The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) Read Free

ease.
    “I’ll drive her home, get her settled in, and talk to her roommates,” Mason said.
    “I’ll follow you on my bike, assuming it’s still running,” Steven said.
    “It’s running, but I wouldn’t drive it,” Sean said. “You’ve got some damage to the body, and I wouldn’t trust putting it on the road until we can check it out. We’ll store it in the barn until we can get it fixed. Ride into town with Mason tonight.”
    “Shit. Perfect end to the night, right?” Steven said. “Licking my wounds in the backseat of a purple punch buggy.”
    “Nah, Belle will sit in the back,” Mason said. “Harder for her to get out.”
    “Screw you,” Belle muttered. She wrenched away from his grip yet again and shoved her feet into her shoes. She was sick of them talking about her and making plans pertaining to her as if she weren’t standing right there with them.
    Story of her life, really. She really wished it weren’t the case, but it had been since their father had died five years ago. Their age gap was possibly to blame. There was a gap of a little over ten years between her and Sean. Her brothers would probably always see her as a child. In spite of her mother’s urging, she couldn’t just ignore it. She deserved respect but, if not that, some autonomy. It really wasn’t that much to ask for.
    “
Belle!
” came that voice from the portal.
    Damn it, not again.
Belle clapped her hands over her ears and ran. Not toward the hellmouth, but toward her car. If she couldn’t investigate that voice, the best thing she could do was get away from it and bide her time. If she were lucky, it wouldn’t follow her into her sleep and plead with her until she tried again to get inside.
    And she
would
get inside to put an end to the mystery. Good or evil, she’d deal with whatever the entity was in her own way ... even if she had to resort to creative means to get Steven Welch off her back. If he planned on making himself so damned convenient, perhaps she’d just get him onto
his
back.
    She snorted and slumped in the backseat of her car, cutting him a glare as he folded his long body into the shotgun seat.
    That’ll put him off for sure.

CHAPTER TWO
    Steven felt like he was the Incredible Hulk and had showed up late for fairy princess ballet class instead of a meeting with the Avengers.
    He stood in the doorway of Belle’s small rental house with his duffel bag at his feet and her roommates giving him the sort of wary stares little kids gave to their parents when they threatened to cancel trick-or-treating.
    He gave them a little wave, hoping to disarm them. “Hi, ladies.”
    They blinked at him.
    Mason emerged from the back of the house, and the ladies stood from the sofa.
    “She’s got to be at work by seven,” he said.
    “So do I,” the roommate with the messy dark brown ponytail said. “We usually walk there together.”
    Mason shrugged. “Steven’s been watching her for weeks. You’ve probably seen him walking the block and wondered who he was. Now you know he’s here because my addle-brained little sister has mistaken the portal on the ranch as being the entrance to the beauty parlor or something, and she needs to constantly be pulled back from it. You should be relieved there’s a good reason you kept seeing him walk past.”
    “I would have been okay never knowing that my cousin’s been trying to fling herself into hell,” the roommate with curly blond hair said. “My father is going to kill me if he finds out there’s a guy here, by the way.”
    “Tell him I’m a cop,” Steven muttered. “That usually goes over well.”
    “You don’t look like a cop.”
    “You want me to flash my badge at you? Unfortunately, I left it back in Raleigh. You’ll have to take my word for it.”
    She blinked at him again.
    Ponytail roomie said, “You don’t have a gun in that bag, do you?”
    “Of course I do. A few knives, too, but don’t worry—I’m perfectly proficient in the safe use and