The Hunter (25 page)
Authors: Theresa Meyers
She hiccupped, her body trembling. A cold wash of dread slid down his spine as hot dampness started to saturate his shirt right over his heart. Aw, hell. That did it. “How about this, I promise that’ll we’ll stop shortly and rest for the day.”
She nodded against his chest and gave a slight sniffle. “Why?” Her voice was so small, so soft that he nearly missed it.
“Why what?”
“Why are you willing to help me?”
He stroked her hair. “I promised,” he said simply. He didn’t need more of a reason than that. A Hunter’s promise was ironclad. His honor, his ability to trust his brothers in the Legion, depended on it.
Lilly gazed up into his face, her green eyes luminous and fringed with dark spiky lashes. “How big a fool do I look to you, Colt Jackson?”
Her words hit him like physical blows, triggering his defense. “You don’t believe a Hunter can have honor when it comes to a supernatural?”
She nibbled her lip. “If what you want to call it is honor, then you’re the first Hunter I’ve met with it.”
For a moment he couldn’t look at her. There was simply too much push and pull, confusion and mixed emotion. Duty. Honor. Loyalty. Love. Aw, hell. He’d reached the tipping point with her where he couldn’t lie to himself any further. There was more of him invested in Lilly than just his libido; she’d somehow slowly claimed his heart.
He peered at the walls looking for some sign of what they should do next. There, at the center of the floor, was a small lion’s head. He stepped on it. A huge crunching thud echoed under the floor. Clicking noises preceded a sudden jerk beneath their feet as the entire room, floor and all, began to spin on its axis.
As the room rotated slowly, it cut off their access to the hallway, leaving them trapped, but gut deep Colt knew it was this or declare a stalemate and just sit there. They had to take the next step if they wanted out. They had to take the risk. He took a deep breath, then let it out real slow. “If you wouldn’t call it honor, what would you call it?”
Lilly turned her gaze away from his broad shoulders and chiseled stubborn features as she contemplated how to answer him. She didn’t want him to see the unnatural feelings that were colliding inside her. The hero-worship she could understand. He was the Chosen, a legend in her world. But the small dull ache building in the pit of her stomach when she thought of what her life would be like if he freed her from Rathe and then walked away into the sunset, well, that was more difficult to comprehend.
“I don’t know. Attraction, maybe. Friendship?” she offered.
On one hand she wanted him to be attracted to her, and not just because Rathe had made it her mission to romance the Book away from him. On the other she feared what an emotional entanglement with him might mean. She’d learned the hard way very young not to trust a single soul—her father had seen to that. Putting all her chances of escaping Rathe into Colt’s hands was a huge risk. For so long she’d contemplated what she might do if she wasn’t Darkin anymore, how she’d find Amelia and start life over. Putting her trust, her heart, in a Hunter’s hands was a risk she’d been sure she wouldn’t be willing to take. Until now ...
Colt’s touch was soft, but his eyes weren’t as he brushed an errant curl away from her temple. “I can tell you whatever is happening between us is far beyond friendship.” Her whole world felt like it was spinning, and while logically she knew the floor beneath her feet and the room she stood in rotated, she couldn’t help but think some of this instability was in her unusual responses to Colt, because this kind of spinning made her head and chest feel light.
Never having made many friends when she’d been mortal, Lilly was ill equipped to make a comparison. “How do you know?”
He pressed two fingers to her sternum right above her breasts, and the touch went all the way down to her heart. “You feel it in here, way down deep. Friendship don’t do that.”
Her breasts tightened and ached, waiting for his touch to glide just a bit farther to one side or the other along the inside swell of her breast. But he didn’t, and the ache increased.
“Neither does honor,” she countered. She’d had enough of waiting for him to admit the growing attraction between them. She grazed the back of her hand lightly against his hardened length.
His lips twitched. Desire flared in his eyes.
She lowered her lashes. “What are you thinking about right now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“How good you looked in britches.” He cupped his other hand around the smooth roundness of her bottom, pulling her in tight against him. Lilly gave a little gasp at the sudden counterpoint of soft against hard. Colt might be good at playing stoic, but he couldn’t hide the evidence of his desire. “I’ve been thinking about it since I watched you walk around in them things. They’re like a kidskin glove, hugging your curves. Give a man plenty to fantasize about. I think they might be even more tempting than that little scrap of silk you were wearing in the circle in the desert,” he added.
Lilly gave a husky laugh. “Don’t get used to it,” she said as she purposely rocked against him. “It’s a sight you’ll likely never see again. Skirts are more my style. I’d prefer not to be in britches at all.”
Colt’s dark pupils swallowed up the blue. The scent of leather and wild places that clung to him sucked her in and made her heartbeat thump hard and her stomach dip. “I can arrange that,” he said, his voice deep and low as he reached for her buttons.
She grabbed the fabric of his shirt in both hands, pulling him even closer so they were nose to nose, hip to hip, and looked deeply into his eyes so he couldn’t mistake her intentions. “So what’s stopping you?” she breathed.
There was nowhere for them to go, not until the room stopped its rotation and revealed the next exit to them. The vibrating movement of the floor only agitated his state to a higher level.
His voice sounded rough and ragged, a man on the brittle edge of control. “It’s wrong. Darkin and Hunters don’t do this. There’s rules.” He slipped his hand slowly up her spine and into her hair, stroking his fingers through her curls, cupping the back of her head. The light throbbing in her blood grew more insistent in response.
“So?” Lilly went up on her tiptoes and grazed his lips lightly with hers in a teasing, seductive touch that twisted the need building inside her into an even tighter knot.
“I know you’re a succubus, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting you.” His eyes intently searched her face, looking for answers and lingering on her mouth, making it tingle, his shoulders rock hard with tension. “It just plain don’t make sense. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t give a damn.”
He pressed his mouth hard to hers in a kiss that speared right to her very core, making her temperature soar and her bones liquefy. They melded together in the searing heat between them. There was no more him or her—only them. His touch ignited a breathtaking fire that threatened to consume them both from the inside out. She arched into him, wanting, needing, greedy for more.
He broke their fevered kiss and pulled back, his shallow and fast breathing matching hers as he rested his forehead against hers. “I can’t think straight when I’m around you,” he said, fine lines of pain appearing around his eyes as he closed them. “How do I know you aren’t just using your succubus powers on me?”
Lilly only wished she had, and far earlier. She gave him a slow, wicked smile. “If I were, there’s no way we’d have lasted this long.”
“I think—”
She kissed him hard, nipping his lip. “Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking at all, just feeling.” Lilly rucked the ends of his shirt up out of his pants, then ran her hands underneath the cloth. Her hands glided along the ridged planes of muscle along his abdomen and sides, then up and across the broad expanse of his back. His skin was hot, gloriously hard and smooth beneath her fingers.
Colt sucked in a hissing breath. “Still don’t make it right.”
Lilly placed a finger over his lips to silence him, then replaced it with a lingering kiss that was part nibble, part flick as she slowly undid the buttons of his shirt and peeled it down his muscular shoulders. “Maybe this doesn’t fall into wrong and right.”
Colt groaned. His hands spread and tightened on her sides, his thumbs rasping back and forth over the soft sides of her breasts. “Everything falls into right and wrong.”
“Not everything.” She snapped her fingers, replacing her boots, buckskin britches, short blue jacket, and broadcloth shirt with the black silk sheath he’d summoned her in, placing only the most insubstantial barrier between his touch and her skin. “Like this. Is it wrong or right?” she teased.
His eyes widened a fraction and then he shut them tight and blew out a harsh breath as he cupped the globes of her breasts in his heated palms. “Very right,” he growled.
She leaned in close, pressing herself to his chest, with only the hot silk between them as she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. “That’s my Hunter.”
Colt cried out, kissing her hard, his arms tightening around her as he lifted her up off her feet hard against him. His tongue was slick and soft, brushing, feasting on her mouth. Lilly thought she might just explode. Slowly he lowered her to her feet, her whole body brushing the full length of him as they both panted. But as she reached for the buttons in the rough fabric of his pants, the rotation of the room stopped abruptly and another grinding of gears filled the chamber.
He tensed. “Something’s wrong. It’s a trap!”
There was nowhere to go. No exit.
“But you said the lion’s head was the Hunter’s signal of what to do next!”
“It was, is, but maybe that one was intentionally placed there to mislead.”
The floor in the circular room shifted beneath their feet, lifting to one side, creating a smooth, angled surface with nothing to hold on to. Colt slid, trying to climb up the floor as it tilted higher and higher, opening into a dark chasm beneath them. He grabbed the upper edge of the floor as she went sliding past him with a scream. He reached out to grab her, the yank and pull of contact making her whole arm burn, but he held fast to her wrist. He groaned, clenching his teeth, his jaw flexing and muscles in his arm bulging as he held them both by his one hand clamped on the edge of the upended floor. Their contact was smooth and slick and his fingers slipped against her skin, making the bones in her wrist twist with the pressure.
“Don’t let go!” she begged, eyes wide and terrified.
Her skin was too slick, too smooth. The muscles in his arm burned and the metal edge cut into the palm of his gun hand as he held both her weight and his by one hand as they dangled precariously above the abyss.
“I can’t hold us much longer,” he muttered through tightly clenched teeth. “But we’re going to go together. On the count of three, ready?”
“What? No! I’m not ready!” she said as she twisted frantically beneath him, grabbing hold of his arm with her other hand, her fingers digging into him hard enough to bruise.
Colt caught her panicked gaze and held it. “It’ll be all right. Trust me.” He had no idea if that was true or not, but her movement was shortening what little time they had left to hold on. It made no sense. Why had the lion head led them to a trap? The blood oozed out of the cut, making the metal slick beneath his fingers. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe this was the only way through this metal rabbit warren. His grip on the edge of the metal began to slip.
“One.”
“Colt! You don’t know what’s down there.”
“Two.”
“Don’t do it!”
“Three.”
At the same time he let go, he pulled her up with every ounce of his remaining strength to hold her against him and cushion their fall into the darkness.
The drop was fast, a skidding free fall that sent them spinning off in the darkness on a slide that looped back on itself over and over in a spiral like a giant corkscrew. His hat came flying off, and with a thud they came to a stop on a pile of filthy rags.
The bronze walls were less tarnished here, and parts of their original golden luster showed in spots of the verdigris. The space they’d been unceremoniously dumped in was not much bigger than a sleeping compartment on a train, with four walls and only one, regular-sized, bronze door with a crystal doorknob and a keyhole beneath it.
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