Cougar's First Christmas Read online

  Six months ago, Lauren never would’ve had the nerve to ask any man to fuck her, let alone in a husky whisper, but Sean had changed all of that. The cougar-shifter treated sex as being necessary to happiness and nothing to be ashamed of. She tended to agree with him.

  Before she could think of anything else, Sean squeezed her ass and lowered his head. A hairbreadth away from her lips, his words were a hot caress as he said, “As you wish, baby,” before taking her lips in a possessive kiss.

  Opening at once, his tongue slipped inside her mouth and she threaded her fingers through his hair. She met him stroke for stroke, and tilted her head to have better access to his mouth.

  Damn, his heat, his taste, and even his scent made her even wetter.

  Sean growled and backed them up against a wall, not hard enough to hurt her, but enough to let her know his cougar-side was coming out to play.

  One hand moved between them to pinch her nipple and Lauren cried out. Sean pinched again before running his hand down her ribs, her stomach, only to stop just shy of her clit. Wiggling, she tried to tell him she wanted to feel his fingers through the shimmery material of her baby doll lingerie, but instead of touching her, he removed his hand.

  Growling in frustration, she was about to break the kiss to ask what the hell he was doing when she felt his hard, hot cock where his hand had just been.

  When had he done that?

  She moved one of her hands down his back to land on his tight, round ass only to feel the fabric of his jeans under her fingers.

  He really was going to fuck her with his clothes on, and she found it hot.

  Sean broke the kiss at the same time he rubbed the head of his cock against her clit, the friction of the material making her legs weak. Only because she clung to his neck with one hand did she remain standing.

  Sean’s voice was husky when he said, “Are you wet and aching for me?”

  He gave an extra swirl on her clit and she hissed, “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Her cougar-shifter moved his arm behind her to under her ass and lifted. Before she could wrap her legs around his waist, he thrust his hard, long cock into her with one swift motion.

  Gripping his neck harder, she reveled in how deliciously his cocked filled her up. “Mm, yes.”

  After his eyes flashed cougar blue, he grabbed the back of her head with his free hand and pulled her down for a kiss as he moved, his cock stroking hard and deep into her pussy. Her already sensitive nipples grew more so as the lace of her lingerie rubbed against them; the silky material on the lower half of her body felt like a cool whisper against her skin.

  Tightening his grip around her ass, Sean pounded harder, the sound of the flesh slapping against flesh all but drowning out everything else.

  At least, until Sean growled into her mouth. The vibrations sent a tingle through her body, straight to her clit. Even without his fingers touching between her legs, she was close. So close.

  A few more hard thrusts and she broke the kiss to cry out as pleasure shot through her body. She held on for dear life as her cougar-shifter continued to move in and out as she spasmed around his cock. Just as she came down from her orgasm, Sean growled with one last thrust before he held her close and bit where her neck met her shoulder. The delicate sting caused by his elongated feline fangs sent her over the edge again.

  She’d barely formed a coherent thought before her man whispered into her ear, “This time, I’m going to lick every inch of your body before I allow you to come.”

  Shivering, Lauren knew he was telling the truth. He was about to torture her in the best possible way, and she would never get enough.

  ~~~

  An hour later, Sean lay on the couch with Lauren sprawled on top of him, his human female stroking his chest with her soft, delicate fingers. Even after all this time, he sometimes worried that his animal side would be too much for her; shifters were fond of sex that was hard and rough. But after the first few times they’d been together, she’d opened up to him to the point that one day soon she’d be able to outlast him. Hell, she’d soon be as demanding as any shifter female.

  Without thinking, he chuckled and Lauren looked up at him. “What’s so funny?”

  Hugging his completely naked human tighter, he said, “I was just comparing the first time we had sex to just now.”

  She frowned. “Be careful, Fisher. Christmas Eve or not, I can still leave your ass cold and alone tonight.”

  He reached a hand up and brushed her cheek with his knuckles. “Always the threats before I have a chance to speak.” Her frown deepened and he grinned. “But I love your mouth, so don’t ever change.”

  Her lips twitched as she battled a smile. “Well, let’s just say I’m practice for meeting my family. My older brother is as stubborn as any of the shifters I’ve met thus far. He’s nearly as tall, too.”

  “You sure there’s no secret shifter blood in the Spencer family tree?”

  As she shook her head, her long, straightened, black hair tickled his chest. “I don’t think so. The Spencers are just stubborn. And maybe a bit argumentative.”

  “A bit?”

  She gave a playful slap against his chest. “Look who’s talking, buddy. You need me to keep you in check. Who the hell knows what would happen if you were let loose on your own.”

  The words were meant to be teasing, but all of the sudden, all Sean could think about was how he wanted Lauren with him.

  Always.

  His inner cougar chirped. Yes. Ask her. Now. Make a claim. She is ready.

  Lauren must’ve notice his lack of response because she laid a hand on his cheek and said, “What are you thinking, Sean? I see your heart in your eyes.”

  Six months ago, Sean would’ve balked at showing his true feelings so plainly on his face, but with Lauren, he never had to hide who or what he was. She accepted him.

  They may be naked under the flashing Christmas lights, but it was time.

  He cupped her cheek and his voice was low when he said, “I want you as my mate.”

  His human blinked and whispered, “What?”

  Sean wasn’t about to back down. “Mated, married, we can do it both ways, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Emotion choked his throat at the thought of her saying no. He couldn’t lose her. “I can wait, baby. It just felt right to ask.”

  Giving a wobbly smile, Lauren slapped his chest again. “I don’t want to wait, Sean Fisher, but you know it’s against the law.”

  Rubbing his thumb against her soft cheek, he whispered, “Marriage might be, but we could be mated by my clan, and make it official the human way as soon as it’s legal. Momentum is building to make that happen.”

  As she silently stared into his eyes, his heart rate kicked up. Maybe he’d asked too soon. Or, maybe she didn’t love him as much as he’d thought. After all, they would face censure just about everywhere they went until the laws changed and human-shifter pairings became more common.

  Afraid this might be the last time he held her, he hugged her close. If she said no, Sean wasn’t sure he’d be able to just let her go. Human or not, Lauren Spencer was worth fighting for.

  She opened her mouth and he held his breath. “Oh, Sean, I would love to be your mate, but how would it work? We can’t live together, we can’t be married, and we’d always be looking over our shoulders for a cop. Is that what you want?”

  She didn’t say no. Grabbing on to that small piece of hope, he said, “We could make it work.”

  “How, Sean? I need specifics before I get my hopes up.”

  “Well, you’re nearly done with your dental training. Have you ever considered becoming a shifter-specialized dentist? You could set up a practice on DarkStalker’s land. I’m sure my clan would love to have you.”

  She searched his eyes. “Are you asking me to move in with your clan? Do they know about this?”

  He moved his hand from her cheek to the back of her neck and squeezed. “I haven’t asked. I wan
ted to ask you first.”

  ~~~

  Her heart thumping in her ears, Lauren couldn’t believe Sean had asked her to be his mate. The thought of never having this shifter male tease her, touch her, or hold her close made her heart squeeze. She hadn’t known where their relationship was going, as the law forbade human-shifter marriages, but now all she could think about was spending the rest of her life with Sean Fisher.

  Yet Lauren was far too logical to say yes without thinking things through. After all, it wasn’t just her life that would be turned upside down if she said yes; her family, and his, would have to accept them as well.

  He squeezed the back of her neck again and Lauren realized she hadn’t responded. Laying a hand on his jaw, she said, “Maybe.”

  He blinked. “Maybe?”

  “Yes, maybe. First, I want you to meet my parents and charm them like no tomorrow. Then, we can go to your clan. I want to meet them before I even start thinking about living amongst a pack of cougar-shifters.”

  One corner of his mouth ticked up. “At least we’re not wolves.”

  “Sean.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll be serious.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “So when am I meeting your clan?”

  He chuckled. “Funny you should ask as I spoke to my sister earlier today about that. She’s determined to scare you off.”

  “Oh, is she? Well, maybe I should buy her a scratching post for Christmas and throw down my challenge.”

  Caressing the back of her neck, he leaned up and placed a kiss on her lips. “Have I mentioned recently that I love you?”

  “Maybe.” She kissed his jaw and then his ear before she whispered, “But I think you should show me how much, just to try to sway my decision into the yes column.”

  He slapped her ass. “You know you’d miss my ‘surprises’ if you left me.”

  Sean had a tendency of showing up in random places and convincing her to have sex in bathrooms, parks, hell, he’d even made her come with his fingers one night while they’d been out to dinner at a shifter-run restaurant. “Yes, but who would miss having a woman around who allows those kinds of surprises?”

  “Allows? Baby, one touch and you melt in my hands.”

  “Then make me melt again, Sean Fisher, and my Christmas Eve will be complete.”

  As he kissed her and hugged her tightly against him, she pushed any worry she had about their families to the back burner. If worse came to worst, and neither his clan nor her family could accept the mating, this might be the last night she had with her cougar and she would make it count.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, they were driving in silence when that song came on the radio. Sean groaned just as Lauren squealed and jacked up the volume to the rock version of Carol of the Bells.

  As she waved her hands in the air in time to the beat, his inner cougar growled. Not that Sean could blame him; the first time he’d heard the song, it’d been cool. But after two hundred times in the span of a week, he was ready to rip the stereo out of the car and forgo any music at all if it meant he wouldn’t have to hear the song ever again.

  Glancing over, some of his irritation eased as Lauren swayed to the music. Maybe this song wouldn’t be so bad if his female swayed to it while she was naked.

  Yes, if she were naked and swaying, she could listen to the same song a thousand times, and he wouldn’t care.

  Tearing his eyes away, he focused back on the road. Despite being the busiest freeway in the state, I-5 was dead this early in the morning on Christmas Day. Lauren had wanted to spend the entire day with her family, so they could get to know him, and right now, he needed as many bonus points as he could until she agreed to be his mate.

  Especially since meeting his clan would be ten times worse for his human than him meeting her family. DarkStalker was cautious, and while they’d recently accepted one of their own mating a wolf-shifter, mating a human was a whole different ballgame since it was illegal.

  But it wasn’t as if he would put his clan at any serious risk. DarkStalker’s clan leader, Kian Murray, was one of the smartest men he’d ever met, and if there was ever a shifter to find a legal loophole allowing Sean to mate a human, it would be Kian. Provided the Spencer family accepted him, first thing tomorrow he’d call his leader and ask for his advice.

  As the song ended, Lauren turned down the music, but before he could tease her about her weird obsession, something smacked into his bumper. The car spun and his reflexes kicked in. He tried to keep his steering wheel straight, but something slammed into him again, knocking his grip loose. The wheel spun out of control, and his last thought was of Lauren before the car crashed headfirst into the roadside barrier and the world went black.

  ~~~

  Lauren opened her eyes to find a white, inflated airbag in front of her face. Blinking a few times, the fog lifted from her brain at the same time pain radiated up her left leg. She groaned, and then remembered Sean. “Sean? Babe? Are you okay?”

  When there was nothing but silence, a bad feeling gathered in the pit of her stomach. He’d better be alive, damn it. He couldn’t leave her like this.

  She pushed against the airbag until it deflated. Turning to the side, she found the driver’s seat empty. The door was open, so she yelled, “Sean!”

  The answering silence made her heart skip a beat. Her shifter would never abandon her. Lauren needed to get out of the car and see if he’d been thrown to the side.

  Oh, god. What if he’d been thrown and broken his neck? Shifters healed fast, but not even her cougar-shifter could survive that.

  Breathing in and out, she forced her panic down. Freaking out about “what ifs” would accomplish nothing, so she fell back on her usual logical self and determined the first step was getting free of the car.

  A quick check told her that apart from her leg, the rest of her injuries appeared to be superficial. They’d been lucky to hit whatever it was head on rather than on her side or she might be dead.

  Moving the deflated airbag out of the way, it took a few tries until she could undo her seatbelt and open the door. She leaned her head out and peeked, but she didn’t spot any people or other cars, except for the occasional person driving past. Rather than wonder why no one would stop to check on them, Lauren eased out of the car and noticed the long gash on her left leg. It wasn’t gushing out blood, which was good, but it hurt like hell so she still kept most of her weight on her good leg as she pushed herself up.

  Once upright, her head spun for a second, but she gritted her teeth and remained standing. She needed to see if Sean was okay.

  Favoring her right leg, she limped around the back of the car until she could see the driver’s side, but her shifter was nowhere to be found. The small pool of blood right outside his car door made her stomach churn as she realized this might not have been an accident after all.

  “Shit.” She should have told Sean about that car following her last night. Some small part of her brain screamed that the two were related.

  If this were a normal situation, she’d wait for the state patrol to show up, report what had happened, and ask for their help. But Lauren was a human and Sean was a shifter, which meant talking to the state troopers or the police might land her in jail.

  Think, Lauren, think. She wasn’t about to abandon the love of her life, but who would help her?

  Then it hit her—his clan. If she could find a way to contact them, they should listen to her long enough to gather the facts. They might toss her aside after that, but none of that mattered as long as she secured the help Sean needed.

  There was only a matter of minutes before a passerby stopped or the state troopers showed up, so Lauren limped to the driver’s seat and confronted more blood. Normally, she wasn’t squeamish at the sight of blood; she saw it often enough when working on her dental patients. But this wasn’t just any blood; it was her boyfriend’s blood.

  Stop it. Focus, or who will help him? With a deep inhalation, she leaned down
and looked for Sean’s phone. He always tossed it into one of the drink holder slots under the stereo console, but both of them were empty. Clenching her jaw, she sat down on the blood-covered seat and fished around his seat, and still came up with nothing. She turned, and after feeling around the floor of the backseat, her hand came into contact with a hard, rectangular object. Bingo.

  After checking that the phone still worked, she grabbed her purse from under the passenger side seat, maneuvered herself upright again, and limped for the grass on the side of the road. There were some trees not too far away, but with the pain in her leg, it took three times as long to reach them. Just in time too, as the sirens blared in the distance.

  Once she was far enough inside the trees to be hidden from view, Lauren took another fortifying breath. She hoped Sean had told his clan leader about their relationship because she was about to call him.

  She looked through Sean’s phone until she found the name Kian Murray. She may never have visited Clan DarkStalker, but Sean had told her a little about their clan leader. While DarkStalker’s leader didn’t hate humans outright, he could still blame her for Sean’s disappearance and leave her to the human police.

  No, she needed to stop with all the guilt about not telling Sean about the tail last night. She and Sean had been careful, but whenever people had discovered her boyfriend was a shifter, they’d suffered their fair share of jeering and threats. The person who had hit them could be any one of those people. After all, she had no proof it was Human Purity or any of the extremist “humans only” groups.

  With her guilt pushed back for now, she hit the call button and the phone rang once before a male voice answered, “Hello?”

  Her heart was pounding as she answered, “Is this Kian Murray?”

  “You’re not Sean. Who is this?”

  He was trying to intimidate her with his tone, but she wasn’t having it. “This is Lauren Spencer, Sean’s fiancée. He’s been taken, and I need your help.”