She nodded. “Although, I think you won by default anyway, didn’t you?”
True. She had refused Mason’s kill, which had disqualified him from the courting.
“I am the winner though,” he purred and leaned towards her. “I won the courting like I said I would.”
“I never said you wouldn’t.” She feathered her fingers down to his nape and he shuddered as she teased it with a light caress.
He resisted the urge to purr and kept his eyes locked with hers as he stroked his hand down her side and leaned a little closer.
“You going to pick me as the winner?”
Yasmin looped a hank of his hair around her fingers. “It would be rude not to.”
He mock-scowled at her, but let that one slide, because she was enjoying teasing him and after seeing her hurt, he was too happy to see her smiling again to stop her.
“So, I won the courting, which is nice and all… but in the end I think I won a better prize… the best prize possible… one I wouldn’t part with for anything and one I intend to cherish and take care of for the rest of my life.”
Her eyebrows knitted, but then her smile returned and it was brighter than before, damn near blinded him as she tangled her hands in his hair and lured him down to her, so their lips were a bare inch apart and her breath washed over his face.
“And what did you win?” she breathed against his lips.
Flint cupped her cheek in his palm and pressed his thumb to her chin, tilting her head back, so their eyes met. His heart hitched, warmth spreading through him as he gazed at her, into soulful dark eyes that had bewitched him from the moment he had met her, had pulled him under her spell and into something that still felt more fantasy than reality to him.
One that was going to have a happily forever after.
He brought his mouth close to hers and whispered three words, three that had her rising up to kiss him, to sear him and stamp her name on his soul all over again, marking him in a way that made him feel she was saying his words back to him and meant every one of them, viewed him as a prize she would cherish and take care of for the rest of her life.
“I won you.”
The End
Read on for a preview of the next story in the highly addictive Cougar Creek Mates paranormal romance series, Craved by her Cougar
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Cobalt’s heavy black boots chewed up the loose gravel at the edge of the river where he had been wearing a trench since ending his shift six hours ago, pacing relentlessly through the night as he wrestled with himself.
He should have spoken to Rath when he had arrived at Cougar Creek weeks ago, shouldn’t have let it go this long without talking to his older brother. Now, it was getting harder and harder to find the right moment, or even the right words, or the damned courage to tell him what had happened, even when he needed the advice.
He needed to unburden his shoulders before he broke under the weight of it all.
It was a solid plan, and all his brother could do was shoot it down, but fuck, it was difficult just thinking about approaching Rath and laying it all out there. It had him awake most nights, restless and pacing, and he was lucky his cabin was secluded, set away from the others on its own small parcel of riverfront land, or someone would have noticed that he had gone the past four days without sleep.
Shit, someone was going to notice it soon regardless. There was only so long he could make it before one of his brothers took a look at him and finally saw just how thinly spread he was, how stretched tight and in danger of breaking.
Although, the reason he had been losing sleep might have more to do with the spring mating gathering that had called him back to Cougar Creek and a certain female who was participating for the first time.
He tried not to think about Ember, about the fact his raven-haired beauty had finally hit a century old and had matured, and how he had felt the second he had set eyes on her at the creek this time.
Cobalt tried not to think about that every damned second of the day and night, but it haunted and tormented him.
Realising she had come to attend the gathering, that males were going to fight for the right to ease her as her need to mate mounted and he was unable to be among them because of his position within the pride, had been a hard punch to the gut followed by one right in his chest that had felt as if it was going to smash his heart to pieces.
It had left him reeling, off balance and dangerous.
He had arrived at the creek in time to discover Storm, his younger brother, had gone off to fight a bear shifter, and the combination of seeing Ember at the creek looking for a male to take care of her needs and his brother in danger had sent Cobalt into a rage so deep he had come close to chasing the bear shifter when he had retreated, determined to end the bastard and uncaring whether he had to take on the male’s entire pride to do it.
Only the realisation that Storm had been badly wounded had stopped him in the end, giving him something else to focus on and allowing him to pull back on the reins and regain control.
Cobalt shoved his hands through his platinum-blond wild hair and growled as he clawed at it, pivoted and began pacing back along the clearing in front of his cabin, faster now as his emotions started to get the better of him again.
He needed to fight. His muscles felt too tight, clamped on his bones, his entire body pulled as taut as a bowstring and, fuck, he was in danger of snapping.
His claws lengthened, his fangs sharpening as frustration mounted, an explosive mix of anger, shame and bitter disappointment. He snarled, lips peeling back off his teeth, and wheeled to pace back the way he had come, his strides clipped as the need to fight merged with an ache to shift.
Gods, he wanted to surrender to that soul-deep ache.
He wanted to purge every damned feeling that was boiling inside him, twisting him and pulling him apart, and let instinct take over. Shifting into his cougar form would give him that release and the relief from it all he so desperately needed.
His animal form dampened his emotions because it couldn’t process them as easily as his human side so it suppressed them instead. His messy feelings would fade into the background if he remained as a cougar for long enough as his instincts rose to swamp him.
In that form, he obeyed a more basic and uncomplicated set of needs.
Fight. Feed. Fuck. Survive.
It was all that mattered when he was running as a cougar, and it was tempting to let it sweep over him, but it was dangerous too.
Those instincts were liable to send him straight to Ember.
He wanted to fight for her, as the other males could, and, sweet gods almighty, he needed to ease her needs, ached to give her the relief he could feel she desperately needed. Whenever he was close to her, it drummed in his blood and drove him to do something, whatever it took to ensure that she found the release from her instincts, from the mating heat that had brought her to Cougar Creek.
Cobalt tried to push her out of his head, but need flared inside him, made him want to claw his own damned skin off as he twitched restlessly, body primed for the delicate, beautiful female who had caught his eye two decades ago and had been on his mind ever since.
In his heart.
The sun crept higher, breaking the tops of the mountains as he turned away from the creek and paced back towards the other side of his small territory. It chased the crisp coolness from the morning air and from his arms, making him aware of how cold he had gotten in just his black t-shirt and jeans.
Cobalt slowed his step to bask in the light, letting it warm him and wash over him, wishing it would carry away all his troubles as it used to whenever he had bathed in it when he was a kid.
The mist swirled as the air heated, rippling over the surface of the shallow broad river to his right and snaking around his ankles.
He stared at the horizon and drew down a slow, deep breath of the cold air. Narrowed his focus to that distant point where jagged snow-capped mountains met the sky an
d let everything else fall away from his shoulders, until they felt lighter again.
He couldn’t let this go on any longer.
He would go mad if he did.
With Ember’s presence pushing at his restraint, cranking him tight with emotions that were tearing him apart and instincts that were making him volatile, he needed all of his focus to control himself around her and the other males. He didn’t need to be distracted by what had happened.
But Rath was always caught up in Ivy, his beautiful mate, and it pained Cobalt to see them together, so happy and swept up in each other. He couldn’t even talk to Storm because his younger brother was away in England looking into his mate’s half-brother’s background, trying to determine whether he really had been working alone and not with Archangel, a hunter organisation that had attacked his pride almost four decades ago.
An organisation that had taken their parents from them and had come close to taking Storm too.
Just thinking about that night had the need to fight rising again, a wild and feral urge to bloody his claws and fangs in order to protect his brothers.
Cobalt focused on the sunrise again, using it to calm that urge. It was slow to leave him, his fatigue and another night of worrying leaving him worn down and weak to it.
When it had finally flowed out of him, he looked down at his hands.
At his extended claws.
He stared at them, willing them to go away, but they refused.
Fuck.
He needed to speak with Rath.
It needed to be today.
Before he became a liability, a male not on the edge but firmly over it, one who was likely to fight over the slightest thing.
And he knew with a sickening sense of certainty that if he fought, it wouldn’t end there.
He would kill.
Cold went through him, his blood icy sludge in his veins, and his stomach churned.
He growled at himself. He had let this go on long enough, couldn’t put it off any longer or he would be a danger to the pride.
Cobalt twisted on his heel and marched along the riverbank, heading away from the sunrise and towards the area where most of the cabins at Cougar Creek were situated.
Ember’s family’s one included.
His pulse jacked up as he spotted it through the trees nearest the river. The lodgepole pines and spruces sheltered it, providing some cover for it where it stood just ten metres from the riverbank, facing onto the large swath of green that formed the main area of the creek.
Smoke curled lazily from the chimney, signalling someone was up.
His step slowed and he couldn’t stop himself from glancing across at the front of the L-shaped cabin as he entered the clearing and started up the two-hundred metre stretch of grass to where his brother’s cabin stood at the top of it, nestled beneath the trees.
The curtains were drawn across the small windows that flanked the door of her cabin, blocking him out. An ache started inside him, throbbed deep in his bones and had his step slowing further, until he almost stopped and surrendered to it.
He wanted to see her.
That yearning burned inside him, a need he found hard to deny. His instincts pushed him to step up onto her deck and knock on her door, to go to her. Fuck, they more than pushed him.
They demanded it.
She was his.
He knew that.
Gods, he knew it.
It blazed inside him like an eternal flame that was only growing fiercer, burned so hot he felt as if it was going to devour him sometimes, utterly destroy him unless he found a way to calm the raging flames.
There was only one way that was going to happen, and while his position as pride protector had been a blessing before, keeping the females away from him because his duty meant he couldn’t participate in the gathering, it was the worst of fucking curses now that Ember was taking part for the first time.
And he couldn’t.
He had never hated his duty before, but he hated it with a vengeance now.
When he and his brothers had taken it on in the wake of the Archangel attack over thirty years ago, a brutal assault that had left the pride shaken and had forced them to move to a new territory, he hadn’t cared. But then, shortly after they had settled at Cougar Creek, he had set eyes on Ember for the first time.
She had been a long way off maturity, a cherub-cheeked young female who would have looked like a teen nearing twenty to any passing humans.
He had watched over her whenever she had been at the creek, and had used his position as pride protector to keep the females away from him during every gathering, and damn, she had grown into a stunning female with supple curves that set him on fire every time he looked at her.
Idiot that he was, he had wanted to give her time to reach maturity before approaching her, figuring she would make an appearance at the creek at some point and he would be there when it happened since Rath kept him up to speed on who was visiting.
He just hadn’t thought her first appearance after maturing would be a damned spring gathering.
Now he was stuck on the side lines, acting as security for the pride while they were caught up in the mating heat and overseeing all the fights for dominance over females that were breaking out.
Females like Ember.
But she was his, and he needed her.
He needed to knock on that door that separated them. He needed her to open it and look at him with soft eyes, ones that told him he wasn’t alone, that she ached for him too, craved him with the same ferocity as he craved her.
And he needed her to open her arms to him, because what he really needed most right now was to rest his head on her shoulder, wrap his arms around her and just hold her until he felt he was back on solid ground, everything put back in place and right again.
Gods, he needed to hold her until this pain went away, just wanted one moment with her without anyone seeing them, or judging him.
He needed her to hold him together, to lend him her strength and give him courage and hope.
Hope that she would be his and hope that his life could only get better from this point.
He scrubbed his hand over his mussed blond hair, did it so much these days he was surprised he had any left, and huffed as he pushed away from her home and forced himself to head towards Rath’s one-and-a-half storey log cabin at the top of the sloping green.
He trudged up the gentle hill, the growing distance between him and Ember tearing at him, and wanted to growl when a dark-haired male emerged from the woods to his right and he caught the male looking towards the river.
Towards Ember’s cabin.
The hunger in the male’s pale golden eyes had Cobalt looking over his shoulder, seeking the one he was looking at.
Ember stood on the deck, dressed in dark blue jeans and a thick black sweater that hugged her curvy figure, her damp ebony hair blending into the wool as it tumbled around her shoulders. She nursed a steaming mug, gently blowing on it, her profile to him and the other male.
A male who was still staring at her.
Cobalt itched with a need to change course and close the distance between him and the male to drive him away and make it clear that Ember belonged to him. The gods only knew how he managed to stay his course, finding the strength to keep moving towards Rath’s cabin instead.
He glanced at the male again before taking the step up onto the deck that stretched the length of the gable end of the log cabin, finding him still watching Ember. Maybe he could just shoo the male away before rousing his brother. It probably wouldn’t take much. A flash of fangs and a growl might be enough.
If it wasn’t?
He was liable to take things further in order to make sure he left, and he wasn’t sure he had the strength to restrain himself and stop himself from going all out on the male. Hell, the state he was in right now, frayed and close to the end of his tether, there was a danger he would skip the flashing fangs and growling and go straight to beating the shit out of the
male.
So he forced himself to rap his knuckles on Rath’s door instead.
Because if Ember saw that side of him, if she witnessed the darkness he held within him, she would never want him.
He eased back on the deck and glanced up at the triangular window that sat beneath the eaves of the roof as he waited. A shadow moved across them, and then the door in front of him creaked open to reveal his older brother dressed in only a loosely buttoned pair of faded blue jeans.
Rath rubbed sleep from his grey eyes and yawned.
“What’s up?” his brother murmured quietly and his eyes narrowed on him as he finally lowered his hand to press it against the doorframe. “You look like hell. You alright?”
Cobalt blew out his breath. “Can we talk?”
Rath nodded and glanced back inside, up at the loft bedroom, and then reached around the door. He yawned again as he stepped out onto the deck, a navy fleece dangling from his right hand, and Cobalt moved back a step to give him room.
“Ivy’s still sleeping.” Rath tugged the fleece on and scrubbed his eyes again, and Cobalt envied the bastard all over again.
Not because he had a mate this time, but because he was clearly catching some good sleep, and Cobalt was on the verge of crashing and burning. Maybe after he had unburdened his shoulders, he could hit the sack.
Although, sleeping lost its appeal when he glanced over at the male and found him still staring at Ember. He needed to be around to make sure she didn’t do something foolish, like accepting one of them.
He glared at the male and shivered as a hot caress slid down his spine.
Ember.
She was looking at him.
Sweet gods, the feel of her gaze on him stoked the fire burning inside him until it was in danger of decimating his restraint.
He twisted at the waist and looked at her, unable to stop himself as her eyes lingered on him.
She glanced away, her focus shifting to the male, and something crossed her face, something he foolishly read as disgust. She turned and disappeared back inside her large cabin.
Rath slumped into one of the wooden chairs to Cobalt’s right, below the kitchen window of his cabin.
Courted by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates Shifter Romance Series Book 3) Page 17
