The Cougar's Bargain (10 page)

“I'm not going to be sick. I'm not drunk.”

“You lie like a cougar-skin rug, Sean Foye. You drank
wa-a-ay
more than me.”

“Damn, you can really drag those vowels out, can't you? That a requirement of being Southern?”

She stuck out her tongue.

“And I've probably got fifty pounds on you. I also ate more. You barely touched your burger.”

“Who has room for food when you can eat beer? Have you ever had Schlitz? It's like a pork chop in a can.”

“You can't live on beer. You've gotta eat nutritious things so that when you shift, you don't do stupid shit in your animal form like lick lampposts and chew grass.”

“I'm too evolved for such nonsense. You can't eat grass without barbecue sauce on it, anyway.” She took another lumbering step forward.

That time, he didn't even bother suppressing the laugh. “You know, I can hardly believe I'm saying it, but I can't wait to hear what comes out of your mouth next.”

“Yeah? You and what army?” She straightened up again and narrowed her bloodshot eyes at him.

“At ease, soldier. You need me to wave the white flag, or can you just take my word for it that the battle is over?”

“Is there gonna be a holiday to commemorate it? If we wait until tomorrow, it can overlap with my birthday. Let's fight until then.”

He nudged his phone out of his jeans pocket and peeked at the time.
12:01.
They might have stayed longer at the bar, but the guy Sean had hoped to talk to was out of the country. He'd had to try to get info about the folks at that address Lola had provided elsewhere, assuming if the avenger didn't pull some magic tricks out of her metaphorical hat first.

“How about now?” he asked. “It's already tomorrow. Can we call a truce?”

“Don't lie to me. I can see through bullshit just like I can see through that mesh tank top you insist on wearing all the time.”

Mesh tank top?
He scrunched his face. “I think I've worn that thing twice in two months.”

“All. The. Time.”

“You don't like it? Everyone else seems to.”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug and took another slow step. “They're your nipples. You can show them to anydamnbody you want to.” She stopped to wag a finger at him. “But that doesn't mean people
want
to see them. Don't forget that. I swear, folks used to wear more clothes back in the day.”

“Oh, yeah? You've been alive so long that you remember the good-old days when people wore legitimate clothes, huh? And happy birthday, drunkie.” Frustrated with their slow pace, he scooped her up and carried her cradled in his arms.

Her head lolled back and she sighed. “Don't give me a ticket, officer. I swear this is my natural hair color.”

“Is it, now?”

“Uh-huh. I get it from Mom who got it from my gramma Lucille who got it from some Viking. Not sure how much she paid for it, especially accounting for inflation.”

He snorted.
If this is what she's got bobbing around in her brain when she's sober, no wonder she's so tart.
“I'm sure whatever she paid was worth the price. The color suits you.”

“You think so? I've been thinking about going red.”

“Nah. Don't do that. People think we gingers are untrustworthy for some reason.”

“You so, so are. I wouldn't even trust you to walk my armadillo. Oh, shit. Who's feeding my armadillo while I'm away?”

“Probably Ellery.”

“She's a good friend. I only have the two, you know.”

His grin fell away at the forthrightness of her words. He didn't want that to be true, but the fact she felt it broke his heart for her. No one liked feeling misunderstood.

Or ignored.

She picked her head up, closed her eyes, and pressed her face against his chest. “Let's go to Vegas and play the slots.”

He smiled again and adjusted her more comfortably in his arms. His inner cougar had sort of picked his head up to take note. He wasn't ambivalent anymore, but cautious. He didn't know what to make of her any more than man-Sean did. “Can't go to Vegas, Miss Avenger. You're on a mission.”

“Boo.” She hummed the
Mission Impossible
theme song as he started across the motel's back parking lot, and he said a silent prayer that his bike was still there and unmolested.

Somehow, he managed to get her up two flights of stairs without banging her head against the stairwell walls, or without stumbling over various out-of-place supplies the maintenance staff had left out in the open.

Standing in the breezeway in front of her room, he shifted all her weight to one arm and patted his pockets for the key, only to remember that he needed
her
key.

He set her cautiously on her feet, and she seemed stable enough, though her eyes had taken on a bit of a glaze. “Where's your key, birthday girl?”

“The answers are usually in the back of the book.”

He pressed his lips together to keep the laugh in, and gave her a little turn. He patted her back pockets.

She gasped. “Ugh!
Rude
. You did buy me dinner first, though. I'm so confused. Are there rules for this?”

“I'm just looking for your room key.” He found it in her pocket and turned her again so she held up the wall.
Didn't even cop a feel. Who the hell am I?

He slipped the key into the lock, turned the handle, and flicked the light switch.

She hissed and rubbed her eyes. “It burns, God, it burns.”

“Now you're just exaggerating. Those dim lamps won't kill ya. Besides, you're a Were-cougar, not a vampire. And vampires don't exist, anyway.”

“Oh.” She crinkled her nose, sniffed, straightened her spine, and lurched into the room. Falling face-first onto the bed, she said, “Nightie-night,” and went still as death.

Sean stood in the entryway, propping the door open with his foot, and wondering what, precisely, had just transpired. He didn't consider himself to be much of an observer of drunks, but as far as goofy reactions to booze went, Hannah took the cake.

And he kind of liked her goofy.

He let the door shut quietly behind him, and squeezed into the tiny bathroom. He grabbed the trashcan, and set it beside the bed in case Hannah woke up and couldn't hold her liquor long enough to stumble to the toilet. Then he scraped back his hair and laughed at himself. If he would have thought half a case of beer would have loosened her inhibitions, he might have delivered a six-pack of Tecate tied with a big red bow to her a month ago.

She'd been too busy trying to either plot her escape or debilitate him by any means necessary to have an actual conversation with him. That had worked for Hank and Miles. They'd come to an agreement long before Hank's curse really became much of a threat, but the businesslike start to their relationship bloomed into something warmer. Miles understood Hank, as much as
anyone
could understand Hank, and she liked him anyway. Ellery and Mason hadn't come to an agreement so much as her being worn down by how fucking pathetic he was. Sean teased that the biggest reason she'd stayed was because she'd fallen in love with his son Nick, and that Mason was just the extra in the household, but he knew it wasn't true. For some reason Sean couldn't figure out, she loved the man, and the big doofus loved her right back.

Hannah, though …

Sean set her keycard on the dresser and turned to look at her.

Even sprawled facedown onto the bed, she was something incredible to look at. He'd always thought of her as a kind of Amazon. Tall, and vicious, and beautiful enough to be bait. She could lure a man into a trap and leave him so confused and uncertain of himself, he'd forget what it was he'd wanted from her in the first place.

Sean had certainly been there plenty of times. Every time he argued with her, he had to ask himself if she was worth the trouble—the continual slashes to his self-esteem and the attempted emasculation. She'd fought him and worn him down so much that he wasn't a threat anymore, and he knew it. He was still something—some
one
—she wanted to get away from. Just for different reasons.

He forced a long, ragged breath through his parted lips and bent to untie her sneakers. He left them near the dresser—away from the barf-can—and turned off the light before quietly opening the door to the adjoining the room. He left the doors cracked so he could hear her stumbling around if she got up, and put himself to bed, too.

So fuckin' tired.
And his inner cougar wanted to be let out.

He'd have to wait until morning. He didn't want Hannah to wake and think he'd abandoned her. That was a reputation he was desperately trying to shake.

• • •

Hannah's memory about the previous night was sketchy, at best—fortunately, because she couldn't remember having any bad dreams, either—but she had a good hunch she'd said some pretty stupid shit. She didn't intend on rehashing any of it or asking Sean to fill in the gaps of her memory. She had a mission to go forward with, and needed to get back to the Double B so she could figure out what she was going to do with her life. Being turned into a Cougar didn't bother her nearly as much as not knowing what she was good for anymore, and not having everything perfectly locked down and sensible.

She'd have to find someplace to live, maybe in town. She'd been sleeping most nights at Hank's because he had the newest sofa and she just couldn't cope with sleeping at Glenda's anymore. The hospital was hiring, and so was the clinic. Hannah could get a nursing job, no problem. Ellery had reminded her that New Mexico was a Nurse Licensure Compact state so she wouldn't have to scramble to get new credentials. The ones she'd earned in North Carolina followed her. After she had that squared away, she could …

Well
. She sat up, cringing, rubbed sleep out of her eyes, and scooted to the edge of the bed.

Find Sean a woman. Somehow, she'd need to fulfill her promise to Lola, even if the idea now made Hannah a bit sick to her stomach.

Coward
.

Her entire life back in North Carolina had been work, and apparently, she hadn't thought of establishing anything beyond that, including in her interpersonal relationships. Then again, the last time she'd tried to step out of her rut, she'd gotten herself kidnapped.

She shuffled to the bathroom, sighing as she scrolled through the missed calls on her phone. There was one from Glenda's number, but that might have been Miles or Lola. She could call them later.

Her kidnapper was in the very next room, if the slightly ajar door beside the dresser was any clue. It was hard to think of him that way—as a criminal—and she'd tried so hard to make that word stick for two months. He'd done what he needed to survive, and she'd done the same. They hadn't called a truce so much as tired themselves out.

He has to be tired
.

With her toothbrush in her mouth, she poked her head into the other room. He'd actually managed to get his clothes off, judging by the pile next to the bed, and slept under the covers like a normal person.

Dead asleep.

She didn't know how light a sleeper he was, but he was a cat, and with that came a built-in instinct to react to sounds. Hung over or not, he'd probably be up and moving around the moment she opened her room door. She would have really preferred that he slept.

She didn't know what she was doing or how to carry out her mission, and she didn't want a witness to her fumbling around. She could have used a few more hours of sleep herself, but she needed to get a jump on
Los Impostores
and, at the very least, gather some info about who they were and how they operated.

She felt like what the cat dragged in—literally and figuratively—but if history were any guide, after a couple of hours, a few cups of coffee, and a sausage biscuit or two, she'd feel almost human.

Well, almost
Were-cougar.

She took one more look into Sean's room to see if he'd gotten up, but he hadn't moved.

Her vision focused on the tension in his expression, his furrowed, sweaty brow, and his occasional writhing. Moving closer, she could feel his energy surging and recoiling, wildly vacillating in a way no strong Cougar's power should have. The cat in him was probably still trying to get out.

“Damn,” she whispered and crouched at the bedside.

What did Mason say?

He'd told her not to let Sean shift. He'd told her to touch him.

Touch him
.

She extended a tentative hand to the arm he dangled over the bedside, and cautiously wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

His skin was burning hot, which for a human would have thrown Hannah into emergency fix-it mode to bring down his temperature, but shifters ran hot as a matter of course. Just not
that
hot. It was worrying, but not enough to make her freak out.

She leaned in and pushed his hair off his damp forehead and his eyelids sprung open. It took a moment for his pupils to regulate to the light and for the tension in his body to ease at seeing her there.

“You don't have to get up.” She withdrew her hand from his forehead and sat back on her heels, keeping her other hand on his wrist.

“What time is it?”

“Around seven. I always get up early, whether I want to or not. The nightmares usually screw with my REM cycles.”

“Did you have one?”

“No. The beer chased it away, I guess.” She pressed her hand farther up his forearm and let her fingers drape over the solid muscle. The man worked hard for a living. Say what she might about him, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty or put his nose to the grindstone to meet the aggressive deadlines at Foye Woodworks. Sometimes, the Foyes worked throughout the day and well into the night trying to stay caught up, only to leave the shop to deal with demonic disturbances, glaring drama, and … relationship trials. Nothing about their lives was easy. They took nothing for granted.
Shouldn't I admire that more?