A Cougar's Claim (Charmed in Vegas Book 7)

by Jennifer James

  The words evolved into something new with each note Kit sang. When he trailed off into a whisper, Rhiannon felt gutted, a shell with nothing left inside but her world-weary heart.

  “Growing up I hated it when people sang that song to me,” she said, and cleared her throat. “And then you sang it to me that summer. And all this time I hated it even more because you weren’t around to sing it to me anymore.”

  “I’ll sing it whenever, wherever you want. I’ll sing you anything you want.” Kit kissed her shoulder, the shell of her ear, the top of her head.

  “Don’t make my any promises. Don’t kiss me like you’re going to stick around.” She scooted away, intending to head for the bathroom and stay inside until he left. A black side table with a telephone on top sat next to the bed. The walls of the room toed the line between gaudy and edgy modern; every piece of furniture and art work held black, red, and white in the palette.

  “So how should I kiss you?”

  “You shouldn’t. No kissing.” What should she say?

  Kiss me like you love me.

  Kiss me like I matter.

  Kiss me like I’m the last woman you’ll ever kiss.

  Kiss me like I’m air, like I’m water, like I’m priceless beyond measure and you can’t live without me.

  Kiss me the way I ache to kiss you.

  She couldn’t say those things. Not to him.

  The mattress dipped and he clambered off the other side. “I’ll get you something for pain.”

  “Okay.” Too bad they didn’t make medicine for heart break. Rhiannon stretched for the phone, whimpering in discomfort. If only he understood that physical pain was the least of her problems. “Where are we?”

  “The Phoenix.”

  Holy hell. The most lurid, infamous hotel on the Strip? Great. Well, everyone who liked to throw shade and start rumors about her being a prostitute in addition to a burlesque dancer would have a whole bunch of ammo for their trash talking now.

  “Baby Jesus and all the crackers. Why The Phoenix?” She dialed Inila’s number from memory and left a message when the dragon shifter didn’t answer. What if the demon Lilith went after her too?

  Inila was a dragon, practically impervious to harm, but that didn’t mean Rhiannon didn’t worry about her friend.

  “Some friends of mine thought it’d be easy for me to get in here without shocking the front desk staff.” Cabinet doors banged and a faucet ran.

  “Why would you shock the front desk staff somewhere else?” She propped herself up on her elbows for less than ten seconds and decided that was the worst decision she’d made yet that day.

  “I was naked.”

  “You were....” A rather large part of her was pissed that she’d missed the show. Mmm, naked Kit.

  If she could have punched herself in the face for that dangerous fucking train of thought, she would have. Multiple times. Who cared how he looked naked? Not her. No ma’am. “Oh, you shifted and didn’t have your clothes.”

  “I had my clothes. I would have had to lay you down on the ground so I could change or have someone else hold you. No way in hell that was going to happen.” Kit crouched next to the bed and dropped three white pills in her open palm. “Here.”

  Blinking to clear unexpected tears from her eyes, she forced herself to look anywhere but at him. He couldn’t lay her down long enough to get dressed? Her heart thumped in her chest too hard and too slow.

  “I don’t think I can swallow anything right now.” She clenched her fingers around the tablets and stared at the geometric pattern in the carpet. Kit smelled too good again, his pheromones trying to convince her some mattress dancing was a good idea. He also looked amazing, even if the faint pink lines of new scars marred his abdomen, his upper lip had a split in it, and what might be blood was crusted under his fingernails.

  “I’ll crush them and put them in water for you then.”

  “Please, stop. Stop doing this.” She dialed the number for The Howler. The owners of the bar would be pissed at her, but she could barely move, let alone dance. At least she could explain things had gone sideways because of shifter shit and a demon and going to jail without having to hide parts of the story like she would with humans. What the hell time was it, anyway? Was it even the same day?

  “Stop doing what? I got you some pain medicine.” He shifted from one foot to the other, his shoulders curled inward, but he put both fists on his hips.

  She left another message, a thread of worry starting to take root. Where were Inila and the staff of The Howler? The bar, at least, should have had some one there to take a message.

  And then there was Kit. Hovering around her, acting like he expected a swat on the nose or something. How very odd. How irritating. Kit wasn’t supposed to be acting like an insecure boy. Big strong alpha males didn’t do that. The last thing she had time for was coddling a butt hurt man baby. “Just...get away from me. I want out of here. I’m going home and I’m going to curl up in my bed and sleep until some of the pain goes away.”

  A sound rolled out from his lips, in such a deep octave that all the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose. The glass of water rattled on the side table. Cold fear, the kind that lived in the part of her brain that still feared the dark, marched on unsteady heartbeats across her skin. Arousal trickled along behind the fear.

  Uh-oh. Maybe he wasn’t being a baby after all. Or she’d pushed him past the line of trying to be careful with her right into alpha-hole territory.

  Well, good then. She understood the alpha-hole mentality.

  Except this was Kit.

  The noise swelled, larger, larger, larger, until a full bodied snarl crawled free from Kit’s lips. “I’m trying damn hard to be patient. To take care of you. To not do anything that will get you hurt further. To not scare you or be an overbearing alpha asshole. But you’re testing me to the limit. I’m a shifter who needs to take care of his injured, fragile mate.” Kit crouched next to the bed, his eyes reflected the low light in the room back to her, the irises the strange green and gold hue of his beast. Fangs pricked his lower lip. “Take. The. Fucking. Pain. Pills.”

  She tossed the tablets in her mouth and chased them with water. Being bossed around with the right touch of aggression turned her into compliant goop. God help her if he ever figured it out.

  The pills caught in her throat and she coughed, water dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Kit swiped at her chin, the rub of his thumb arousing despite her injuries and the all too obvious reasons she should tell him to fuck off. What did that say about her—getting wound up over him cleaning her face off like she was a baby dribbling drool?

  “Shifters are nothing but trouble.” She gasped from pain, trying to roll into a sitting position, shivering when Kit helped her upright. He stuffed pillows behind her back, still growling and huffing under his breath, cussing every other word. “My daddy was right. He told me I’d end up nothing but a piece of ass to be used and tossed aside, dead in a ditch. I’m halfway there already.”

  Kit snarled, gripping the sheets on either side of her thighs in a white-knuckled grip. The tendons and veins in his hands stood out from the tanned, calloused skin.

  “No one is going to kill you and throw you into a ditch. Not while I’m around.”

  Relaxing back a tick into the pillows, she tried to control the way her heart fluttered. She didn’t fear that Kit would harm her, not physically, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being kinda scary. “And just how long will you be around?”

  Their gazes locked, less than an inch separating their mouths, each breath mingling in the air between them.

  “You’re here to get Jase and go home. Right? Some kind of thing with his dad or whatever. You’re his father’s second, so you being here instead of at home means his dad—the alpha—wants him home yesterday.” Rhiannon pushed hard on his sternum. “Why else would you be here in Vegas? You didn’t come out here for me.”

  Kit didn’t budge. She might as well
have been trying to knock over a mountain.

  “I don’t know how you got into this mess you’re in, but I’m not going to leave you alone to deal with it. We’ll figure it out together.” He leaned in so close his lips brushed hers when he spoke. “How long will I be around? Forever. You’re my mate. Accept that. I’m going to help you. And then we’re getting the hell out of Vegas because it is too fucking dangerous here.”

  “Unless you’re sitting on millions of dollars—which I highly doubt—the best thing you can do to help me is to help me find Jase and then throw him to the ogres.” Rhiannon struggled to her feet, the high density hotel carpet ticking the soles of her feet. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so horrible. “And you can’t do that because his daddy is your alpha. So that means I can’t have you helping me find him. And who said I’m moving out of Vegas? You don’t decide that for me.”

  “Mate. Enough.” Crowding her, moving her head from side to side, extending her arms, and dropping to his knees to check her rib cage, Kit nudged, nuzzled, and even sniffed her.

  With his cougar so close to the surface, she knew she had to hold still and let him have his way. Rhiannon stood docilely in place and tried to stifle the tiny noises escaping her throat with every movement. “I’m okay Kit. I’m just sore.”

  Kit growled, a soft vibration at her pulse. “I wanted to scratch you while you were out so you’d wake up healed. I didn’t. You can’t imagine how hard it was....”

  Madness. This was madness. Emotions leaping all over the map like a bead of water splashed into a skillet, Rhiannon knew he’d managed to gain another foothold in her battered heart. Skating her fingertips over his brow and down to the nape of his neck, she kept her voice low, stroking the sensitive area over and over until his shoulders relaxed. This would be so much easier if she didn’t want the whole mate thing to be true. “Any chance you got a room with a hot tub?”

  “I didn’t get the room.” Kit licked one particularly sore area on her neck, and tingling heat spread across the flesh in a spider web of healing energy.

  Too close, too concerned, and too fucking sexy. Her knees knocked together. “How are you doing that? It feels...better.”

  “Good. You’re my mate. I can help you feel better, if you let me.” He licked her again, slower this time. “There’s more than one showerhead. No tub.”

  “If you didn’t get the room, who did? Please don’t say Inila.” She wobbled across the room, needing distance to cool her rising desire. Her stiff legged gait made her feel more like one of those creepy walking kid’s dolls than a trained dancer. She needed space from him before he busted through the last of her defenses.

  Kit prowled on her heels. “It wasn’t the dragon. I know better than to borrow money from a creature that values things more than people. Why did you take a loan out from a crime family?”

  “Touche. Sounds like you’ve got a handle on everything. Inila fill you in?” Taking his silence for an answer, she sniffled. Of course the damn dragon would have told him. Inila didn’t have a human’s sense of tact. Unable to stand the way her salt crusted clothes stuck to her body any longer, she peeled her jeans down her legs. “Any more judgments you want to make about my choices?”

  She dragged her shirt up over her head.

  “It’s not a judgment.” he stared at her chest, his eyes glimmering with lust.

  “It’s not?”

  Two deep breaths. Four. Dropping his head to the side, he offered his throat. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Fighting to inhale past the constricted muscles in her belly, she tried to shove the urge to hurl herself into his arms and bawl like a baby aside. “Yeah, well I bet that a pet python just wants to give you a hug but you end up with broken ribs anyway. I knew the risks. I made a decision under extreme duress. It was the wrong one. ” She turned and headed into the bathroom, the cool tile floor a shock. “Not my first time thinking I’d examined every angle and still came out wrong.”

  “You didn’t imagine our mate bond.” He followed too close, the width of his shoulders almost filling the door way. “You weren’t wrong. I failed you. I should have talked to you about my concerns, about my fears. But you need to remember, we were kids. Kids. We couldn’t even legally drink.” Kit’s breath puffed hot across the crown of her head. “Give me another chance. Please. Tell me what’s going on, how you got into this mess. Let me help.”

  Rhiannon shook her head and swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “You’re right. We were young. So damn young. But here we are again in a crazy, high stress situation where no one should be making huge, life changing choices. You want me right now while I’m an attractive female neck deep in an ocean of shit. How far do you think that’ll get us? Lots of shifters have wanted me short term, Kit. But none of them wanted me enough to make an effort to keep me.” She yanked on the clear glass door of the shower stall and almost smacked it into the wall.

  “Enough. I’m here. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grown ass man and I know, with everything in me, with every fucking beat of my heart, that you’re mine. You’re my other half. You’re my perfect fit and I’m yours. So the timing sucks. So what? If you wait for the right time, the perfect time, you’ll die without ever knowing how amazing we can be together.” He towed her back into his chest. The heat of his body sank into her, comforting her, easing tension from sore, cramped muscles. The blunt edges of his teeth closed over the back of her neck and she shuddered. Hot tingles slid from the point of contact to her breasts, belly, and lower. She squirmed against him, restless. Reckless. “I won’t ask nicely again. Either you tell me exactly what’s going on, or I’ll tie you up and eliminate the threat.”

  “Screw you,” she whispered. She wanted to stomp across the tile, slam the shower door in his face, kick his shins, and have a big sob fest in the shower. But, God, she wanted this, wanted him so bad. Just the fact that she wanted it this much, wanted him with an intensity that was an ache in her bones, meant she should be hauling ass out of there. But he had saved her. Fought for her. Taken care of her. He wanted to help shoulder her burden and he said everything right and he felt amazing behind her, like a bulwark of strength she could lean against, but.... But.

  But he’d destroyed her before. She wasn’t that same naïve girl who believed in love and soul mates and fate. Not anymore. She wanted to. Oh, man, she wanted to. More than all the light from every star in the sky.

  But he hadn’t looked for her. All this time, he hadn’t tried to find her. Him finding her here in Vegas was nothing but a coincidence. And that meant something, didn’t it? He’d had years to track her down, and he hadn’t.

  “You’re not going to screw me. I’m not going to screw you. What’s between us can’t be reduced to screwing.” Hard capable hands gripped her waist, the nails elongated. Memory filtered into her consciousness of that night so long ago, when he’d had her in a similar embrace. “You want to take your anger out on me, I get that—I know I deserve it. But we mean more to each other than a simple screw.”

  “What do you think you’re doing? I don’t want you touching me.” Such a lie. More than anything she wanted to cover his hands with her own and let him comfort her. “Even if you were at-the-height-of-his-sexiness Sam Elliot, I wouldn’t let you touch me. You make everything confusing.”

  Shoving him away, she shimmed out of her panties, trying not to feel sorry for herself, trying to deny how much she didn’t want to be angry anymore and give in to him instead.

  Because in part, he was correct about everything. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with an ogre mob boss. But what choice had she had?

  “For the record, when you find yourself out of options one day, and the only thing you can do to help someone you love means you’re basically lashing yourself to the rails of the Titanic...and you do it anyway, that thing that’s going to end up killing you...I hope you remember how judgy you got on me and you feel like a huge, steaming, pile of elephant shit.”

  The co
ld steel knobs turned easily under her grasp. Rhiannon ducked into the corner of the shower to avoid the initial freezing water that shot out of the shower head.

  “Who did you do it for?” Kit slunk across the tile, his cougar turning his irises gold, his gait the smooth, smoky bass line of an old jazz song. “Who would you fuck yourself over so royally for?”

  Water droplets spattered on her shins, warm enough now to remind her of a thicker, hotter substance. How she imagined the blood must have felt when her mama had her accident.

  “You know sometimes things happen and it’s a slow slide into hell. My mama was alone after Daddy died. A few years ago she fell in the shower and hit her head. A stroke. The stroke was bad enough, but the fall...she cracked her head open. The doctors said she might have recovered from the stroke if she hadn’t fallen.... ” Water washed over her, enveloping her in warmth and softness, helping to obscure the way her voice cracked. “Thank goodness a neighbor had made arrangements to come by and look at some of her remaining stock animals. She would have died in there. She needed twenty-four-hour care after that, and I didn’t want her stuck on a state funded plan. I managed okay for a while. I think I thought she’d get better. I didn’t want to sell everything off right away or put the ranch in hock to the government so she could get state assistance. I kept thinking she’d recognize me....”

  “Sweetheart,” he murmured. She’d never heard a voice more tender. The spray slowed, and the weight of heavy, muscular arms enfolded her. “You sold off everything, didn’t you? The land your parents had was worth millions. And when that ran out, you turned to Mancini?”

  “I was able to keep up for a while. I had to sell it fast, below value. The market’s down, and even if it wasn’t there aren’t too many buyers out there for what my family had.” She threaded her fingers through his, seeking the comfort of his touch. “I miss the land, the mountains, the wildness of it, the stillness and the calm...but none of it mattered next to taking care of my mom. Even when I wanted to be with her, had to stay here and keep working so I could pay. She got worse recently and it was like she just decided she’d had enough. I went home for a few weeks to say goodbye. At that point, all the money I had was gone; a small personal loan from the bank helped me make ends meet here for a while.” A new kind of pain lanced her. “We weren’t...close. You know. But she did her best to push me as far away from my father as she could. She loved me.”