The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (22 page)

“You’ll be all right,” Hannah said.

Dawn squeezed into the backseat, sloughing off a few mangled feathers in the process.

Lily maneuvered in after her, perching on the edge of the seat to avoid sitting on Dawn’s right wing, which didn’t seem to be hanging quite right.

Belle hoped Ellery could figure out how to fix it. She couldn’t imagine getting the angel to town and behind an X-ray screen.

Hannah closed the car door and walked Belle several paces away from the car.

“I could keep him here tonight,” Hannah whispered and stared toward the hellmouth. The others had dispersed to Sean’s house or home with Ellery. “He’s on autopilot. I can remind him that he’s done babysitting you.”

“But who’s going to babysit
him
?” Belle asked.

“Are you volunteering?”

“I don’t see where I have a choice.”

“Of course you have choices. You could tell him to fuck off, and he’ll tell you ‘
gladly
’ and go home tomorrow.”

Belle shifted her weight and stole a glance over her shoulder and into the car.

Steven was staring straight ahead through the windshield and gripping the steering wheel as if for dear life. He wasn’t paying them any attention as far as she could tell.

“I don’t want him to go home,” Belle whispered.

“What does that mean?”

Belle shrugged. “Do I need to ask your permission to keep him?”

Hannah scrunched her nose. “No, but with me being his sister, I’d question why you want to.”

“I just do.”

“You’ve got to give me a better answer than that and not the Cougar bullshit, either.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. The Cougar bullshit is a big part of it. I would leave him alone, probably, if it weren’t for that.”

“But ...”

“I just want him. I don’t want to leave him alone. It’s hard to explain the compulsion to you—to put it into words—because you weren’t born like this and don’t have the same impulses. When I look at him, I want to grab him by the collar and drag him into my cave. Not just that, but I want to roll a rock against the entrance so nothing gets in and he can’t get out. I want him completely dependent on me until he admits he can’t live without me.”

Hannah cringed. “
Yikes
, Cougar chicks are weird. Every single one of you.”

Belle scoffed. “Yep. We’re pretty wicked. Can you imagine what the second generation of Cougars was like? The first ones born of the men Lola turned?”

Hannah shook her head hard. “I don’t want to imagine it. My dreams are gory enough as it is without adding new fodder. Listen, I’ll call in the morning and let you know the plan. If you don’t hear from me, call Ellery. The longer it takes for us to call, though, the better.”

“Because it’ll mean shit didn’t immediately hit the fan.”

“Exactly.”

“Try to keep the shit from the fan, then. It might take me a while to roll that rock into place.”

Hannah chuckled and started toward the houses. “Shit. This adventure keeps getting wilder and wilder.”

Steven wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up in Belle’s bed.

He remembered parts of the drive back to town from the Double B ranch, although admittedly, his mind had been elsewhere. He remembered musing about Dawn’s difficulty in extracting herself from the car and how she couldn’t be soothed until Lily had tightly bound her—spasming wings and all—with a blanket and settled her onto the sofa. Apparently, being still made Dawn nervous, and Lily had thought that since swaddling worked on babies who couldn’t control their nervous impulses, perhaps it’d work on high-strung angels, too.

Maybe some angels didn’t need sleep, but Dawn had gone out like a light on the sofa with Lily rubbing her singed hair.

Steven could even remember Alex coming out of her bedroom, half-asleep but wild-eyed, to assess the situation. Belle had escorted her back, explaining she’d tell her everything later.

But he
didn’t
remember taking off most his clothes—he was down to his boxers and undershirt—and climbing into Belle’s bed, and he
certainly
didn’t remember her climbing in with him.

He should have remembered that, since she apparently slept in next to nothing. Not that he was complaining.

She was sprawled at a diagonal angle across the bed with her feet at the far corner and her head resting on his chest.

She’d obviously been awake for a while. She was reading some sort of magazine on a tablet computer.

“What time is it?” he asked. His voice sounded like his throat had engaged in mortal combat with a meat grinder and the meat grinder won. Must have been from all the smoke inhalation.

She set down her tablet and rolled off of him. “Almost one. Are you hungry?” She rested on her belly and propped her chin atop her fists.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them. “One o’clock.
Shit
.”

“No need to hurry to get up. Hannah and the gang are keeping things hush-hush until some of the dust settles.”

“The angel dust?”

Belle groaned. “Lily’s taking care of her. Ellery stopped by earlier to splint up her wings, and they’re already looking better. She’ll probably be able to pull them in soon. And of course, the weirdo collective wants to know what we saw.”

Damn
.

Steven’s body started shaking with the laugh he couldn’t quite force out.

Belle pressed a hand to his chest, and for some damn reason, he stopped moving. Stopped spasming.

“It’s all right if you don’t want to say anything,” she said softly. “I remember everything. And also, I have this.”

She rolled toward the nightstand and plucked a few tri-folded papers off it.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a letter Jill sent to me. There’s some information in there not only about
Los Impostores
, but also the Sheehans and ... well, she explains what happened to her mate. How he died. I guess she needed a confessional, and she didn’t want Mason to think she was skipping out on her responsibilities to Nick. She just needed some space from it all. I can’t blame her. It was a lot to keep secret.”

She handed it to him, and he squinted at the nearly unintelligible scrawl. Jill’s handwriting seemed to vacillate from careful and legible to childish scribbles. Belle must have guessed the cause of his furrowed brow, because she said, “After a few paragraphs, you get used to it.”

She stood and grabbed a ratty bathrobe from the back of the armchair in the corner, and instead of studying those pages, he watched her slip into it and kept his eyes pinned on her body until she tightened the belt.

If there’s a god somewhere that cares about me at all, she’ll keep that thing on.

His self-restraint was the stuff of legends, but she was practically taunting him with her graceful splendor. She was pretty and lithe and ... bold as hell. Perfection, if he’d ever seen it, and he needed to get away from her soon or he’d forget why he was supposed to be keeping his hands off of her.

“Gonna grab some breakfast,” she said. “In the mood for anything in particular?”

He shrugged.

“Really? I’m surprised you didn’t make some quip about the salad.”

“The salad?”

“You remember ... the salad from lunch yesterday?”

“Was that yesterday?”

Belle shoved her hands into her bathrobe pockets and shifted her weight. “It was a long day, but not
that
long.”

“I’ll get something.” He set down the letter and started to stand, only to set his foot atop something stuffed and resistant on the floor beside the bed.

It was his duffel bag, pushed against the nightstand. His clothes from the previous day were draped over the top.

He glanced at her and back down to the bag. “How did I get in here? And undressed?”

“You walked. And you undressed.”

“I don’t remember that.”

She shrugged. “I might have helped.”

“Meaning ... you undressed me?”

“No. I’m strong, but not that strong. I had to get you to do it yourself.”

“I don’t remember undressing.”

“You were a little out of it.”

“You said you helped me. How did you help me?”

She rolled her gaze up to the ceiling and let out a long breath that sputtered her lips. “I ... might have compelled you a little.”

“What?”

“One of the advantages of being a born Cougar. We women just don’t have the bulk of the guys, so we can’t forcibly steal mates the way they do sometimes.”

“You gave me a mental whammy? Is that what you’re saying? How is that any different from just picking a guy up and tossing him onto your shoulder?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. What I can do doesn’t rob you of your ability to say no and walk away. It’s just a calming effect. It keeps you rational. I just happen to be a little better at it than other women in the glaring.”

“’Cause your daddy was the alpha, right?”

She turned her hands over in concession. “I tried words. You weren’t listening. You needed to rest, so I got you moving.”

“I don’t remember. Did we ...”

“What?” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned into the doorway. “Did we have sex? No. Believe it or not, the cat in me would prefer that you be awake for that, and now that you’re up, she is, too. That’s why I’m going to go get you breakfast and am not on the bed right now.”

“Oh, okay.” He didn’t even know if he’d say no if she
were
on the bed. He didn’t know much of anything at the moment. “Why am I in here and not on the sofa, though?”

“Simple answer. Because I wanted you in my bed. If you’d like to move to the sofa, I think I could probably lure Dawn off of it, but that would seem cruel, don’t you think? Do I make such poor company that you’d want to toss an angel off the couch?”

“You’re talking me in circles. What are we even arguing about?”

“We’re not arguing. You were wondering how you got there, and I guess you didn’t like the answer.”

“I don’t like feeling like I’m being jerked around and have no say in what my body’s doing.”

She scoffed and pushed away from the door. “Nobody can jerk you around, and that includes me. I can’t make you do anything you ultimately don’t want to do. All I can make you do is feel comfortable while you decide. Nothing’s getting into you. Nothing’s compelling you.” She knelt beside his duffel bag and drummed her fingertips atop her knees. “Want to know what I saw last night in those caverns?”

“The same things I did.” Things he didn’t want to see ever again, because if he did, surely he’d behave the exact same way. He’d freeze up and be an embarrassing dead weight. He’d make the folks on his team have to work twice as hard to get the job done.

She shook her head slowly. “I saw a little more than you. As a Cougar, I’m calibrated to see things that other folks don’t know are there and especially so in that realm. Some of those things I saw, if they were to make it out of the portal, they might not be visible to the naked eye, but I could see them there.”

“What did you see?”

For a long moment, she stared at his chest and chewed the inside of her cheek as if she needed to gather up the right words. She squeezed his knee, stood, and then walked to the door.

“You know what? I’ll get you something to eat, then you can ask whatever you want.”

“That bad?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“So it
is
bad.”

“I
can’t
answer that. We’re not in the same place.”

“Because you don’t freak out when weird shit closes in on you.”

“Because I’m not you and I don’t have your memories or experiences.” She rounded the doorway and padded quietly down the hall, and he stared at the empty doorway for a while.

He listened to the soft murmurs in the living room—from Lily, maybe—and then the rattling of pots and pans.

“Why am I still here?” There was no reason to be there anymore—not in Belle’s bed or even in New Mexico. He could go home and try to put all the mess behind him. Back in North Carolina, he wouldn’t have to come face-to-face with things so wicked and morally bankrupt that they’d attack gentle angels.

He had his feet on the floor and his hands braced against the bedside when Belle returned.

“Sit,” she snapped.

“What?”

“Unless you’re going to the bathroom or looking out the window to see what a lovely day it is, you don’t need to be up.”

“I need to go.”

“Go
where
?”

“Home.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Ex
cuse
me?” He scoffed. “In case you missed the memo, sunshine, I’m a grown-ass man. I’ll go wherever I want, and I’ll go there whenever I want to.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is that so?”

“Hell yeah, it’s so. There’s no damn reason for me to be here.”

“None, huh?”

The tart snap to her voice suggested that he’d perhaps stepped into something of the excretory variety.

“Oh, hell. Are you about to go all Kathy Bates from
Misery
on me?”

He didn’t see Belle move, but obviously she had. He heard her hair-raising hiss and felt the prickles of proximity on his skin a moment before his eyes registered her in front of him. Her fangs were out, pupils narrowed to their catlike slits, and her grip on his thighs was punishing.

He scooted back a bit and swallowed hard. “Jesus Christ.”

She stopped hissing and stomped away, throwing up her hands. “
You
do this to me!”

“What in the world? How the hell is you goin’ a little monster my fault?”

“You’re antagonizing my inner cat.”

“Like
hell
I am. All I did was said I had to go.”

“And you don’t see where she would think that would be a problem? I’m in heat. That’s what I’m going to do if the animal part of me doesn’t get what it wants.”

“So ... you’re going to keep me locked in this room until you’re out of heat, is what you’re saying.”

“No.” She dragged her tongue across her now-normal teeth and patted down her hair. “I’m a reasonable woman, Steven.” She stabbed a finger in his direction as soon as he opened his mouth to rebut that. “I am, damn it. I’m fighting this thing as hard as I can. If you do rash and sudden things, I’m going to be upset. I can’t let you leave.”