The Cougar's Pawn (22 page)

“This doesn’t work quite as well if you strangle me, honey.”

“It’s a reflex,” she muttered.

“I’ll fix it.” He slid off the foot of the bed and pulled her along with him until her ass was at the edge. He spread her thighs, holding her legs in their new position by the knees, and got down on his knees.

Better view, anyway. He drew his finger down her wetness, and when her knees threatened to draw in, he said, “Nope.”

She put them back.

“Just hold still for me.” He worked her with his tongue and finger, nudging her back into compliance every time her legs moved closer. “It’s too fucking dark for me to start digging through drawers to find something to tie you down with. I know you can hold still.”

She took a deep breath, and whimpered as he started up again. Her toes curled, legs shook, and her hands gripping the bed’s edge went white at the knuckles.

Good girl.

He added another finger to the carnal massage and she nearly vaulted off the bed. And to think, he’d worried she’d be unresponsive.

Pressing his tongue flat against her, he slid one wet finger down farther and pressed at her tighter entrance.

“Mason.” There was a warning in her tone.

“Hmm?” He murmured around her, sending another violent shudder through her body.

She kept her legs apart, though, even if her hands moved to his hair yet again.

“Put your arms over your head.” He massaged the bit of skin between her entrances and worked her clit between two knuckles. “Just like that. Keep them there until I tell you otherwise. Got it?”

She didn’t respond.

He took his hands off her.

“Yes, goddammit!” she snarled.

“Good girl. Alpha might not give you want you want, but he’ll always give you what you need.” He pressed again at that taboo place, distracting her with his tongue and fingertips on her sex. When he breached it, she let out a short, loud cry before clamping her hands over her mouth.

He’d forgive her for it. There was a child in the house to consider. The last time Mason had made a woman get loud in this way had been long before Nick’s birth.

He could always take her outside …

Nah
. The desert echoed. She could probably be heard clear to the hellmouth.

“Hands back up,” he said.

She complied, only for him to flip her over and haul her ass up into the air.

She struggled onto her hands, and he gave her ass a swat on each cheek.

“Where are you going?” He gently pushed her shoulders down to the covers. “Didn’t ask you to get up.”

“Tell me the plan and I’ll try to stick to it.” She wriggled against his hand, and he gave her ass an appreciative rub.

“I don’t think you will. I’ll think you’ll do anything you can to subvert me. To make me work harder, won’t you?”

“Probably,” she muttered into the bed.

“You’ll confuse a man like that. Having your body say yes when your mouth is spouting ever so much shit.”

“Assume yes unless I specifically say no.” She wriggled against him again, and he gave her a little love tap.

Her toes curled again.

“I see. Trust me?”

“Only in this room, Mason.”

“Aw, I like when you say my name. Sounds so much better than
buddy-roe
. Stay right there.” Chuckling, he backed away, keeping his eyes on the prize all the while. Such a nice ass. It’d be nicer with a little more red on it, though, either from his handprint or his bite. Later, though. Some things needed to be worked up to, in spite of how much she was asking for them.

He patted the dresser drawer behind him, opened it, and found the still-sealed box of condoms. He brought them up to his eyes and squinted at the expiration date in the dim light.

Thank you, goddess.

He pulled one out and tore it from its packet. Sliding it onto himself, he asked, “Still want to get put to sleep?”

“If you can manage it.”

“Easy as pie.”

Gripping her haunches, he eased into her tight, wet sheath and tried to ignore the distracting, triumphant cat dancing around in his head. “Sweet manna.”

She clenched around him. “Like that?”

“Oh, yeah.” He swiveled his hips and made himself a little more room inside her. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was the first one there.

She wriggled again, and he pressed his hands to her ass, kneading the flesh and working her cheeks apart.

He thrust.

She clenched.

Shit
. He’d promised her a ride, but he may have bitten off more than he could chew. It’d be one thing if he’d cleaned the pipes earlier, but he was going into the scenario after a very long dry spell and with a woman who could make him hard with so little as a sneer in his direction. He was in a really bad way.

Mind over matter
.

He closed his eyes, and he concentrated on increasing the speed of his thrusts, of working her up to hot and heavy with a side of begging. He thought of playful things.

Bunnies frolicking in tulips.

Leprechauns dancing around a pot o’ gold coins.

Kittens leaping and missing their targets.

Cougars enmeshed in battle. Biting, wrestling, transforming.

Not cougars.
People
. Naked, sweaty people, clinging desperately to each other and searching for release.

Goddamned cougar.

He shook his head to free himself of his id’s baser notions. Id didn’t want him to last. Id wanted him to come.

No, he needed to make
Ellery
come so he could stand by his word. Alphas made things happen, so he wrapped her ponytail around his fist, gave it a small preemptory tug, and said, “Better hold on.”

She gripped the quilt top so firmly he could hear the threads ripping. There was the slap of skin against skin along with her pants of pleasure and restrained moans with each pull of her hair.

He added his own hisses of anticipation, because he was so fucking close. He had to get her there first. He moved his free hand from her hip and pressed its thumb into the seam of her ass. With each thrust, he pushed it in farther until it was inside her up to his knuckle.

Her body spasmed against him, her hands pulling at the covers for purchase, and he thought, “Thank fuck.”

Freeing his hands, he leaned over her, and increased the speed of his thrusts until that starburst of ecstasy burned low in his torso.

“Mason!”

He let go. His orgasm rolled through him like a runaway freight train on a greased track and all he could do was try to breathe. Try to stay on his feet. Try to make his legs stop shaking.

“Damn.” He pressed his palms to the bed and got his weight off of her, slowly pulling himself free of her.

She let out an indulgent little moan and slid forward onto her belly.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Ask me in the morning. I need some time to think about it.”

He chuckled. “Right. Be right back.”

He cleaned himself up as quietly as he could in the bathroom and returned to the bedroom to find Ellery asleep with all that hair covering her face, and one arm dangling over the side of the bed.

He got in beside her, straightened the covers, and pulled her close to him. He only had a couple of hours, then he’d have to get up and start another too-damn-long day.

He nuzzled her hair with her chin and tightened his arm around her waist. Comfortable. She belonged right there in that space in front of him. Her body had been made for him, and there was no doubt about that.

Closing his eyes, he wondered if he’d gone too far, though. He should have been able to stop himself in spite of her teasing. He was Alpha. He had nothing to prove.

Or did he?

She wasn’t Cougar. Even as his mate, she wouldn’t be Cougar unless she wanted to be. Maybe Cougars liked their sex a bit rougher on average than the typical Joes, but there were no guarantees she’d tolerate it from him. One day, he might scare her away, not just with his sex, but his love. She’d always be his mate, but she didn’t have to be there to be that. She could leave and he’d have nothing left to do but love her from a distance and hope she’d come back.

She twined her fingers with his and molded her legs against the bend of his knees.

He could tone it down for her. Keep her away from all the Cougar stuff. Make things normal for her. Maybe that’d be the ticket.

“Yeah,” he whispered, convinced.

Normal would keep his little witch from running. Suited him just fine. Sometimes, being Alpha wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Later in the morning, Ellery stepped outside Woodworks with Nick on her hip and intercepted Darnell on his way past the building.

“Let me see your arm, Cougar,” she shouted.

He stopped. Slumped. Turned toward her.

“Bring it,” she said.

He cringed. “Now don’t go getting mad. I swear, I did everything you said.” He walked over holding his arm out as if he carried a smelly bag of garbage at the end of it.

“Roll up the sleeve for me.”

Sighing, he did as she asked.

She stared at the discolored, oozing arm for a moment and could barely tamp down the anger building. If she weren’t holding her little wingman, she would have popped Darnell in the forehead, and
hard
.

The door swung open behind her. Mason stepped in between them.

Oh, boy
. He already thought she was bossy and domineering, and she suspected at some point he would suggest she stay in her lane. She planned to go down swinging before he did. Life. People were doing it wrong. It was her job to tell them.

“Uh, hey, Alpha,” Darnell mumbled.

“What the fuck did you do to your arm?”

“Nothing. Nothing much … ”

“The scab’s all torn up.”

“It itched a little.”

“What’d you do, scratch it with your claws?”

Darnell rocked back onto the heels of his cowboy boots. “Maybe. Hard to say.”

“Hard to say, my ass.” Mason turned to Ellery and raised one of those reddish eyebrows at her. “Can you fix it?”

“You
want
me to fix it?”

“Not particularly. I just wanted to know if you could.”

Darnell made some sound that was half gasp and half yip.

Poor kitty.

“I actually came out here to tell you not to bother. It’s Cougar mess.”

His grin was crooked and shaky, but she was totally counting it.

Damn, that grin.
It was all the more brilliant for its rarity.

She switched Nick to her other hip.

Darnell held his arm in front of her face and affected a pout. “It’s not gonna fall off, is it?” Compared to the Foyes, Darnell was almost
excessively
expressive. She wondered if the Foyes were aberrant if Darnell was. She let her gaze track back to Mason. That warm energy of his licked around and enveloped her. She felt like a statue being slowly overtaken by some sort of sentient ivy that receded every time she paid it any attention. It was almost shy in its approach, as if it thought she’d shear it back if she noticed it. Nothing like Edgar’s had been. Edgar’s was all bulk and no substance—the puffed chest equivalent of an aura. Mason tended to keep his compact and contained, and he didn’t even have to. She’d never encountered an alpha who bothered.

She’d never met a
man
anything like him, alpha or not.

Nick caught a particularly matted tangle of her ponytail and yanked her out of her reverie. Try as she might to keep the mess detangled, something about the lack of humidity, and perhaps certain bedroom antics, had her hair in knots yet again.

“Ell?”

“Huh?”

“Darnell’s pouting at you, and it’s giving me heartburn. Should we fix his arm again?”

Should we
, not
will you
.

The fog in her brain parted and let the beacon of rational thought shine through. She squared her shoulders and cleared her throat. “It can fall off for all I care. He should have done what he was supposed to the first time.”

Mason barked with laughter.

God, how she loved hearing that sound coming from him. Loving seeing the joy in his face on the rare occasion he let it out. It was almost as sexy as the man naked, which was a hard sight to beat.

“You heard her, man. Good luck. Maybe pouring a little tequila on it will help.”

Darnell huffed. “You’ve never been cruel, Alpha.”

“Turning over a new leaf, since all you assholes seem to demand it.”

Darnell pouted. “She’ll fix it if you ask her to. Come on.” He scratched at the edges. “I’ll do better.”

Mason shrugged. “I could ask, but it’s up to her. She can say no if she wants.”

She
could
say no. She could say no to everything at the end, and he knew that. Was he playing her? Softening her up?

“She’s
your
medic. She can’t say no.”

“Not my medic. My woman, according to
La Bella Dama
. Alpha’s woman does what she wants.”

Darnell’s nostrils flared. Pupils dilated. “Say what?”

“Don’t start sniffing. She’s already claimed.”

Darnell’s nose twitched again. “You sure she’s a keeper? She only smells a little like you. I wouldn’t want to piss off the goddess—lord knows I don’t need any new problems—but … ”

Ellery handed Nick over to his father, grabbed Darnell’s arm, and sent another hot blue flame over it.

He yipped as if someone had stepped on his tail. “That hurts!”

“The only thing you’ll be smelling for a while will be seared flesh. Don’t you worry about my scent. That’s none of your business.”

He cast a sideways glance to his Alpha.

“Go put a wrap on it,” she said. “If it’s infected the next time I see you, I promise I really won’t care. I get enough of that shit in the emergency room. Some people just don’t want to do their part to ensure their health.”

“She’s mean.” The man sounded like he was one blink away from shedding a tear.

“And if she’d been sweet and demure, the glaring would have criticized her for that, too. Can’t win with you all. Nothing I ever do is right.”

“You do well enough,” Darnell said softly before straightening up a little more. “Hey, Hank and Sean brought home mates, too?” Darnell asked. He leaned sideways and looked past Mason through the woodshop’s glass door.