The Cougar's Mate Read online

  “I take it you don’t like beef, huh?” Glen asked. “Otherwise, you probably would have grabbed the jerky. It’s good jerky. If Mrs. Foye didn’t hate me, I’d ask her what all she puts in it.”

  Just ask her, Glen.

  “She’s such a good cook,” Glen mused. “I guess she’d have to be, though. Those Foye men are damned picky. I don’t know how she puts up with them.”

  Floyd huffed. He wasn’t picky at all. In fact, he even said “thank you” to his mother for the meals sometimes.

  “Her grocery totals have to be astronomical.”

  Floyd tried to nod, but he had to way of knowing if the motion had the intended effect. He didn’t have a human neck at the moment.

  Sighing, Glen pulled another handful of jerky out of the bag. “It’d make going home with Floyd easier if she didn’t dislike me so much. I don’t know if I could endure it.”

  That plaintive complaint made Floyd get to his feet and go to Glen.

  She flinched when he sat in front of her, and he kept very still so she could see he wasn’t the thing she needed to fear.

  If she had her wits about her, she’d figure that out soon enough. Once the fear went away, logic would sweep away her doubts and pave the way for revelations. He had to count on that. Glen was one of the most logical people he knew. Always had been, and ruthlessly so at times.

  Glen pulled her knees against her chest and laughed softly. “She used to be really nice to me when I was little. I don’t know what happened.”

  Fate happened.

  Floyd was tempted to shift back so he could tell her. He’d always known Glen was his, and when he’d told his mother at age sixteen, she’d become afraid for him. She’d feared Floyd would be rejected and would spend the rest of his days pining away over a human woman who didn’t want him. A moping alpha would end up being a dead alpha, and no mother wanted that for her son.

  Floyd would wait for Glen to come around. He had to.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  That cougar didn’t seem particularly intent on going anywhere, so Glenda figured she could sidle away from the wall and go looking for Floyd.

  She had no idea how long he’d been gone—only that he hadn’t been there when she’d opened her eyes and that she and the cat had been having a staring contest for about an hour, according to her watch.

  “Maybe this is his den,” she mused, and stood slowly. She put her hands out toward the cat in a soothing gesture and whispered, “I’m just going to go look for my boyfriend.”

  The cat stood.

  “No, no. You stay there. You don’t need to follow me.”

  The cat shot around her and sat at the entrance.

  Growling, she tried to dart behind it but it got up on its hind legs and swatted at her.

  She jumped backward, clutching her chest. “Oh, come on!”

  She tried to go the other way to the same effect. “Just move. I’m trying to get out of your hair…or fur or whatever. Just let me go.”

  The cat sat.

  She didn’t think for one moment that it was going to cease its harassment of her, though. That predatory glint to its dark amber eyes disabused her of that notion.

  Plopping onto the sleeping pallet, she groaned again and drummed her fingertips atop the covers.

  Tossing food for it hadn’t worked. Asking it to move hadn’t worked. She sure as hell wasn’t going to try to fight the thing. That would have just been stupid.

  She tapped her finger against her chin and narrowed her eyes at the cat. “Maybe I can sneak out when it falls asleep. Cats sleep all the time, especially this time of day.” At least, the cats on the ranch did.

  Yawning, the cougar stepped onto the pallet with her.

  “Seriously, cat?”

  He curled up beside her, lashing his tail against her leg.

  It was almost as if he understood English.

  She cleared her throat and gave his head the tiniest of pats. “You understand English?”

  He made some sound that was half snarl and half wildcat meow.

  “You do, don’t you? I’m not losing my mind, am I? I’m telling you things—asking you things—and you’re responding.”

  He got up onto all fours, pressed his paws to her shoulders, and pushed her flat on to the pallet. Then he curled up next to her again.

  “This. Is. Weird.”

  She pushed up onto her forearms and looked over at the big beast. She’d never been up close and personal with a cougar before, but she was fairly certain they didn’t come that large. He had to have been well over six feet long from hind paws to the top of his head, and his shoulders were broad. If he were an animal like whatever was taking down the cattle at the ranch, she could see how it would have been so easy for him. The thing had vicious claws and fangs.

  The “vicious” beast gave Glen’s forearm a long lick.

  “Ew! Stop that.” She wiped the slobber off on Floyd’s side of the covers thinking it’d serve him just right for abandoning her to be assaulted by the animal.

  She scoffed. “I bet Floyd would do that on purpose. He’d be just the kind of fool who’d make friends with the wildlife. That’s why you know English, right? He’s been out here giving you all the words he won’t give to me. Typical Tarzan.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave the beast a sideways glance.

  If a cat could wear a bemused expression, she would have thought that particular animal had one.

  “You even look like Floyd when he makes that face. You’ve probably been around him too long. Or maybe it’s witchcraft or something.”

  She batted her braid loose and swatted some of the grass and dirt out of her hair. “Magic or some…” She stopped combing and fixed her gaze on the staring cat. “But Floyd’s not a witch. He said he’s not, and I think I would have known if he were. I mean, the witches in town aren’t exactly secretive about what they are. The locals seem to tolerate them okay because the witches are all nice and helpful.”

  She considered the witch Agnes who worked at the grocery store to be something of a surrogate aunt to her. Agnes always had helpful little tips for Glen whenever she went in to pick up supplies. Some were more helpful than others. Knowing how to read the meat department labels to tell how fresh a piece of pork was definitely qualified as useful. Being able to discern a werewolf from a regular wolf…not so much.

  “Werewolves don’t exist,” she’d always said to Agnes, and Agnes always gave her those long blinks from behind her thick glasses, and then muttered, “Okay, sure, hon. You believe that, then. One day you’ll wish you’d listened because you won’t remember what I said.”

  “But they don’t exist,” Glen said to the cat. “Werewolves and stuff like that aren’t real. Things like that can’t stay in hiding.”

  The cat sat up.

  “You think they do?”

  She wouldn’t have sworn it in a court of law, but she thought the cat nodded.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m losing my mind. I bet your best friends are werewolves, huh?”

  It shook his head.

  “Are you really talking to me, or am I just loopy from fear and dehydration?” I’m going to kill Floyd if he’s not already dead.

  The cat moved quickly to the crate, rooted through it once more, and pulled a canteen out between his teeth. He dropped it on Glen’s lap and retook his spot beside her.

  She didn’t want to touch it. She was pretty sure she was loopy and imagining things. She thought that perhaps it was all just a dream and nothing in the past twelve hours had happened.

  “I’m probably still back at the Double B,” she said, sounding more confident than she actually felt. “Might have bumped my head after falling off a horse or something.” She swallowed hard and tightened her fingers around the canteen.

  But it didn’t seem like a dream. Her vision was too clear, and the movie around her didn’t fade away with the realization she was starring in it.

  “If it’s not a dream, then wha
t is it? Magic?”

  The cougar made a huffing sound and shook his head again. It seemed a very human display of frustration—a very Floyd action.

  “Floyd…”

  The cougar bumped the side of her arm with his nose.

  “You’re not…you can’t be. That’s just silly. Those things don’t exist.”

  He made that noise again.

  “Do they?” She reached out, tentatively, to stroke the top of his head, and he let her. He pushed his head into her touch and caressed her hand.

  “This doesn’t make sense.” She rubbed under his chin and gently stroked his whiskers. “Or does it? If witches exist, there could be other mortal beings with different kinds of magic, right?”

  The big cat purred.

  Pulling her hand away, she sucked in some air. She didn’t think that cat was going to hurt her, and he should have. He was a hungry predator, and she was weaponless prey.

  “But you don’t want to eat me, do you?” She pushed her hair behind her ears and hesitantly met the cat’s gaze.

  Brown with gold rings around the pupils. So beautiful. She’d seen gold rings like those before. In fact, she’d spent long evenings looking into them under the moonlight. The eyes in that cat were intelligent and old. Just like Floyd’s.

  “Like…Floyd’s.”

  The cat bumped her hand with her nose.

  “Floyd?” she whispered.

  He shook himself hard, and his wretched snarling sound made the fine hairs on her neck stand on end.

  She moved away as he writhed atop the pallet, and when the man burst free, bones still shifting back into a human configuration and skin stretching grotesquely, she screamed.

  And then fainted.

  At least, she must have, because all she could remember was falling, and the world around her fading while Floyd’s admonition of, “Baby? No, don’t black out,” echoed in her ears.

  * * *

  Glen opened her eyes to find Floyd leaning over her and her head atop his lap.

  Throwing her hands down to the pallet, she tried to push away from him, but his rigid grip around her waist was too tight. He didn’t even have to try all that hard to hold her, and now she knew why he’d always been so damned strong.

  “Let go of me,” she spat.

  “I need you to be still, Glen.”

  “Let go!”

  “No.” He rolled her toward his body, pressing her face against his belly, making her inhale his familiar, earthy scent. “I’m not gonna let you move until I’m sure you understand what you saw.”

  “You’re some kind of freak. That’s what I saw.”

  If her sharp words affected him any, he didn’t show it.

  He rubbed her hair and rocked her a little, humming quietly.

  Or purring?

  He was purring. She hadn’t wanted to believe that he was some kind of cat, and apparently the mental overload had made her pass out.

  “Floyd, I don’t understand.”

  “This is what I am—what the Foyes are. You understand. You just don’t know how it’d be possible.”

  Maybe that’s true. “Have you always been like that?”

  “I was born like this. My family’s been like this for centuries.”

  She tried to sit up again, and this time he let her. She was under no illusion he was going to go far, though. If he had reflexes just like that cat, he’d be on her before she got to the cave entrance. She swallowed. “Does…does anyone know?”

  He nodded slowly and leaned back onto his forearms. Long, lean, and strong.

  Cat.

  That certainly explained his stealth. His grace. Even his beauty. Anyone that handsome couldn’t have been human.

  She swallowed hard and closed her eyes against the visual onslaught. She felt stupid for not suspecting something was off about him in all that time. The pride she had for her unique understanding of the inscrutable Floyd Foye evaporated like dew under a hot sun.

  “Who knows, Floyd? Tell me I’m not the only one who didn’t know.” She opened her eyes and pinned her gaze on him so he’d see the dare in them.

  Lie to me. Go on and lie.

  He grimaced and rubbed the scruff on his chin. “It’s not as big a secret as you’d think. We’re not rare. Shifters, I mean.”

  Grinding her teeth, she nodded. “Then why didn’t I know? Why didn’t you tell me long ago?”

  He shifted his gaze toward the cave opening. “I wasn’t supposed to.”

  “What do you mean you weren’t supposed to?”

  “I’m only telling you now because it wouldn’t be fair to you if I didn’t. You’re my mate, Glen. I don’t want anybody else. Can’t even look at anybody else like that. That means I’m…gonna act a certain way, and you’re gonna think it’s not normal. You’re gonna think I’m stifling you sometimes or that I act before thinking too often. When it comes to you, I’m all instinct, no matter how much I wish that wasn’t the case.”

  “You were never going to tell me?”

  “That’s what’s bothering you the most? Not the part about you being my mate or that I’m this…thing you never knew existed?”

  “Take me home, Floyd.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no? You can’t keep me here against my will.”

  He scoffed. “Did you hear what I just said? I’m not gonna act normal when it comes to you, and now you’re telling me to take you home. No, I’m not gonna take you home. If you run, I’m gonna chase you.”

  “Do you understand how deranged that sounds?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea of it.”

  “You were going to let me marry you without ever telling me this about yourself?”

  “I was hoping that it wasn’t so important. I need you to be with me in spite of what I am.”

  “Not important?” She wrapped her fist around her ponytail and gave it a frustrated tug. “You’ve got to be joking. You’re some kind of…animal that I’ve never seen or heard of before, and you think that’s not important? I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me. I don’t know anything about you at all, do I?”

  “Come on, Glen, don’t be like that.” He opened his arms for her, but she moved just out of his reach.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “You’re acting like you don’t know me, but you do. I’m still the same Floyd, just with one less secret now.”

  She scoffed. “Well, it was a pretty big secret. You being this…cat, and…your family, too? Is that really why your mother hates me?”

  His mouth opened, but he was too slow to answer, and that was all the response she needed.

  “It is, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s not that simple, baby. The truth is, your folks have known for a long time about what I am and what my family is. They didn’t want us boys anywhere near you.”

  “They knew.”

  “I’m sorry, but they did. I told you, it’s not that big of a secret. My mother has always been cautious because me and you together…well, it was just gonna be tough, Glen.”

  “And now you’re trying to take away my choice.”

  “You have a choice,” he said quietly. “You always have a choice. You can tell me no and put your foot down. You can leave right now, but if you do, I’m gonna chase until I can’t anymore, and then I’m gonna hurt. I need you. You have no idea how much I need you.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked herself a bit. She needed the soothing movement. Her agitation was half from nerves and half brought on by the sudden chill. The precipitous drop in temperature meant some much-needed rain was probably about to blow through, and knowing her luck, it would be too heavy for her to run home in. She’d get drowned in a desert flash flood. The irony didn’t escape her.

  Lightning flashed across the sky, thunder shook the earth nearby—too close—and then the heavens opened up. It wasn’t a shower. It was a weather event, and she’d been too eager to run off w
ith Floyd that she hadn’t checked the forecast.

  She let out a ragged exhalation and buried her face against her knees. “Damn it.”

  “This is our way,” Floyd said quietly after a while. “When we have to take mates who don’t know.”

  “You steal them?”

  “We take them away from the distractions until they can say yes or no for sure. I don’t want you to say no, Glen, but I couldn’t wait any longer to be with you, either. Maybe there was a better way to go about this.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just stay away from me.”

  “Glen—”

  “No.” She picked her head up and held her hand up in time to see him heading over. “Just…stay over there. Give me some space. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

  “Just tell—”

  “Nuh-uh. You don’t get to decide who gets to talk right now. You didn’t talk when it mattered, so right now, you don’t get to say anything.” She huddled against the wall beside the pallet and pulled the covers around her.

  For a long while, she watched the rain and meditated on how the arrows of water were so quickly absorbed by the parched desert soil. The land was thirsty, and the bit of green that would appear on the pastures in the coming days would be a welcome sight to her father. If the cattle had grass, they’d need less grain and hay.

  When Floyd shifted in her periphery, she turned her head just enough to see him clearly.

  He sat cross-legged against the opposite wall, head hung and his curtain of dark hair shrouding his face.

  At that moment, he looked approachable. Glen had always thought he was, but not too many of the girls in town would have agreed. He had a tendency to be surly and impatient with the people he didn’t want to be around, and he didn’t even pretend to be social. He wasn’t social, except with Glen, and that had never hit home for her in such a way before.

  She leaned the side of her head atop her knees and watched him curl and uncurl his fingers against the cave floor again and again.

  She wondered what he was thinking, or if he was even thinking.