The Cougar's Pawn

by Holley Trent

  The Cougar’s Pawn

  Desert Guards 1

  Holley Trent

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Copyright © 2015 by Holley Trent.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

  www.crimsonromance.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-9264-0

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9264-5

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9265-9

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9265-2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © 123RF/Igor Stepovik and 123RF/Анна Павлова

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Crimson Romance’s Executive Editor Tara Gelsomino for indulging my ginger fetish with this series. The Foye boys would be so much less fun if they had brown hair.

  Also, thanks to tireless editor Jess Verdi for making me show that, in spite of their slightly dark hearts, my characters do have feelings.

  Thank you for purchasing a Crimson Romance novel. Please sign up for our [weekly newsletter] for information on new releases, contests, discounts and more.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  About the Author

  More from This Author

  Also Available

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ellery Colvard zipped her sweatshirt up to her chin and tugged her bandana down so it covered her ears from the freezing Utah air. “I hate you both,” she said to her friends.

  Miles, shuddering on her little corner of the rapidly deflating air mattress, wore a broad grin. A manic grin. Ellery had known the woman for ten years, and thus knew the smile was as phony as that Gucci purse Ellery had bought out of some guy’s trunk last Christmas. Momma hadn’t figured out it was fake yet, and given their tumultuous relationship as of late, Ellery didn’t care if she ever did.

  “Pretty sure the fifty states camping trip bucket list was your idea, precious,” Miles said sweetly.

  Teeth chattering, Ellery shook her head. “No. It was Hannah’s. I was too drunk to say no.”

  Hannah sighed and rapidly chafed her thin arms. “Okay, maybe it was my idea, but it was Miles’s idea to run down the states in reverse alphabetical order. We could have been in California right now.”

  “Yeah, I was definitely drunk when I suggested that,” Miles said. “But in my own defense, what woman in her right mind—especially a woman as educated as you two are—would give a flying frick about the specific order they received their torture in? Y’all, it all sucks equally, if you ask me. Which I guess you did. Why did I say yes to this?”

  Ellery turned her gaze to the tent’s sagging fabric above them and sighed. Try as they might, they couldn’t get the stakes positioned right, and this wasn’t their first camping rodeo by a long shot. “If we’d done Alaska first, it would have probably also been the last,” she groused. “I hear the bears up there could shit out a human being completely undigested.”

  “For God’s sake, screw the bears,” Hannah said. “The people around us are bad enough. So damned hunky-dory. Happy smiley people in their head-to-toe Patagonia gear who’ve barely gotten their boots broken in.” She wound her long blond braid around her index finger again and again and let her knee bob. “I actually hate camping. I did it so much as a kid with my dad and brothers, and I hated it back then, too. It’s just so inconvenient.”

  “But you agreed,” Ellery said. She leveled her friend with an incendiary glare, but Hannah was unmoved. Didn’t even flinch. Ellery should have expected that. Southern women couldn’t use the stare on each other. They were born immune to it from everyone except their own grandmothers. No one was immune to a granny stare. When Granny gave that look, a little girl would sit up straight and get the scrunch off her face immediately.

  Hannah shrugged. “I just thought it was time I did something more adventurous than chasing butt-naked practical joker patients down the hospital halls. So sue me.”

  “Thanks for bringing us down with you, girl.” Ellery pulled her leggings-covered knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her damned coat was too snug and too short to pull over them. “Who would have thought it’d get down to forty degrees in Utah in the middle of the summer?”

  “Might have something to do with that hail storm coming through,” Hannah said. “I think I caught something about that on the radio when I was at the Jeep.”

  “Hail storm?” Ellery’s voice careered to that stratospheric pitch her sister Gail had been trying to coach out of her for the past year. When Ellery got agitated, she got shrieky, but who could blame her? She wouldn’t get so freakin’ frustrated all the time if crazy shit didn’t keep happening to her.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the sharp sting of her nails against her palms.

  Deep breath.

  Deep breath.

  Anxiety gets in the way of clear thoughts.

  She pushed her panic away on an exhalation and opened her eyes. When she spoke again, she wanted her voice to be level. Calm. “So, Hannah, you didn’t think that, perhaps, with the storm coming that we’d like to get under some cover more than a millimeter thick? Or did being in this dinky tent while hail and wind pelted it sound like a proper adventure to you?”

  Ellery could handle a little wind. She was a goddamned witch, for crying out loud, and her magic was tied up in air and weather. She could buffer them a little, at least for a while, but Hannah and Miles didn’t know that. In the ten years they’d been friends, Ellery had never told them what she was. Folks like her played their cards close to their chests. No one was “out,” and knowing too much about the supernatural world wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Sympathizers sometimes became targets, and Ellery had been fighting off boogeymen of the demonic and minor-god sort frequently during the past year. It was all Gail’s fault. At least, that’s what Ellery liked to tell her. It wasn’t really, but Gail hooking up with that gorgeous half-demon witch had a little something to do with their goddess zillion-times great-grandmother coming out of the woodworks and raising Hell—somewhat literally—a year ago.

  Nope. The girls didn’t need to know about that.

  “Next time, warn a girl, would ya?” Ellery muttered.

  “Shhh!” Miles hissed, and she put one index finger on each friend’s lips.

  Ellery grunted. She loved her friend like a sister, but she was shivering so hard that she could see sounds and feel colors. Her patience was edging ever-closer to cut-a-bitch territory, but that dull-ass knife on the multi-purpose tool she’d bought at Camper’s Paradise bef
ore their last ill-fated trip couldn’t cut cheese, much less flesh. Her fingernails would have to do.

  She nudged back one cuff and studied her nails. Oh yes. Nice and jagged.

  “Did you see that?” Miles’s pale eyes went wide in the dim light and her gaze flitted from the tent slit to each corner of the enclosure in search of some phantom shape only she had seen.

  “See what?” Ellery whispered.

  “Don’t do this to me, tramp,” Hannah hissed, and she grabbed Miles’s wrist. “So help me God, if I have to get my gun out of the Jeep to feel safe enough to sleep tonight, you’re gonna—”

  Wind whipped around the trio, blowing maps and paper wrappers around them as their tent peeled back in one easy yank, exposing them to the elements.

  “What the hell?” Ellery scrambled to her feet intending to chase the tent, but no sooner had she turned did a rough hand clap over her mouth and another over her eyes.

  When then the hand on her mouth retreated, she tried to open her mouth to scream only to find her lips were taped together.

  Memories of the last time someone had gagged her came rushing back, and her heart rate soared.

  No. No! Not again.

  She wrenched her body around and swung her arms, trying to make contact with her assaulter and vaguely registering her friends’ wild movements in her periphery, but he moved around her with a silken ease and pulled a hood over her head.

  “Mmmf!” she mumbled, and the attacker grabbed her around the thighs and heaved her up to one broad shoulder.

  She kicked, flailed her arms, and thrashed her fists against his back.

  He held her tighter, and his hot energy enveloped her, stealing her breath for a moment. It was like stepping into a sauna—stifling and uncomfortable at first, but moments later it was soothing. No. Enervating. She could fall asleep in his grip.

  She didn’t know what he was, exactly, only that he wasn’t human. Wasn’t witch, either. She’d know a witch, even if she didn’t know what kind he was.

  “Let’s go before the park ranger drives by,” the giant said in a bland voice, far too calm for a man participating in an abduction attempt.

  It was a deep voice. Low and rumbling in his chest and a sound as smooth as the one the cello Ellery played as a teen made. She wondered, briefly, if the Neanderthal in possession of that sexy voice had a face to match. Baritones seemed to be in such short supply where she lived, and she’d much rather hear her name called out in the throes of passion in a nice bass than in a strained tenor. Because that was so important at the moment.

  She gave herself a thump to the forehead to reboot her common sense and started kicking again.

  “What about their stuff?” another deep voice behind them asked.

  Sounded like the owner of that voice was straining a bit. I hope one of the girls is giving him hell.

  “Ooo!” Ellery said behind her tape, meaning good! When Miles got squirrely, she fought dirty. She’d seen it time and time again when they did kickboxing classes at their gym. Instructors always thought Miles was an easy target because she was so darned cute. Well, Miles wasn’t beneath the occasional low blow. Really low. She was short.

  Ellery’s giant starting moving, stopping once to crouch, and then he was up again. “Grab the backpacks. They probably have ID cards in them. Leave the rest.”

  “Mmmphf mm ezz oof oooh!” Ellery said when he increased his gait, bouncing her atop his shoulder like a colicky baby on a jiggling knee. What she was trying to say was Put me the fuck down!, but either he didn’t catch the gist or else didn’t care to indulge her.

  He kept moving at that inhuman pace, way faster than a man bearing an extra one hundred and…something…pounds should have been capable of.

  She pounded her fists against his rock-hard back some more. All the blood pooling in her brain was making her dizzy, and being upside down made her nauseous. It would serve him just right if she puked on his backside.

  Feeling loopy, she chuckled at the thought and switched from pounding to scratching. She patted his rear feeling around for the hem of his shirt, and let her palms linger atop his flexing ass cheeks.

  Oh my.

  Just the right balance of hard and soft. Animalistic speed and reflexes.

  Ah. Shifter.

  They always had great bodies. Spent a lot of time in the buff, too, if her family-through-marriage accounted for anything. She allowed herself one little squeeze in curiosity.

  Nice.

  One more squeeze.

  “You break it, you buy it,” he said.

  “Eh off,” she said. As if.

  Great ass or not, she was under no pretenses that the scenario was all fun and games. Hannah had a really freakin’ awful sense of humor, but even she wouldn’t put them through a prank like this.

  Ellery made a grunt of protest, found his shirt hem, and yanked it up. She sank her nails into the heated flesh of his lower back and earned a hard swat on the ass for it.

  “Ooog!” she grunted.

  “Be still.” His voice was just calm as before.

  Yeah right. She had a fucking hood over her head, tape over her mouth, and she’d been abducted by some Were-caveman. What’d he take her for, an idiot?

  She blustered and scratched some more, this time digging her nails in deep and clawing her hands up his back.

  This time he stumbled, but didn’t swat her again. Some unholy sound came from that barrel of a chest—some cross between a groan and a growl—and he stopped.

  He bent, set her on her feet, turned her rapidly Lord knew how many times, and yanked the hood off.

  An approaching male voice behind him said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  She leaned left, right, crossing her eyes and pleading with her brain to recognize which way was up.

  Before her vision cleared, the big man got in front of her, stooped down to her eye level, and stared.

  Lord have mercy.

  The blur receded, and there in front of her was a sun-burnished Were-caveman with curious-seeming amber eyes and glossy auburn hair dancing over his shirt collar. The wind made it caress his strong jaw and flutter into his eyes. Eyes with pupils that seemed to be elongating into slits.

  Cat.

  Her noodly legs fell out from beneath her. She groaned when her sore ass hit the ground.

  “Huh. Never had a lady collapse just from looking at me before. I must be getting scarier.”

  So, so scary. God, he’s beautiful.

  Somehow, she managed to pull her gaze away to assess the scenery around her. They were at an old pickup truck. It had to be older than Ellery. The tailgate, along with the hardtop cover’s flap, were open to expose the dark maw of the bed.

  He dropped her backpack on the desert soil, squatted even lower to join her in her seated position, and draped his forearms over his thighs. His amber gaze held a dare, and whatever it was, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take it.

  Or maybe she did.

  She didn’t know. The energy overwhelmed her—confused her. Whatever flavor of Were-cat he was, he was powerful, and it was evident he was an expert at containing it. He was no novice—no newly turned shifter. He’d been born that way. She’d been around enough Wolves lately to tell the difference.

  “This’ll be easier for all of us if you don’t struggle,” he said.

  She blinked. So far, he seemed only minorly inconvenienced whereas she was the one fighting for her life.

  Wasn’t she?

  He didn’t seem like he wanted to kill her, but she was probably more valuable to him alive than dead … especially given her affiliations. The guy would probably be offered a hefty sum for her capture, assuming he knew what she was. Her wind goddess great-grand-whatever, Agatha, kinda had a lot of enemies. Ellery had been used as bait before. She’d just assumed it would happen again, eventually, because unlike Gail, she was an easy target. She wasn’t as practiced with use of practical magic, and didn’t have a powerful immortal being as a husband-slas
h-bodyguard.

  “I’m going to bind your hands and ankles,” he said.

  One after the other, Hannah and Miles fell onto the ground behind her. The men pulled off the hoods over the ladies’ heads, and as if instinctively, the girls joined hands with Ellery.

  She stole a glance up at her giant’s accomplices and would have gasped if her mouth hadn’t been covered.

  They had to be related. If they weren’t, there was something in the water in Utah… She cut her gaze to the license plate. No, they weren’t from Utah. The water in New Mexico. She could make a mint by bottling and selling New Mexican water, if that’s what it grew.

  Tall, broad, tan, and broody. The brothers, maybe, had redder hair—one short-cropped, one a bit longer than the lead ogre’s.

  No, not ogre. Ogres didn’t have lush lips that begged kissing. Caveman would do.

  He stood, set Ellery’s bag on the tailgate, and reached into the truck while the other two men guarded over Ellery and her friends.

  The girls huddled together a bit more as the men eyed them up, assessing them as if they were cars on the lot and not women they’d just stolen from a campsite.

  The man with the longer hair nudged his companion. “How do we pick?”

  Pick? The word could have been an execution order for the way Ellery’s heart rate kicked up. Picking implied randomness. And if so, the harassment wasn’t about her being a witch at all. They were plain-old thugs, and thugs didn’t play by the rules, because they didn’t know them. They wouldn’t want to demand a duel with Agatha or barter for Ellery’s release. They wouldn’t know they could or should. So, what could they want?

  Doesn’t matter. Run.

  She didn’t think she’d get far, but if she could draw those Cats away from her friends, she could work up a little lightning, maybe. What she could put off wouldn’t put three men of their sizes down for long, but perhaps long enough for the girls to get to the rented Jeep.

  She scrambled to her knees, with Miles and Hannah following her cues, only for them to be quickly, and easily, suppressed by six large hands.