Page 3 of A Cougar's Kiss
Keller stepped closer to the bed, but he didn’t touch the FL. Shya did the same, going to the other side of the bed because standing right next to Keller might be too much considering she now had to deal with the fact that Cole was awake, or at the very least talking.
“The…Desert…Cat.”
His face remained impassive while his lips moved, the words coming slower, even the machines surrounding him seemed to stop working while he spoke. She stood still, almost holding her breath as she waited for the next words to come. But they didn’t and moments later, the machines began their normal rhythmic drone. The chill that had greeted her when she came in dissipated and a warm breeze wafted her way carrying the scent of cinnamon.
“What are you doing here?”
She had a feeling he would speak first. It was his nature, the dominant that had been stilted for these last three months. The cougar that was caged and hated every second of its captivity. Shya took a slow, steadying breath before meeting his gaze across the bed.
“I came to see you.”
There, she’d said it out loud. She came to see the cougar that had crept into her every waking thought, the one who eased its way into her dreams and thus her entire being, the one everyone around here feared, except her.
“Why?”
A man of few words. Somehow, she doubted that was the real Keller, even though he hadn’t done anything to prove that point since he’d been here. He didn’t socialize with any of the other Shadows, not even the small group of cougars that were part of the STT who trained every morning at 4 a.m. Keller went to the gym during the same time, but he never trained with them, didn’t even use the equipment that was near them, just went to his own corner and did his thing. The same corner, on the same equipment, at the same time, every morning, like clockwork.
“I wanted to tell you something.” Again, total honesty. She’d thought about what she wanted to say and how to say it in earnest for the last two weeks.
“Tell me what?”
The words were there, right on the tip of her tongue, but when she’d practiced them over a hundred times now, he hadn’t been two feet away from her, staring at her with those intense eyes or smelling like…cinnamon. That wasn’t the most enticing scent, and yet, it was drawing her in as if she were a fish caught on a line.
“That I want you.”
And that did not sound as sexy and romantic as it had in her mind. Nope, going by the way he was staring at her with complete confusion etched across his very handsome face, it sounded just as odd and slightly off-her-rocker, as she’d thought. Damn.
The comlink he wore on his left wrist lit up and buzzed, the action pulling his attention away from her as he looked down and pressed one of the many buttons on the side of the device. Every member of the STT and the Assembly leadership wore comlinks. Shya wore a leather bracelet her mother had given her for her sixteenth birthday with the Topétenia insignia on it because they were too afraid giving her the tribal tattoo might cause some sort of reaction in her already compromised body. The sickness she’d been cursed…or rather, born with, was like the unwanted gift that just kept on giving.
“My shift is over and you should leave.” His tone was curt and cool and he didn’t look at her this time.
She took a step away from the bed. “I’ll walk with you back to your room.”
“No!”
One word. One brutally different tone. One sharp prick to her chest.
Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowly. Count to five.
Shya walked around the bed and headed to the door when her fingers touched the knob again, she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “We can walk and talk about what I want and what the FL just said. Or, I can go straight to the Assembly Leader and tell him that Cole’s been awake for some time and you haven’t told anybody.”
