The Cougar's Pawn

by Holley Trent

  Odd. He wasn’t in line to win a McArthur Genius award any time soon, but her quick one-eighty ramped up his wild kitty skepticism.

  Her fingertips skipped down his back to his waist, and she ground herself against him again.

  This time, he pulled up with his hiss. “You know, I like a morning romp as much as the next guy, and I’d love to get your clothes off, but your behavior is weird right now.”

  “You mean, I’m not doing it right?” Her expression suddenly went very flat, as did her voice.

  “Doing what right?”

  “Being the lovestruck, moon-eyed Cougar mate.”

  “You’re playing me. You think I’m stupid?”

  She shrugged. “Had to try.”

  “Why?”

  “To get your guard down. You do have a nice dick, though, dirty red.” She winked.

  “For fuck’s sake.” He crawled off the bed and yanked the covers off her. “Rise and shine, brat. Got a busy day ahead.”

  She sighed, thrashed a few seconds, and got up. She gave his midsection a malevolent leer as she headed to the door.

  “Keep those dirty looks to yourself,” he said as he righted the covers. “I know you want me, Ellery. I can smell it. It’s okay to want me.”

  “Wanting to fuck you and wanting you as a person are two different things. I happen to know how to compartmentalize.”

  “How about we start with one? I’m under no pretenses that it’ll lead to the other. There’s nothing wrong with a mutual mercy screw.” He fluffed his pillow and propped it up against the headboard. “I’m man enough to admit it’s been a while for me.”

  Nineteen months, to be exact.

  She put her hand on the doorknob and stared at the floor. Shifting her weight, she seemed to be at least considering the offer, which totally floored him. He didn’t get the impression that she was hard up, whereas at the moment, he would take what he could get. He wouldn’t be able to resist his mate for long, even if she hadn’t yet agreed to stay.

  “I’ll pass,” she said softly.

  Odd. No snark. No vitriol. He didn’t know her well enough to guess what was on her mind, but given the way her scent had mellowed so quickly, he suspected it wasn’t something he should poke at.

  “Let me know if you change your mind. I won’t hold it against you.”

  “No, I imagine you won’t. You’d be holding me against you.”

  He couldn’t help his grin, though from her end, it probably looked like a sneer. Cats tended to have to work harder on expressions. He could feel like he was smiling broadly and actually not be. “That, I would be. Cougars appreciate a good cuddle following a fuck. Keep that in mind, too. I’ll take umbrage if you roll away when you’re done, mercy screw or not.”

  She opened the door to the sound of Nick’s coughing on the monitor. “Better put on some pants, dirty red. You’re on the daddy clock now.”

  • • •

  Mason dragged the collapsed Pack-n-Play from the corner of the woodshop and set it up behind the reception area.

  Ellery sank onto the rolling chair at the desk and folded her arms over her chest. “What do you expect me to do all day long while you’re cutting wood?”

  He opened the portable crib and set Nick into it. He tossed in a couple of toys and chewable books.

  That should entertain him for all of fifteen minutes.

  Usually, his mother kept an eye on Nick while Mason worked, but she had her hands full with Hannah and Miles at the moment. Hank and Sean still didn’t know which woman to pick. They’d seen no clues and had no dreams. At some point, Mom was probably going to make them draw straws and get it over with. Miles was fidgety, but distractible. Hannah kept running toward the door. Mom may not have been a cougar, but she was fast when she wanted to be. It also helped that Mom’s deadbolt needed a key to unlock, and Mom wore it around her neck.

  Mason pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long exhale. “If you get really bored, you can do some filing, though I don’t expect you to. We just happen to be behind on that since Mom quit being our receptionist.”

  “Hmm. With you as her boss, I wonder why she’d do such a thing.”

  “Very funny. Believe it or not, her world doesn’t totally revolve around her children. The ranch is hers, and she’s pretty hands-on with it. The wood business was Dad’s.”

  “Good reason to be busy. I’m sure she doesn’t miss the big fat zero you paid her, too.”

  “We paid her.”

  She pushed up an eyebrow. Little witchy skeptic.

  He sighed. “Okay. Usually. Hank does most of the bookkeeping and Sean does pretty much all of the face-to-face with customers. I try to keep the shop from falling apart. Between the three of us, we usually get our act together.”

  Kind of. They’d stopped reading their online reviews. They all said the same thing, more or less: Superior product! Rude customer service. Take your blood pressure meds before phoning.

  “Have you considered hiring someone to do sales and admin? Someone pleasant, perhaps?”

  “It’s going to be a long two weeks if we can’t get through a single conversation without you insulting me.”

  “But you set yourself up for it so prettily. Doesn’t he, Nick?”

  Nick made a little “Ha” sound and waved a board book at her.

  “I already read that one, but thank you. I highly recommend it. Just watch out for the foreshadowing on page eight. That furry monster is up to something.”

  And damned if Nick didn’t open the book. Huh.

  Mason gave her a questioning look.

  “What?”

  “Are you using witchcraft on my kid?”

  “No. My magic doesn’t affect minds. It’s physical.”

  “He’s acting like he understands you.”

  “Babies process more language than they can actually use. Have you tried talking to him?”

  Nick looked up very pointedly at that moment and stared at Mason as if he were daring him to lie.

  Mason let out a breath. “Not the way you do.”

  She put her elbows on the desktop and tented her fingers. Her smile held the perfect balance of know-it-all and don’t-push-me. Typical Type A, just like Mom. No wonder he couldn’t make sense of her.

  He closed the glass door between the front office and the woodshop, and knocked on the large window behind the desk to get Ellery’s attention. He made the universal sign for I’m watching you by pointing to his eyes, then to her, just in case she hadn’t figured out yet that running was pointless.

  She just stared blankly at him. He pulled the door open. “I mean it. Don’t try to make any outgoing calls from the desk, either. We’ll see the extensions light up on the phone back here.”

  “You’ve got every base covered, huh? You should consider making this kidnapping thing a career. You’d earn a pretty penny in ransom.”

  “But then I would have to deal with even more women who hate me.”

  “Speaking of women who hate you, I want to see my friends.”

  “Later.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “You have my word.”

  “You’ll have to prove to me that means something.”

  “Tell me how to and I will.” He started around the shop to turn on lights and machinery. A lot of the machines were due to be replaced. Some were older than him. They’d served his dad well for a lot of years, but Mason couldn’t help but to wonder how much faster work would be if they had newer tools. Yet another thing on the to-buy list, right below a new truck.

  The shop’s side door creaked open and one after the other, his knucklehead brothers tracked in the desert dirt. Sean went immediately to the front, pulled open the partition door, and strode to the schedule clipboard hanging on the wall near the playpen. He gave it a quick glance, then bent to ruffle what little hair Nick had.

  He looked back into the workshop and winked. “How’d you sleep?”

  Mason gave him the finger under preten
se of scratching his nose. Nick was watching. It wouldn’t do for him to pick up any of his father’s bad habits.

  Hank, now standing at the desk in front of Ellery and shuffling through the paperwork on top, called back, “It’s a valid question.”

  “And inquiring minds want to know, right?”

  “For good reason.” He pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper and squinted at it, then at his watch. Shrugging, he picked up the phone’s handset and dialed a number. “You’re leading by example. We just want to know what that example is.”

  Even from the back, Mason could hear Ellery’s sigh.

  “Ignore them,” he said, and set down the length of oak he’d been eying. He was already two days behind on a custom cabinet job, and he still needed to fix that molding problem from the last one. Doing damage control in the front office took priority at the moment. His brothers weren’t what he’d call loquacious, but they had a knack for packing a lot of punch in a few syllables.

  “We’re impossible to ignore, big brother.” Hank perched on the desk edge and tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder, still shuffling through papers. “Yeah, this is Hank Foye at Foye Woodworks. I’m calling about your overdue invoice. We’ve got about half the parts of your bookcases lined up here and ready for drop-shipping. They’re taking up a lot of space. When should we expect payment of the remaining balance due?” He set down the papers. “Sure, I’ll hold. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “Who are you calling at six in the morning?” Ellery asked.

  “It’s eight on the east coast,” Hank said with a shrug. “I’m ruthless when it comes to collections, but I limit my cruelty to regular business hours.”

  “How much money are you talking?”

  Hank crooked a thumb in her direction and grinned at Mason. “She doesn’t beat around the bush, does she?”

  Mason shrugged. “I’ve never known an alpha’s mate who did. Answer her.”

  “I’m not your mate,” she said.

  “You are for the moment.”

  “Ten thousand dollars, babe,” Hank said.

  “Don’t call my mate babe.”

  Now Hank gave him the finger.

  “It’s a big custom unit,” Hank told her. “Full-wall bookcase for some politician in D.C. who can’t tell his head from his asshole but has deep enough pockets to purchase Foye products.”

  “Wouldn’t it be less expensive for them to hire a local carpenter?”

  “It would be,” Sean said, “but people recognize our style. They’ll pay a premium for it.”

  “How long has your family been at this?”

  “Third generation.” Mason leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms over his chest. “Nick will be the fourth.”

  “Assuming he doesn’t go Coyote and won’t want to stay in one place for more than three days,” Sean said.

  Hank tossed a wadded ball of paper at him. “Shut up, man.”

  Sean shrugged. “What? She was going to find out, anyway.”

  Ellery said nothing, just swiveled in the seat and stared at Nick, who was watching them all with keen interest.

  Sean sauntered over and extended his hand to Ellery. “You’ve seen me in my birthday suit, but we haven’t yet been properly introduced. Sean Foye.”

  Ellery hesitated, but after a few seconds, put her hand in his and let him shake it. “Ellery Colvard.”

  “Pretty name for a pretty lady.”

  “Sean,” Mason warned.

  “What?”

  “You need something to do?”

  “Nope. I need to go supervise that installation in an hour. Just waiting on the crew, assuming they’re on time. Cougars have a hard damn time getting up in mornings. I really want to start having a human backup crew on hand.”

  “You can glue and clamp a lot of cabinet trim in an hour.”

  “Fine.” Keeping his gaze locked on his brother, he bowed and kissed Ellery’s hand.

  She had the temerity to blush.

  Mason was going to kill him. Or let his cougar kill him the next time they shifted. Either way was fine. Either would be messy. The cougar wouldn’t worry so much about the fratricide guilt, though. Might even be a good thing—it’d put Sean out of his probably mate rejection misery. Maybe someone would do the same for Mason.

  “Don’t get your hackles up.” Sean strode to the storage bin and grabbed a bundle of clamps. “I’m just helping you out a little.”

  “In what way?”

  “She only smells a little like you. If you call yourself staking a claim, you’re not doing a very good job. Some other cat might think she’s a free agent.”

  “And you think contaminating my scent with yours will help?”

  Sean shrugged. “They’re close enough. To anyone who isn’t a Foye, they’d be indistinguishable.”

  “You’re such a goddamned saint.”

  “I keep telling you that. You never want to believe me.”

  Hank hung up the phone and dropped his papers into the already-full inbox on the desk. “The senator’s bookkeeper is cutting us a check and we should expect it by Thursday. Need to get the rest of that job back in the work queue. It’s high priority now.”

  “Why, just because the client is a senator?” Ellery asked. She bent over the side of the Pack-n-Play and pressed a tissue to Nick’s snotty nose.

  Mason only looked at her ass a little. Couldn’t help it. It was silly to think he’d resist such a sight, especially given how he’d been so good so far.

  “As if that weren’t reason enough, no.” Mason watched her patiently wrangle infant snot for what seemed like five minutes. When she’d tossed the tissue, he added, “He’s a shifter. We try to sow goodwill where we can. You never know when you’ll need a favor.”

  “Such as greasing the wheels so certain broken laws go unpunished?”

  “Hey—”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. It’s the Cougar way. Laws are just strongly-worded suggestions for you all.”

  “Have you been around many shifters, Ellery?” Hank asked. He stood at the glass customer entrance with his back to the room. There might have been some ranch staff or even their installers on the dirt road.

  “Mostly Wolves,” she said. “I’d say the group I’m in is allied pretty closely with them.”

  “Your coven?”

  “No, not my coven. My coven is a joke. Was a joke, rather. My sister and I got booted from it last year.”

  “Why?” Mason set down his pencil and joined her at the desk. “I’ve never heard of a coven outing members unless they’d done someone harm.”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’re technical witches.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning they do everything by the book. Measuring ingredients for potions and chanting very precise spells. They’re not magic users.”

  “And you and your sister are?”

  She didn’t answer. She just leaned forward and made a little circle in the air with index finger in Nick’s direction.

  His hair fluttered as if someone had opened the door and allowed in the breeze.

  Nick let out a delighted shriek and rubbed the top of his head. “Gah!”

  “Again? Okay.”

  She did it again, and Nick’s response was no less enthusiastic.

  She smiled—a genuine smile for Nick that made his daddy’s black heart fill to bursting—and looked up at Mason. “It’s wild magic,” she said. “Technical witches tend to be of the opinion that we shouldn’t try to harness wild magic and that it’s inherently dark.”

  “You think otherwise?”

  “I don’t have a choice but to think otherwise. Recent events persuaded me that in spite of being shunned by a lot of people in my life who didn’t agree with my choices, I … ” Her shoulders dropped and her smile fell away. “I guess I couldn’t keep ignoring what I was born to be.”

  “What kind of events?” Sean asked.

  She didn’t answer. Her fo
rehead furrowed, and her stare went unfocused as if she’d gotten lost in her own head.

  Mason squatted in front of her and rested a tentative hand on her knee.

  She didn’t swat it away, surprisingly, but did focus on it, then him.

  She didn’t want to say. That was okay. Probably didn’t trust him, and he didn’t really expect her to. He wasn’t gullible enough to think that drama and conflict within a group of supernaturals was unique to his glaring. In spite of everything, he didn’t have it the worst. He would never claim to. He did want to know what had disconcerted her, though. He had to be interested—to be kind. If he didn’t, he may as well give up on meeting La Bella Dama’s challenge.

  “Suppressing nature is rarely a good idea,” he said. “You can only roll with it and keep getting up when it knocks you on your ass.”

  “You would know?”

  “Yeah. I would. I battle with my animal half every waking minute. I may seem pretty stable, but sometimes I’m not myself … at least not who people know me as. Some days, I don’t know whether it’s me or my cougar calling the shots. I’d like to be able to pin all my bad decisions on him and his impulses, but that’s something young Cougars do. Grown men take responsibility.”

  Her gaze tracked over to Nick in the playpen.

  Most women would see him as baggage. A reason to say no to Mason. That was the least of his concerns at the moment.

  “You being a witch makes my life somewhat more difficult, but if that’s what you are, don’t repress it for my sake.”

  She let out the tiniest scoff and stared down at his hands. “As if.”

  Better than fuck off, at least. That was progress.

  He stood and backed to the shop door. “I’ll try to finish up by eleven so I can take you to the store.”

  She nodded and looked up right as Hank stepped away from the front door. A ranch hand stepped in, holding his arm tight to his chest.

  It took barely a second for Mason to scent the blood.

  “What the fuck did you do to yourself?” Hank pulled back the front of Darnell’s jacket and took a look. “Shit, man.”

  Darnell, pale as a winter sunrise, sat on the hard plastic chair near the door. “Got into a little brawl last night at the bar.”

  “Last night? Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” Mason sniffed. Fetid. Infection.