The Cougar's Trade

by Holley Trent

  “You’re rich?”

  Out of all the things, that’s what he plucked out? Unbelievable. “Was the settlement large enough to make up for me never really knowing my parents?” she asked through clenched teeth. “No, but I’m sure it was enough money to buy this ranch two or three times over. And of course, there was my parents’ estate, and their companies. Those were liquidated and the assets put into a trust, which—again—I didn’t know about. I’m quite wealthy.”

  “I see,” he said flatly.

  So, so flatly.

  “Do you?” She wasn’t so certain he saw her at all, but all she could do was keep letting her nerves do the talking.

  He shrugged.

  “I always thought it was funny that so many people came forward to claim my parents’ money, but no one stepped up to claim me. So, I guess I’m used to being the one who isn’t picked.”

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck.”

  That about sums it up.

  Without another word, he padded to the door and turned off the light. His heavy footsteps sounded past the foot of the bed, and a moment later, he pushed the curtains open and let the moonlight in.

  Subject dropped, apparently.

  She settled beneath the covers closing her eyes, remembering to turn her back to him just before nodding off.

  Felt like such an odd thing for her to do on purpose, to turn her back, but she wasn’t going to let herself give him more than he gave her in return. At the diner, he said he’d repay the favor. She was becoming less sure she even wanted him to. Gifts given begrudgingly had never been satisfying to her, no matter how valuable they supposedly were.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She’s weak.

  Hank kept thinking it there in the dark as he stared at the sky through the window. She had more baggage than an airplane cargo hold, yet she remained far too trusting in spite of it. She was a woman who needed to be escorted through life being told what to do and reminded to be cautious because people would use her. Fuck, she was letting him use her and she hadn’t even been able to work up a decent barb for him. She might have been so much less pathetic if she’d shouted at him or accused him of being more interested in her wealth than her person. Money was nice, yeah, but he was just fine with working for his. He didn’t want hers. He would have preferred having a poor woman who had some fight in her than one he’d have to coddle. But, whether he liked it or not, she was the glaring’s Second Lady.

  He rolled over, being careful not to jostle her, and propped himself up on his left elbow. She remained in the same ball she’d curled into hours ago. Hadn’t moved an inch. Probably scared to. That was certainly an unusual occurrence in his world. The women he’d dated tended to be more aggressive. They liked to argue back, assuming they let him get a word in edgewise. They’d been the kind of women who’d follow him to his truck from the bar and just hop in, asking where he was going to take them. He liked that kind of woman well enough. They were fun to be around and didn’t put too many demands on him. But they obviously weren’t cut out to be his mate if Miles was any indication of what La Bella Dama thought was suitable. He was through with trying to make sense of the goddess’s whims. He could keep on and on only to end up mentally exhausted with nothing to show for it but anger. It was like him as a teenager trying to make sense of why he had to be the one to decide between talent and duty when everyone else around him had it so simple.

  Study music to maybe win a seat in an orchestra, or playing backup to someone who actually wanted to be in the spotlight? Or stay at home and be the free labor that would help the Foyes dig out of the mountains of debt Woodworks had slipped into when the boys were teens? He hadn’t really seen where he had a choice—at least, not one that wouldn’t burden him with years of guilt and an unquenchable feeling of disloyalty. That didn’t stop him from continuously brooding over it and hoping circumstances would change.

  They never changed, at least not when he needed them to. He didn’t expect that to be the case with Miles, either. The glaring was a mess, and she was weak.

  From somewhere on the floor, his phone rang. He groaned.

  Miles jerked upright. “Is it a demon?” She practically vaulted herself off the bed, but he had the reflexes of a cat and grabbed her by the waist before she could tip herself off the edge. She was probably used to being woken in the middle of the night by shrill ringing whenever he, Mason, or Sean spotted an entity coming out of the hellmouth. They took turns at watch, and it was Sean’s night. That wasn’t Sean’s ringtone, though, or even Mason’s.

  “Go back to sleep. I think that’s Darnell.”

  The phone seemed to ring endlessly. Hank was about to roll himself off the bed to turn the damn thing off when it finally stopped. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing, though, because the part of him that was cougar didn’t want to let go of Miles. It kept him frozen with his arm slung around her waist and her back pressed against his side. He could lie to himself and say that it felt so good because he was predator and she was prey, but it wasn’t that. She was in his den—his space—and his inner cougar wanted to make sure she stayed there. If the man in him wouldn’t act, the cat would. The cat had made that decision downstairs when the scent of her arousal had hit his nostrils and her cheeks had flushed from her shame.

  His inner cougar didn’t want her ashamed to want him. The man part of him understood why she was, though.

  She squirmed under his grip, but didn’t scoot away. “Um…what would Darnell want this late?”

  “Don’t know.” Hank closed his eyes and turned his head away from her, barely suppressing his impulse to rub his cheek against her and transfer his scent. The cougar part of him didn’t understand the hesitation. Just do it, it said. His cougar didn’t understand that normal women thought that was weird. His cougar didn’t seem to understand that his mate was weak. Hank wasn’t so sure what that meant for his instincts. There was a break in logic between the two of them. “Just lie down. Whatever it is can wait until morning.”

  She settled back under the covers, but she rolled onto her back, looking up at him. In the dim light, her eyes were as gray as the moon.

  The phone rang again, and this time he threw the covers off him and got up. He found the phone in his shirt pocket and dragged his thumb across the screen. “What, Darnell?”

  “So, I’m outside the bar, right?”

  “Darnell, I swear to the goddess, I’m gonna kill you, or at the very least, wait for you to shift and then string you up by your tail.”

  “No, no! Wait! You’ll want to hear this.”

  “Okay, I’m waiting.” Hank leaned against the dresser and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “So, I’m outside the bar, hunkering down in my truck with the window open. Parked near the Coyotes’ bikes, right?”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, so, I’m scooting down real low and I overhear the Coyote alpha talking to that guy Jill’s supposedly mated with.”

  “Uh-huh?” Hank perked up. That was interesting. Esteban wasn’t much of a fighter. Even Ellery could take him out if she was in a pissy enough mood, but like most Coyotes, he was an opportunist. He could make trouble, even if he never managed to land a single blow.

  “The alpha’s laying into him about how he can’t get Jill in check and whatnot, and he called them all sorts of very imaginative insults ’cause she abandoned Nick with Mason.”

  It hadn’t exactly gone that way, but Hank didn’t bother correcting him because the details didn’t matter. Jill hadn’t abandoned Nick. Mason had taken him, convinced Nick would be better cared for on the ranch, where there were more people looking after him. It was pretty hard to argue.

  “So the alpha goes on to say how the dude should send Jill in as bait, groveling and whatnot, and while you folks are distracted, they grab Nicky.”

  “Nope. Not happening.”

  “That’s what I said! Well, not aloud. Anyway, Jill’s not so stupid that she’d do it,
or if she tried it, I think she’d intentionally do a bad job of it. I don’t think she really wants to be on Mason’s bad side.”

  “I don’t think so, either, not if she plans on seeing Nick again. Listen, thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Wait—one more thing. The thing Miss Miles told me to check up on.”

  Hank stared across the bed at her. She sat with her knees curled up under her chin once more and raised her eyebrows.

  “You mean about their road-tripping?”

  “Yeah. You don’t have to worry about any imminent Nicky snatches because their whole crew is riding out to Tulsa for a double wedding, I think they said. Should be gone four or five days.”

  “I pity the fools who’d marry any of them.”

  “They’re not all bad. Just…well…some—no, well, the vast majority of them. Okay. All of them.”

  Hank wasn’t going to argue that. The Foye brothers had always had a hands-off policy when it came to Coyote women. Mason had slipped up with Jill in a moment of weakness. “Thanks for keeping your ears open. Go on home and get some sleep.”

  “Did I do good?”

  Hank laughed. “Yeah, you did. You’d better show up to work on time tomorrow, though. I’m not getting between you and Mom’s anger, so you’d better be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, too. She said something about moving the herd.”

  “Ten-four.” Darnell disconnected.

  Hank set the phone on the dresser and let out a breath. “I guess Darnell fancies himself to be a special agent.”

  “Like Inspector Gadget or Perry the Platypus?”

  He chuckled and rubbed his eyes. “Shit, probably a mix of the two.” Knowing Darnell, he probably really had gone out and found himself a secondhand trench coat and a fedora, or at least a trilby. It wasn’t like he had any hobbies besides drinking and catting around—literally—so he probably had himself a damn good time playing the snoop.

  Hank returned to his spot on the bed and tucked himself back in. He lay on his back, looking at the bumps his feet made under the covers. “Think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?”

  “I don’t know. That was a pretty full waking.”

  “Cougars don’t tend to suffer from insomnia.”

  “Even at night? Aren’t cats nocturnal hunters?”

  “I can’t speak for most cats. Were-cougars this far north don’t hunt much in general. Jungle cats do. It’s harder here with so much natural competition.”

  “The Coyotes?”

  “And the occasional Wolf. Yeah. Our inner cats assume that the human part of us will get us fed eventually, and they will fast unless they have no choice but to hunt.”

  “You’re not in control when you’re in your cougar form?”

  “Depends. It’s kind of like talking to yourself. You kind of have two consciences, one man and one beast, and they’re always arguing. Usually, they entwine and act harmoniously in whichever shape we take, but sometimes one is louder than the other.”

  His cat was doing a damn fine job of scratching its way to the surface at the moment. Shut up and let me get closer to her, it thought.

  “Must be busy in your head,” she said softly, as if just saying the words would break him.

  Shit. She was going to have to learn to be a lot more assertive, and fast, or he’d never be able to take her anywhere Cougars would be. They’d question him about her, wonder why she was so passive.

  “It can be. It’s just something you get used to from the time you start shifting at puberty. It’s gradual. Doesn’t slam into you all at once.”

  “Still must be scary, knowing your body is going through such changes and dreading that first time you shift.” She rolled onto her right side, face half-buried in the thick pillow so only one bright eye was exposed. “Does it hurt?”

  “Shifting?” He shrugged and fluffed the pillow under his head. “I remember I used to think it did, but I think we all learn to compartmentalize the pain. Plus, the more we do it, the faster we are at it.”

  “Do you heal faster than the rest of us?”

  “If we shift, yeah. The cells repair themselves in between one form and the next, but that’s assuming our beast halves are cooperative. Sometimes we can argue ourselves out of shifting. Shifting in order to heal wounds is often painful in a way we can’t shove to the back of our minds.”

  “That’s interesting.” That one eye closed.

  “That’s usually what people say when they mean the exact opposite.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She wasn’t really there. Autopilot. Nearly asleep. He had one mind—the cougar one—to nudge her and make her whisper some more to him in that sweet voice. The man part of him suggested he let her sleep so he could think in peace.

  He scooted a little closer. She didn’t wake, didn’t stir, not even when he tucked his leg beneath hers.

  Compromise.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Miles had never had a pet of any sort, so she wasn’t certain waking up to purring was typical for cat owners. Not that she could actually own Hank, but the principle seemed much the same. Own. Mate. Two different kinds of possession.

  She must have nodded off while they were talking. Rude, but she’d needed the rest. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a month. And maybe all that purring was what kept her asleep. Judging by the brightness in the room, it had to be after nine.

  “Welcome to the land of the wakeful.”

  Miles bolted upright at the sound of Mason’s voice, throwing the slumbering Cougar’s arm off her torso in the process.

  Mason chuckled and put his feet up on the bed. He relaxed in a chair at the bedside, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.

  Hank sat up. “Shit, man. Give me my spare house key back.”

  “And then who’d come shake you awake when you’re sleeping like the dead? I swear, you and Nick are cut from the same cloth. You could probably sleep through a fireworks show.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Eleven fifteen. I was going to let you sleep, but Sean is trying to negotiate some sort of peace accord with Hannah, and we’ve got an order to get out this morning. Another boring shop day for Nick since Ellery’s at work. I guess the good news is he’s starting to get used to wearing the ear protection and doesn’t yank it off the moment I put it on him.”

  “Might as well look on the bright side.” Hank stretched his arms over his head and popped a few cartilages in his shoulders and spine. The sound always made Miles shudder, but she’d certainly heard worse. There was nothing quite like the sound of a woman’s amniotic sac bursting. She was a neonatal nurse, but she had been gradually transitioning to the maternity wing in the past few months. As much as she loved babies, there was a certain satisfaction in supporting their mothers. Women in general, really. She liked imagining the world as a global village where they all cared for each other and watched each other’s back. She knew it wasn’t realistic, but the thought of it made her smile anyway.

  Her motion seemed to pull her back into Mason’s consideration, as if he’d forgotten she was there. She suppressed a sigh. She would have preferred he didn’t remember. Didn’t want to know what he was thinking when he looked at her like that. He’d let himself into the house in that cat I-own-everyplace way, and mix that with his big-brother dominance and prerogative as alpha, she kind of felt like he could do whatever the hell he wanted. She just wished he’d have given her a little warning. She had to look like a reanimated corpse.

  “Morning, Miles.”

  She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and tried to smile.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be dropping in like this often. That’s really more of Sean’s bag. Ellery would strangle me if she knew I was here, but Hank didn’t answer his phone.”

  Hank shrugged. “Battery is probably dead. Should have tried the house phone. Darnell called me in the middle of the night. I’ll tell you about it in the shop.” He tipped himself off the bed and padded toward the bathroom. Mason followed.

  Miles kept h
er place in the bed, not certain what she should be doing, besides perhaps trying to get into Sean’s basement to talk to Hannah. That was pressing, but at the same time, she couldn’t get in Sean’s way. No one had ever been able to force Hannah to do anything. She needed time to come around, and to feel safe enough to do it.

  Miles rolled her aching wrists and stretched her legs in front of her. Hank had gotten what he wanted, and it was time for her to demand something in exchange. Thinking in such terms was hard because she didn’t generally expect recompense for good deeds, but for the living statue, she’d have to make an exception. If she didn’t, he’d never respect her. He’d never see her as anything beyond someone to be pitied.

  She could be greedy and demand her pound of flesh. She just needed to figure out what the Cougar could give her that she didn’t already have.

  • • •

  Miles had evidently been quiet for too long, because Glenda waved a gardening glove–covered hand in front of her face and said, “Yoo-hoo.”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you sure you don’t have a little bit of cat in you? You’ve been staring for a while. I had to check to see if you were still breathing.”

  Miles chuckled. “No. No cat.” Who could fault her for staring? The view from the greenhouse was so nice. One moment, she’d been contentedly transferring tomato plants to larger pots and sprinkling dirt around, and the next, she’d been transfixed. Hank and Mason were loading large boxes into the transport company’s truck, and apparently that was a shirtless endeavor. She’d seen the man nude—had seen all of the men nude, actually—after shifting, but she’d been too polite to stare. Given her profession, she saw a lot of nude bodies, but very few were built like the Foyes. Tall and lithe, but muscled. Shifters in cowboy boots. There had to be a calendar for that. If not, someone could make a mint.

  “I’m all right. Just thinking.”

  “Uh-huh.” Glenda nodded and wore that sage expression Miles had become so familiar with in the past month. She resumed her scrutiny of her hothouse cucumbers. “How’d you sleep last night? I know Hank’s house is a mess. I can’t sleep in a mess.”