Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different)

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  “Honestly, I have no idea. You’re right about your power level, and it’s good that you accept it, but that does make me wonder why you’re part of this mess. Maybe they have a hook in you because they killed Phil, or because you’re connected to Sam and to me, and snagging one more shaman wouldn’t hurt their plans.”

  She shrugged. “Might be as simple as I haven’t gotten the hang of shielding yet so I’m getting sucked in without them even trying.”

  He sighed and stretched his hand across the table and brushed hers.

  It was a friendly gesture, a little contact after a terrible night, but the touch heated her, and she clenched deep inside.

  She yearned to lean across the table and kiss him, feel the heat of his mouth against hers, his tongue sliding between her lips. To move across the table, the hell with the coffee, to crawl into his lap and wrap around him, then take it from there. But after the way sorcerers had been playing hockey in her head earlier, she didn’t know whether to trust the sudden rush of lust.

  She gave his hand a quick squeeze, then pulled away and distracted herself with the coffee. She was too aware of that hand, of the life energy and magic flowing through it, calling to the energy and magic in her own body. She kept talking, trying to make herself think of anything except her raw need. “So I’m not super-powered. That’s good. I think my mom was, and I saw how that ended.”

  He nodded. “The more powerful you are, the closer you are to Trickster, and the harder it is to operate in consensual reality. Bad when you’re practicing, worse if you don’t.”

  A sudden fear gripped her. “Is Gramps in danger?”

  Jack’s silence lasted long enough that Cara knew the answer before he spoke. “Yes. If he hasn’t been doing magic since your grandmother passed on, I’m surprised he’s still as sane as he is.”

  “Shit. We have to warn him…”

  “He knows, Cara. He’s the one who taught me that. I’d just started as his student at the time your mom died. We were working together, connected, when she pulled the trigger.” She saw the shudder rack his body with the breath he took before he spoke. “That was the last lesson he beat into my head before handing me over to Marla Whitehorse.”

  “Can’t we… I mean, shamans are supposed to help people. Can’t we do something to help him not want to destroy himself?”

  “We can try, but Sam’s a tough case. He’s a shaman of great wisdom and power who’s chosen to turn down Trickster’s gifts. He hasn’t made this choice lightly. His wife and their only child and many of his friends are in the Otherworld. Maybe he’s just had enough.”

  Gramps wanted to die.

  She supposed that would be his right, if it meant quietly fading away. In his case, though, it wouldn’t be quiet.

  Insanity in someone with his powers would not just be tragic but dangerous.

  And the power she’d been given, the blasted power that had torn her from her old life, the power she kept waiting to find a reason not to curse, seemed to be useless.

  Again.

  “We can’t just let Gramps die. We have to do something.” Phil had died because she hadn’t known he was in danger. But she was here for her grandfather.

  It had to work. If he died—if she lost him too because she couldn’t reach him with love or magic—it would break her. And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe then she’d stop accidentally harming people.

  The cabin turned dark. Frustrated tears burned in her throat and welled up behind her eyes. She fought them back, dug her fingers into her palms, hoping the distraction would bring her back to control.

  Jack saw the convulsive gesture, but more than that, his own palms stung as if he was the one clenching his fists so hard he was threatening to break skin.

  “Help her. Touch her,” his cougar indicated.

  Jack questioned that prompting. The cougarside liked touch, communicated with touch, but Cara might just smack him. As he hesitated, the cougarside bombarded him with images: a male cougar licking the wounds of a battered female, then standing guard as she sank into a healing sleep. Two cougars, male and female, supporting a frail old male. Two cougars, male and female, walking side by side.

  “Cara’s not a cougar, stupid!” he reminded his furry half.

  “You see things your way. I see things my way. We’re both right.”

  On the other hand, she needed all the help she could get, and so did Sam. Maybe the cougarside didn’t know a better way to get the point across.

  He leaned closer and flehmened, letting himself get a good whiff of Cara’s scent. Her unique, attractive, but definitely human scent.

  Some underlying note called to both sides of his nature.

  The cougarside purred and sent images of protecting and mating.

  The wordy side tried, for about half a second, to analyze that faint, tantalizingly familiar, scent. Almost feline. Lynx?

  Cara began to shake, subtly enough that a human might not have noticed.

  Jack’s wordy and cougar agreed that the time for thinking was done. Jack closed his hands over Cara’s, pried the tight fists open.

  Brought her hands to his lips and kissed the angry half-moons she’d marked into her palms, gently and quickly, like a father kissing his daughter’s boo-boo better.

  He braced for protest but none came, though her mouth opened once, then closed, without her saying a word.

  A few tears escaped her rigid control.

  His cougarside prompted, and he listened. He leaned across the table and licked them away, tasting her salt, taking in her pain.

  Lord love the Lady, what a weight of guilt she carried—not for just Phil and the wolf girl, not just for the people she’d been unable to save in the line of duty and the loups-garous and skinwalkers she’d killed tonight, but for her mother and father as well. As if a little girl could have prevented a lost shaman from ending her torment. As if a daughter, even a grown one, could save an alcoholic from his demons.

  He let go of one hand so she could slap or punch him if she needed the release of violence. She pulled her hand back, and he braced for a blow.

  Instead, Cara placed her hand gently but firmly on his face and moved him so their lips met. “Just one kiss,” she breathed into his mouth.

  His cougar snarled approval.

  Her lips tantalized his. They were soft, slightly parted, like a teenage girl who was just learning the magic of kissing.

  He felt that kiss shudder all the way through his body, though—that kiss or an echo of the devouring ones they’d shared the night they’d made love. Fucked. Whatever you called it when you were magically controlled to do something you wanted to do anyway.

  The hand he hadn’t released gripped his hard, as if she wanted more, craved more, but couldn’t ask for it.

  Powers knew he wanted more. That little taste was enough to jolt his cock to life, make his cougar prowl restlessly, seeking his mate.

  No, his cougar thought he’d found his mate, in the woman who was now pulling away from him, shaking like they’d done something far edgier than share a soft, almost innocent kiss.

  Cara’s eyes had gone wide, their color almost lost in pupil. Her face was wet with tears that she wasn’t bothering to hide anymore. Cara, brave Cara, was shaking.

  “I had to do that,” she whispered, “but I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what’s real anymore, if I really feel what I think I’m feeling. Please leave. I need to be alone.”

  His wordside told him to be polite and go, but his cougar flat-out refused. The cougar smelled her need, her fear, her fragility.

  She flopped down on the bed and glared at him. “Didn’t I tell you to leave?”

  He knew he was going to sound like an asshole—Trickster give him a good way out of this one!—but it was not that simple. “You don’t want me to leave. And even if you do, it’s not safe. You’re on the edge of something, Cara. I need to stay.”

  She threw a pillow at him. He was grateful she didn’t have anything
else handy; it hit him square in the face. “Get out. Just…get out. I …I can’t want you. I can’t want you in my life.”

  The cabin reeked of lies.

  A sensible man would have taken her at her word, even if he knew otherwise. A sensible man would have gotten the hell out of there and not looked back.

  No one had ever accused Jack Long-Claw of being sensible.

  It took Jack three steps to get to the bed, but he might have been walking to Vancouver the way those three steps loomed in his mind. Three steps. It seemed like much more.

  Certainly it was long enough for Cara to spring from the bed and throw something else at him. Except she didn’t.

  She didn’t even squirm away when he pressed her back onto the bed and lay on top of her. Instead, her arms snaked around him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Don’t lie to yourself, Cara,” Jack said.

  “I’m not lying.” Her voice grew stronger from the combination of irritation and need that Jack brought out in her. “I didn’t say I don’t want you. I said that I can’t want you. Every cell in my body is screaming for your touch. I feel your life force and your magic moving in your veins, and my magic wants to feel that with you inside me. But this can’t be real. I can’t trust it. I can’t trust myself. I’ve fucked up too much already, and I don’t want to fuck you up too. I’m a big fucking failure, and I’ve already killed one lover and one young woman who was just doing me a favor, and my own mother.” She took a deep breath. “Go away while it’s still safe.”

  Phil stood at the foot of the bed, his face distorted by contempt and fury, cursing her, and Becky Goulding was next to her. In the darkest corners of the cabin, creatures lurked. She didn’t know what they were, but she knew they were there, waiting to tear her apart for her sins.

  She’d failed Phil. Failed Becky. Failed that woman and her kids in Toronto. Failed the perp too, by not getting there before he killed, when someone might have been able to help him or at least lock him up where he and the horror show in his head could do no harm. Failed her mother. She’d fail the village, and she’d definitely fail Jack if she let him get close.

  Jack pressed two fingers against her lips. The touch zinged through her body.

  With that touch, the voices stilled.

  He kissed her forehead. His lips sucked gently, and some of the dark clouds in her head were sucked away.

  At the foot of the bed, Phil and Becky morphed into transparent versions of the comfortable man she’d dated and the carefree girl she’d known. Phil blew her a kiss and Becky pointed at Jack, mouthed hot! and flashed a thumbs-up. Both images faded so abruptly Cara couldn’t tell if they were actual ghosts or the voices in her head shifting into something benign.

  The cabin seemed brighter now, the kerosene lamp and the pale light illuminating previously haunted shadows where nothing lingered other than a few dust bunnies. “Be careful what you call yourself, Cara. Words have power. What we name ourselves can come to be. That’s true for everyone, but especially for people with magic.”

  What he said made sense, even to her bewildered, self-loathing brain. She knew, deep down, she wasn’t a bad person, that she hadn’t killed anyone except for a few bug-fuck crazy sorcerers who’d tried to kill her first. As long as Jack was touching her, keeping the voices at bay, she understood she wasn’t bad, just confused and frightened.

  And really attracted to Jack Long-Claw. Whether she was “ready” or not, she yearned to take the chance. Whether they’d been initially pushed together by magic or not, they’d developed a real connection now, one that, if circumstances were different, they’d have definitely been exploring a few weeks ago.

  Lynx’s voice popped into her head, less acerbic than usual. “You know, the effort spent fighting something natural and positive is making you more vulnerable to the sorcerers. You’re already messing with your own mind, so it’s easy for them to step in.”

  It made so much sense when Lynx put it that way. And being vulnerable to the sorcerers certainly wasn’t helping her or the village.

  She was fighting off crazy here. She needed those voices to shut up. If Jack helped with that, so be it.

  She wanted him so much it hurt, but she could have kept on telling herself that it wasn’t the time, that she couldn’t be sure what she felt was real. But the way his touch cleared her head meant that whatever she felt wasn’t sorcery—and if it was Grand-mère interfering, Grand-mère was obviously on to something.

  “If I’m going to save Gramps, let alone help get rid of these sorcerers,” she said, wondering how she sounded so calm, “I need to be sane. Semi-sane, anyway,” she added, because talking to glowing spirit animals still didn’t seem like a sign of being entirely right in the head.

  “Right…” Jack squinted down at her, obviously trying to figure out where the rambling thought was leading.

  “And sometimes what looks like crazy is the only road to sanity.”

  “Now you’re talking like a shaman.”

  The last words were muffled when Cara drew him down into a kiss.

  “Clever girl!” Lynx said, her prissy Oxford voice relaxed and—dare Cara think it?—approving. “Break down those walls.” Then she began to purr.

  Cara thought she sensed a cougar, probably Jack’s cougar-self, nuzzling and nipping at Lynx. “Wait a minute, kitty cat. Did you set this up so you could get laid?” Flesh-and-blood lynxes and cougars wouldn’t mate, but two spirit guides probably could.

  Lynx had been only in her head, but suddenly she was in the cabin, her eyes glowing gold. “I can manage such matters on my own, but you two needed some help. Cougar and I have been trying to get you two together since day one, but whenever you start to get anywhere, you back away. Silly solid people make everything so complicated.” She sprang onto the bed. Jack, who could obviously see her, froze. She strutted over, head-butted first Jack, then Cara. For a spirit, she could be pretty damn solid when she chose. The great gold cat eyes shifted to dark brown human ones. Lynx’s voice changed as well, though it also seemed hauntingly familiar.

  Cara didn’t recognize the voice at first because she’d never expected to hear it again.

  “Love the living man, or at least enjoy him and see if you can love him. It doesn’t diminish what you had with Phil to admit you need someone who understands what it means to walk with Trickster. Poor Phil never would have gotten it no matter how he tried, and would have resented it in the end. Like your father, only with less alcohol.”

  “Mom?”

  Then Lynx, or whoever it was, disappeared.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Cara shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs.

  “I think your mother approves of me. That was your mom, wasn’t it? I heard Lynx’s voice change too.”

  She nodded, reluctant even to admit what she’d heard. “I think so too…but…how? Lynx is my mom?”

  “Sometimes, kind of, when you need a mother’s wisdom instead of cat wisdom. Your ancestors and some essence of Trickster get mixed up to become a spirit guide. That’s why two people can have the same spirit guide, only it isn’t the same at all.”

  “Lecture later.” She pulled him closer. “Kiss now.” Now that she’d made up her mind, she didn’t want to wait.

  Jack didn’t press for her to open her lips for his tongue. She just did, and when he didn’t take the hint fast enough, she explored, darting her tongue into his mouth, letting them entwine and get to know each other.

  Only then did he seem to believe that she meant her words and actions.

  If he’d still had doubts, he definitely got the point when she reached under his sweater to stroke his skin, feeling the fine play of muscle in his back, running her hands down to clasp his ass through his jeans. They rolled to their sides, still kissing. Jack cupped one breast with his big hand, letting his thumb flick over the nipple. Even through winter layers, her nipples perked, straining for more. Needing more, needing to feel his hands and his lips on her n
ipples and all over her body, needing to feel his skin against hers.

  Needing to feel, period.

  “Too much clothing,” she whispered. “I don’t want to rush. But at the same time I do.”

  “I’ve been waiting forever. Dreaming of you forever.”

  “Yeah.” She meant to say more, but the words melted away. You had to think to talk sensibly, and she’d been thinking too much lately and feeling and doing too little.

  They slipped apart just long enough to undress, then rolled back together.

  It wasn’t like the first time, driven by madness and dark magic. Any magic involved this time was Cara’s reaching out to Jack’s and Jack’s to Cara’s, making the dimly lit, stuffy little cabin as bright and cheerful as spring.

  “Beautiful,” he breathed. He brushed his fingers, not over her breasts or her thighs or the curve of her mound or any part of her that anyone had ever called beautiful, but over the gunshot scar.

  She flinched, but he persisted.

  “A brave, beautiful warrior, wounded in battle.” He kissed the scar, licked it.

  Under his ministrations, it throbbed and pulsed, only slightly less sensitive than her pussy. “Do you want this gone, Cara? We could do that, working together.”

  She thought, but not for long. She hadn’t worn a bathing suit or a tank top since the shooting, wanting to avoid questions, pity she didn’t deserve, disgust she suspected she might deserve.

  But the scar was a memorial for a woman and two children—and, thanks to the insight her magic gave her, to a man who hadn’t been able to fight his madness any longer.

  “Not yet. It still has things to teach me.”

  “Good you know that.” He kissed it again.

  And kept his lips moving down her body. His hands worked in concert to make sure no bit of skin was neglected. The power flowed from kiss to kiss, touch to touch, filling her, bringing every cell to life.

  She’d had her eyes closed, letting the pleasure fill her. She opened them cautiously.

  Jack’s aura was still striped wildly, but the dominant color was the red of passion. Her own aura rose red and rainbowed, joining with his.