Craved by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates Shifter Romance Series Book 4) Read online

  An urge to sink on his ass and just give up ran through him, but he forced himself to push onto his feet instead. He was damned if he was going down without a fight.

  Rath had given him an opportunity to claw back at least a little of his dignity and he wasn’t going to squander it. If he could make a success of working at the creek, that would be worth something.

  Right?

  He wouldn’t be a total failure anyway.

  Cobalt strolled up the gently sloping green to his cabin, took the steps up onto the raised deck, and pushed the wooden door open. The coolness of the long room embraced him, the familiar scent of it offering comfort he badly needed.

  This was his sanctuary.

  Nothing could touch him here, not even the beast he held locked within him.

  He grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen that overlooked the deck, carried it to the dark grey couch that stood facing the stone fireplace that took up a large portion of the right wall of the cabin, and set it down on the worn wooden coffee table. He sank onto the couch, releasing a sigh as its softness gave beneath his weight, and rubbed his eyes as he yawned.

  Gods, he needed sleep, but he wanted to hit the ground running.

  So he leaned over the table, dragged his black laptop to him and opened it as he set it on his knees and slumped back into the couch. He rubbed his eyes again, stifling another yawn as the computer booted up.

  His fair eyebrows dipped and knitted as the screen awoke.

  The internet signal was shitty today, but it would do.

  All he wanted to do was search for some local companies that could supply the metal sheets for the roofing project and fire off some emails for quotes based on a rough estimate of the materials he would need to complete the first two cabins, his and Rath’s, and his best guess on how much more he would need to complete the other cabins at the creek.

  That would hopefully get a good discount.

  There were close to twenty cabins spread around the creek. Most of them were a similar size to Rath’s, but some were close to the size of his.

  He opened a spreadsheet and couldn’t hold back the yawn as he roughly calculated the size of his roof and then the size of Rath’s, and tried to remember how many cabins at the creek matched them.

  Another yawn crept up on him as he searched for companies in the area, and he sent the first two emails. He blinked to clear his watery eyes and covered his mouth with his hand as another yawn escaped him. His fingers danced across the keyboard, but slowed as his eyelids drooped, growing heavier by the second.

  Maybe he needed coffee.

  It was the last thought to cross his mind before he came around to a stiff neck and hot knees. He grunted and frowned as he groggily took in the laptop on his thighs and the long stream of Ts across the screen.

  Crap.

  His eyes dropped to the clock in the corner of the screen and widened as he saw the time.

  Double crap.

  Cobalt shot to his feet, set his laptop down on the table and rubbed sleep from his eyes.

  He was late.

  Rath was going to kill him.

  He rushed around his cabin, stripping off his jeans and t-shirt as he went and grabbing a fresh set of clothes from his bedroom drawers. He tugged the worn black jeans on, bouncing on his toes as he yanked them up, and quickly buttoned them, and followed them with a dark grey t-shirt.

  As he raced for the door, he raked his fingers through his blond hair, trying to neaten it.

  Everything else would have to wait.

  He jammed his feet into his boots and slammed the door behind him, and leaped from the deck, hitting the grass at a dead sprint.

  When he reached the forest, he banked right, cutting through it in the direction of Rath’s cabin rather than heading towards the river. While he preferred that route, this one was faster. He ducked and weaved through the pines, leaped thick roots and dodged beneath low branches, never slowing.

  A few of the males and females relaxing on the decks of the cabins in the woods watched him as he passed, muttered comments leaving their lips that he paid no attention to as he focused on his destination and reaching it before Rath lost a little faith in him.

  When he hit the path that wound through the woods, linking the clearing with Storm’s cabin and some of the others, he stopped just short of colliding with someone.

  “You being chased?” Flint drawled and leaned to his left, trying to see past him.

  Cobalt shook his head, struggling to catch his breath as he leaned forwards to rest his hands on his thighs. “Just late.”

  “Rath isn’t mad.” Flint was a damned mind-reader. His youngest brother grinned when Cobalt lifted his eyes to his face, his smile tugging at the scar that cut across the corner of his mouth. “He asked me to do the afternoon perimeter sweep, and because I’m such a nice guy, I said I would do it. He tried softening me up with some shit about you needing your beauty sleep.”

  Flint peered closer, his grey eyes shining with mischief and his black eyebrows knitting as he scrutinised him.

  “You do look a bit less Hollywood handsome than usual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair so… scruffy… out of place… I honestly didn’t think that was possible. And are those bags under your eyes?” His brother grinned again.

  Cobalt growled.

  He had told Flint a thousand times to quit saying he looked like a damned movie star.

  Both Storm and Flint were obsessed with that, constantly teased him about his looks.

  Some good they did him.

  The gods might have given him the appearance of an angel, but they had made him a demon, and the only female he wanted in this world knew it.

  A hot shiver tumbled down his spine, tripped over his skin and set his nerve endings alight.

  He shifted his gaze to beyond Flint.

  Ember.

  His heart hitched at the sight of her, a thousand urges and needs assaulting him all over again. They fired him up, pushed him to stalk towards her, to prowl around her as he growled and nudged her, briefly making contact as he towered over her, crowded and dominated her, letting her know that he wanted her.

  They pushed him to fight too, labelled every unmated male in the vicinity as a threat to his claim on her as his eyes tracked her.

  Fuck, she looked good today.

  Soft purple leggings hugged her legs, accentuating the flare of her hips, and a loose black woollen jumper concealed her curves, the sleeves so long they covered her hands. Her left hand peeked out as she lifted it and pushed a few strands of her ebony hair back into her French braid.

  He expected her to look away, but this time she didn’t.

  Her grey eyes were bright with their subtle hints of blue as they lingered on him as she crossed the green.

  Heading away from Rath’s cabin.

  He bit back the growl that rumbled up his throat as he spotted his brother on the deck, watching her walking away.

  What the fuck had Ember been doing at his brother’s place?

  “You feeling frisky… or fighty?” Flint frowned at him.

  His eyes were glowing gold. He could almost feel the change in them as his temper frayed, the rage he had tried to suppress boiling back to the surface as he watched his brother staring after Ember and recalled what her mother had said.

  “Fighty,” Cobalt snarled and pushed past Flint, storming towards Rath, that rage mounting inside him with every step closer he got to his brother.

  “What put a bee in your bonnet?” Flint muttered and he felt his brother moving away from him.

  It wasn’t a bee. It was a fucking hornet, buzzing around in his head and stinging his heart on repeat, and it wasn’t going to leave him alone until he had a word with his older brother.

  He didn’t want to fight, but he couldn’t let it go. He needed to know what had happened, or he would never be able to look at Rath without wanting to shove his fist into his face. Fuck, he would never be able to even think about his brother wit
hout wanting to get into a brawl with him.

  The sweet scent of Ember swirled around him as he reached the spot she had crossed, stoking the fire inside him, rousing his instincts as her fated male. She was his, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to take her from him, not even his brother.

  The sensible part of himself, the fragment not ruled by instinct and a driving need to win his female, whispered that his brother was mated now, clearly hadn’t been interested in Ember.

  It did nothing to ease his mood, or his need to fight.

  Gods, he needed to strike his brother, needed to unleash every drop of his fury on him and get it all out of him before he exploded.

  Or lost control.

  “Easy, Brother,” Rath murmured as his grey gaze slid to him, his dark eyebrows dipping and straight jaw setting hard. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

  Cobalt wanted to counter that with the fact he had to be, because he had been staring after Ember, raking his damned eyes over curves he had no right to look at.

  Because she was his.

  “I heard something today,” Cobalt bit out, practically snarling it at Rath as he stopped before him. His brother’s expression darkened, a warning in it, one that Cobalt refused to heed. “Ember’s mother tried to give her to you.”

  Rath’s face instantly softened, all the tension draining from his wide shoulders, and his gold-grey eyes gained an edge that was somewhere between an apology and pity.

  So Cobalt bared fangs at him.

  He didn’t need anyone’s fucking pity.

  “She did.” Rath held his hand up when Cobalt snarled again and stepped forwards, every muscle coiled in readiness, his fist itching to plough into his brother’s face. “But I turned her down. I’m not interested in Ember.”

  The relief that went through him on hearing that wasn’t enough to bring his mood back down to a simmer. It barely took the edge off his need to fight. He clenched his hands at his sides as he struggled to rein in his temper and tamp down the hunger to unleash hell with fist and fang.

  Rath’s eyes slowly narrowed, suspicion forming in them that Cobalt didn’t like.

  He wanted to keep the fact that Ember was his fated female private. It was too late though. He could see that in his brother’s eyes. His outburst had revealed it all to Rath.

  He cursed, aiming it at himself for confronting Rath about what Ember’s mother had done. He hadn’t been thinking clearly, hadn’t thought at all. The sight of Ember walking away from Rath, the fact that her mother had tried to give her to his brother, and the constant onslaught of his instincts as her fated male, had swept him up in a maelstrom of feeling, rage so deep that he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

  Rage that still burned inside him.

  It needed an outlet. He needed to purge it. To fight.

  No, he needed to get the hell away from the creek and calm down, before he did something reckless, dangerous.

  Before he lost control.

  He couldn’t hold back the tide now he had opened the floodgates. The urges flowing through him were too powerful, battered him and had him aware of every male in the area, every possible opponent he could take on in order to satisfy this hunger to fight.

  “Cobalt,” Rath started but then he tensed.

  Cobalt dragged his gaze up to his brother and sensed what he had before he could ask what was wrong.

  The scent of spilled blood hit him a split second before three males broke into the clearing from his right, tearing at each other.

  “Get out of here.” Rath moved to grab him.

  Too late.

  Cobalt bared his fangs and loosed a feral growl.

  Everything went the colour of blood.

  CHAPTER 4

  Aggression.

  Ember felt it sweep through her as Cobalt’s focus shifted from her to Rath where he stood on the deck of his cabin a few metres behind her. Cobalt was angry for some reason, seethed with dark needs that had him broadcasting his feelings to her through the fragile bond that linked them as fated mates.

  She had never felt such rage in him, such unadulterated fury.

  It thrilled her a little, not because she liked it when he was angry, but because the powerful emotions he was experiencing made it easier for her to detect others in him.

  Like the flash of desire and need that had gone through him when she had dared to look at him.

  Ember was tempted to turn towards him as he stormed in Rath’s direction, his jaw tensed, muscles popping beneath his tanned skin, and his golden eyes locked on his brother. He was on the warpath though, a male determined to fight Rath for some reason.

  Another electric thrill rushed through her, striking as hard as lightning and shaking her as a reason popped into her head.

  Rath had been looking at her. Cobalt had seen her leaving his brother’s home and he had gone from feeling desire to feeling a hunger to fight.

  Because of what her mother had said this morning?

  She tried to push that ridiculous thought away, but it persisted, ran around her head in circles and refused to go. Had she been wrong about Cobalt after all? Was he aware of what she was to him?

  Did he want her?

  The aggression burning in him flared stronger, and she did look back now, not bothering to hide what she was doing as she normally did whenever she looked at Cobalt. He squared up to his brother and her step slowed, worry spinning through her to bring her close to stopping as she neared the deck of her cabin.

  Were they going to fight?

  Her brow furrowed, heart filling with hope that they wouldn’t come to blows, and not only because Cobalt seemed strained enough as it was without adding falling out with Rath to his troubles.

  She didn’t want them to fight because everyone else in the clearing was watching too, waiting to see what Cobalt would do.

  Waiting for him to fall victim of the side that everyone spoke about behind his back, treating him as if he was a monster, unfit to be a member of the pride.

  Sometimes, Ember felt as if she was the only person who wasn’t afraid of him.

  Unlike many of the pride, she had seen everything when he had fought against Archangel. She had been young, shut away in her family’s cabin at the old territory, and had been at the window, watching the fighting with her heart in her mouth, afraid the hunters would break through and reach her.

  Back then, Cobalt had never even glanced at her, hadn’t noticed her at all.

  Gods, she had noticed him that night.

  He had been brutal, vicious, swift and deadly in the defence of his brother, cutting through the humans and spilling so much blood the ground had been crimson.

  But he had been glorious too, breathtaking as he had fought to protect the pride.

  A warrior.

  All of the violence had changed him though.

  He smiled as easily as he had back in the days that had come before the attack, but she could see through them. They weren’t the smiles that used to grace his lips. They were a shadow, a faint echo of them, lacking the feeling they had once held, and his eyes always held a hint of darkness, one that easily drove the females away whenever they flirted with him.

  His past and his temperament might put other females off, but not her.

  She wasn’t afraid of him, not even when he was in danger of losing control.

  Three males came tumbling out of the woods near to her cabin and she gasped as she stumbled backwards, away from them as they snarled and tore at each other, ripping through clothing to shred flesh and spill blood.

  Rath said something and she saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

  One of the males staggered and hit the ground near her, growling as he tried to shake off the blow one of his opponents had landed. She recognised him. He had fought for her early in the gathering. Another who had been rejected by her mother.

  Ben looked up at her, blood cascading from his nose, his eyes bright gold and fur rippling over his skin beneath his ruined flannel shirt.
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br />   The hunger to fight that shone in his eyes morphed into another desire.

  Ember took a step back.

  Ben reached for her.

  A vicious growl echoed around the creek, tearing startled gasps from some of the females in the vicinity who were watching the unsanctioned fight, and then Cobalt was before her, his hand twisted in the male’s dark hair as he loomed over him.

  Cobalt snarled as he yanked Ben backwards, away from her, and the male bucked and hissed as he tried to get onto his feet. He didn’t get the chance. Cobalt’s free hand closed around his throat and he slammed the male onto his back on the grass.

  “Cobalt!” Rath sprinted across the clearing.

  Too late.

  She could feel it as whatever restraint Cobalt had left snapped, could only watch as pure rage lit his features and he dropped and braced his knees against Ben’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground beneath his full weight, and smashed his fist into the brunet’s face.

  Her eyes widened as Cobalt gripped Ben’s throat to keep him in place and punched him. Once. Twice. A third time. Then a fourth. The other two males broke apart as silence descended, shattered only by the pained grunts of the male trapped beneath Cobalt, and Cobalt’s snarls as he continued hitting him.

  Crimson splashed over Cobalt’s chest to leave dark streaks on his charcoal t-shirt and arced up his neck and face, saturated Ben as his cheek split open and nose cracked.

  Everyone stared, horror on their faces as Cobalt pummelled him.

  Someone had to do something.

  She instinctively reached for Cobalt, aching to soothe him, to help him regain control by showing him that she was fine, in no danger now.

  Gods, she had wanted to see he knew she was his true mate, but she hadn’t wanted it to be like this.

  She knew all about fated mates, was aware that he had lost control because of his instincts, his deeply rooted need to protect her from any male and to fight anyone who tried to take her from him. Had he been holding those needs back all this time, bottling up the urge to fight?

  He wasn’t holding back now. He was overflowing with aggression, with rage that blazed in her veins too, an echo of the fury that had him snarling and growling, flashing fangs as he landed vicious blows on Ben.