Hunter's Prey: Bloodhounds, Book 2 (3 page)

Sylvie nodded, her fingers trailing over the edge of her desk. “I suppose you wouldn’t want to settle here. All the men worth chasing are already up at that manor.”

Wilder was blissfully in love with her best friend. Nate would always consider her more of an honorary daughter than anything, whereas Archer fought long and hard against anything resembling true emotion. Hunter just plain wished for the life he’d had before—a gentle one of luxury and privilege, judging from the way he acted.

Funny how much that last one bothered her.

Ophelia shook her head. “There’s nothing for me there. For you or one of your girls, perhaps, but not me.”

“Then I’ll miss you.” For Sylvie, who guarded her heart close for all her drunken indiscretions, it was a rare moment of honesty. “You bring something civilized and gracious to this hardscrabble town, Ophelia, at least for those who don’t have a place among the righteous. We’ll all miss you.”

If she met Sylvie’s sentiment with her own, they’d both end up crying. “I’m not gone yet, you know. And who knows—maybe
I’ll
fall in love with a lonely rancher and stay right here.”

“There’s always Charles.” Forced casualness wreathed the words. “He’s sweet enough, and lonely, too. Won’t come visit any of the girls, now that I’ve said I won’t be marrying him.”

And the one thing Sylvie wanted more than Charles was for him to be happy. “He’s a nice man. With no interest in me whatsoever.”

“Maybe we weren’t born to belong to human men.” Sylvie settled on the arm of the couch and raised both eyebrows. “Could you? You’ve been under a bloodhound. Could you settle for quiet, human lust when you’ve had a wild beast stalk your pleasure like the sweetest prey?”

There was only one answer, and Ophelia hoped it was true. “If I were in love, I wouldn’t hesitate. I don’t think there would be anything quiet about it, and it wouldn’t be settling.”

For an endless moment, Sylvie didn’t reply. Her eyes glittered with tears she seemed unwilling to shed, the silence between them filled with a thousand things so well understood, words were unnecessary. She and Sylvie had both known hard lives from young ages, lives stripped of ignorance and innocence, leaving only the simple truths of money and sexual power.

Somehow, in spite of it all, they’d both clung to hope. Ophelia could see that in Sylvie’s eyes as the woman slipped from her perch to tumble gracelessly on the couch. Flinging out one arm, she grasped the bourbon and laughed. “Let us drink to love, then. May you find it, as surely as that wide-eyed friend of yours has.”

Ophelia relented. “One glass. I’m supposed to be civilized now, you know.”

“Welcome to the borderlands, my sweet. Vampires could kill us at any moment, and even the polite women drink when no one can catch them.”

“Well, then.” She lifted her glass. “To polite drunkenness.”

“And love,” Sylvie reminded, hoisting her own glass high. “Two things that go delightfully together.”

“And love,” Ophelia echoed quietly. The only thing truly worth drinking to, if the poets and bards were to be believed.

She didn’t know.

“Miss Ophelia!” Hunter hopped past the last two steps and lengthened his strides, desperate to escape the manor before Archer tracked him down for another pummeling under the guise of training. He hurried across the front drive to where Ophelia stood with her satchel.

She took a deep breath and smiled. “Good morning, Hunter. How are you?”

“I’m feeling more myself.” A lie, but only a small one. The Lord only knew who he was or how he was supposed to feel. Belatedly, he snatched his hat from his head. “I thought you could use some help. With the shopping, I mean.”

She regarded him thoughtfully. “It would be a help, actually, if you could carry some of my parcels. That way I won’t have to wait to have them delivered.”

Relief eased some of the pressure in his chest, enough that he managed a smile. “Anything to enjoy a bit of time outside.”

“To get away from Archer for a while,” she corrected with an answering smile.

Either he was the most obvious man who’d ever lived, or he wasn’t the only one who found Archer to be an enormous pain in the ass. “That too, maybe.”

“I welcome the company.” She handed over the satchel as he fell into step beside her. “I spoke to Sylvie the other day.”

“Sylvie?” The name escaped his lips before he remembered who it belonged to—the woman who ran the brothel on the edge of town. Not a welcome topic in the least. “She’s your friend?”

“Yes. We’ve known one another for quite some time.”

“I see.” Hunter tightened his grip on the satchel and tried to find a conversational path that led away from the dangerous topic of whorehouses and the new moon. Instead his clumsy tongue tangled around the first words that popped into his head. “You worked together?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She cleared her throat. “Sylvie has agreed to personally see to your needs during the new moon.”

This conversation might be worse than letting Archer punch him in the face. “That’s kind of her,” he managed awkwardly, then cast about for something else to say. “Iron Creek’s bigger than I expected. There are more people here than I’ve ever seen crowded into a border town.”

“Because of the manor,” Ophelia explained. “Like it or not, this close to the border it’s safer to live in a town with a resident bloodhound or two.”

As soon as she said it, he felt like a fool for not making the connection. “Of course. People seem to be settling faster than they can build new homes.”

“Some merchants fare extremely well in towns such as this. The butcher, for instance.” She grinned and nodded toward the satchel Hunter carried. “We’ll be visiting Mr. Plotkin today to make an order. His business is positively thriving with three of you in town.”

His stomach rumbled at the thought of what the cook could do with a side of beef. “Don’t suppose you’d mind stopping by the bakery. Satira bought streusel for Nate a few days back…” Hunter offered her a sheepish smile. “Seems like I’m hungry all the time.”

Ophelia tapped her temple. “I remember. It’s on my list.”

“I should have known better.” He offered her his arm as their steps brought them to the end of the drive and into the long street that ran the length of Iron Creek. “Where to?”

“The mercantile is closest, but if we head to the butcher shop first, we can put in our order and then…” She trailed off and smiled politely at someone behind him. “Good morning, Sheriff. Deputy.”

Virgil McCutcheon, sheriff of Iron Creek, was a rugged former cowboy who made the girls blush when he threw his too-smarmy smile at them—which he did often enough to give Archer stiff competition.

As Hunter turned, the man swept off his hat and bowed low to Ophelia, that teasing grin fixed firmly in place. “Miss Ophelia, always a pleasure.”

“Likewise.” She turned her attention to the other man. “Deputy Miller, how are you settling in?”

“Fine, ma’am. Just fine.”

“Good.”

McCutcheon was watching Ophelia, gaze too intent. It still unsettled Hunter, sometimes, that he could concentrate and hear the way the sheriff’s heart thudded faster than the deputy’s. Virgil wanted Ophelia, for all he tried to hide it, and Hunter found himself easing closer to her. “Do you need anything, Sheriff? From the bloodhounds, I mean. Any trouble we need to see to?”

“Not at the moment,” Virgil drawled, glancing to the man at his left. “All’s peaceful in Iron Creek for a change, eh, Deputy?”

“Haven’t really been here long enough to say for certain, sir,” the deputy answered. “Sure is quiet, though.”

“Just as we like it.” Virgil bowed again and dropped his hat back on his head. “If you two will pardon me, I was showing Deputy Miller here the lay of the land. If you need anything, Miss Ophelia, you just shout at us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Sheriff.”

Hunter didn’t relax until the two of them were three stores down. “He seems awful sweet on you.”

“Who, Virgil?” She grimaced. “He’s harmless, just a bit of a flirt. I think it pleases him to believe he might affect me.”

His damn traitorous mouth betrayed him again, opening without permission as clumsy words tumbled free. “And does he?”

“Does he what?”

It was a chance to back away, but Hunter realized he needed to know. Needed it with a twist in his gut out of all proportion to the question. “Does he affect you?”

She laughed and bumped her arm against his. “No, not in the slightest.”

When she smiled, she got a teasing glint in her bright eyes that he knew all too well. Fine ladies didn’t smile like that. The proper daughters of bankers and senators had clear eyes and vacant smiles. Even the smart ones, because the smart ones knew the men they were supposed to marry didn’t often appreciate sharp minds or worldly knowledge. Not in their wives, in any case.

Ophelia was the worldly sort of woman a man escaped to when bright, proper smiles weren’t enough. Maybe that explained the way his body tensed when she walked too close, the way arousal thrummed through him at the hint of her floral perfume. A man’s hunger, too long denied, and he instinctively knew this woman could handle that hunger.

His other instincts were the ones he worried about. The dark whisper, fading a bit now that the full moon had waned. If only he didn’t still feel fractured, like the man inside him had to fight past a monster to get so much as a word out. “Where to—” No, he’d already asked that. Stupid. “The butcher. To put in the order.”

“Mr. Plotkin is expecting us.” She tightened her arm around his. “Thank you for helping me today.”

It left him unaccountably flustered, perhaps because not another damn soul in the manor bothered with trivialities like manners and polite thanks. Only her. “Happy to do it, ma’am.”

And there it was again, the teasing smile. Her gaze flicked over him, just for a heartbeat, and he knew that look too. He’d played the lazy rake to enough experienced women to know that her quirked mouth said
I know you want me
even as her narrowed eyes said
And I shouldn’t want you.

He had to look away. He’d never been the sort of fool who thought he was buying more than a woman’s willing cooperation and her pleasure, but Ophelia would make a fool out of him, if he let her. When he glanced at her again, her smile had slipped away, replaced by lips pressed firmly together and a sad look of resignation.

She wasn’t selling…and he wasn’t buying. They both knew it, and neither of them liked it. Hunter cleared his throat. “Miss Ophelia—”

A man stumbled off a side street and closed a dirty hand around Ophelia’s upper arm. “The colors are wrong,” he slurred. “Clearest green I ever saw…”

She shrank back, and rage shattered the last shreds of humanity that Hunter had been hanging on to. He locked his hand around the man’s wrist and jerked, but only managed to shake Ophelia, as well, when the bastard didn’t release her. Fury ratcheted up another notch, and he drove an elbow into the side of her attacker’s face. “Let
go
of her.”

The man bared his teeth in a grimace. “It might still be her.” He released her arm only to reach for her face, and Ophelia stumbled away.

Hunter snarled and kicked the crazy bastard’s legs out from under him, riding him to the ground to put a knee at the small of his back. Perversely, it was easy to find words when his blood had turned to fire. “I don’t know what your problem is, friend, but you will be in a fucking world of hurt if you touch her again.”

Large hands reached past him to drag the man to his feet. “Drunk, if I don’t miss my guess,” Virgil McCutcheon proclaimed. “We’ll take care of it.”

Hunter couldn’t stop the growl from tearing free, or the urge to plant a fist in the sheriff’s overly helpful face purely out of irritation at the implied challenge. “I’m managing just fine.”

Virgil nodded to where his deputy had laid a steadying hand on Ophelia’s arm. “You’d best see to your companion.”

That got him moving. His opponent half-forgotten, Hunter rocked to his feet and crossed to edge the other man away from her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She clung to Hunter’s hand. “Just a little shaken up, that’s all.”

Her heart was racing. Hunter shifted his body to put himself between her and the rest of the street. “He had a vicious grip on your arm. Should the doctor look at it?”

“No, I—” She flashed him a pleading look. “Don’t fuss, Hunter. Let’s just head on our way.”

Keeping a firm hold on her hand, Hunter glanced back at the glassy-eyed man who’d attacked her. There was something off in his gaze, something as crazed as the strength with which he’d grabbed Ophelia. He was a danger to her, a danger that should be snuffed out, if the dark voice whispering across the back of his mind was to be believed.

Maybe that voice was the instinct Archer and Wilder kept telling him to listen to, but Hunter’d lay all his chips on the probability that it had more to do with the soft hand trembling in his own. Scaring a lady was a crime, but not one that needed to end in death.
That
surely wasn’t the way to prove he wasn’t a monster.

So he bit back the temptation to kick the man sober and made do with a nod. “If you find out what he drank to put him in that state, send a message on up to us, all right?”

“Corn liquor, most like,” Deputy Miller replied. “But we’ll have Doc Kirkland take a look at him.”

“Thank you.” Hunter retrieved the satchel and offered his arm to Ophelia again, too aware that a knot of ladies had gathered on the opposite side of the street. Their low whispers tickled just out of range, but he caught the tone easily enough. Politely appalled, but hungry for scandal.

Ophelia saw them too. She looped her arm through his and stared straight ahead, her cheeks burning. “The butcher’s shop first, yes?”

“The butcher’s shop,” he agreed mildly, wondering if it would undermine his job as town protector to scatter the proper little ninnies with a well-timed snarl.

It took half the remainder of their journey to the shop for her to relax enough to look at him. “I’m sorry. Old habits die hard, isn’t that what they say?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Is your old habit to be more polite than they deserve?”