Cougar Wants [Cougarlicious] (Siren Publishing Classic)
Page 1
Cougarlicious
Cougar Wants
During a weekend with her two lifelong friends, Kimber Jordan decides she wants to become a cougar. When financial difficulties arise, she chooses to rent a room rather than ask friends or family for help. When the pizza delivery guy asks to rent the room, Kimber is intrigued. He’s younger, gorgeous, and makes her dream of things she’d forgotten.
Tate Pierce, a cougar shape-shifter, has worked multiple jobs for so long he doesn’t remember what free time is. When he delivers Kimber’s pizza, he realizes she is his lifemate. He doesn’t care that she is an older woman. She is sexy and beautiful and everything he wants in his mate.
When work comes between them, Kimber takes drastic measures to show him there is more to life than work.
Can Kimber help Tate change his life goals to include her? Will this cub be able to tame his cougar?
Genre: May-December, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length: 25,614 words
COUGAR WANTS
Cougarlicious
Cooper McKenzie
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
COUGAR WANTS
Copyright © 2012 by Cooper McKenzie
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-823-4
First E-book Publication: July 2012
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
If you have purchased this copy of Cougar Wants by Cooper McKenzie from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.
The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.
This is Cooper McKenzie’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. McKenzie’s right to earn a living from her work.
Amanda Hilton, Publisher
www.SirenPublishing.com
www.BookStrand.com
DEDICATION
This one’s for Jinger Bruton, one kickass cover artist, and a woman I am honored to call my friend.
COUGAR WANTS
Cougarlicious
COOPER MCKENZIE
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
“What’s wrong with men?” Kimber Jordan asked as a gray-haired man older than they were two-stepped by with a woman maybe half his age.
“What do you mean?” Stacy Covey asked. She sounded lost at the strange change of subject while Gwen Ford waved at the passing waiter without success.
It was the first night of their semi-annual Girls Only Weekend, this time in Houston. Gwen had been filling them in on her son, Grant, and his latest loves and adventures. But Kimber was tired.
Tired of being alone every night.
Tired of these twice-a-year weekends of girl talk and problem solving.
Tired of trying to figure out how they had reached the week of their fortieth birthdays without men who loved them by their sides.
“Why is it men our age and older feel the overwhelming urge to chase after sweet, young things half their ages? What’s wrong with us? None of us looks like we just turned forty. We’re not dried up, old crones, and we’re all successful women. Why don’t we have men lining up to dance with us? I mean, if they can do it, why can’t we?”
Kimber knew she sounded bitchy, but dammit, she was tired of sleeping in her queen-size bed with only Max, her loveable but spoiled mixed-breed dog, filling the other half of the bed. Her friends stared across the table at her as if she had stepped over the edge of sanity.
“What are you saying, Kimber? You want to start dating boys my son’s age?” Gwen asked after taking a long draw on her strawberry daiquiri.
“Maybe not quite that young, but I’m saying I’m tired of being a good girl, of being proper. I’m tired of waiting for an age-appropriate man to walk up to me and propose or fall at my feet and declare undying lust. And if dating younger men makes me a bad girl, then I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to become a bad girl and a cougar.”
Stacy smiled as if she was beginning to understand where Kimber was headed with her rant. “And younger men have stamina and the ability to get it up more than once a week, too,” she added with a giggle.
“Stacy!” Gwen admonished before turning to Kimber. “So, how young are we talking?”
She sounded hesitant and skeptical, but that was Gwen’s way. While Kimber, the creative one, was the ringleader of the trio, Gwen was the voice of reason and sanity that had kept them out of jail on more than one occasion. Stacy was the practical one who followed wherever Kimber led, but carried a GPS and a bag of cookies with her, just in case.
Before Kimber could reply, Stacy pulled out her smartphone and started typing. “Cougars are older, usually successful women who date younger men,” she said, squinting as she read from the tiny screen.
“Yeah, we got that part already. Isn’t there some formula or rule about how young a man is too young?” Kimber asked, wishing she had brought her computer tablet with her. That, at least, had a screen big enough they could all read.
“Hang on,” Stacy said as she brought up another screen. “Okay, here it is. The rule is to date no younger than half your age plus seven years. In our case, we’re talking twenty-seven-year-olds.”
“Twenty-seven?” Gwen squeaked as she gave a distasteful shiver. “That’s only a few years older than Grant. There’s no way I can look at anyone that young no matter how sexy he might be.”
“So, how young do you think you can go?” Stacy asked patiently as she slipped th
e phone back into the pocket of her blue jeans.
“Um, well, I’ve never thought about going younger. I’ve always dated older men. And Patrick was twelve years older than me.”
“Well, think about it,” Kimber encouraged, trying but failing to sound gentle and encouraging. “Just remember, a younger man will be better able to handle your power surges and keep up with you in bed.”
“Yeah, then maybe you won’t blow through vibrators as fast as you do,” Stacy teased, referring to Gwen’s killing three vibrating sex toys in the last year.
Gwen blushed. “Why did I ever tell you about that?” Then she, too, began to giggle.
Kimber joined in, and the trio laughed until they were wiping tears. Then she said, “Because we have been best friends since the second day of seventh grade, and you tell us everything.”
They had seen each other through boyfriends and breakups. They had stood up at each other’s weddings.
When Stacy showed up one weekend ten years before with a black eye, split lip, and three broken ribs, thanks to her ex-husband, Gwen and Kimber convinced her to get out, divorce the rat bastard, and start over.
When Gwen’s husband dropped dead from an aneurysm, she called them before calling her family.
And when Kimber had left the advertising world to follow her lifelong dream of being an artist, those two were the only ones who applauded her decision. They also helped her through the divorce from her husband shortly afterward because he did not like the fact that she was making herself happy and still bringing home the same money. He wanted her as miserable at her job as he was at his.
She was closer to these two women than she was to her own family, even if she only saw them twice a year.
Glancing back to the dance floor as they waited for Gwen’s decision, she watched a bald man who was probably ten years older than they were waltz by with a much younger woman in his arms.
“Thirty,” Gwen finally said. “I don’t think I can go any younger than thirty.”
Kimber nodded. “Sounds good. Stacy? What about you? How young are you willing to go?”
Stacy smiled, though her mossy-green eyes looked sad. “I don’t care how young or old he is as long as he treats me right and makes me laugh. How about you?”
Kimber hesitated. This philosophical discussion was all well and good, but could she go through with it? Would she be able to look at younger men as anything other than someone to take care of? Would she be able to find someone who wouldn’t mind dating a woman entering her fortieth year who some days felt closer to eighty than forty?”
Sure, she looked younger than her age, was still in great shape, and had a personality that other people sometimes found childish. She had also maintained an innocent air that her ex-husband had often chided her about, especially in light of the work she now did.
“Whatever it takes. My biggest challenge will be actually meeting someone. Sometimes working at home in my pajamas isn’t all the glory that it could be.”
For the first time since they had started this conversation, Kimber wondered if maybe she should back off from what she was proposing.
Stacy reached out and patted her hand. “Don’t worry, someone will pop into your life when you least expect it. Just keep your eyes open, keep the faith, and continue putting together those kick-ass covers.”
Kimber’s art had shifted once her divorce had been finalized. While she continued working her own art, the bulk of her income came from being a cover artist for several erotic romance e-book publishers.
“So, for our next weekend, we bring our young lovers with us. Since we’re going to Kimber’s, maybe we can rent a beach house with lots of bedrooms and lots of privacy,” Gwen said, looking excited by the prospect of this new challenge.
Kimber and Stacy nodded in agreement before finishing off their drinks. Then they decided they had had enough of being ignored in the Houston bar, so they headed back to Stacy’s house and the hot tub in her backyard.
Chapter 1
“Arrrgh! I hate money!” Kimber screamed as she threw the pen in her hand across the room.
It had been three and a half months since her return from Houston, and after working on the household budget for the last hour, she was in need of another weekend away from her life. Not that she could afford it, but it was a nice thought.
She had been squeaking by financially for months, but last week, she’d had to replace all four tires so her car would pass inspection. The unexpected expense had eaten up her pitiful savings as well as a big bite from her monthly budget. Even if she gave up eating, there was no way she could make the budget come out even.
“Okay, girl, so what are you going to do about it?” she asked aloud.
She refused to ask her parents for money and did not want Gwen or Stacy to know how deep her financial troubles had grown over the last year.
“Real job or…what?” she continued.
After standing up and stretching, she wandered through the house looking at her possessions with a critical eye. Was there anything she could part with that would bring in enough money to keep her floating for another month without giving her sleepless nights of guilt?
Books filled shelves but they were hardly collector’s material. The few nicked and dinged antique collectibles she owned were family heirlooms, and if her mother found out she sold them, Kimber would not have to worry about paying the bills because she would be dead.
Walking through the rest of the house, she stopped at the room she jokingly called the guest room. It was the size of a nice walk-in closet in a modern house, but sixty-some odd years ago when her house had been built, it had been considered a bedroom.
She looked around at the packing boxes piled around the rooms. Boxes were still full even after living there for two years. Sighing, she had to admit that no one would pay rent for a closet.
Stepping to the end of the hall, she looked into each of the other bedrooms as well. Her bedroom was the second largest room while her office slash studio filled the largest. Walking into the office, she admitted she might be able to rent out this room. But how much would a renter pay for a bedroom when they would have to share a bathroom?
“And how are you going to fit all this into the guest room?” she asked as she looked from the shelves of books and supplies for her art.
Her gaze then moved to her desk with the computer she used for her work and then the tilt table that was more of a bulletin board than a drawing table. There was just too much stuff to move this into the guest room.
“So, you move your bedroom in here and the office into the bedroom. It’s not like anything exciting has happened in the bedroom since you moved it.”
Just thinking of all that needed to be done before someone could move in made her tired. Walking back down the hall to the dining table where she had left the bills, checkbook, and budget, she sighed again, feeling overwhelmed. Renting out a room was a solution to her money crisis, but would it actually pan out before the electricity and water were cut off?
And how was she to do all this moving by herself in a timely manner when she still had work to do?
“One thing at a time,” she murmured as her stomach grumbled.
Looking at the clock, she realized the day had slipped away from her. Thankfully, she had gotten an early start on the cover work due that day. She had finished them and sent them off before turning her attention to the budget issues. Friday was pizza night, and though she could not afford it, she refused to go without her weekly fix.
Picking up the phone, she dialed the pizza parlor’s number quickly. When a voice answered, she placed her normal Friday night order of a thin crust pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, and extra cheese. The only change was that she ordered an extra-large instead of a medium. If stress eating didn’t get to her, she could freeze half to keep for next week.
Once assured her dinner would arrive within the next thirty minutes, Kimber turned her attention back to the matter of renting a r
oom. She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk and found a piece of white cardboard, which was free of the doodles she did when thinking or talking on the phone. Using several wide-tipped pens, she drew a colorful and artistic “For Rent” sign with her phone number printed underneath.
It took a few minutes to find a plastic sleeve to keep her sign pretty and a few more to find a nail and hammer so she could post her sign. Stepping out of the front door, she looked around the small covered porch for the best place to hang her sign.
Deciding the post would be the most visible from the street, she positioned it, holding it in place with the nail. She heard a car pull into the driveway, and she glanced over her shoulder. The pickup truck had no lighted sign on the roof, but she was not expecting anyone else.
Dinner had arrived.
Lifting the hammer, she decided to finish hanging the sign before dealing with the pizza delivery guy. Bringing it down, she missed the nail and slammed her thumb instead.
“Oh, shit, damn, damn, damn, ouch,” she cried out as pain flashed through her thumb and all the way up to her elbow.
She dropped the sign, nail, and hammer. Barely a second later, her big toe screamed with an identical pain as the hammerhead landed on it.
“Having trouble?” a deep voice behind her asked. He sounded amused at her pain.
“Duh,” she replied sarcastically.
Looking over her shoulder through the tears that filled her eyes, Kimber felt her heart pause for several beats before it began to pound. This was not Aaron, the normal pizza delivery guy, who had shown up every week for the past six months. Aaron was barely out of high school, short, pimply, and about twenty pounds overweight.