Claimed by her Cougar

by Felicity Heaton

  She lowered her hands and looked up at him, her gaze catching his and holding it, and as the sun bathed her face, made her eyes sparkle and brightened them, he lost himself in charting every fleck of gold against the hazel of her irises.

  His heart beat harder, stronger, drummed against his chest and in his ears as he stared down into her eyes, the air between them crackling with energy that chased over his skin, had the hairs on the back of his neck rising and his breath coming faster.

  A need to growl, to snarl and make her cower, make her submit to him, rose within him, had golden fur on the verge of rippling over his arms and chest beneath his dark green fleece.

  He shook it and the spell she had cast on him off and pushed away from her, his voice a dark rough rumble. “Only gasp like that when you’re about to get attacked in the future.”

  Because it did things to him that made him dangerous.

  Made him want to forget everything.

  Made him want to lose himself in her.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Let me help.” Ivy followed Rath as he stormed away from her, his damned back up over her gasping.

  It wasn’t as if she had committed a crime, so she couldn’t understand why he was making such a big deal of it. The iciness of the water had shocked her, and she had done what had come naturally.

  Gasped.

  Part of her wanted to stay near the river in case bears showed up, and maybe to avoid him a little, but the rest of her had her chasing him down, determined to do something that would stop him from being so gruff with her. Downright moody.

  Maybe he was always like this.

  Maybe she was expecting too much and any attempt to smooth things over between them so her night here wouldn’t be awkward and a complete disaster was going to backfire and only make things worse.

  “I don’t need help.” He proved that by nimbly leaping to land on his right foot on a post of the railing that enclosed the deck that ran around the front and right side of the cabin and vaulting from it onto the roof as if he was a professional gymnast.

  “It’s the least I can do for you letting me stay here. I want to repay you.”

  When he glanced down at her, banked heat in his stormy grey eyes, images of other ways of paying him back popped into her head. She immediately shoved them out again.

  He turned away and looked as if he was going to ignore her until she got bored and went away, but then he huffed as he glanced around the roof. He stilled and stared at the rafters through the hole he was repairing, his rugged face dark with whatever thoughts were crossing his mind, his near-black eyebrows dropping low, causing a wrinkle at the top of his straight nose and a slight twist of his lips.

  He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “Fine. Hand me those shingles.”

  There was a weight of regret in his tone, one that made it clear he wasn’t happy about her helping him. Why? Was he the sort of man who preferred to fly solo in everything he did? Did he view her helping as something that would make his work less rewarding?

  Or was it something else?

  She gathered a stack of the wooden shingles and tiptoed, stretching them towards him as he reached down for them, his eyes fixed on the roof, held away from her.

  She was starting to get the impression that his problem wasn’t with people, it was with her.

  Well, he wasn’t the first difficult man she had worked with, and she wasn’t going to let his temperament deter her from paying him back by helping him.

  While he worked, she took off her camera and set it down on a rusty metal table, and moved the table close to her, so the camera would be within arm’s reach if a bear showed up. He had said they wouldn’t come today, but what did he know about wild animals? It was impossible to predict their movements. There was still a chance that the bears would show up.

  A chance that she clung to as she handed him more shingles whenever he needed them and kept one eye on the river as the day wore on.

  “They won’t come now,” he said and she snapped herself back to him, tearing her gaze away from the river and lifting it to him where he balanced on the edge of the roof, his left leg dangling and his right one bent at the knee.

  He rested his arm on it, letting his left one drape with his leg, and looked down at her.

  “They might.” She tried to keep the disappointed note from her voice, because if she heard it, she would want to give up on them, and she had never given up on anything.

  Not yet anyway.

  “Something must have spooked them.” He raised his head and scanned the scenery beyond her, a wrinkle forming between his dark eyebrows as he set his jaw, focus written in every line of his face. His eyes looked brighter again, almost golden. His deep voice lowered to a smooth warm tone that was soothing. “Maybe they’ll show up in the evening.”

  She glanced at the river and had the feeling he was being nice to her, saying what she wanted to hear so she didn’t lose heart, but when she looked at him, his handsome face was dark and he was focused back on his work, hammering in the shingles with a renewed sense of purpose, as if the poor things had done something wrong.

  Or maybe he felt he had done something wrong by being nice to her.

  It hadn’t slipped her notice that he had been keeping his distance. She had known enough men to spot the signs that screamed he wanted her gone, regretted letting her stay and had thought the better of it. It was fine with her. As soon as she got her shots, or tomorrow morning passed without a bear showing up, she was moving on.

  She had learned her lesson where men were concerned, was damned if she was going to get caught up in him and get burned all over again.

  But damn, he didn’t make it easy.

  He hammered the last shingle home, admired his work with a satisfied glint in his grey eyes, and then twisted away from the roof. He planted his hands against the edge of it and sprang down, his body flexing deliciously as he pushed off, hips arching forwards, and landed squarely on his feet on the deck just a metre from her.

  He must have been a professional gymnast in a previous life.

  Although she did suppose his agility could easily have come from working alone on the cabins, his days passed in manual labour and physical exertion making him more flexible and stronger than most men.

  He slowly rose to his full height, his eyes darker than before as he lifted them to her, and stared at her for a long, drawn out and intoxicating moment before he casually discarded his hammer and pulled a handful of nails from his back pocket. She tensed as he leaned towards her, heart doing a flip in her chest as he came close to brushing her left arm with his chest, and his masculine earthy scent filled her senses.

  The sound of the nails hitting the metal table beside her was loud in the thick silence.

  He paused, and she swore he looked at her, swore he leaned towards her a little as he withdrew and pulled in a deep breath.

  As if he was taking her scent into his lungs in the way she wanted to breathe his in.

  He didn’t look at her as he moved around her, but he tensed as his left arm brushed hers.

  His voice came from behind her, a note of warmth in it that was new, and a little startling. “You deserve a beer after your work. Come on.”

  “What I really need is a shower,” she muttered as she turned to follow him, sure that she stank after her trek through the forest and today’s work.

  He paused and looked at the river. “You can wash in it.”

  Ivy shuddered. “It was freezing. No thank you!”

  He smiled, and hell, it was dazzling, lit up his whole face and was such a contrast to the man who had been glowering at her from the moment they had met that all she could do was stare at him and wonder who this man was and when had he switched bodies with the Rath she had thought she had been coming to know?

  “I have a bath. The water’s heated by the solar panels and the burner, but it should be hot enough. You’re welcome to use it.” The moment he said that, something crossed his face, somethin
g that erased the warmth from him and left her feeling cold as he moved away from her, heading towards his cabin.

  Ivy lingered, her gaze following him up the sloping green as his long legs swiftly devoured the distance between him and the cabin as if he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough.

  Infuriating.

  It was definitely a word that applied to him.

  He wanted her off his land, and then let her stay. He was nice to her one minute, and biting her head off in the next. He smiled at her, and then hit her with a scowl so fierce she was left reeling.

  She wasn’t sure she could figure him out if her life depended on it.

  As smoke curled from the chimney of his cabin, filtering through the tall pines that sheltered it to blend with the grey of the mountain beyond, she picked up her camera and flicked through the photographs, using them to distract her from him. She didn’t need to figure him out.

  Tomorrow, she would be gone, and he would be just a memory.

  One she was beginning to feel would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  She sighed, set the strap of her camera over her shoulder, and trudged up the slope to his cabin. When she reached it, stepping up onto the deck, he emerged so swiftly he almost collided with her.

  “You took your time,” he grumbled, and she shrugged, because she didn’t owe him an explanation. He edged past her as if she had a contagious disease and he didn’t want to risk getting it and stepped off the deck. “Bath is filled.”

  With that, he was striding away from her.

  Infuriating man.

  She peered into his cabin. It was roomier than she had expected, with a small kitchen area to her right and a rickety looking staircase that curved up to a loft, and a living room ahead of her. She walked to the coffee table and set her camera down beside his laptop, bent and stripped off her boots. She placed them near the log burner and looked around for the bathroom.

  A door beyond the couch, opposite the fire, revealed a white tub.

  Ivy crossed the room to it and frowned.

  Infuriating and complicated.

  She canted her head at the neat stack of fluffy white towels folded on the closed seat of the toilet beside the sink near the bathtub, and the arrangement of shampoo and body wash bottles on top of them.

  He seemed to hate showing her any kindness, had reacted badly all the times he had been nice to her, and now he had shown a great amount of care, filling the bath for her, presenting her with fresh towels and leaving the cabin so she would have it to herself.

  Even if she had all the time in the world, she wasn’t sure she would ever figure Rath out.

  She leaned back and peered through the kitchen window to her right, but there was no sign of him outside, so she stepped into the bathroom, closed the door behind her, and stripped off, because it felt like months rather than days since she had washed and she didn’t want to waste this chance by letting the water get cold.

  Not when Rath had obviously used all of his hot water supply to fill the bath as much as he could, to around halfway up the white tub.

  She stepped into the tub, sank into the water, and moaned as she leaned back and it lapped over her breasts and shoulders.

  Heaven.

  Her eyes slipped shut and she relaxed, savouring the way the water warmed every inch of her and seemed to chase the fatigue from her body and the tension from her muscles.

  A bath had never felt so luxurious.

  She wasn’t sure how long she soaked, but the water was growing cooler when she finally forced herself to reach for the shampoo and body wash, and set to work. When she was done, she eased back again, wringing out every last drop of time in the bath.

  She didn’t want to leave it.

  Or put her old clothes back on.

  She was sure they stank too and her odour had been half the reason he had been so off with her, keeping his distance. She couldn’t blame him.

  “Shoot,” she muttered as the thought of fresh clothes had her remembering that she had left her pack in the living room, near the door.

  Her heart pounded as she considered trying to reach it.

  She wasn’t sure where Rath was now. She had been in the bath so long that he could be anywhere, had probably gotten bored of waiting for her to emerge and had returned to the cabin for that beer he had clearly wanted as a reward for his hard work.

  Ivy stood and let the water run off her, and grabbed one of the towels from the stack. Thankfully, it was large enough to wrap around her, and covered her from her chest to midway down her thighs. She tucked it closed beside her left breast, opened the door and peeked out.

  He wasn’t in the cabin.

  But he had been at some point. The white plastic canisters tucked in the corner of the kitchen were full of water now. Replenishing his supply because of her? She would have to remember to thank him for the bath.

  She tiptoed across the room, heart racing as she strained to hear him, afraid that he was on the deck and would hear her and walk in while she was only wearing a towel.

  When she reached the wall behind the log burner, and her black backpack that rested against it near the door, she glanced off to her left.

  Froze.

  Rath stood by the river, his bare back to her, faded jeans riding low on his lean hips. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he twitched a fishing rod back and forth, the line swishing with each swing, his muscles working in a symphony that had her soul singing praises for him. He finally cast, and as soon as the fly settled on the rippling water, he began gently jerking the rod with his right hand, causing the tip to twitch as he slowly pulled on the line with his left, drawing the fly across the river.

  Her breath lodged in her throat, and hell, she wanted to grab her camera and take a picture of him because he was stunning, a sight to behold as the sinking sun cast golden light over him and the mountains rose beyond him.

  The only thing stopping her was how angry he had been when he had seen she had photographed him.

  He struck, leaning back as he lifted the tip of the rod and it bent. It jiggled as he began drawing the line in quicker, the fish fighting back.

  When he had it at the bank, he stooped and lifted it, his profile to her, and then his head turned her way.

  Ivy dove into the bathroom with her backpack.

  She slammed the door shut, and set the bag down, and rifled through the lower section for a fresh set of clothes. Her charcoal trekking trousers were her only spares, and while they were a little tighter than her brown ones, they definitely went better with her chestnut hoody. She loved natural colours, but there was such a thing as too much brown.

  She slipped into a fresh set of black underwear, pulled on a merlot-coloured t-shirt, and pushed her arms into her hoody, leaving it open as she shimmied into her trousers.

  Her hair came next, a task she never relished. She grimaced as she brushed the tangles from her damp waves and wrestled them back into submission, and debated tying it back. It would dry faster if she left it loose, so she placed her elastic around her wrist and used his toothpaste and her brush to clean her teeth.

  When she was done, she eased back and admired her work in the mirror hanging above the sink between the toilet and the bath.

  She looked brighter, fresher, and she felt it too.

  All the disappointment of not seeing bears today, and the stress of everything that had happened this morning with Rath, drifted away, rose from her shoulders and left them feeling lighter as she smiled at herself in the mirror.

  Tomorrow, she would see bears, she was sure of it. She would get her shots.

  Ivy pulled the bathroom door open.

  Rath lifted his head as he walked into the cabin, and his eyes widened slightly before he looked away, down at his hand as he held up a pair of trout. “I hope you like fish.”

  He moved into the kitchen, set the fish down on a plate he grabbed from one of the wooden cupboards below the counter, and put them in the small refrigerator. He washed
his hands. Thoroughly. Avoiding her again?

  She stared at his back, almost disappointed to see he had dressed. The dark green fleece hugged his shoulders, making it easy for her to recall what they had looked like naked, his golden skin stretched tight over mouth-watering muscles. She had sworn off men, but she wouldn’t have said no to a closer look at him.

  He cleared his throat, the sound a little awkward, and turned towards the refrigerator again as he dried his hands. “Beer?”

  She nodded. “Please… and thank you for the bath. It was heavenly.”

  “No problem.” He grabbed two brown bottles, cracked them open and walked out onto the deck without even glancing at her.

  Ivy followed him, stopping only to put a pair of socks on, arriving on the deck in time to see him slump into the chair furthest from the door, the one she had occupied this morning, and kick his feet up on the railing of the fence.

  His grey eyes locked on the horizon as he lifted the beer to his lips, and her eyes locked on him, drinking in his profile as he tipped his head back slightly. After a few seconds of her staring, he grabbed the other beer he had set down on the low table between the wooden chairs and held it out to her.

  Ivy took it and the other seat, wanted to lift her legs as he had but they weren’t long enough for her to reach the fence around the deck. She stretched them out in front of her instead and sank into the chair, leaning back with a sigh as she let the beauty of the scenery wash over her again.

  The sun was lower now, and it looked as if they were in for a beautiful sunset, perfect for enjoying with a cold beer.

  The silence that stretched between them as they sat next to each other, watching the world, was strangely comfortable. Birdsong in the trees brought a smile to her lips, the melody becoming entrancing as it mingled with the sound of his steady breathing and she sipped her beer and waited for the sunset.