Mated to the Cougar

by Kristen Strassel

  “That’s the other problem,” Belinda added. “Don’t lions usually mate a little later?”

  I scoffed. “It doesn’t matter, you don’t choose your mate. It’s fate.” I wasn’t liking this at all. “She’s a doe. Any lion in the pride would be able to snap her neck without a second thought.” Lions hunted deer all the time, and that was the easiest way to take them down.

  “Now we have a story.” Belinda’s face lit up like someone’s life wasn’t on the line. “Aren’t you excited? You won’t have to go talk to the old people any more for material.”

  “I like talking to the girls.” I considered them my friends. And I wasn’t going to stop visiting them because we finally had some news in town. No one else ever went to see them, and honestly, they were missing out. “And no, not really. If a lion loves a doe, we should be able to accept that. We don’t need those kind of rules in the pride. It’s dangerous.”

  “They’re the old traditions.” Belinda went back to her desk. This was like a soap opera to her. “The pride doesn’t seem interested in changing them.”

  “I don’t like this.” I was concerned about the doe. Even if her herd backed her up, we could overpower all of them. They didn’t stand a chance. But if the pride was going to start challenging mates, I wondered what that was going to mean when they found out about Dylan and me.

  BELINDA MIGHT’VE THOUGHT my trips to the nursing home were a chore, but I looked forward to it every week. I usually went on Thursdays and talked to the same group of ladies about the history of Woodland Park and the pride. I found it fascinating to hear how much the town had changed and what that meant for the groups of shifters that had called this area home for centuries.

  “You look great, Ari,” Edna said. I regularly met with her, Joyce, and Molly, but since it was Monday, Molly was at her weekly mani appointment and some things could not be missed. I understood. “Like you had really great sex.”

  My mouth dropped open and she and Joyce burst out laughing. I hadn’t expected that. “Fess up,” Joyce demanded. “We might be old but we aren’t dead. We want the details, girl.”

  I bit my lip. “Not exactly.” My cheeks burned, and a purr slipped out thinking about rolling around in the snow with Dylan. Edna and Joyce smirked at each other. “Listen, I’m actually here for a story.” I got the attention off of me and told the ladies what was up. They were so hungry for gossip they forgot all about my sex life.

  Edna was a lion and Joyce was a bear, so we had things pretty well covered. “There have been challenges, but not for a very long time,” Joyce said when I told them about Leo and his mate.

  “But they’re right to challenge,” Edna added. “The purpose of a mate is to reproduce. A lion can’t have babies with a doe. Even if they did, the child would always be an outsider, and wouldn’t be able to find a mate. The next generation would be having the same debate.”

  My heart stopped at the mention of babies. My biological clock had already been ticking way too loudly. And our shifter systems worked on a different cycle than humans. At forty, I was starting to get into the risky pregnancy zone as a human, but as a cougar, I had no idea what to expect. No one I knew had waited as long as I had to have cubs. Some of my friends that were close to my age had children who were already starting to think about their own mates.

  I’d had every intention of telling the girls about Dylan today, they’d love everything about him, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. “What if a cougar couldn’t have children? Would she be challenged, too?” I asked.

  Gods knew I didn’t want to go up against the women of the pride. I knew they had no problem fighting dirty, and I still had trouble with shifting. I’d never win. I was going to need to get my stamina up for more than keeping up with Dylan.

  Edna and Joyce looked at each other, puzzled. “It’s never happened before,” Joyce said. “Every lion in the pride has always had cubs.”

  Most days I left the nursing home feeling pretty damn good. But today I felt like storm clouds followed me out of the building. I’d already called Linnea for a coffee date. I wanted to cancel, but I knew she’d have all the gossip from the mountain, and Belinda was expecting me to come through with this story as soon as possible.

  “Wow, look at you,” Linnea said as soon as she sat down at the café table. “What’s going on?”

  “I started working out,” I said between sips of coffee. Was it that obvious I got a tiny bit of action? I didn’t want to tell her too much yet. I was here for information.

  “Your skin is like, glowing.” Linnea squinted at me to make sure she was seeing things right. Everyone was making me wonder how bad I looked before. “You haven’t looked this good in years.”

  “Thanks.” Maybe the shift made the difference. It definitely got rid of a layer of dead skin. “So what’s going on with this challenge?”

  “It’s happening.” Linnea bit her bottom lip and the table shook with her purring. She craved trouble like I craved chocolate. And getting a little piece of it had the same effect on her. “Anyone who thinks they have a legitimate claim to Leo can challenge Daphne. The fight can go on until there’s a clear winner.”

  She didn’t have to say that she’d be climbing into the ring. I already knew she’d be the first in line.

  “I understand everyone’s upset that he claimed a doe. But since when do we say who can claim who?”

  Linnea rolled her eyes. “They can’t have babies.” Like Edna and Joyce said.

  “So anyone who can’t reproduce can be challenged on their mate?” My hands shook as I lifted my coffee cup to my lips. I hoped in her bloodlust over being able to fight the doe she didn’t notice how nervous I was.

  I always thought I’d be shouting it from the rooftops when I found my mate. Instead I was terrified for anyone to find out. I wasn’t prepared for a fight to the death.

  “Pretty much.” Linnea shrugged. “It should never be a problem, unless you claim outside of the species.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what happens if you’re too old to reproduce, but Linnea was the last person I’d ever ask. I needed to stick to gossip with her. That was her expertise. “So how does the brother come in?”

  “Obviously there’s no way Leo will willingly bring the doe to the challenge. And he will fight for the doe.” Linnea spit out the word doe every time. “So the only way they can avoid this is if Leo can win his own challenge. The brother is the only one in the pride who we think would be able to take him down.”

  “Leo’s in amazing shape.” He was a snowboarder and I think a rock climbing instructor. “What’s his brother, a ninja?”

  Linnea laughed. “No. He’s a personal trainer.”

  I knew it.

  Chapter Nine

  DYLAN DIDN’T EVEN MAKE it in the house before we started kissing. He’d brought a bottle of wine with him, and it was cold against my back when he put his arms around me in the doorframe. I was up on my tiptoes pulling him into me like he was the oxygen I needed to breathe. The skin on my cheeks was already chafed from Saturday, and I was extra sensitive to his beard moving against it. We might’ve stayed there all night. But my neighbor Janet’s dog thought I was under siege when they went by on their nightly walk and she made it her business to ankle bite Dylan to the death.

  “It’s okay, Pookie,” I said as I bent down to reassure the Yorkie, laughing. “He’s my friend.”

  “Quite a friend.” Janet gave me the thumbs up from behind Dylan’s back. Hopefully she’d finally stop asking me to go to bingo with her.

  Once I stood up, Dylan closed the door and pressed my body against it, anxious to pick up where we left off. I took the bottle of Riesling from him. “Everything’s ready in the kitchen,” I managed. At the end of our training session this morning he’d given me the recipe for his chicken satay marinade. I’d actually been looking forward to cooking with Dylan tonight, even though it was so normal, it would be intimate, working together like that in the kitchen.

 
Oh, I had it bad if Dylan had me thinking cooking was hot.

  But now I was nervous after my meetings with my nursing home girls and Linnea today. Dylan had said several times he’d come back for family business, but I never thought that meant possibly fighting over his brother’s mate. It wasn’t settling well with me that he’d be so judgmental of Leo’s choice. I might have been the only member of the pride besides Leo who was rooting for the doe.

  “Hey,” he said, bumping me playfully as he passed me on the way to the refrigerator. I was lost in thought and jumped a mile. “Are you still mad at me over those planks? Because they’re not going away. They’ll get easier. I promise.” He lifted my hair and kissed my neck.

  “I can’t lift my arms over my head.” I let my head fall back as he continued to kiss me. Dylan was doing all the heavy lifting in this kitchen project. I’d been assigned to the rice and salad. His fingers were already under my shirt, moving slowly up toward my bra. It tickled, and it took everything I had not to turn around and kiss him, hard. “I need to talk to you.”

  One last kiss before he slid his hands back out from my shirt. “What’s up?”

  I turned around to face him. I could hardly hear myself think over my own purring. “When was the last time you talked to your brother?”

  Dylan took a deep breath, holding himself up against the counter. His arm muscles tensed, and his hair fell in his face. “Not since we were teenagers.”

  “Then why did you come back now?” I moved his hair away from his face. The time for hiding was over when he left Los Angeles. And even more so when he called himself my mate. Dylan had been nothing but sweet to me, but I knew something else was brewing down deep that brought him back here.

  We were in this for the long haul. I needed to know everything.

  His eyes were dark. “Because Leo and I don’t technically belong to this pride. Our pride died out in the San Isobel forest after all the females had been challenged and overtaken by enemies. Leo and I are the only two left. If he can’t produce offspring, our legacy will vanish that much sooner.”

  His explanation left my heart pounding. “You realize I might not be able to have babies, either.”

  “Ari.” Dylan pushed away from the counter, bringing his hands to my face. “That’s true of any woman. But my brother with that...doe, it’s a mockery of what our pride stood for. We have a chance to rebuild our traditions and our family. Now all we have are the stories our parents told us. Without children, those will die when we do.”

  “I talked to some of the elders of my pride today.” Dylan’s eyes widened at my words. “This is a big deal, Dylan. I’m actually covering the story for work. And according to the ladies I spoke to, no woman has ever not had cubs. If I can’t get pregnant, what if they challenge me too?”

  “They can try.” He shook his head. “I’ll never acknowledge any other woman as my mate.”

  My heart swelled. But I didn’t feel safe. “Don’t you think Leo feels the same way?”

  “I’m sure he does.” Dylan sighed. “Still, he’s making a fool out of himself.”

  I didn’t know Leo that well, I’d only seen him at some pride gatherings in the last few years, but never really talked him. The younger girls in the pride swarmed around him like he was a rock star. He seemed like a nice enough guy. “Why haven’t you talked to him in almost ten years?”

  “We didn’t get along as kids,” Dylan grumbled. “I was skinny and shy, and he was ashamed of me.”

  “Is that why you went to LA?”

  He nodded. “I needed to reinvent myself in a place free of judgment.” He pulled the chicken out of the oven. “I had to be able to prove myself. And somehow, the shallowest city in the world seemed like the right place to do that.” He grinned at me.

  “And now you want to prove yourself to him.” I leaned against the counter and took a good look at him. Tall, muscular, proud, and beautiful. “You don’t have to fight to show him.” It was obvious.

  “It’s our pride’s tradition. It’s all we have left. Tradition,” he growled. Male lions were programmed differently. I’d watched it my whole life. This was how they solved their problems. Never had it affected me so personally. “And if your pride challenges you, I’ll do the same thing for you, Ari.”

  Chapter Ten

  “YOU’RE WORRIED.” DYLAN wedged himself between me and the couch cushion after dinner. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he began working at the tight muscles at the base of my neck with his thumbs. I immediately turned to jelly at his touch. He brought his lips to my ear, his hot breath against my skin undoing me even more. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  In a way, he was right. Neither of us were going to change each other’s minds. Dylan had to prove himself to his brother, and until I got pregnant, I was going to worry about the pride challenging me. It seemed crazy to know someone less than a week and already wonder about when you were going to have a baby with them. This was when I’d usually turn to the pride, because they were the only ones who understood. Our concerns weren’t the same as those of our human friends. But this time, they might use it against me.

  Dylan continued massaging my back and shoulders, and I melted into the movement. He knew exactly how to manipulate each muscle, releasing the sore, tender skin. I sighed in relief. Not only did I ache from the shifting and the workout, but he was right, I was worried. His thumbs bumped against my bra hook. He pushed against it several times, like he was giving it a secret knock, but of course nothing happened. I chuckled and turned back to him to see fire dancing in his eyes.

  “Fuck it,” he purred, and unhooked my bra so he could keep moving his fingers in an uninterrupted pattern down my spine. I let it hang loose under my shirt for a minute before thinking the exact same thing and pulling the shirt over my head. Dylan helped me with the rest, sliding the straps down my arms and forgetting about the bra as it fell to the floor. I faced him completely, repeating the motion with his shirt and then pressing my body against his bare chest.

  “Not so fast.” His voice was soft as he pulled away from me, his hungry eyes all over my body. “Playing in the snow with you the other day was fun, don’t get me wrong, but all I’ve been able to think about since Saturday was doing this. I know exactly what I’m going to do.” Dylan eased me down on my back, my spine arched as soon as his lips touched the skin in the hollow of my neck. I tangled my fingers in his hair as he kept kissing me, his lips moving lower until he got to my breasts. My nipple hardened when he blew a gentle breath against it, his beard tickling the aureole, and that was the last time he was gentle. His mouth became greedy, sucking and licking as I writhed underneath him, wanting him to swallow me whole.

  Everything was different with Dylan, the connection so much stronger. We weren’t even all the way undressed and I was coming completely unglued from the feel of his lips on my skin. I’d felt the connection on Saturday afternoon but it was this, in our human form that sealed the bond.

  My heart pounded under his lips, and I cried out when he stopped. He climbed up to meet my face, his body hard and heavy on top of mine. “You make me absolutely crazy.” He pushed the hair away from my face. “I don’t know if I can control myself around you. Every day I slip a little bit more.”

  Usually I’d never move this fast with anyone. With everyone else I looked for excuses to push this moment off, to make it end once it happened. I never wanted it, like this anyway. “I don’t want you to control yourself,” I breathed against his lips. “I want to drink in every single drop of you.”

  His eyes sparkled, yellow and gold like precious jewels, as his lips spread in a smile. “Arielle.” His kiss took my breath away. “You need to be careful what you wish for.”

  I laughed as he nipped at my neck, more playfully the more I cried out. “It’s not going to work on this couch, though,” he said against my cheek. And he was right. Dylan had to be at least six foot five and his shoulders were as broad as the bright yellow cushions. He rolled bac
k on his heels before he stood up. I sat up to show him where the bedroom was, but he pulled me into his arms before I had a chance to get any farther.

  “It’s the room at the end of the hall,” I murmured into his hair. He nodded. I had a feeling he would have laid me down in the middle of the living room floor and had me there if he couldn’t have found a better place in a hurry.

  I bounced on the mattress when he dropped me down on the bed. Purring as he crawled up to meet me on the bed, I reached out for his hair. I was so glad he didn’t pull it up tonight like he did at the gym. It fell down his bare chest, and I wrapped it around each of my wrists and pulled his face down to mine. Even those few minutes apart left me craving his fresh snowy taste. He nipped at my lips, giving me a little bit of what I wanted, his arms still taut and caging me in.

  Untangling myself from his hair, I moved down to the button of his jeans. Dylan groaned as my fingers moved against his stomach, and I could swear I felt the butterflies. Before I unzipped him, I ran my fingers along the denim, the outline of his erection strained against it. His cock twitched, he sucked in a breath as I circled the outline of the tip. “Gods, Ari,” he purred.

  “You’re not the only one who can’t get enough,” I teased before I unzipped his jeans, and his cock sprang out. Dylan pushed the fabric away, and I watched with appreciation as his body came into view. My finger was at my lip, and I started sucking on it while he took his jeans off. His eyes were fixed on the movement, lips slightly parted. I moved the same finger to his lips and let him suck.

  All this power and need was coursing through my veins, and it was making me absolutely crazy. Call it chemistry, or the magic of actually being with the person that was put on earth to bring you pleasure. Whatever it was, it was amazing and I couldn’t believe I’d lived so long without it. I gently pushed Dylan back to the bed, and he leaned back, completely at my mercy. I repeated his movements from the living room, placing butterfly kisses on his collarbone, moving down his chest, licking the lines that defined every muscle in his chest and stomach, finally running my finger down the line of hair that started at his belly button.