The Cougar's Trade (28 page)

She slid down a little more and thought she might do a little purring of her own. At some point, she’d closed her eyes, and she forced them open to catch his wary gaze, his tenuous composure. He was trying so hard to hold himself together, likely just as she was.

“Don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered as she descended as far as she could take him.

Her compulsion was to say “Don’t worry about that” or “Do what you want,” but she’d fought for too many years to speak up about her limits. She couldn’t give someone else pleasure at the expense of her own, and he
could
hurt her. There was an animal in him—somewhat domesticated, but wild all the same. “Just hold on to me.” She grazed her lips across his parted ones and nuzzled his cheek, letting out a sigh as her body adjusted to the fullness and craved his motion. Not that she’d need much of it. She was strung so tight, every muscle in her body seemed prepared and eager to launch.

“If I stop,” she said, “you stop.”

“I will.”

She pressed her knees against his hips and rode him slowly, tightening that taut elastic band in her core with every dip—with each roll of his hips.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he said. “Look at me.”

“So difficult.” All the same, she pushed her eyelids up and waited for her pupils to put him and his remarkable features back into sharp focus.
Bless the goddess for throwing his parents together.

“You’ll have to get used to it.”

“That’s not the hardship you seem to believe, Hank. Besides…” She lowered herself onto him again and tightened her muscles around him, drawing a strained hiss from him, but his gaze never left hers. “I know you’re cockier than that. You know how women look at you.”

“I honestly don’t pay attention to what most women are doing.” He swiveled his hips in a figure eight and nearly launched her through the roof, but her grip on him was too tight, and with her teeth sunken into the meat of his neck, she likely wasn’t going anywhere fast.

She released the bite when he chuckled. “Sorry.”

“It’ll go away when I shift.” He lay back on the bed and scooted them both to the middle.

Much better for her straining thighs.

“Or maybe I won’t shift unless I have to. Maybe I’ll let it heal over so folks can guess who gave it to me.”

Her cheeks heated, but he likely didn’t see, because he pulled her torso flush to his and put her cheek against his chest.

She could hear the loud thrashing of his heart and that now-familiar purr as she rocked on him. She sighed and dug her fingers into the covers at the mounting of friction and pressure, of the gentle strokes of his fingertips against her backside, and his stubbled cheek against her face.

“I’d…I’d rather wear your mark.”

“You’ll have plenty, in time, if you want them and the pain that goes with them. I’d prefer that folks don’t know about all of them, though. They’d be for just you and me, and I’d love to lay you down and count them at every opportunity.” He rocked his hips and drove his head against her aroused G-spot, setting off that sensitive trigger to an orgasm that had her digging her nails deep into his biceps and cramps paralyzing her curled toes.

He grabbed her face and brushed his thumbs across her closed eyelids as he kept stroking, kept feeding her fire. She opened her eyes to take in his intense, needy stare, his parted lips, and his flushed face, and she gave him the permission he silently sought.

“Go ahead, Hank.”

“Thank you.”

His release came with a ravaging, possessing kiss that had her tightening around him yet again and unleashing another smaller, but no less satisfying orgasm.

“God,” she whimpered, collapsing on top of him.

He said nothing, but that purring intensified and he started gently stroking her spine. His breathing evened as she propped her chin atop his chest.

His eyes were dark pools, all pupil, no green to be seen. The black retreated slowly as she watched and his lips curved upward. A smile—or at least his version of it. “What?”

“I think it’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re not normal.”

“I know, but neither are you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think you would be mine if you were? Nah. You wouldn’t. You might be perfectly human, but there’s nothing normal about you.”

“Do you mind so much?”

“Not at all. I think I prefer it. What would I possibly do with a straight-arrow mate?”

“Growl at her a lot, probably.” And not in a way she’d like. Personally, Miles was getting to the point where she expected it, and she didn’t mind it. She might not have always been able to read his expressions, but the sounds he made were easy enough to discern.

That purring meant he was sated and content, and she planned on making sure he did a lot more of it.

After reluctantly peeling himself away from Miles and showering, Hank insinuated himself between Mason and Ellery and brought his beer bottle to his lips. With his back to the vast majority of the glaring, they couldn’t read his lips and probably couldn’t hear him over Tito’s
Norteño
music, anyway.

“Lot of people here, huh?”

Ellery bobbed her eyebrows. “Witches are leaving soon. We’re just waiting on our rides.”

Mason snorted and took a long slug of his beer. Ellery’s “rides” were a few angels with the ability to teleport. She and her coven had made a commitment to try to revive a fallen angel who was currently in a deep sleep. It wasn’t just out of the goodness of their hearts—the sleeping creature was her sister’s father-in-law, and there was a chance he might be able to close off the ranch’s hellmouth. As wary as Mason was about letting his mate out of his sight, it was probably the best reason he could.

Miles squeezed between Hank and Ellery. Instinctively, he slung an arm around her and pulled her close.

Ellery made one of those little coy grins behind her bottleneck, but made no comment. Good thing, because Hank wouldn’t have had a comeback. Her know-it-all expression was easy enough to read, though.

“You would recognize all the Cougars on sight, wouldn’t you, Mason?” Miles asked.

He shrugged. “Depends on what form they’re in. I see folks on two legs far more often than I do on four. I can usually tell if their smell is familiar, though. We pick up each other’s scents all the time in town, so we’re aware of each other even if we don’t see each other.”

“So you’d know if someone was here that didn’t belong?” Her voice took on a note of strain at the end that had the hairs on the back of Hank’s neck standing to attention.

Mason pushed up both eyebrows. “I don’t know you well, but I’m pretty sure paranoid isn’t one of your flavors.”

Hank gave her a little squeeze. “What’s wrong?”

She looked over her shoulder at the scattering of picnic blankets, coolers, and socializing Cougars in the pasture—some in their human forms, some lounging as cats. Many who lived in town didn’t get a chance to shift out in the open, so being at the ranch afforded them a little space to rest and heal in their animal forms. “I don’t know. A couple of the Cougars seem to be on high alert for some reason. I mean, they seem fine. They’re talking and laughing and eating, but they seem distracted.”

“Sounds like a typical cat. They’ll stop what they’re doing at the smallest provocation.”

“Maybe, but…I don’t know. I can’t shake the feeling in my gut.
La Bella Dama
has been peculiarly quiet today, too. I’m guessing Ellery told you about that.”

“Yeah. This morning. Trust me, I’m still trying to process it all, but which Cougars do you think seemed off?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“You won’t. I’ll be discreet. I’m good at that.”

She widened her eyes and took a deep breath. “Well. Tito, for one.”

Hank immediately caught the other man in his gaze. Everyone around Tito was moving—bobbing their heads to the music blasting through the big speakers mounted in the back of his truck. Tito, though, stood very still. He stared somewhere into the crowd, and fidgeted his hands at his sides as if he was trying to decide whether or not he should spring to action.

“That’s odd,” Mason said in a low tone. “The man never stands still.”

“Let me go talk to him.”

Miles spun on him. “Hank—”

He scooped her up and silenced her with his lips over hers until her body melted in his arms and she let out a little sigh. “I’m not going to yell at him. I promise.”

She furrowed her brow.

“He’s a friend. I’m just going to see what’s up. And who else seemed squirrelly?”

“His mother.”

“Lola?” The last time he’d seen Lola, she was berating Val about her botched dye job.

“L-
lola?
” Miles’s eyes went cartoon princess round, and he could only laugh. She might have looked innocent, but he knew better now than to doubt her for that sweet exterior.

“Yeah, that’s her name. I think it’s a pretty common one for Mexican women.” She was acting as though the name had surprised her, or as if the name wasn’t a typical one back east.

One of her eyebrows seemed to have acquired a new tic. He watched it with catlike fixation until the tiny muscles calmed.

“Um…maybe,” she said quietly.

“I won’t get you in trouble with your friend. I promise.” He set her down, took her by the hand, and walked her with him to Tito.

“Hey, hey,” Tito said as they approached. He picked up the smartphone connected to his bootlegged speaker configuration and turned the volume down a few ticks.

“Thanks for helping Sean set up the pig cooker,” Miles said.

Tito waved a dismissive hand. “You kiddin’? I love any excuse to cook over a flame. Meat turned out pretty good, huh?” His dark gaze tracked slowly to the right.

Hank followed it to a group of Cougars squatting beside an open cooler. Two he recognized as the ones Mason had just screened. Their background checks came up okay. A couple others, Hank didn’t know. Strangers, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It’d been a long time since the glaring had convened on such a scale, and from what all the old-timers said, it was normal for visitors to pop in. They could be out-of-towners checking out the glaring before a possible move, or just friends or family members of the newcomers.

Miles tapped Tito’s shoulder. “You okay?”

He cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Super. What’s up?”

“Haven’t seen Tiny today.”

“My ma sent him to her house to get her special hot sauce. She said yours was too mild.”

“Your mother,
Lola
,” Miles said with curious enunciation as if she was still processing the name.

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“I gave her a bottle of the hottest stuff I could find in Sean’s pantry,” Hank said. “He’s a pepper head.”

“Still a
gringo
.” Tito cleared his throat and his gaze tracked yet again.

Hank was starting to think Miles was right. Something was up. “You seem a little distracted.”

“No, just playing sentry, I guess. I can’t help it.”

He probably couldn’t. It was his job, just like Hank had his and Miles had hers.

“You’re suspicious about them. Why?”

“I dunno. The newbies, I know they checked out okay, but I just find it suspicious they happen to be from the same area the Sheehans were last laid over in. There aren’t that many Cougars in Washington.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I didn’t?” Tito’s full moustache twitched at one corner.

Miles groaned. “This is my fault. I told Tito where the Sheehans might have been based on some information I got at the vet’s office, but I didn’t tell you, so he did the math you didn’t have all the numbers for.”

“Shit.” He and his mate were going to have to have a little talk about glaring communication. He turned his back to the pasture and drummed his fingers on the tailgate. “What about the other two?” he asked low.

“I can’t say. Scents are weird. I noticed when I cut past them to get a plate. Definitely Cougar, but…I dunno. I’m having a hard time putting a label on what’s bothering me. Encountered it before, just can’t name it.”

Miles’s body went tense against Sean’s side. “Coyote?”

Tito’s nostrils flared. “Could be, but not recent, you know? Or more like the scent was transferred from someone else who’d been in contact with a Coyote.”

“You mean like Mason after Nick has been with Jill?”

“Yeah, kinda like that.”

Miles gave Hank’s sleeve a tug and pointed to Darnell walking out of the barn clutching a squirming teenager by the collar. “Isn’t that Ralphie Sheehan?”

“Sure is,” Hank said. “What the hell is he doing here? He was in Albuquerque. Who was supposed to be watching him?”

“Couple of locals,” Tito said. “Can’t trust nobody, I guess. Maybe Dr. Sheehan paid them off.”

Darnell deposited the whining kid in front of Hank and gave the boy a firm poke to the shoulder. “Found him hiding behind the hay. Who knows how long he’s been in there? I hadn’t been in the barn myself for a week, so for all we know, he could have been there all along. Found a bunch of food containers back there with him. Tell Mrs. Foye to check her fridge.”

Hank reached in to grab the kid by the collar, but Miles got in front of him and encircled his wrists. The part of him that was domineering second-in-command flared with indignation that she would publicly stop him from doing his job, but her open expression and his inner cougar’s relative calm backed him down.

Give and take. Let her do her job.

She released him without unpinning her gaze from him, and knelt beside Ralphie. Now she did look away. “We’re surprised to see you here.”

“Figured you would be.” Ralphie’s voice was raspy and strained, as if he hadn’t had much practice using it recently.

“How’d you get here?”

“Walked.”

“You walked all the way from Albuquerque?”

“Easy on four legs. Took me a few days, though.”

Hank knelt slowly beside him. Ralphie was calm at the moment, but Hank knew his mere presence could escalate the situation. Miles could probably get the boy to talk, but Hank needed to remind him of why he wasn’t welcome.