Cougar
Page 6
Jackal was there at my side. "This way," he whispered and touched my arm.
His quiet nature made my gut flop.
Maybe I had made the right choice. I turned, to find my duffle bags piled on the floor a few feet away.
He knelt beside them, grabbing the straps, swinging the handles over his strapping shoulder.
In my state of shock, I just watched him heave everything upward and shoot me a firm glance then nod toward the closed door. Mindlessly, I followed the heels of his boots into sunlight, around a corner, to the first round lodge where he shoved the wooden slab of a door into a small shadowy space.
A standard Guardian's lodge.
He held the door wide.
I just couldn't bring myself to look at him. To let him see my fear of being marked. Because I really wasn't ready to have sex with him.
Or anyone.
But I followed the sunlight shafting across the small sparingly decorated space. Just a small table and two ladder-back chairs sat under a barred window. A bed, the thorn in my side, stretched along the opposite wall.
What else did a Guardian need to function? The village fed him.
The door shut out the sunlight behind me.
Jackal's whispering footfalls halted.
Where was he? I turned to face my savior.
He threw open one of two windows' shutters and dropped the duffles one at a time without looking at me. His muscles strained and stretched.
Like he needed to run. Exercise.
"Are you scared of me?" he asked, kneeling beside the load of guns, looking up at me with the kindest touch of empathy in his eyes.
What a fucked up question. "How would you feel?"
"Scared." He waved at the table. "Will you sit and talk with me?"
Why talk? Just mark me so we can line out what counts as normal around here. "I'd rather have a bath."
He smiled and rose to tower steps away. "No problem. Grab some clean clothes. I'll take you to the bathhouse."
"I thought I was on lockdown until you marked me."
He grabbed some clothes from a basket beneath his bed and chuckled. "Tornado won't complain. He's getting what he wants. He knows I'm responsible. That's why I'm his right-hand man. He won't argue about a bath. Besides, he'll just think I marked you already."
"In three minutes?" I'd hope for a little more time and sensitivity when being mounted by a man. But I'd only had one lover aside from the rape. Maybe all males just took care of their business and left their mates wanting.
"He wouldn't put it past any of us, Sierra. That's how he operates. My mother died, and he took another mate in a week. Although, he chalks it all up to having to produce Guardians." He snorted and waved me toward the door. "I, myself, think he just can't wait to try out another woman."
I set down my guitar and Black Betty and grabbed my backpack stuffed with clothes. "You say that like you disapprove of his practice."
He waited for me at the closed door. "I've never mated before. He's the boss. I just take orders."
Like remaining in the room so I could choose him. I grabbed some pants and a tank top.
Why had this obviously perfect Shifter never taken a mate? Everyone knew Shifters had strong sex drives. Like their inner beast drove them to mate. But they had to bite a woman during sex to create the mating bond. He had to have been with other women. What kept Jackal single? "Why me?"
His compassionate eyes studied me as I crossed the space between us. "I didn't think any of the others would take care of you." He shoved the door wide.
Warm sunlight showered me.
But nothing as warm as the words he'd uttered.
The others wouldn't take care of me? How so? However, discussing the issue outside wasn't wise with all the gaping villagers. Even Tornado who leaned on the doorframe of his meeting room.
Maybe everything was going to be okay.
"Jackal?" Tornado called.
Jackal waved at him, placed his hand on the small of my back, and guided me through the hodgepodge of houses.
If Jackal had lived his entire life here, he knew how to handle Tornado. So, my worrying about things wasn't going to do me any good.
"There are almost fifty Normals here," he said, walking slowly. "That includes Guardian mates. Almost anything you could want is sold by the merchants. But we try to keep the population from exceeding seventy-five."
"Don't tell me. Tornado just kicks them out. Most likely women and children because he's heartless?"
Jackal's face split with a huge grin. "No. He's a family man, Sierra. Besides, his job is to protect families. The weak."
So, Tornado wouldn't be happy to learn I'm a huge extraterrestrial magnet.
"The way you sing," he said softly, "is beautiful."
John said the same thing.
My heart burst in agony.
"It makes you sad to be complemented?" he asked.
My expression must have reflected my inner pain. "John used to say the same thing," I focused on the scuffed toes of his combat boots as we walked.
He halted, lifting my chin with an index finger and a thumb to make me meet his sad gaze. "He and I shared the same mother. Our dame had the bluest eyes. Like Rattler. And she taught us to respect all people. If I had met you before him, I would have hidden you up in the wilderness too. He and I enjoyed most of the same things. Although, we're very different. I'll blame that on Tornado's genes." He fell silent, studying me. "I don't want you to hide your grief." His thumb brushed my cheek. "Give it time. Cry all you want. He was important to me too."
Something hitched in my chest.
I was lucky John had been important to him.
Why didn't Jackal keep talking? That voice of his was so soothing. Maybe everything really would be alright. Especially since I couldn't ask for more than a Shifter who cared for my emotional wellbeing. But what would he do if he learned what I really was? Dumping the fact I'm a Cougar on someone had to be pretty life-altering. Especially to a mate. And I'd be mated before morning.
"Come on. We're almost there." His warm hand fell away from my skin, and he turned back to the hard-packed earthen trail winding between houses.
The village butted up against a mountainside where a cave gaped at the sprawling clutter of human dwellings. Mother would have said the mountain laughed at the people trying to cling to it for protection. But she looked at things so differently than I did. A Rites-of-the-Goddess priestess would. Yet, Father's scientific Shifter perspective would see a resource. A cave. I preferred the resource.
Jackal entered the dark cave interior first. "Paulson."
He seemed to be greeting a Normal.
Five steps into the cavern, my vision acclimated. Jackal towered in front of me, blocking what lay ahead. "Nobody enters until my mate has finished," he warned.
Something in my belly warmed and spread throughout me at that threat. I kept on Jackal's heels.
"Of course," Paulson replied. "How was the trip?"
"Too damned long." Jackal stepped sideways and turned to me.
Beyond him stretched the most beautiful sight lit by fires contained inside large tubs. Twinkling stone pillars extended from the floor to the ceiling or just hung like enormous icicles. An area to the far right sported a long lacey ribbon hugging a lower section of the cave's ceiling, a strip of the finest dripstone icicles. Stalactites.
The Earth really could jack with a person's mind sometimes. Like Mother's thoughts of a cave as a mouth laughing at the village. Upon entering the cave, one would rethink the laughter related to protection as more like stupidity for living outside such an amazing natural wonder. But I'm not going there after giving up my Rites-of-the-Goddess training.
Jackal walked beside me down a path through the flowstone.
It's funny how a lifetime's lessons are impossible to shake when all a person wants to do is forget the dogma brainwashed into her head by the age of eighteen. Eight years in hiding with an amazing mate had given me ample time to write
off most of the unpalatable doctrine. Not that the belief and principles were bad. Just something I could always see through and proven false as revealed by the events in my life.
Although, no honorable Goddess would abandon her devout follower the way the Goddess made me witness my parents' death, leave me at the hands of rapists, and then take the only thing I had left-John, the man who brought me back from the ledge of suicide-when it was all said in done. Justice served? Maybe. But how cruel. I'd always prayed and studied. For what?
Why in the world am I thinking about this now?
We stepped around a bend in the path into a serene place jingling with a little more than a trickle of flowing water.
A surreal place of faint wayward sunlight mingling with shadow. Where the muted sunlight came from, I couldn't see. But there was just enough blue light to dance upon a pool Jackal led me toward.
At the water's edge on the right, the water rolled in a gentle trickle of a rush over wet stone, downward a few feet into the pool.
Recharge. Beautiful and peaceful.
"Go ahead and bathe." He thrust a palm at me. "Use this soap. The stuff in the basket to your right is lye. You don't want to use that trash. It's eaten me alive before."
He really was looking out for me. I plucked the circular bar from his warm palm.
He shot me a wink and turned his back, striding away.
The pool was a good twelve feet across at its widest. Although, the basin was anything but round. The edge spread out, reaching for walls, in anything but a recognizable shape. The cavern bent and bulged, leaving corners hidden away like some giant had squeezed the rocks with both hands and some spaces oozed out between the long-gone fingers. Water filled most of the floor of the space. All but the edge where Jackal walked, skirting the bath like he stalked some prey in his camouflage.
I'd be wise to hurry and strip to submerge in the water before he turned to face me.
Or was he providing me with privacy? Probably.
The man had a gentle way about him. Even though I'd seen him kill.
But I'd never hold his defending me against him.
That was just another reason to go along with Tornado's plan. I'd simply have to accept things have changed. That my future began the moment John's last breath eased from his body and left me here with his brother.
Besides, widows married their brother-in-laws all the time these days. For security. And more so because some brother-in-laws loved their brothers' widows enough to cling to them through the aftermath of a mate's loss. That's where I was.
The aftermath.
And I needed to hide. From the aliens and their hidden agenda for Cougars. I watched Jackal's broad shoulders, the bulging muscles in his arms, the strength and compassion in his stance as he walked slowly away from me, studying the pool's mirroring surface.
Protecting me. Maybe because of a moral obligation. But the Shifter had honor.
* * * *
The splash of water indicated my soon-to-be mate had found a seat in the pool, Jackal concluded. Time to bathe and complete the binding. Not here though. I wanted her in my bed. Where I could shut the door and hide our private union from village censure. Nobody had any business seeing my woman's nude body or what passed between us. I turned.
All I could see of her was in profile. She sat nude in the water with her side facing me. Where she could watch me with her peripheral vision. Her long wet hair covering her breasts.
Good thing. I didn't need any more temptation to push me over the edge and get on with the marking here. Her request to bathe was enough to shatter my resolve in marking her to allow her whatever she needed to be happy before Tornado's law had to be upheld. I'd help her every way I could. But the marking had to take place in the end. Afterward, I wouldn't touch her unless she asked me to.
She turned that pale blue gaze to me when I was a few steps from where she sat rubbing a lather between her palms. But she only watched me a moment then acted like I wasn't present.
Was she terrified I'd attack her?
She didn't radiate fear.
Or sorrow.
Just what danced in her mind? I grabbed my boot and yanked, then turned to the hem of my shirt. Within moments, I leapt, nude, into the deepest part of the cool water, massaging away four days of travel.
How would she react when I surfaced? Terrified? I thrust my head above the jigging water's surface and wiped water from my eyes.
She had shifted her seat, deeper into the shallows, where her breasts were submerged enough to allow her nipples coverage from the snatch of the dancing water's dark surface. Still, she focused on working up a lather to bathe away our journey's grime.
I could have chuckled. Swam over and playfully borrowed the soap. Most women would have swum out to me and wrapped their arms and legs around my body to anchor their smiles before my lips. Offer themselves in hopes of my accidentally biting them when dipping into the molten velvet of their hot souls. Not Sierra. She probably housed so much grief she'd never come to me. Funny how I swore I'd spare a mate the torture of worrying for my return every time I left to pull my weight in protecting the village. Every time I risked death outside Death Summit's walls. So, I didn't mate. And here I float wishing the one woman I wanted to risk causing her additional pain enough to mate with her would acknowledge my presence.
Especially when the village daughters hurled their bodies at me.
I had to go and choose a widow. My brother's. A woman I'd never met until a few days ago. We had nothing between us but a dead man who had stolen her heart. I really had no right demanding she give me hers today.
But she'd gone and touched me, almost intimately, twice since we met.
And my Wolf craved her.
A knot tied in my chest.
Shit. I wanted her after she'd touched me.
But how would she react to me?
Once I marked her, no other woman in my bed would satisfy me.
Would she feel the same? She was just a Normal. She'd never have the permanent tie to her I'd create for myself during the marking. Would I live to regret the decision to take my brother's widow under my protection?
Especially when I craved her touch.
* * * *
He spent a lot of time swimming, Sierra thought, scrubbing the soapy lather deeply into her scalp. He hadn't snatched me up and groped me though. Nor had he even looked my direction since he first surfaced. I'd lose my mind waiting for him to take care of Tornado's business. He needed to just mark me and get it over with. I dunked my head forward and ran my fingers through my drifting hair to rinse the suds.
By the time I slung my hair down my back, he had eased over to float at my side, sat, and held out a palm. "Soap." He wore his signature contemplative gaze.
What did he think? I handed over the slippery circle of magic-the lemony soap.
He arched a dark eyebrow at me. "Feel better?"
Actually I did. Soap and a lot of water worked a special kind of magic that chanting and prayer never yielded during my priestess training. "Yes."
He rubbed up his own lather with his gleaming wet muscles like he masterfully turned the tip of a stick against stone to make fire.
Fast. Determined. Would he handle my body the same way? Hopefully he would just get the job done and leave me to a good night's sleep. To heal. The bite alone in the marking shouldn't cause any residual pain. Everything else probably would.
"You're still afraid of me," he said softly, eyeing me with one eye in profile while he worked the lather in his palms.
Goddess, who wouldn't be afraid? Look at him. He was enormous. Not fat. That body I'd watched out of the corner of my eye had just enough fat on it to soften his hard edges. Just enough cushion to house his bulging veins where they warned he could take whatever he wanted.
Shit.
This was really happening.
But I chose him because he'd always seemed so caring. Understanding of my situation. Lord, he was so damned big that he'd certainly
lock me down with his weight alone. I'd be at his mercy.
Before, during, and after the bite.
Why didn't he just get on with marking me?
He rubbed froth over his head, neck, and shoulders.
Maybe asking to help with his back would win me a bit of gentleness when he took my body.
He dove underneath the pool's dancing surface.
Too late to make a peace offering. I guess my being tortured in this life given I couldn't return home to my clan was inevitable. My sisters of the Rites of the Goddess would force me back into training I never appreciated though. Not even my father was here to stand up to the sisters like he'd done all those years when allowing me to learn to hunt and use weapons-sacrilege to all of the Goddess sisters except the enforcers. I was trapped here or forced to set out on my own, into The Wild, a woman alone, hunted by Normals in search of brood stock or women to sell into prostitution.
A woman couldn't win in this world.
At least at Death Summit, I could live without the dogma of priestesses trying to control my Cougar. And Jackal would protect me from other men.
Jackal surfaced his mass of glistening musculature with a spray of water and reclaimed his seat at my side.
I just stared at the jigging water's surface.
Now? Would he just get the marking over with?
"Look at me, Sierra."
I managed to. Maybe not dead on. But I did look at him.
"I'm going to have to touch you once for the marking. But I swear I'll not touch you again until you ask me to."
Oh, the sincerity.
My heart tied into a choking mass.
Why did I want to cry? There couldn't be any tears left inside me after two nights of shedding my memories. Trying to let go. Clinging to my ghost of my John. I just nodded at Jackal.
His fingertip took the underside of my chin and forced me to look into his welcoming green eyes. "I've never bonded myself to a woman. But I know what it's like to want to feed the beast when it surfaces to feed during sex. And I know it's not an uncontrollable moment. A man who can't control the marking isn't worthy of taking a mate. You're safe, Sierra. I swear it."