The Cougar's Bargain (3 page)

His brain was a Tilt-A-Whirl of confusion, and the fact he could recognize it at all informed him that he'd regained full self-awareness. It'd been patchy the past several days, with him cycling in and out of control of his brain. He couldn't remember much—just glimpses here and there—but even with his eyes closed, he knew what must have happened.

He wriggled his very human toes and balled his numb fingers into fists. His left arm, pressed beneath his ribs, tingled from poor blood flow, and his neck burned from his head being propped at a bad angle.

As he waited for his vision to focus, he drew in a long breath through his nose and itemized the scents. The familiar woody scent and linoleum—that was his finished basement. He took another breath and pushed himself to upright as the shape of his old CRT television came into focus. He caught the scent of Cougar, and not a Foye. Not a born Cougar, at that. The essence was too weak.

The person it belonged to shifted in his periphery—a blond blur. His mate.

Shit. What happened?

He rubbed his eyes and put his head against the wall.

So fuckin' dizzy.

Shifting back to human was usually a painless process for him, but perhaps his body had come to believe that he was never going to do it again. Hell, that was where his brain had been, last he could remember. He wasn't going to hold his breath that Hannah was going to come around, so he'd held on as long as he could to keep his human awareness front and center while he was in his animal form. He'd done it for the sake of his brothers and wanted to be around to help out. Foyes didn't have calm, easy lives. Between running a busy woodworking business, quarreling with local Were-coyotes, and fighting the occasional demonic threat coming from the nearby, open hellmouth, the family was stretched thin with obligations. Even in his animal form, he could fight and be a comfort to his family. That was about all he could do, but it was better than nothing, or so he'd thought. As the days had worn on, he'd been less and less himself, and he'd resigned himself that the thread connecting the cougar and man in his mind was going to snap, and he'd be stuck on the wrong end of it. He had no idea what had happened in the last few days—or weeks?—or how long he'd been in that basement.

He hadn't expected to come back. Hadn't expected
her
to accept him. He should have been happy that she did, but nothing in his life seemed to come without strings attached.

He pushed his hair back from his eyes and let his now-clearer gaze fall on the snoozing woman to his left. He must have had his head on her lap. He couldn't remember putting it there, and he couldn't imagine her having invited it.

Her eyes flitted wildly behind closed lids, and she let out a long hiss in sleep.

He scoffed. Depending on whether the cougar part of her brain or the human part was the one engaged at the moment, she could have been having some very interesting scenes play out in her mind. He needed to wake her and find out what was what, but sometimes, pulling a shifter from a dream was a dangerous thing for the one doing the rousing.

He could wait. He needed time to get his wits about him, anyway, before he launched right into the Fight of the Epoch with Hannah.

He knew there was going to be a fight. That was the only way they knew to communicate.

“I should probably call Mason or something. Assuming I can get to a phone, that is.” He blew out a sputtering breath and crossed his legs at the ankles, suddenly realizing his nudity. He shrugged. Wasn't like she hadn't seen it all before, anyway. Nudity and shapeshifting went together like hangovers and aspirin, and he'd lost count of how many times he'd had to shift in front of her in the past couple of months, having to deal with threats that were easier to contend with on four legs.

He leaned in closer to Hannah, looked on both sides of her legs, and found her phone beside her on the left side, partially beneath her denim-clad thigh. He carefully worked it out and stood slowly, allowing his blood to fully circulate and waiting for his muscles to respond to simple requests. He padded toward the staircase to check the door, but he already knew it had to be locked from the other side. That was what he would have done had his brothers been in the same situation. He would have locked them in with their mates until they worked it out and got their shit together.

Not that he believed by any stretch of the imagination that he and Hannah had their shit together.

He twisted the knob and gave the door a tug.

There was no give.

“Had to try,” he muttered. He turned on the phone, dialed in Mason's number, and sat in the middle of the flight of stairs, keeping Sleeping Beauty in full view. He wanted to see her face the moment that she woke and realized that one beast was gone and she'd gotten another one in his place.

Why'd she bring me back, anyway?
He didn't trust it. She'd been so resistant, so now he was pretty sure she was setting him up for the okie-doke.

Mason let out a long exhalation as he answered. Of course he was tired. It was four in the morning. “What's wrong, Hannah?”

“It's Sean, man.” He held his breath and waited for Hannah to open her eyes at the sound of his voice, but she didn't.
Maybe she won't as long as that dream is going on
.

“Damn! I didn't expect to hear from you.”

Mason didn't have to articulate it, but Sean knew what had been left unsaid: to hear from him
ever again
.

Sean pulled his tongue across his dry lips and grunted. “Well, here I am. I just woke up five minutes ago. Hannah's asleep.”

“Ah.”

“Why did—”

“Just be grateful. Don't ask why.”

“Do you know why?”

Mason didn't respond.

Nah, that's not suspicious at all
. Sean rubbed his throbbing temples and closed his eyes. He'd sort it out later when his brain didn't feel like it'd been battered and deep-fried. Both the man part and the cat part were feeding him information at once, and it was too fucking much.

“Can you come let me out? I could do with some fresh air and then a shower.”

“Yeah, of course. I …
shit
.”

“Shit what?”

“The keys. I dropped them somewhere between your place, Woodworks, and my house last night before bed. I figured I'd look for them in the morning. I can get out there now with a flashlight—”

“Fuck. Nah, don't sweat it. Is there food here? How long as she been here?”

“About … thirty hours, I think. We dropped some food off last night, so you should be able to throw something together unless we underestimated Hannah's appetite.”

Judging by the half-eaten sandwich at her side, Sean didn't think that was the case.

“Go on back to bed, I guess. I'll see you in the morning, or whenever you find the keys. If you can't find them, you have my permission to call the locksmith and pay him whatever he wants. Just don't fuck up my door. Can't replace that.” He'd fought his brothers fair and square for that door, and to get it, he hadn't been ashamed about fighting dirty. That door was the last thing their father had carved before his heart attack killed him. The picture was only half done because it hadn't been a priority project. It was just a thing Dad did to pass the time between jobs. Sean had installed it as the basement door so he could see it every time he walked from his kitchen to the back of the house.

It tortured him, because he and his dad had been on the outs when he'd died, but he'd had to have it. Perhaps the guilt was his punishment for not being around when it happened.

Mason sighed. “Yeah. I'll call you with a status update, if necessary. Hang in there.” He disconnected.

Sean tapped the phone against his palm and for a little while, watched Hannah fight the air in her sleep.

She should have woken already.
Sean for certain would have been startled awake, but he'd been born a Cougar. He didn't know much about turned Cougars. There were a few in the glaring—spouses of born Cougars. They'd decided they wanted to be like their shifter partners and allowed their mates to bite or scratch them. They weren't in Sean's circle of friends, though, or any of the Foyes', so he couldn't say for sure how they were different. And Hannah hadn't been a volunteer. He wondered if consent made a difference.

“Or maybe she's just a heavy fuckin' sleeper.” He rolled his eyes at himself. Speculating was pointless. He knew fuck-all about her, really, and she knew just enough about him to hate him.

The only thing that really mattered at the moment was that she was his mate. That didn't automatically commit them to a lifetime of togetherness, only that she was the woman
La Bella Dama
thought was his perfect other half. He wasn't sure what that said about either of them, because again, he barely knew Hannah.

He wouldn't have pursued her if it'd been up to him. He didn't like difficult women, and he didn't usually have to work so hard for attention—not even from Cougar women who were notoriously cold. Hannah could top every woman in the glaring as far as hostility went.

He shuffled the rest of the way down the stairs and across the open room to the fridge.
Can't really expect to think straight when I haven't eaten in gods-know-how-long
. He was the kind of hungry that went well past simple discomfort to gnawing, gut-wrenching pain. He'd have to take it easy, and possibly have something easy for his body digest … like a whole cow.

He grabbed a couple of meal replacement shakes as a start and chuckled at the forethought of whichever of his brothers' mates had picked them up. Probably Ellery, if he had to guess. She was Type A in that way, always thinking ahead, whereas Miles tended to be more of a “fixer.” She efficiently nuked problems that couldn't be prevented.

Hannah was still asleep when he walked past her and toward the bed at the far wall. He climbed beneath the covers and put his back against the cold, wooden headboard, watching her twitch and pull faces in her not-so-restful slumber.

And I thought Hank was a wild sleeper
. Sean popped the top on one bottle and took a long sip of the stuff. “Shit.” Smooth as it was, it seemed to be hanging up in his esophagus, lodging in the tube as if it consisted of a handful of pennies and not just artificially flavored liquid chalk.

For him to not have hunted while he'd been in his cat form, his brothers and others in the glaring had probably been keeping Sean on a very short leash.

The first swallow of shake finally made its way down to his stomach, only for the organ to let out an insistent rumble as the liquid coated it.

“Yeah, fuck you, too.”

The next swallow was easier, and even more so the following one.

He let himself relax a bit farther down into the covers, and rolled onto his left side.

Hannah was becoming still, and her facial features relaxed.

Asleep like that, when she didn't have her tough-girl attitude turned up to eleven, he could actually look at her. Surprisingly, he hadn't done much of it. He'd known, superficially, that she was pretty, but when they were arguing from opposite sides of a room, he didn't pay much attention to the parts that comprised the whole of her. Hell, they'd been nose to nose on more than one occasion, tossing insults like grenades, and he couldn't even say for sure if blond was her natural hair color. In his own defense, he usually didn't pay much attention to things above women's shoulders.

He liked what was above Hannah's shoulders. The little diamond stud in her nose was a bit unexpected for a woman who seemed so uptight, but she didn't really need any adornment. If she turned on the glam and slapped on a full face of makeup, she'd probably make guys stumble in their tracks. Sean suspected that she wouldn't wear it for
exactly
that reason.

Suited him fine. There may have been no love lost between the two of them, but his wild cat programming made him possessive whereas the human part of him
might
have been more laid-back. At the moment, the animal part was dominant, and Sean didn't know if his brain would ever go back to the way it had been before the curse took effect.

“Maybe that's not a bad thing.” He popped the top on the second bottle and at the shudder in his periphery, looked up.

Hannah, wide-eyed, stared wordlessly at him for a few seconds with her jaw hanging open. Then she closed it, sucked in some air through her nose, and cleared her throat.

“Before you talk, thank you for curing my curse. I know you don't like me much, but I won't ask why you did it.”

He suspected Mason had made her somehow. He'd deal with Mason later.

“You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. You're off the conversational hook.” He drained the second meal replacement drink in one long pour down his throat and set both bottles on the floor beside the bed.

She bobbed her eyebrows and pulled her knees against her chest, pressing her lips into a tight line. Obviously, she didn't need to be told twice.

Suited him just fine. The gears in his brain weren't shifting smoothly, and he could probably be offensive without even trying at the moment. He may have had a generalized annoyance toward her, but he didn't go around intentionally trying to piss folks off … besides his big brothers, anyway. Pissing them off was a goddamned riot.

“We're locked in here for the time being. I used your phone to call Mason. He lost my house keys last night, so until he has a chance to get out and search the property in the morning, we have to sit tight.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not like I have anything better to do.”

She'd agreed to accept him as her mate and couldn't even tamp down the derision for five minutes. The morning was bound to be a ball of laughs.

“If you're looking for an apology from someone—anyone—I can certainly give you one,” he said, “but for some reason, I don't think it would make much of a difference.”