Cougar Bait Read online

  He even seemed to be trying to be a little more careful. The tongue dragged much more gently over her left breast than it had over her right. Though it still stung her sensitive nipple, Samantha felt a new sensation as well.

  Looking down, she saw in the dim moonlight that the itching, stinging welts that had covered her body were gone. At least they were gone from the places Keller’s Cougar—she was reasonably sure it was his anyway—had licked her. From her belly button down, though, she was still sticky and sweaty and covered in bug bites.

  Not to worry, whispered a worried little voice in her head. He’s getting there. . . .

  Indeed he was. The washing continued as the Cougar made his way, with long, methodical swipes of his rough tongue, down her hips and lower belly.

  “Keller?” Samantha whispered uncertainly. “Um, you can stop anytime. I’m awake now.”

  But the big beast showed no sign of stopping. He ran his rough tongue over the tops of her thighs and all the way down her sticky calves.

  By this time, Samantha had clamped her thighs closed, determined not to let the huge Cougar anywhere near her most sensitive area. It was one thing to let him tongue wash the rest of her, but some things had to remain off-limits.

  Right?

  Apparently the big cat didn’t think so. After he finished licking her all over, he returned to her inner thighs and nudged his nose right into her crotch.

  “No! Huh-uh—no way.” Samantha sat up and glared at him, shaking her head firmly. “Sorry, buddy, but that area isn’t up for grabs. Or licks. Or whatever.”

  The huge Cougar lifted his head and stared at her with unblinking eyes, shining pale green and implacable in the moonlight.

  “No!” Samantha repeated.

  The Cougar nudged the juncture of her thighs again and a low growl began to rumble in the back of his throat.

  The message was clear—apparently she didn’t have a choice.

  “But I don’t want to,” Samantha told the Cougar in a wavering voice. “It’s embarrassing. And . . . and scary.”

  Without meaning to, she let a tear slip down her cheek. And then another and another. Soon she was flat-out crying, as the whole awful experience she’d been through in the past two days suddenly came down on her at once.

  Being kidnapped and held at gunpoint for hours and hours . . . locked in the ice-cold cell . . . being “harvested” by Lounds’s horrible machine . . . the fight for her life and then barely escaping the lab only to find herself lost in the wilderness . . . wandering for hours, lost and alone while her body underwent a strange process that made her feel sick and horrified and frightened . . .

  It was suddenly too much. Too, too much. Though Samantha considered herself to be one tough cookie, hours of pent-up emotion overwhelmed her, and she sobbed as though her heart would break.

  The cougar seemed to understand her distress. To her surprise, he stopped poking his nose around her thighs and came up to nuzzle her face instead. He lay down beside her, wrapped his huge forelegs around her waist, and butted his immense furry head against her cheek.

  “Oh . . . ,” Samantha whispered, and threw her arms around the massive neck. Burying her face in his ruff, she let the tears take her, crying her pain and misery and fear into the comforting furry pelt, which smelled like sunlight dappled through the trees and some warm, masculine spice she couldn’t name.

  The warmth of the big cat comforted her, and after a moment, she felt a rumbling running through his huge frame, a thrumming vibration that seemed to shake her entire body.

  She sniffed and pulled back a little, looking into his glowing green eyes.

  “Is that . . . are you . . . purring?” she asked the big creature.

  In answer, he butted his head gently against her cheek again and wiped her wet cheeks with a swipe from his wet, rough tongue.

  “Oh!” Samantha rubbed at her wet face, but she wasn’t really upset. The gesture was comforting, like a lick from a favorite house cat, only on a much larger scale. And at least the huge cougar didn’t have tuna breath like the cats she’d owned in the past. In fact, his breath was scented like cinnamon and some other exotic spice she didn’t know the name of. It was nice . . . warm, just like his fur.

  Also, the places where he licked her were immediately healed. Her eyes, which had felt swollen and hot from crying, were soothed, and her flushed cheeks felt cool. Best of all, the horrible headache that had been throbbing in her temples for hours was magically wiped away, leaving her with a clear, pain-free head for the first time in what felt like ages.

  “You’re taking care of me, aren’t you?” Samantha whispered, looking up at the huge cat. “You just want to heal me.”

  The cougar regarded her with his pale-green eyes and nodded his head once. It might have been an incidental gesture, but somehow Samantha didn’t think so. It felt deliberate to her, as did the way the cougar was looking at her.

  “All right,” she whispered and took a deep, shuddering breath. “All right then. As long as you promise to heal me, and that’s it.”

  Disentangling herself from the heavy paws, she lay back on the damp, sandy grass and opened her legs.

  The cougar rose and paced around her body twice, as though giving her time to get used to the idea of what he was going to do. Then, after giving Samantha a long, searching look, he started at her inner right knee and began dragging his tongue upward.

  Samantha stiffened and had to fight to keep her legs open, but the cougar didn’t do anything indecent. He simply licked along her inner thigh, and after a moment she realized he was lapping away the sticky nectar that had been leaking from her steadily for hours, and healing the stinging bug bites, just as he had on the rest of her body.

  It felt so good to be clean and healed of the itchy welts in her most sensitive area that she sighed and let her thighs fall wider apart, even bending her knees to give the cougar greater access.

  To her surprise, the big cat avoided the mound of her sex and moved down to drag his tongue up the inside of her other knee and thigh. He worked for several minutes on both upper legs, his rough, warm tongue healing and bathing her at the same time, until Samantha felt like her skin was silky soft and brand-new all over.

  Well, almost all over.

  The spot between her legs still felt swollen and hot and sticky, as fresh nectar continued to well up and coat her inner thighs. Samantha didn’t know if she wanted the huge beast to lick her there or not. On one hand, it still didn’t feel sexual—which was a good thing, she thought. But on the other, it was embarrassingly intimate, especially knowing that the cougar was almost certainly Keller in his other form.

  It was hard to admit that she was leaking some strange substance and couldn’t stop it. It felt dirty and wrong, and the last thing she would have asked any man she cared for was to have him lick up the mess she was making.

  She had almost decided to try and close her thighs again when the cougar put his head directly between them, making it impossible to shut her legs.

  “Keller,” she protested, rather breathlessly. “Look, I’m really messy down there and I don’t think—”

  The cougar cut her off by bending his head and taking a long, wet lick between her thighs.

  Samantha gasped as she felt the wet, rough tongue bathe the outer lips of her sex. It was shocking, even though she’d been expecting it. Shocking and embarrassing and . . .

  And it felt really good.

  Again, not in a sexual way, although there was no denying the tingle she felt when the warm, rough tongue lapped her pussy. But the main sensation she felt was relief. From the time Lounds had clamped the suction cup over her sensitive mound, the lips of her sex had felt swollen and hot. In addition to that, the constant flow of nectar had made her feel dirty and sticky and awful during her long trek through the Everglades.

  It was such a relief not to feel that way anymore. To feel clean and cool, to have a respite from the constant throbbing ache that had settled in her sex lik