that. I don’t even remember her coming in here.”
Damned hormonal, Swiss cheese brain
.

“For real?” Steven’s laugh fell off. He set his elbows atop the counter, and stared at her.

She groaned. “Gods, what?”

“You tell
me
. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

Only that she was obviously forgetting chunks of her life. Sometimes she had blackouts when she was in heat. It was a combination of her being unable to regulate her temperature and low blood pressure. Usually they were just for a few seconds. She’d fall out of a conversation and would have to have someone nudge her and remind her of what she was talking about. But things had been different lately. Often, she’d leave work and end up at home and not remember crossing the street. That wasn’t normal for any of the few Cougars she knew who had discernible estrus periods.

She picked up the dirty dishes from the place beside Steven and carried them back to the kitchen. She needed some space to think and in a place far out of his orbit.

Too often lately, she’d come out of that trancelike state feeling like something was leaving her. In recent weeks, she’d been angrier and angry more often. It was hard for a female Cougar to know what was normal anger and what was out of place. They were genetically coded to be cynical and untrusting, and sometimes they lashed out at inappropriate times. For once, she could
tell
something was out of place. There was something unsettled in her, and that anger wasn’t hers or the part of her that was cat. It was someone else’s anger, left behind for her to find like some kind of clue. It was righteous and indignant.
Justified
.

What the hell is it?

She didn’t even know who she could ask.

She set the dishes and utensils into the basin and wiped her hands clean on her apron. Rubbing her eyes, she tried and failed to tamp down her dread at going back out into the diner. Looking at that man was going to ramp her up again to that agitated headspace she didn’t want to be in.

She grabbed the carafe of hot decaf and made her way back out and to the corner table to refill the senior group’s mugs.

You forgot to look at him. Backtrack and look at him
, the horny cat in her said.

While smiling at the little old ladies, Belle shook her head at herself.

Shifters argued with themselves all the time. It happened when the animal parts and human parts of them didn’t agree on a plan of action, and apparently her cat part thought she should drag Steven off his stool into the back alley and yank down his pants. She wanted a second look at what he’d teasingly shown her the night before. He should have known better than to tease a cat.

She dragged her forearm across her damp brow and laughed dryly. “He’s not even my type.”

“Who’s not?” Clovis Seagram asked, peering at Belle over the top of her thick glasses.

“Oh, don’t mind me, Clovis. I’m in heat. Again.”
And possibly possessed by something.

“Oh.” Clovis pushed her mug closer to the edge of the table and tapped it with her spoon. “Is that decaf?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me for regular. I don’t want your husband yelling at me again.”

Clovis waved a dismissive hand at her. “Oh, what does he know, anyway?”

“He’s your doctor. I’m pretty sure there’s a reason you’re supposed to have decaf. Something about your pills, if I recall.”

Minnie Garcia—
possibly
the oldest woman in the glaring besides Lola, though she would never admit it—entwined her bony fingers and fixed her dark gaze on Belle.

“Oh, hell, the
stare
. What’s wrong?”

Minnie always shot straight from the hip in that
I’m old, I can say what I want
kind of way. It wouldn’t have cut to the bone so cleanly if it weren’t for the fact she was so damned sharp. The retired librarian was generally right about everything.

“What
is
your type?” she asked. “Asking for a friend.”

“You mean your grandson.” Belle grinned and poured Minnie some coffee. People were always trying to set her up with their sons, grandsons, and nephews. Sometimes it was flattering, other times ... not so much. “And no thank you. No offense, but Julio and I don’t get along.”

“You don’t get along with anyone, from what I hear. Typical for girls your age. I was the same way.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure you liked your mate at least a little before you decided to have a go with him.”

There were mates, and then there were
true
mates. Most shifters never found their true mates, and they didn’t hold out waiting for them. The Cougars could implore Lola to help them find them, but that always came with a cost, at least for the males. If the mates she chose for them refused them, they’d be cursed. Lola had sent Belle’s brothers out on a mate hunt before they were even ready for them. It had worked out in the end, but they’d certainly made things hard for themselves. Personally, Belle liked the idea of having a little guidance in picking a mate. Eventually, she wanted to stop playing the field and settle down with some nice guy, but he needed to be
right
. Female Cougars had a propensity to keep their mates once they’d committed, even if those men later turned out to useless sacks of shit. They’d try to fix them, and most of the time, it was pointless.