Beauty Dates the Beast(23)

So he was having second thoughts about the yucky human virgin? “No,” I said, my voice stiff with hurt. “You should not have.”

He looked further defeated by my tone. “I know you’re a virgin. You probably want flowers and candlelight dinners, and I can’t give you that. But I can make a vow that I won’t throw you down on the couch and ravish you because I can’t restrain myself.”

I frowned. Where was he going with this?

He looked solemn. “I just want you to know that tomorrow night is going to be special for both of us.”

Tomorrow night? The night of his heat? “Are you on drugs or something?”

It was his turn to frown. “What do you mean?”

I gestured at the door. “Your girlfriend—”

“Ex-girlfriend,” he insisted. “I’m not dating anyone in the clan. Not her, not Savannah.”

“You’ve never said who Savannah is to you.”

“Savannah is my cousin. She’s like a kid sister to me. Which is why I want you.”

“Correction,” I said. “You want anything female and convenient. Remember Rosie? Bachelorette number one?”

“Why, Bathsheba, you sound almost jealous. Would it help if I said that once I heard your voice, I didn’t want anyone but you?”

Oh, yes. “No,” I said. I picked up his novel and pretended to read, determined to ignore him.

He plucked the book out of my hands and tossed it across the room. “We need to talk about you and me.”

I got up to go after the book. “There is no you and me.”

He stood, too, blocking my way. “That’s what we need to talk about.”

I glared at him and tried to move around him. He stepped in front of me again. I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. “What?” Damn, why did the man have to be so tall? And broad? I felt small next to him.

He brushed my hair off my shoulders, playing with it. For some reason, he loved my hair. I thought of Arabella’s short curls and felt rather smug—she might have had a kick-ass body but I had prettier hair. Stupid, I knew, but I’d take whatever victories I could get.

“Bathsheba,” he said, his voice grave. “I am extremely attracted to you. I wanted you the first moment that I saw you.”

Flattery happened to be my weak spot. Damn the man.

His fingers dipped to my chin, lifting my blushing face to meet his gaze. “But I have a big problem. Tomorrow when the sun goes down, Savannah will go into heat. Normally when a female cougar goes into heat, she leaves the area so as not to affect her clan. But she doesn’t have that choice this time, and because she is a female in my territory, it’s going to affect me. I can’t do anything about that. I’m … I’m stuck, really.”

His gray eyes searched my face, as if he was hoping to find answers there, or encouragement. “If you and I aren’t going to work out … I need you to tell me now. Otherwise I’m going to have to chase down that bitch Arabella and ask her to spend the night with me. I don’t want to. Hell, the thought of having to do so makes me furious—but if my only other choice is that, I’m going to have to go after her.”

He was laying it all out for me, his eyes earnest. I realized then that all his flirting and heavy-handed possessiveness was for my benefit. If I said no right now, he’d let me go shut myself in my room and never touch me, because he wanted to honor my wishes.

And instead he’d just sleep with that bitch Arabella.

I wavered between my loyalty to Sara and my attraction to Beau. My life revolved around Sara’s safety, but right now I had an opportunity to take something for myself. Maybe I could have this one small interlude before we went on the run again. And I realized, quite suddenly, that I wanted this, and him, very, very much.

He was obligated to have sex, but he wanted me. And I liked that.

I fingered his shirt, smoothing over a damp wrinkle. “You realize that you’ve put me in a very awkward position, don’t you?”

He actually blanched, bless his heart. “I know, sweet Bathsheba.” His hand moved from my hair, sliding to my cheek. He caressed my skin with his knuckles, as if he simply had to touch me.

My heart always gave a little flutter when he said my name like that. “This isn’t exactly how I planned my first time,” I admitted. “I know we’re stuck in this cabin together and you have to have sex tomorrow, but …” It felt a little odd. More than a little odd to think that I’d be de-virginized tomorrow night.

“I’ll make it special for you,” he vowed. “I’ll give you romance.”

“Romance?” My brow furrowed. “What do you have planned?”

He smiled. “Leave that up to me.”

I trailed my finger down his shirt. His pectorals were so hard that I could practically feel the definition of the muscles through his shirt. “Well, if you truly have no choice, then I suppose we have a date.”

He grinned and leaned in to kiss me. “You won’t regret it.”

I tilted my face up for his kiss, thinking that Sara was going to give me such shit when I saw her again—

“Sara!” I blurted, moving my head just before he could kiss me.

His mouth landed on the edge of my jaw. “What about Sara?” he said, not breaking stride.

I gently pushed him away. “You said everyone in the clan is affected by this heat thing, right?”

I could have sworn his eyes gleamed slightly when I mentioned the word “heat.” “Every cougar is, true.”

“So what about Sara? She’s staying with the guys.”

He pulled me against him again. “I told them to hit town tomorrow night. The ones that don’t have a mate usually have a local girl on the side.”

“And who’s going to stay to make sure that Sara is safe?”

“Ramsey. He’s not affected by the heat.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a were-bear. Only cougars will be affected by the heat.”

My relief nearly made me sag. “So what is a were-bear doing in the Russell pack?”

“We’re not really a pack. We’re a clan. More of a corporation.” At my arched eyebrow, he explained. “Were-cougars tend to be loners, drifters. Packs are a wolf thing.”

“But I thought the Alliance was a pack itself.”

“The rest of the Alliance tends to flock to clans, or packs. Vampires have a leader. Werewolves have packs. Fey have their own strange hierarchy. In our world—because we’re so different from everyone else—family and friends are everything. My father realized a long time ago that as loners, we were putting ourselves in a weak position. That if we were going to stand a chance against the rest of the affiliations, we needed to have one of our own. My father created the Russell clan, but not everyone is a cougar. The majority are, but some, like Ramsey, are different.”

“And only two girls? Just Savannah and Arabella?”

“Shifting seems to be a recessive gene. That’s what makes a heat so important and so damn annoying as well. Because cougars have a wide territory, everyone in the entire pack with cougar blood is affected. Savannah and Arabella are the only two cougar women in the Russell territory. There’s more females up in the Northwest, but their men are rather possessive. I’ve never met one.”

“Too bad for you,” I said wryly.

That heart-stopping grin that made me turn into Jell-O returned. “I’m not complaining. I rather like how things have ended up.”


A blood-curdling scream woke me in the middle of the night.



I froze in Beau’s bed, afraid to move a muscle.

The scream echoed again; it sounded inhuman. I’d heard Beau’s wildcat cougar scream and this wasn’t the same. This was nightmarish, twisted.

Not good.

I rolled over and stared at the window, which was covered in frost. I couldn’t see out, but I could see the heavy line of salt covering the windowsill. A faint red sheen flickered in the window, as if there was some sort of red light outside.

Wariness made me slide to the floor, and I reached for the sharpened stake I’d made from the woodpile and stashed underneath the bed.

The scream rose through the woods again, closer, and I raced for the bedroom door. It opened before I could touch it. Beau stood there, grim-faced, his hair tousled, his chest bare.

He looked at my stake in surprise, then shoved something into my other hand. “Take this.”

I felt relief when I realized the cold, heavy weight was a gun. “Is this loaded? Safety on?”

He grunted. “So you know how to shoot? You always surprise me.”

Little did he know. I’ve even killed a man. I tucked the stake under my arm and flipped open the chamber of the gun. Six bullets loaded. “Of course I know how to shoot. I work for a business that deals with undead and werewolves. Are these bullets made of silver?”