by Holley Trent
Mason looked back to see Mom slam the tailgate shut.
“He’s already picked. Are you going to challenge him?”
“Just trust me,” he called back. “You wouldn’t want this one anyway.”
“Asshole.” Ellery tried to wriggle off his shoulder to no avail.
“Be still. I’m trying to find my keys.”
“Screw your keys.”
“Take them both to my house,” Mom said to Hank and Sean. “They’ll stay with me until you work it out.”
“Hey, take me back. I’d rather stay with your mother,” Ellery said.
“You’ll stay with me. In my bed.”
“Nope. Hell nope. I will stab you at the first opportunity.”
“Not if I stab you first. I’ve got just the weapon, and it’ll only hurt a little in the beginning.” He pounded up his porch steps and grabbed the screen door.
“You audacious jackass, when you get me out of these ropes, I’m going to—”
“You’re going to go pee, right? And then I’ll make you some dinner and put you to bed.” He pushed the key into the lock. “Cuddling will make us both feel calmer. You’ll see. It’s the Cougar way.” He rolled his eyes. He could probably come up with a few more cornball lines without even trying. No one could ever accuse him of being suave, and usually, he didn’t care. He’d never tried to come on to a woman who needed him to be so debonair, and he wasn’t going to start now.
“Cougar!” She let out a frustrated growl. “I’d just gotten used to the Wolves, and now this. That’s just fucking great. I should start earning merit badges for having to deal with all the shit that happens in my life.”
Wolves? Interesting. He filed that information away to question her about later.
“Gods, your language.” He turned the knob and pushed the door in. “I thought Southern girls were supposed to be soft and demure.”
“If you dislike my language so much, toss me back into the truck and return me to Arches.”
“No, ma’am. I’m going to deal with your mouth. Apparently my goddess thought I deserved your verbal flagellation.”
“So why bother complaining about it?”
He set her down in his foyer and turned on the light to see her pretty face screwed into a ball-withering glower. Well, she had a backbone, his maybe-mate. For his brothers’ sakes, he hoped they all did, but knowing his Ellery had some fight in her meant she wouldn’t cower when she saw what he was—the reason he’d had to steal her in the first place.
Hundreds of years ago, being taken as a Cougar bride was considered to be an honor in their culture, but Cougars weren’t tribal warriors anymore. There was nothing illustrious about being abducted to be a woodworker’s mate. In fact, it sounded like the basis of a very twisted Lifetime movie. Unluckily for him, he got to play the villain.
“Seems odd to me a man who would snatch ladies would be so concerned about the gentility of her language.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t give a shit about your language. I just figured this would be a lot easier for both of us if you were a little sweeter. You might be my wife one day. Congratulations.”
She made a most indelicate snorting sound and shook her head. “You are insane, bud.”
“My name is Mason. Mason Foye.” He extended a hand to shake, and she locked a malevolent leer onto it.
Oh. The ropes. He looped his hand through her arm and pulled her gently toward the kitchen. She tottered, taking the tiny steps afforded by her bound ankles. “I’ve got some shears in here to cut that off.”
“What do you want from me? Why did you bring me here?”
He let out a long breath. Apparently, she didn’t believe the wife story. “I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re asking. Hold still.” He picked her up easily and plopped her onto the counter next to the sink. He could feel her glare on the side of his neck as he rooted through his junk drawer.
“Why couldn’t I stay with my friends?”
“Don’t worry about them. They’re safe.” It was his brothers he was more worried about. He angled her feet up and clamped them between his thighs while he examined his tight rope work. He didn’t want to ruin perfectly good rope, and was looking to cut it off as close to the knots as possible.
“That’s good for them, but what about me?”
“You’re safe with me.”
“You’ll have to excuse me for not taking your word for it.”
He ground his teeth and worked the scissors between the strands. Once he’d popped the rope and had begun unwinding it from her ankles, he said, “I couldn’t hurt you. Not as long as you’re tethered to me.”
She lowered her chin to her chest and blinked at him. “Pardon?”
“Tethered, dear. We’ve got a psychic tether that attached the moment I plucked you up at the campground—the moment I grabbed you. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t let my brothers pick you.”
She blinked again.
“I know none of this makes sense to you.” He tossed the rope to the floor and picked up her delicate wrists with his left hand next. Her long, thin fingers didn’t show evidence of any missing rings. There were no indentations, no tan lines on her dark honey skin.
“Are you going to cut that?” she asked, rousing him from his thoughts. “I actually do need to pee.”
“Do you wear much jewelry?” he asked.
“Jewelry?” There was a note of humor in her voice, as if the question was absurd. Perhaps it was to her.
“Do you?” He set the point of the scissors in between the tight cords at her wrists and nudged the blade between her forearms.
“Besides my watch and these hoop earrings I never take off? No. Unnecessary rings get in the way at work. The one ring I do wear”—she flashed her right hand almost too quickly for him to see—“is an heirloom. Sentimental attachment.”
Unnecessary rings, she’d said. Good. Probably no fiancé for her to go home to, but with his luck, she probably did have one—the hipster kind that didn’t believe in giving engagement rings because they were trappings of elitist hegemony or some such bullshit.
The rope fell to her lap, and he tossed the scissors into the drawer while gripping her wrists with his right hand.
He could tell she was itching to rub them, to get the blood flowing again, but he wasn’t ready to stop touching her yet. She was so soft, so warm. He couldn’t help but to think it, but she’d feel like a dream curled up against him in bed.
Fuck, yet another trial.
If he could get her into bed, his job at wooing her would be 200 percent easier. Not just because he was good at sex—hell, he did well enough, he guessed; it’d been a while—but because the subconscious mind was more willing to trust in sleep. His Cougar hormones would help her to understand that he might have been a criminal sort of asshole, but a generally honorable one. He wouldn’t hurt her.
She flattened her palms against his forearms, and looked up at him, narrowing her eyes.
“If you’re trying to be ugly, it’s not working.” In his book, that counted as a compliment.
She pressed her lips together tighter.
“Nope. Still not there.”
Chilling tingles radiated up his arms and settled into his core. The hell? Perhaps that was a sign of the goddess’s blessing?
The tingles warmed, became hotter. Sharper.
He didn’t register them as painful until one crackling bolt exploded through his body and knocked him back on his ass.
Clutching his chest, he stared up at the woman standing over him.
“I hope that hurt. Where’s the bathroom?”
He tried to draw in a deep breath, but he felt like his air passages had been charred and scraped. He coughed. “Wha—” He swallowed and let his spent air out in a wheeze. “What’d you … do to me?”
She knelt, and canted her head. “I’ve never had a reason to try that before. Thanks for being my guinea pig.” She rubbed her chin. “Gail can do that. I wonder how much my skill set
overlaps with Gail’s … ”
He somehow managed to sit up. “You’re a witch? And who the hell is Gail?”
“Boo.” She made jazz hands. “Ta da! Yep, I’m a witch. Scared? Gail is my sister. Also a witch.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “And you’re a cat, apparently.”
Shit. It seemed less and less likely he was reaping a blessing and more like he’d activated a really obnoxious practical joke. “Like, a natural witch?”
“You’re asking too many questions, buddy.”
“For good fucking reason.”
If she’d gotten her power through practice and not genetics, it could possibly wane over time, which would be ideal for his purposes. No way could he talk a woman with the ability to electrocute him on a whim into falling in love with him in a two-week period. For that matter, he wasn’t sure if he wanted a woman with knowledge of that sort of power anywhere near him, but then again, perhaps his sadistic goddess has chosen Ellery for a particular reason. The witch had “Alpha’s Mate” written all over her. Figuratively, of course. He’d been expecting a surprise from his mate, but not a literal shock.
“My turn to ask a question. Again, where’s the bathroom?”
Too discombobulated to speak, he pointed.
“Thank you.” She strode to it.
She locked the door before he could get to his feet.
“Shit.”
Were the others witches, too? He reached for his cell phone to warn Mom, but then he thought better of it. If the ladies were all a little weird, the chances of them staying might actually be a little greater. They’d understand that things in their world didn’t work the same way as they did with regular folks. Sometimes, they had to take what they needed and clean up the mess later, even if they didn’t really want the thing they had to take in the first place. He let out a manic bark of laughter and gave his hair a sharp tug. “Oh, fuck.”
Groaning, he got to his feet and shook off the remaining tingles from her little shock job. “Real cute. I bet next, La Bella Dama will have me offer up my head for use as her own personal soccer ball.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he almost hurled it across the room in fright.
“Get it together. It’s not the goddess, dipshit.” If she knew how to use a phone, she would have certainly dialed him up for a good berating long before now. Had to be one of his brothers. Maybe they’d already found out about the women for themselves the hard way. He connected the call without even looking at the display. “Tell me what happened.”
“Mason, I’m at the gas station. Are you coming to get Nick?”
It took a moment for that voice to register.
Not La Bella Dama, unless the goddess had taken the form and voice of a flighty, sometimes-mangy Were-coyote. It obviously wasn’t Mom. It was Jill. His ex.
Worse than the goddess.
“Shit.”
The goddess may have been trying to ruin his life, but Jill controlled it by holding one small package: their son Nick. Being busy on the mate raid, he’d forgotten she was supposed to call.
It wasn’t the co-parenting that frustrated him so much, but Jill’s fickleness when it came to scheduling. He never knew when he was going to see Nick, and so he’d always been accommodating of her last-minute requests. One problem with having a kid with a Were-coyote was that one couldn’t expect them to commit to so much as finishing a sandwich, and it wasn’t like the courts could enforce anything between them. Shifters liked to stay off the law enforcement radar as much as they could, even for non-criminal matters.
“Which gas station?” he asked.
“The BP off the interstate.”
“All the fucking way out there? Come on, you couldn’t have driven closer to the ranch?”
“We stopped to eat. Figured you’d be here by the time we’re done.”
He knew exactly how long it took a ten-month-old to finish a meal, and that wasn’t long.
“I must say your timing is awful, but I’ll be there in half an hour.”
He disconnected and called his mother’s house phone. He had to find someone to babysit the witch. It wasn’t like he could take her along. What he’d do with her once he brought Nick back—well, he’d worry about that later.
When Mom answered, he launched right into it. “Jill called. I need to go get Nick.”
“Foul timing.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I’ll bring the girls over there, then. You have food? I was about to cook them something.”
“Nope.”
She let out one of those long-suffering sighs—the “Alpha’s Wife” sigh. She couldn’t get away from the mess even if she tried. “I’ll pack up some things to take over, then.”
“Thanks. Uh…” He raked his hair back from his eyes and stared at the closed bathroom door. “One other problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, maybe it’s not a problem so much as an FYI. Ellery’s a witch.”
Silence. Rarely a good thing considering Mom’s status of the resident know-it-all. She had a response for everything.
“Mom?”
“Take her with you.”
“I can’t. I—”
“Nope. I’ve got my hands full as it is. Miles won’t stop crying and Hannah’s giving me this bizarre glare. Still, if these two were a little weird, I would have known it by now. Ellery’s your mate. Alpha up and hash it out during the drive. Find out just what kind of witch she is. Maybe she can help you and your brothers with the hellmouth.”
He groaned at her choice of phrase. Alpha up. She’d been saying that for five years. He was doing the best he fucking could, and it never seemed to be enough. She said winning fights wasn’t enough, so what was? “The hellmouth. Yeah. That’ll win her affections for sure.”
The Double B ranch had been, inadvertently, built around an inactive hellmouth—a portal non-corporeal demons used to travel between Hell and Earth. The last time anything had come out of it had been back in his great-grandfather’s day before the Foyes married into the Baxters, but the Foyes guarded it all the same.
A year ago, something had happened. The portal had opened, and they’d been suppressing a demon approximately every three days. Cougars were unusually sensitive to supernatural shit—witches excluded, apparently—so the demons rarely got the jump on them. But, being on high-alert all the time was exhausting, especially with everything else going on. The business. Needy-ass Cougars always needing money or favors. Jill and Nick. Mason and his mate problem.
The Foyes didn’t know how to close the hellmouth, or even if they could, but they certainly didn’t want to abandon their land. Nor did they want those demons having free rein. In their Cougar forms, they had the magic to harm them. Send them running back to Hell. As men on two legs—couldn’t do shit. The ladies were going to see one or all of them shift probably long before they were prepared for it. It’d been two days since the last demon fight. The odds were not in the Foyes’ favor for holding out. As it was, they were lucky nothing had happened with Mom at home alone when they’d made that road-burning drive to Utah and back. He didn’t really understand La Bella Dama’s logic in sending all three of them at once, given the turmoil at home. She could have waited, or just sent Mason, if she had to send anyone at all.
Quit trying to understand her. He ground his palm against his eyes and forced a breath through clenched teeth. “All right,” he said into the phone. “Tell Hank and Sean where I am, and if I’m not answering my phone, it’s because I’m in a dead zone. If I’m not back in ninety minutes … ”
“Yep. I’ll send out the cavalry.” She disconnected, and he stared at that bathroom door some more.
He didn’t think that witch was going to let him tie her up and toss her into the back of his truck again, so he was probably going to have an interesting drive ahead.
“Oh, joy.”
CHAPTER THREE
Ellery’s plan had been to sit there on the tub side until someone came t
o her rescue, but she realized that might be a long time in coming. Unless she got hold of a phone or was able to plead with some hapless proselytizer who came to the door at the exact right time, she shouldn’t have expected anyone besides her familiar—her cat, Pumpkin Pie—to recognize that she was missing. Her family didn’t expect her home for a week, and she wasn’t due back to work until the next Monday. For the second time in her life, she’d have to depend on her cat to save her ass.
She and Pumpkin Pie shared a psychic link, as did all witches to their familiars, should they choose to keep one. Pumpkin Pie had been foisted on her by her grandmother. Grandma Della had insisted that Ellery and Gail were woefully lacking in the common sense department and that they needed all the help they could get. Well. Funny thing about that was that it later turned out that Grandma Della had just been a pretender all along. She was a practicing witch, but had no actual magic of her own. She didn’t have a witch’s instincts, just a tidy, hand-printed spell book she kept on her shelf beside the family Bible. Grandma Della didn’t understand wild magic. She thought it was a dirty thing and had convinced the entire immediate family of that, so all the kids who had even a little bit of talent didn’t dare explore their limits. None of them had known what they could do until Gail showed them.
Unfortunately, their cousins had all but shunned Ellery and Gail for deciding to practice using their wild magic, so all the sisters had left were their cats and … each other. Well. Sort of. Gail had her husband Claude, but he was a line on Gail’s family tree, not Ellery’s.
Sighing, Ellery tugged on the psychic link between her and Pumpkin Pie. If Ellery went missing or felt she was in harm’s way, the cat’s instinct was to rescue or render aid. Usually, Pumpkin Pie knew when Ellery was stressed and whoever was keeping her would try to figure out why the cat had suddenly gotten so squirrely. At the moment, Pumpkin Pie was having a kitty sleepover with her littermate Candy Corn, who just happened to be Gail’s familiar.
“Hey, kitty kitty,” she mumbled. “Need a little help.”
She didn’t feel stressed enough. The cat was probably snoozing through the entire ordeal having no idea anything was amiss. Ellery tried to work up some righteous anger, but that damned Cougar had somehow managed to scramble her fight or flight instincts. The last time she’d been so mellow was after accidentally walking through a cloud of secondhand Mary Jane smoke at one of the Wolf gatherings.