Cougar Bait Read online

  “That’s because Lounds—the guy who attacked and kidnapped me—shot me up with some kind of compound to activate my gene that night in Vegas,” she said.

  “I know,” Keller said quietly. “I’d been calling and calling you to try and tell you that I found the syringe he used, with some of his serum still in it. Enough to analyze it and find out what it was meant to do. But you never answered your phone.”

  “I fell into some kind of weird sleep—almost like a short-term hibernation—the minute I got home to Tampa,” she confessed. “And as soon as I woke up, Lounds was there waiting to . . .” She swallowed hard, and he heard an audible click in her throat. “Waiting to kidnap me.”

  “You say his name was Lounds?” Keller felt a surge of possessive fury at the name of the Hyena who had hurt the female he cared for. A low growl rose in his throat—he couldn’t help it.

  “If you’re thinking of hunting him down and killing him, don’t bother. I did that myself.” Samantha’s voice was flat and hard. “Or at least, I helped him along and didn’t stay to try and stop the bleeding.”

  “Sammie . . .” Keller couldn’t help himself, the nickname just slipped out. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he said softly. “So sorry I didn’t get to you earlier. That I didn’t save you from . . .” He swallowed. “From whatever he did to you.”

  “He didn’t, uh, breed me if that’s what you’re worried about.” She was looking down at her feet, not meeting his eyes. “Although he certainly planned to. But he had . . . other things he wanted to attend to first.”

  Keller thought about asking what other “things” this bastard Lounds had wanted to attend to involving Samantha, but he sensed his question wouldn’t be welcome right now. She might open up later . . . if she was comfortable enough. But she was never going to get comfortable unless she came inside, out of the heat and humidity.

  “Why don’t you come in?” he asked her gently. “I think our host has a shower in his bathroom, and I can scrounge around and see what there might be to eat. Also, there’s air conditioning in here. It’s just a window unit, but it’s better than nothing.”

  That got her into the cabin. Apparently the idea of getting a shower was so appealing, she couldn’t resist it—not even if it meant spending the night in close proximity to him, Keller thought dryly.

  He stepped aside to give her room to enter as she climbed the porch steps, one arm over her breasts and the other modestly shielding her sex. He wanted to point out that he’d seen it all before—that he’d tasted it in order to heal her, both in human and in Cougar form. But again he sensed this wasn’t the time.

  He would have to go slowly and let Samantha come to him. If she would come to him, that was. Keller hoped she would—from her scent she was extremely ripe, and ready to go into the breeding fever. He would bet every dollar of his considerable fortune that before the night was through, Samantha was going to need him, and not just to heal and protect her.

  She was going to need him to breed her, and Keller only hoped she would come to him because she wanted to, not simply because her body forced her to.

  * * *

  The rundown little shack was actually pretty nice inside. Not, as Keller had pointed out, ten-thousand-dollar-a-night-penthouse nice, but still, it wasn’t the complete rat hole of a bachelor pad Samantha had been expecting.

  It was a one-room affair—well, two rooms if you counted the tiny bathroom off to one side. There was a double bed in one corner, a tiny kitchen in another, and a ratty armchair with an old fashioned box-type television with rabbit ears in a third.

  But what concerned her more than the state of the shack was the bathroom attached. Would it have running water? Despite having been cleaned thoroughly by Keller in his Cougar form—a fact which made her blush when she thought about it—her breasts and pussy continued to leak the sticky-sweet nectar, which meant she was messy all over again.

  Samantha had an idea if she could just take a really cold shower, she might be able to stop the flow, or at least slow it down. At the very least she could get cleaned up and then maybe wrap a towel around herself to hide her shame.

  The idea held immense appeal, which was why she had finally come inside with Keller, despite feeling extremely nervous and shy to be around him in her current state.

  Of course, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her naked before, but he’d never seen her naked and leaking weird fluids. Well, not in his human form anyway. And Samantha would just as soon keep it like that.

  Inside the tiny bathroom, she found that the shower stall did indeed have running water that got moderately hot. There was no shampoo, though, so she couldn’t wash her hair, only wet it. She did at least find a dried-out bar of bright green soap, high up on a corner ledge. Irish Spring, maybe? Samantha lathered up and washed her body all over, getting rid of the sticky nectar that had leaked from her breasts and sex.

  And was still leaking, she saw with a frown when she stepped out of the flow of the water for a minute. Well, maybe she could do something about that. Gritting her teeth, she turned the shower on full cold and got ready for an icy blast.

  The freezing water made her nipples so hard they ached, and it stung the inside of her sensitive sex when she held herself open to be certain the chilly flow got where it was needed. It was agonizing, but Samantha made herself endure it, hoping to shut down the nectar production once and for all. Also, with the threat of the breeding fever looming, it couldn’t hurt to cool her body down all over.

  She stood in the icy water until she was shivering and her lips were nearly blue before finally stepping out and looking for a towel. Which, as it turned out, was something she should have done earlier.

  There were no towels in the bathroom—nothing to dry off with or cover herself, not even a washcloth. There was a tiny wooden cabinet mounted above the toilet, but it held only a half roll of toilet paper and a stack of pornographic magazines. It appeared that their host, as Keller had called him, was forced to go low-tech in his choice of porn, too.

  Ugh! Samantha stepped back and shut the cabinet hastily. What was she going to do? She couldn’t just walk out into the cabin naked. Though Keller didn’t seem to have a problem with it, she was still shy about showing her body. Even if she did look like she was twenty instead of forty now, she was still full figured and more hippy and busty than she liked. If only—

  “Samantha? Are you okay?” Keller’s voice from the other side of the flimsy wooden door broke her line of thought.

  “Um, fine. Just fine,” Samantha said quickly. “I finished my shower. I was just, uh, looking for a towel.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find one, but let me look.”

  Samantha listened to him rustling around in the other part of the shack, and had time to look down and see that her cold shower had worked. Though her breasts felt uncomfortably full, and her pussy was still swollen, she was no longer leaking. Well, that was a relief, anyway—standing in the freezing water had totally been worth it, even if she couldn’t stop shivering now.

  Finally Keller came back and knocked briefly on the door.

  “Found something—I’m going to hand it through to you, all right?”

  “All right,” Samantha agreed.

  The knob turned and his large hand appeared holding a plastic rectangular package out to her.

  “What’s this?” she asked, taking it from him. “Oh—sheets!”

  “A brand-new set,” Keller agreed, through the door. “He had two of them squirreled away, still in a Walmart bag. I took the liberty of putting the other set on the bed.”

  “That’s perfect—he didn’t look like the kind of guy who would have new sheets lying around though,” Samantha remarked. She pulled one of the sheets out of the plastic package—it was pale green—and wrapped it around herself, toga style.

  “I think he must have had a significant other at some point who bought them,” Keller said. “I’ve seen a few other female touches around the place—a scented