The Cougar's Trade (9 page)

They reached the steps of Mason’s place, and she let go of Nick’s hand. Ellery scooped him up, and Hank pressed a hand between her shoulders and got her moving toward his house.

“’Night, Mason,” he said. “Ellery.”

Miles caught a glimpse of Ellery over her shoulder.

“Hank, she can sleep here,” Ellery called out.

“I’ve got a bed for her.”

“Miles?”

Miles sighed, then called back, “It’s all right, I guess.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Hank said in what sounded like the precursor to a growl.

She didn’t believe he would hurt her. Not physically, anyway—just her feelings over and over again.

She climbed up the porch steps of Hank’s foursquare house, dead tired, but so curious.

Why would a single man have a house like this?
Not even his mother’s house was as large, and it seemed out of place on the ranch with its colonial styling and, unfortunately, garish color selections. Someone—and she didn’t like to assume whom—must have thought pink shutters and slate-gray siding were the height of desert fashion.

“I see the horrified face you’re making,” he said, unlocking the door. “I didn’t pick the colors. I just haven’t gotten around to changing them. The house was going to be torn down and I had it moved here. Cheaper than building new, and I got tired of sharing space with Sean. It’s still a work in progress.”

He sounded almost apologetic, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d never heard the man apologize for
anything
.

He shouldered the sticking door in, hit the light switch just inside, and tossed the paper bag he’d been holding onto a cluttered table beside the staircase.

She stood on the welcome mat, agape and agog at the mess.
Mess
wasn’t a strong enough word. His house was a disaster.

He chuckled, an honest-to-goddess laugh for the first time—that she’d heard, anyway—and waved her in. “Just watch your step.”

She stood frozen, body thrumming in the aftermath of that low, masculine sound that seemed to caress every nook and cranny inside her body and set her skin to tingling.

Oh boy
.

He looked down at her, curiously, with parted lips and a narrowed gaze, as if his own laugh had a similar effect on his body, too. Then he shook his head and moved on.

With a little distance between the two of them, she could think. “Um. What happened in here?” She stepped in tentatively, testing the floor ahead of her with the tip of her foot. He laughed even louder, and damn, if she didn’t feel those tingles again. She crossed her arms over her chest to put some weight against the prickling fullness of her breasts, and rubbed her thighs to ease the thrum of her quivering sex.

What is wrong with me?

“Come on, it’s structurally sound, I promise. Take a carpenter’s word for it.”

She pulled her arm across her suddenly damp forehead and licked her dry lips. “I…I hope you got a second opinion, is all.”

“You mean other than my brothers?”

She cringed, because she
did
mean that, and it was an awfully rude thing to think.

“Don’t worry. I got a legitimate engineer to come out and tell me whether or not I should just set a match to the place and start all over.”

“What did he say?”
Keep him talking
. The aches and urgency in her body went away when he talked about mundane things. She didn’t know why she was suddenly so turned on, because his cavern of horrors certainly shouldn’t have been doing it for her.

“Pointed out a few load-bearing walls to prop up. Had me replace the roof and reinforce the floors.” He jumped, and landed flat-footed with a
thud
that rattled the windows.

She clutched her chest, squeezed her eyes shut, and braced herself for impact, because certainly she’d fallen through the floor and probably straight to hell, given the circumstances.

No impact, no fall.

Oh my God.

She opened one eye to find him shaking his head.
Thank goodness.
Terror made the absolute best antidote to arousal.

“I weigh a hundred and seventy pounds. If I don’t fall through, you probably won’t, either. Besides, you’re from the South. You’ve probably been in much older houses than this one.”

It took a moment to process his words because her pulse was so loud in her ears.
Fraidy-cat.
She took a few slow breaths and relaxed her rigid posture. “Yes. I actually grew up in one for a while. I learned firsthand there’s nothing romantic about living in a historical home with unreliable plumbing and floorboards that creak ominously with every step.”

“This house will be like new by the time I’m done.”

She gave him a polite nod and raked her gaze over all the tools piled atop plastic sheet–covered surfaces. Maybe the house had some good bones, but she certainly couldn’t see them through all the dust and wood shavings. The mess made the nurse part of her that was used to antiseptic white spaces shudder. She could probably get tetanus just from standing there.

“I never considered myself to be particularly anal-retentive, but how can you possibly sleep in this?”

“Upstairs is actually done. Even has new windows that don’t let in the draft. Took me two years.”

“You’re doing it all by yourself?”

“My brothers help with the heavy lifting, and I hire out for the technical trades like electric and plumbing I’m definitely not qualified in, but I do the rest as time allows. Would you like the grand tour? I think you might need a bit of a warm-up before seeing the basement, so we’ll save that for last.”

She took a reflexive step away from him and shook her head. “You’re not putting me in your basement.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that. I just meant touring it. It’s not exactly fit for habitation. Come on upstairs. I’ll show you the bedroom.”

Singular?
Didn’t he say he had a room for me?

He turned on the lights of the rooms they passed, revealing beautifully refinished floors and painted walls in neutral tones, and absolutely no furniture. He hadn’t even hung blinds or curtains. The third bedroom—the master—did, however, have furniture, so he hadn’t had a slip of the tongue after all. She wasn’t certain what that meant for her lodging needs.

He sat at the foot of the bed and untied his boots. “You’ll have to stick close for the next couple of weeks until my scent transfers.”

She leaned against the dresser, lacing her fingers together against her belly. “Pardon?”

“It’s…kind of how when cats rub up against you to mark you as their human? We do the same thing, but deeper. There’s a limited amount of time that I’m actually equipped to do it, and after that, I’m shit out of luck.”

“So, it’s not necessary?”

He made a hand-waffling gesture.

“Thank you for the honesty.”

“For a lot of us, it’s merely traditional, but there are some practical reasons to do it, too, especially among glaring leaders. Once a woman’s been marked, she can’t be unmarked.”

“No one else would want me, you mean.”

He grimaced. “No
Cougar
would. Not for a mate, no. You’d be untouchable.”

So he wouldn’t want her, and nobody else could touch her, either. Ellery had been right. Cougars wanted to have their cake and eat it, too.

“You could say no,” he said. “But I’d hope you wouldn’t. Cougars would know we hadn’t touched and that our match was only for practical purposes.”

“Isn’t it, though? Are you ashamed of that?”

He leaned back onto his forearms and worked his jaw from side to side for a few beats. “It’d make Cougars question me, that’s for sure. They’d second-guess taking commands from me because they’ll believe I don’t have my own house in order and have no right to be leading them. Remember,
La Bella Dama
steered us to who we would have, so bringing you into the fold should have been easy. Things used to be different and this process was less stressful for claimed mates, but no one can remember why at this point. Leaders are supposed to know the traditions and the customs. They’re supposed to thrive with them and make them work.”

She swallowed down the bile inching up her throat and took a cleansing breath. “But I…wasn’t what you wanted.”

He shook his head. “It’s not about
wanting
. It’s about matching. Usually, we can figure out why
La Bella Dama
puts two people together. They’ll each have something the other needs. It’s obvious Ellery is an alpha’s girl. She seemed suited for the job from the time Mason snapped her up out of your tent.”

“And that’s a job I would never have.”

He turned his hands over. “I don’t think you’d be cut out for it. An alpha’s girl needs to have a sharper bite.”

“And I’m too soft.”

He shrugged. “Sweet.”

“And
sweet
doesn’t work well for a second’s girl, either, I guess. You wanted Hannah.”
Lie to me.

His gaze didn’t waver as he ground his teeth. He looked her straight in the eye, saying nothing for a few long seconds, and already, she knew she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

“I assumed Hannah would be the stronger contender for the job.”

“Right.” She looked at her feet. Her shoes had seen her through a handful of camping trips and were the only pair she had to her name in New Mexico. All of her possessions—the ones they saw fit to give back to her, anyway—fit in one compact backpack. She grew up used to having only enough belongings to fit into a couple of duffel bags, but she was really starting to miss having her own space. She didn’t have to hold herself together in her own space. She didn’t have to pretend her feelings weren’t hurt, especially when she was the one allowing them to be stomped on in the first place. She didn’t know how to change that about herself, though—a desire to please people and keep them from hurting was wired into her constitution. She’d been worried about Ellery and afraid of separating from the closest person she had to family on the planet, and her stomach had been in knots for days about how the mess could destroy Glenda, but those weren’t the only reasons she’d said yes to him. She hoped there might be something there, and now she wasn’t so sure there ever would be.

He sat up, stood, and closed the distance between them. He propped up her chin and turned her face to him. “Look at me.”

Slowly, she brought her gaze down from the ceiling and met that Day-Glo stare. It was hard to hold his gaze. There was so much intensity in those eyes.

“I don’t want to hurt you. You may not believe it, but it’s true, and I don’t want anyone else to hurt you, either. Part of my job now is to take care of you, and that would be so much easier to do if it were obvious you belonged to me. Do you understand?”

“I…think so.”

He canted his head in that odd way cats did whenever they were looking too deeply or seeing something beyond what was on the surface. She didn’t know what he saw when he looked at her, besides, perhaps, what
wasn’t
there—
who
wasn’t there.

“The more we touch, the faster the imprint will set. I know it sounds like a hell of a proposition, but I’m not asking you for that.”

“For what, sex?”

He released her chin and retook his seat at the foot of the bed. “Fastest way to go about it, but unnecessary.”

Great
. So that meant that not only wasn’t she getting affection, she wouldn’t be getting sex, either. It wouldn’t make a difference whether she stayed at Ellery’s or Hank’s if he was only going to touch her for
practical
purposes. He could do that during daylight hours. “What do you want me to do, hold your hand?”

“That’s one way to go about it.” He nudged his boots off by the heels and shoved his dirty socks into them. “I imagine it’ll be inconvenient after a while, though. I kind of need two hands to work wood.”

“So, what do you suggest?”

“We can take advantage of downtime hours. When we’re sleeping, I mean. Just put your back against mine.” He started unfastening his shirt buttons.

“Um…”

“You don’t have to undress, but I tend to get hot when I sleep. Haven’t gotten around to installing central air in here yet.”

So practical.
He probably thought she was entirely too frivolous. She figured that out when he’d stared at her shoes in the woodshop. Hell, even she thought the pink was frivolous, but that had been the only color left in her size. She’d gone into the store to buy gray ones.

Nodding, she worked her feet out of her sandals without bending and eyed the massive bed. Four posters. Dark, heavy wood. Looked hand-carved. “Did you make the bed?”

“Yeah, I did. It was a prototype. You can’t see all the fuck-ups. They’re all on the underside. A lot of the furniture pieces in our houses are prototypes. Nick’s crib is one, too.”

She hadn’t seen it—hadn’t been in anyone’s house besides Glenda’s and now Hank’s. Miles ran her palm up the spiraling post at the bottom right and reached up to fondle a jutting point off the finial. She wanted to know if the glossy wood was really as smooth as it looked. It was. It was beautiful—
too
beautiful to have been shaped by the hands of a statue. But then again, that statue apparently had a penchant for cutting silly moustaches out of construction paper. Something wasn’t connecting.

“You sell beds like these?” she asked.

“A few. Mostly nowadays, we just sell headboards. Folks want to downsize their furniture. Minimalists.”

“I’ve always preferred traditional, myself.”

“Old houses aside.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Ideally, I’d have a new house with old stuff.”

“I’m sure your parents have plenty of old stuff to pass down to you.”

She let her hand fall back to her side and drew in some air. “I’ll never know. My parents are dead, and I don’t know what happened to their possessions. I don’t even know where, precisely, they’re buried.”

There. Got that out of the way.
She’d let him into the club. Only a handful of her acquaintances knew that about her. Not many people knew anything about her at all, besides what she fed them in small morsels. She liked it that way. She didn’t have to worry she’d be taken advantage of.