The Cougar's Trade (31 page)

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-slash-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.

“This is so fucking stupid,” one of the men said. “What if we’re wrong?”

Please be wrong about whatever it is
. Ellery craned her neck back to look at them. They didn’t exactly seem jubilant, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Do you trust me?” Auburn ogre asked.

The other two made what sounded like begrudging grunts.

“You may not trust
her
, but you trust me. I’m not wrong. It’s these three.”

Ellery didn’t know who the
her
in question was, but they didn’t seem to be indicating the women on the ground.

“When was the last time anyone we know did this?” the third brother asked.

“I don’t know. She gave me the sign, so here we are.”

Being a witch, Ellery knew a little something about signs, but for the life of her she couldn’t speculate on what the men were going on about. Maybe some kind of ritual sacrifice? If she had any luck at all, they’d want virgins.

He tossed bundles of rope to the other two. “Don’t make it harder for them. Remember what Mom said.”

Mom?
Was that the she they’d referenced? The idea that a maternal influence put them up to this made Ellery’s gut roil. What kind of dysfunction went on in that family? She would have sighed, if she could. Who was she to talk about dysfunction? Her family was the absolute worst for that. Southern Protestant witches had more hang-ups than Rascal Flatts had hits.

“But what about the picking? It’s a reasonable question,” longer-haired brother said. He eyed all three women again, and then bent and looped the rope around Hannah’s ankles.

“We have plenty of time to decide,” shorter-haired brother said. “Long drive home.”

Auburn brother just grunted and knelt to bind Ellery’s wrists. As he tightened the rope, sliding a finger between the coils, he rolled his whiskey brown stare up to her face and asked, “Does it hurt?”

She started to nod just as a matter of course, but then she wriggled her fingers, and flexed her wrists. She shook her head. She wasn’t much of a liar—never had been—but sometimes that worked in her favor. Her brother-in-law Claude had taught her to be honest for the small things so that if she had to tell a whopper of a lie later, it’d be believable. She got a sneaking suspicion she’d be telling plenty of lies before the day was over … assuming she lived to see the end of it.

“Good.” He eased back and tied her ankles with the same careful attention as her wrists, and then pulled himself up to standing. He unzipped her backpack, and his brothers seemed to follow suit, sliding the other bags onto the tailgate and rooting through them.

She furrowed her brow, wondering what he could be digging for, and then he produced her sky blue wallet. Sliding his fingers under the flap, he released the snaps and sifted through the contents.

Was he looking for money? Phone numbers to call to secure her ransom? Nothing about their camping set-up had screamed
excess of money
, so they were going to be shit out of luck if that’s what they wanted. Miles had some, but had no family to give a damn or send it. Hannah had family in spades, but Ellery didn’t imagine she had much more in savings than a few months of paychecks.

She recognized her driver’s license by the barcode image on the backside.

He read it—studied it, apparently, judging by the way his eyes tracked side to side repeatedly—and turned to his brothers. They all held cards. Red-haired brothers extended theirs to the auburn caveman.

“They’re all the same age,” he said.

“That’ll make picking harder,” longer-haired brother said.

The
picking
thing again. She didn’t see how their ages would make any difference unless they planned on sacrificing them in a particular order.

“Maybe not.” He slipped the cards into his shirt pocket and bent low. He picked Ellery up in one easy heave and set her onto the tailgate. “There are some cushions in the back. You won’t be comfortable, exactly, but it should make the ride a bit more bearable.” He zipped up her backpack—sans wallet—and pushed it farther back into the compartment.

She didn’t move, just stared at him. Couldn’t send a blast of wind at him without freaking out her friends. She should have given him a static shock when she had a chance … if she hadn’t been so busy sampling the goods. She regretted it, but damn. When she’d become an active magic user a year ago, she uncorked a voracious libido along with it. She’d thought there was something wrong with her, until Gail assured her it wasn’t just her. It seemed that having a little power did wonders for freeing a woman’s inhibitions. Perhaps that was one of the reasons so many covens cautioned against the use of wild magic. They’d all turn into a bunch of witchy wantons. She didn’t mind being a wanton, but she needed to be able to think strategically. With the Were-cat so close, she was failing hard at it.

“Back you go, Ellery,” he said, and he canted his head toward the opening.

Her cheeks burned hot at the sound of her name, but she didn’t move. She just stared.

He stared right back, those cat eyes of his practically fluorescent in the waning light. Hypnotizing, but not in a way that had anything to do with magic. He was just that stunning. “Would you prefer I use force?”

She closed her eyes, and suddenly she could think.

“Believe it or not, I don’t want to. In fact, I don’t want to be here at all.”

A
reluctant
thug. Well, that made the situation so much better.

She opened her eyes, and in her periphery, caught a glimpse of Miles writhing under one of the Cats’ grips. Ellery didn’t want to make it worse for Miles or Hannah and needed to lead by example. The sooner they got out of the men’s grips, the better. They could go with the flow for the moment, and figure out a plan.
“Thinking’s best done when you’re calm, fille,”
Claude always said. He was usually right. She climbed in, put her back against the left wall, and watched him pick up little Miles and test her bindings.