If he fought for her, her mother would deny him, or worse, she would ridicule him in front of the pride by pointing out his failings.
“My entire worth is tied up in my position. If I break the rules…” It didn’t bear thinking about.
He would be left with nothing.
No one at the pride would want him working on their cabins. They would see to it he was kicked out of the pride just as they had always wanted.
“Ember sees your worth,” Rath murmured gently, his face soft and filled with understanding, and belief. “She sees your true worth, Cobalt. You’re fixating on appeasing her mother, when you should be focused on winning her. Fight for her.”
Fuck, it was tempting.
But it also tormented him.
If he fought for her, he wouldn’t win her. Even if her mother allowed the fight to go ahead, she would only turn him away when he won.
“I can’t do this right now,” he gritted and growled at Rath, frustration getting the better of him as he went in circles, vicious ones that were threatening to rip all control from him again and send him into a tailspin that would end with him losing his mind. “I just want a shower and then I need to check with all the males who are fighting tonight to make sure no one has been fighting over nothing.”
“Take the night off.” Rath’s hard tone brooked no argument but Cobalt opened his mouth to do it anyway. His brother didn’t give him a chance. “I have this, and right now, you’re a liability. You’re too on edge.”
Cobalt growled at that, even though it was true. He bared his fangs at his brother, the fact Rath was benching him and the thought of cooling his heels in his cabin enough to have a need to fight rising inside him. Rath wanted him to fight, and he would damn well do it.
He would fight his brother on this.
He couldn’t sit around doing nothing while he knew males were fighting. Visions of Ember being swept away by one of them, even when he knew none of the fights were over her, would torture him and drive him mad.
Rath held his hand up. “You’re not on duty tonight. You can come watch the fights if you want, relax with Ivy and Yasmin while I take care of things with Flint, or you can go for another run, or stay in your cabin. It’s up to you.”
Cobalt snarled, flashing fangs again as hurt arrowed through him, piercing his already wounded pride.
Rath’s eyes held an apology as he stared into them, seething with a need to make him change his mind. He couldn’t handle this. His brother had just made him feel like even more of a failure by announcing he was unfit to do his duty.
The need to fight goaded him to attack Rath.
He found the strength to turn away instead. He had hurt enough people he loved today.
“I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to fight.” Rath’s quiet voice carried in the darkness, swirled around him and had his steps slowing. “I’d sanction it… because she’s your fated female, isn’t she?”
Cobalt didn’t deny that. He said nothing as he stormed across the clearing, intent on keeping his distance to keep hold of what was left of his pride by avoiding breaking the rules.
Rath’s offer was tempting though, tied him in knots as he passed Ember’s cabin and sensed her inside, moving around it. It tore him between duty and desire.
The door opened and his heart hitched, lodging in his throat. It sank into the pit of his stomach when her mother emerged. She didn’t even look at him. She gave him her cheek as she stared across the clearing.
Cobalt looked there.
At Rath.
At the male she had wanted for Ember.
Cobalt was merely a shadow of his brother, felt that keenly as he looked at him, but fuck, that wasn’t going to stop him.
He wasn’t going down without a fight.
He would fight the world in order to have Ember as his mate and he wouldn’t stop fighting for her.
Because he couldn’t let her and the forever he needed with her slip through his fingers.
CHAPTER 11
Ember did her best to shut out her mother as she moved around the cabin, looking for her favourite pair of black sneakers. She found them in a pile at the back of the elegant wine-red couch her mother was sitting on, picked them up and untied the laces.
“I still feel you should speak with Andre.”
She slid her mother a black look for that one, was tempted to bare her fangs as anger surged through her again. They had been going around in circles since Ember had returned, her mother giving in to her for an hour or so before she slipped and went back to talking about her as if she was a piece of meat to trade.
“We talked about this.” Ember shoved her feet into her sneakers and bent to tie them.
“He’s a good male.” She said those words with such confidence, as if she knew the male personally.
“All you know about him is the fact he has money, a prospering business and a good name. It’s hardly enough to recommend him to me.” Ember finished with her laces, straightened and looked around the room for her black jacket.
It was bound to get cold tonight. The sky was clear, and the air already carried a fresh, crisp note to it.
“Well what would recommend him to you?” her mother snapped.
Ember pulled a thoughtful face as she mused that question.
There was only one answer.
“Nothing.”
Her mother huffed, folded her arms across her chest, sinking her fingers into her thick lavender jumper, and glared at the fireplace opposite the couch. “I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn.”
She was one to talk.
Ember rounded the red couch. She needed her mother to look at her when she said this, needed to know it was sinking in and she understood what Ember was telling her.
“Maybe because it’s my heart on the line? My life? I don’t care whether I’m in heat or not… I’m not sleeping with a male I don’t like.” She mirrored her mother, crossing her arms over her chest, and regretted it when she drew attention to her choice of clothing.
Her mother’s eyes widened as they took her in.
The silver-grey halter-top she had chosen was a little more revealing, and a little more vixen, than her usual plain t-shirt, flashing plenty of cleavage as it hugged her breasts. The colour matched her eyes though, brought out the silver in them, adding to the effect of the subtle make-up she had applied around her eyes, a dash of black kohl and ash grey powder.
“Where are you going dressed like that?” Her mother’s black eyebrows dropped low.
Ember untied her French braid and combed her fingers through the waves to loosen them, so they spilled around her shoulders. “Out.”
“Out where?” She stood and blocked Ember’s path to the door.
“Wherever I want.” Ember went around the back of the couch instead, pulse starting to accelerate as nerves got the better of her, together with just a hint of excitement.
Because she was going to see Cobalt.
His brother was right, and he needed a push, and she was going to give him one. She was going to do things her way for once and she didn’t care if her family disowned her. She would be happy as long as she had Cobalt.
“Don’t wait up.” Ember charged through the door before her mother could say another word, the cool air that hit her as she stepped out into the darkness tasting sweet with a note of victory.
She had leaped the first hurdle.
Now she just had to leap the worst hurdle.
Cobalt.
He was going to fight her on this, she was one hundred and ten percent sure of that, but she was going to fight him right back and she wasn’t going to give up this time, not until she had made him see that she wanted him, loved him, and that she didn’t give a damn about his position, or bank account, or any of that crap.
She just cared about him.
She stormed along the riverbank, her pace so swift she was almost jogging as she headed towards Cobalt’s cabin. Fear drove her. Not fear that her mother w
ould come after her. Fear that if she didn’t reach Cobalt quickly, her nerve would falter, the courage she had mustered bending under the weight of the doubts trying to fill her mind.
She did her best to keep them quiet, to ignore the ones that screamed a little louder in her ears, and kept marching forwards, her mind on her mission.
Lay down the law with Cobalt and stop dancing around things.
But when she reached the clearing in front of his raised cabin and spotted him lazing on the illuminated deck, nursing a whisky and his eyes on the stars, a faraway look in them as soft country music played, she just wanted to dance with him.
Ember blew out her breath and strode towards him, determined not to let her courage falter, to do something before it gave out.
It began to bend as his eyes dropped to land on her and he pushed up into a sitting position, so she took the steps up to his deck as swiftly as she could manage and did the one thing she could think of to rekindle her courage.
His beautiful grey eyes widened as she snatched the whisky from his hand and knocked it back, drinking the shot in one go.
Her throat burned and her eyes watered, and she grimaced as she fought the need to cough.
When she leaned towards the small table set beside his chair, his eyes tracked her and lowered, and it turned out she hadn’t needed the shot of liquid courage after all. The way his eyes burned into her, and the hunger she sensed awakening in him as they lingered on her curves, was all the push she needed.
She grabbed his hand.
He frowned at her. “What are you doing?”
She tugged on his hand and he reluctantly rose onto his feet, an adorable confused crinkle to his brow as he looked between their joined hands and her face.
“What are you doing?” He tried again as she pulled him from the deck, leading him down the steps to the moonlit grass.
She turned to face him, heart pounding and every inch of her shaking, nervous as hell now, but she wasn’t going to give up and run, not anymore.
“Dancing with you.” She stepped towards him.
Hurt flashed through her as he countered her, stepping back to keep some distance between them, his voice gravelly as he said, “That isn’t wise. You need to march your backside to your cabin right now.”
The flicker of gold in his eyes, the way his pupils dilated as he looked down at her, sent a sharp thrill through her that boosted her resolve.
He was hunting her.
He wanted this, wanted her close to him, in his arms. He was just afraid that she would push him too hard again and he would end up hurting her. She wasn’t, and she was going to show him that. Rath was right, and she needed to try a different tack with Cobalt. She had to speak with her heart and not her body.
“What I need right now is in front of me.” She pulled on his arm.
He tensed, going rigid, and she wanted to growl in frustration when she couldn’t move him. Damned males. It wasn’t fair that they were so much stronger than she was.
When he tried to twist his hand free, she refused to let him go, clung to it as if it was a lifeline and she was doomed if she released it.
Realising he couldn’t get his hand away from her, he growled instead, flashing emerging fangs and doing his best to frighten her away, but his display was a shadow of the one he had used on her in the cave.
Because he didn’t really want her to go.
He needed her here.
She could feel it in him.
A glimmer of relief reached her through their fragile bond, and it warmed her, made her realise that he had been worrying while he had been staring at the stars, afraid that she would never come to him again.
“I’m no good for you, Ember.” His deep voice held a resigned edge, one she found she didn’t like as she looked up into his eyes and saw that same feeling echoing in them. “You’re better off away from me… haven’t I proven that?”
For a male who hated others pitying him, he certainly pitied himself a lot.
“Go back to your cabin… to your family. Do what they want, because at least that male deserves you.”
So this was his new tactic? He couldn’t physically scare her away, so he was going to attempt to drive a wedge between them with words he didn’t really mean.
Or was this something else?
Rath had told her that Cobalt needed her to speak with her heart, to his one. He needed to see that she loved him, regardless of everything, that she wanted to be with him and she wouldn’t regret it.
He was testing her, trying to push her away to make her confess the things he needed to hear.
She could do that for him without him hurting himself to make her tell him.
“It’s up to me who deserves me, Cobalt.” She lifted his hand and brushed her lips across it, breathed in his masculine, spicy and earthy scent and sighed against his warm skin. “It’s my decision to make. It’s my damned heart.”
When he didn’t say a word and the emotions she could sense in him remained turbulent and dark, she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his hand, the first flicker of hopelessness running through her.
“You’re not the only one who gets to make this decision, Ember. It takes both of us… and I’m no good for you. I hurt you. I’d… I can’t… I’d just fuck this up too.”
Her resolve started to crumble, her courage taking a hit that left her feeling that at any moment, it was going to give way again.
Afraid that it might, she mounted one last offense, one final shot at getting through to him that was going to leave her wide open for a return salvo that might just destroy her.
She lifted her eyes to his, looked deep into them as he stared down at her, his flinty and as hard as diamonds.
“You really don’t want me?” she whispered, ashamed at herself for not being able to voice those words in a firmer tone, one that hadn’t sounded so weak.
But the thought that he might not want her, that he might insist on her finding another male, and would keep rejecting her until she gave up, cut her deeply, had her throat closing up and breath seizing in her tight lungs.
Tears threatened, burning the backs of her eyes and her nose, and she didn’t want to look weak in front of him, didn’t want him to see how much he was hurting her.
He saw it though.
He stared down at her, the flinty edge to his eyes softening as he looked at her in silence, reading every damned feeling she had wanted to keep hidden from him because the thought that she might have come here only for him to reject her, that he really didn’t want her, was tearing her apart.
Cobalt heaved a long, deep sigh, and the tears she had been fighting filled her eyes as he gathered her into his arms and started to sway with her.
“What are you doing?” She needed to know, because she was terrified that he still might push her away.
If he did it now, after she had come to know the gentle warmth of his strong arms around her, the wonderful feel of them holding her so possessively, so tenderly and protectively, she wasn’t sure she would survive the blow.
“I’m dancing with you,” he muttered. “It’s what you wanted, right?”
She nodded, sniffled a little, and couldn’t stop herself from saying, “You didn’t want to dance though. You don’t have to.”
“Shut up and just dance with me…” he whispered and lowered his head, sighed as he brushed his cheek against the top of hers and held her a little closer. “Because I need this more than you could ever know.”
The damned tears she had managed to get under control came back with renewed force as his words curled around her and he lifted his right hand, sifted his fingers through her hair and clutched her nape, holding her to him.
He was shaking, his strong hand trembling against her, and when she reached out and focused her senses on him, she could feel how much he needed this, how much pleasure just holding her gave to him.
As she turned her head and rested her cheek against his hard chest and listened to his heart
beating, pounding as fast as her own one was, she found her voice.
“I know,” she murmured as she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him, settling her palms against his back and tugging his dark t-shirt into her fists. “Gods, I know.”
She didn’t stop him when he lowered his left hand and caught hold of her right arm, drew it away from him and clasped her hand in his, holding it up by his shoulder as they danced. When he rested his cheek on top of her head, a sigh slipping from his lips, she nestled closer to him and held on to him, absorbing the feel of being in his arms.
It felt like home.
The song changed, but Cobalt kept dancing with her, and she lost track of time as they swayed together in silence. Comfortable silence.
Her chest warmed, filled with light that lifted it, as it dawned on her that she wasn’t the only one who was letting their heart do the talking tonight.
Cobalt was telling her everything he felt without words, all of it on show in the gentle way he held her, in the way he kept her close to him, as close as he could get her, and the way he smoothed kisses over her head, kept breathing her in and sighing in a way that said he couldn’t believe they were doing this.
She couldn’t believe it either.
She finally felt as if she was on solid ground with him, as if she was getting through to him and now everything would be different.
Now, that forever she wanted with him was within reach.
As the song ended, Ember lifted her head from his chest and he drew back. His eyes locked with hers, bright gold in the low light coming from the moon and his cabin. She knew hers looked the same, because she was looking at him.
She was looking at the only male she wanted. The only male she needed.
Her only one.
She rose on her toes and brushed her lips across his, and he was swift to growl and gather her against him, sweeping her up into his arms.
“Make love to me, Cobalt,” she whispered against his lips, his answering groan sending a thrill through her. It was rough, a little raw and feral sounding, and she feared she was pushing him too hard again, was rushing him and was in danger of messing everything up. “Or we could just dance.”
Craved by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates Shifter Romance Series Book 4) Page 11
