The Rogue Hunter's Mate [Paranormal Protection Unit 10] (Siren Publishing Classic) (11 page)

“I can only imagine,” he said, moving the vegetables off the heat and turning the burner off. Going back to the oven he pulled out the rounds and shut it off. Collecting plates and cutlery, he handed the plates to her. Leaning a hip to the counter, Z watched her as she prepared the second round of egg baskets.

Taking in a deep breath, Bethany spent the next couple of minutes focusing on making the egg baskets. Finally she was able to plate them all up and passed him a plate. Smiling she said, “All right, let’s have a seat so that we can figure out if you like these or not.”

Staring at her as he took the plate from her, Z snagged his mug instinctively without looking for it. “You shouldn’t force emotions you don’t feel,” he commented, finally turning to move to the counter and pulling out two stools. “It’s just another form of a lie,” waiting for her to come and join him.

“I know but if I don’t try to force the smile, force the happiness, then the fear and sadness will swallow me whole. I refuse to let him have that on me as well. I refuse to allow him to take my joy and happiness when he’s already taken so very much from me. I know how that sounds but it’s the truth. I refuse to allow him to take any more than he already has.”

Sitting once she had, Z looked at her. “So don’t let him, but don’t force it. Life is full of potholes and hills. We all have to ride them out. If you have to force something then there’s no point to it. You need to find the little things in the world and life that make you smile naturally. A baby’s laugh, an elderly couple making kissy faces, or even the way a flower looks in the sun. You just need to find what will make you smile without effort and let that help to wash some of the ugliness away.”

She then smiled. It was a true smile. “Thank you.” She found something to smile about, him. “For the advice. Thank you for that. I think I needed it.” She needed a reminder that sometimes all that mattered was simply living life. “Eat. I can’t wait to see what you think of the egg baskets.”

Grabbing a toasted circle off the pan he tore it in half and stabbed the egg center. Inspecting it he nodded and cut a piece off to eat, a brow twitching slightly as his only real outer show of emotion. “That’s really good,” he told her. Taking another bite, he sopped up some of the egg yolk making a run for it on his plate.

“And the whites of the egg blend in with the bread so it’s almost like French toast as well,” Bethany told him with a grin. She began to eat her food, stabbing the veggies and sighing happily. “Oh these are so good.”

“That’s something I haven’t had in forever,” Zaidu commented. “French toast,” he added at her look. “Haven’t really had a good batch since I lived in Europe, though the French toast over there just seems better. Personally I think it’s because they make all their bread fresh instead of by machine like the Americans do.”

“Well, while we are out we will get everything that’s needed and I will make you some of my homemade bread.” At his look she grinned. “I have learned to do a great deal of things on my own. Bread making relaxes me, helps me to also keep track of what I’m putting in my body.”

“I’m all for homemade bread but you do realize you don’t have to, right?” he said, watching her. “You are a guest here and don’t need to do anything like that. I won’t argue if you want to. I’m enough of a male to think often with my stomach.”

“Trust me, I know that. As I said it helps to relax me and right now I think that I really need some relaxing. I would like to do something for you. You have opened your home to me, are keeping me safe, so it’s just a little something that I truly do want to do, if you don’t mind, that is?”

“My kitchen is your kitchen,” he assured her, taking another bite and chewing. “Ditto with the rest of the house. You’re here for a time. Feel free to do whatever you want around the place. I will warn you that I have a housekeeper who comes in every week when I’m in town. She comes on Friday mornings and is here with four others for about three hours. I usually try not to be here so I don’t have to listen to her clucking about a bachelor living so long alone.” Z shook his head. “So if you’re up for it we’ll head out Friday morning for about five hours and she can do her thing with her people and when we get back, see what interesting notes she’s left me full of ‘motherly’ advice.”

Bethany couldn’t help but grin at that. “Oh I’m sure that they leave you all kinds of things. Women, especially of the older ilk, tend to mother us even when we don’t ask for it. I think that it’s a weird quirk of the female gene, and yes I know that I am female, and who knows, I might do that one day.” She doubted it, but whatever. She would never be anyone’s mother. She was just far too fucked up for that.

“They may look older but I’ve got them all by a couple of centuries easy,” he said, shaking his head. He was interested in the new notes. “The ladies will figure out I have a guest, a female guest no less, and that would lead to lots and lots of advice. Oh well, I’m never here when they are so it all works out well. At least I don’t have to have to get the advice face to face.”

“True. That would likely be hard to swallow.” Bethany focused on her food, no longer hungry but just trying to work on eating so that he wouldn’t worry. “So what do you normally do when they are here cleaning?”

“Usually I’m working so I’m not in town anyway, but if I am I go to town and catch a movie or do some shopping. Anything that kills those four hours while they are in my space.” Something he didn’t like on the best of days, others in his space. “Why aren’t you eating?” Z demanded quietly, seeing the way she’d slowed suddenly and appeared to be just shoving things around the plate.

“I ate a little. Just not that hungry.” Which was the absolute truth. She simply wasn’t focusing on the whys of her not being hungry. “Movies are always nice.” She took another bite. “Perhaps we can catch the new Bond movie?” She loved Bond, any of the Bond movies actually.

“You keep poking and prodding at it. You are pushing it around.” Zaidu thought a moment and then clued in. “It’s because I made the comment about my age.” Or rather how much older he was than his cleaning ladies. “What about that upset you?” he asked.

“Oh heavens no, that didn’t upset me,” she assured him. “Really it didn’t. Well other than knowing that you are, good lord, how old are you?” She didn’t even know. No, that wasn’t what had upset Bethany. It had been the mention of him getting advice because of a woman in his midst. “It’s nothing you did, Zaidu, I promise. It’s all me.”

“Uh-huh,” he said softly as he watched her. “I am…” Zaidu had to think a moment about it. “I’m, give or take a year, five hundred and twelve years old. I’d actually have to dig out the calendar and do the math to figure it out exactly.”

“Good gravy.” She hadn’t expected that one. “Lordy, you look good for being half a millennium old.” Bethany sighed and shook her head. “Heaven’s sakes, that’s seriously old.” She hoped she didn’t offend, but hell that was old.

“Not really, there are those amongst the Dragons that are centuries older than I am. Talon for one is somewhere up and around the two thousand mark or just under,” he said. “Some of the other Changers get picked off, but Dragons are a lot harder to kill unless you get them in their human forms.”

“Goodness gravy, seriously?” Just the thought of someone being that old was shocking to her. “Remind me not to be at one of their birthday parties,” she teased. “Do they call the fire department for those parties?”

“We don’t celebrate them,” he said. “After the first twenty years of life we don’t bother any longer. We all know we’re going to live a good long time and after a few years it becomes kind of depressing. Plus with me being a Hunter, having friends is a little pointless since I may one day be called to hunt and kill them.”

Unable to help herself she reached out and placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry, Zaidu. That has to be terrible. I can’t imagine living like that.” She led a fairly solitary life, but still had a couple of friends, ones that she wouldn’t have to one day hunt or kill.

“I’m used to it,” he said, quietly noting she’d willingly touched him for the first time, not out of fear or because he was protecting her. “I’ve known what I was from my twentieth birthday, just after puberty kicked in.” Pulling his right sleeve up to show her the markings on his upper arm, he looked at her. “That appeared and everyone knew just who I was to be. Amazing how fast friends bail when they are faced with what you will one day be.”

She touched the marking on his arm and traced it with her fingertips. “If you want me, Zaidu, I will be your friend. I don’t have to worry about you hunting me one day because I’m not like the people you grew up with. I’m just human and offering you human friendship for the limited years I have left on this Earth.”

Staring at her, he watched for a long time before he nodded. “All right,” he said. Her touch was igniting little fires under his flesh and he could practically feel her light touch to his cock. She was killing him with that slow stroke.

She smiled at him. Even if it would kill her she would give him the friendship that he needed. Each time she saw him it would break her heart but she would hide it. She would keep it from him because that was just the way it would have to be. He didn’t want anything from her. He refused to accept her in his life, so she would survive it.

She was regretting the offer already. Her scent had changed in an instant from intrigue to sadness. Drawing back, he stood up and moved to the sink to set his plate into it. Turning to look at her he sighed. “Forget it,” Zaidu said quietly. “You didn’t really mean it and you’re regretting the offer, so just forget it. It’s not what either of us wants anyway, so”—he shook his head—“forget it.” Heading for the hall he paused in the door. “Ten minutes and we’re heading into town,” he told her before taking the stairs two at a time.

Bethany sighed and took her plate to the trash. Pushing the food out, she rinsed her dish and then put it into the sink. After cleaning up in the kitchen, she was standing beside the front door in nine minutes. “I did mean it,” she told him when he came down the stairs. “I would like to be your friend.” Which was the truth. She wanted to be his friend, but he kept pushing her away. “Unless it would be too hard for you?”

“It wouldn’t but you didn’t mean it,” he said, looking her in the eye. “You might have at first but then you started thinking, your own mortality pushed into the picture. It’s fine,” he told her, moving to collect his jacket and grabbing one for her to wear. “Humans always change their minds when they realize that they will die and I won’t. It’s the way of the world. We should go,” Zaidu said, grabbing his truck keys and his wallet.

Boy, what he knew about her would fit in a thimble with room left over, she thought to herself. “Whatever you say. You are obviously the most brilliant one here, the one who’s had oh so much experience, especially dealing with a woman who he pushed away that was supposed to be his other half.”

Shooting her a look, he growled low as he stepped in front of her. “The fact you know that means they broke all the rules. Which, when it’s a Hunter’s life, is a death sentence for the one who broke those rules. The only reason they won’t be called out for it is because it was likely Talon and his damned troupe. Hunters run by a completely different set of rules because our life expectancy is actually set at a hundred years. If we make it past that and into the next century we are like dead men walking because we have outlived any and every moment that was thrown at us and are still around and kicking to give more hell to the Rogues.”

Zaidu wanted to shake her and fucking Gaia, too. “You know who the first person an enemy of a Hunter goes after? Their mate and children. It’s why not a single Hunter has ever, in the history of our people, mated. Gaia, that fucking Goddess who is a pain in my ass, knows we don’t mate and yet she decided to ruin your life for her own amusement. And honestly, that is crueler than anything those Rogues could have ever done to you. Do I want a mate?” he stalked a little closer though he was fighting from backing her to a wall. “Hell yes, more than anything. Will I take one? No. Why? Because I refuse to be the reason an innocent is killed, again. Now, if we’ve had enough of the pity party, do you still want to go shopping or should we discuss and grind this into the earth a little more?”

“Obviously you had to have come from somewhere. Wasn’t your father a Hunter as well?” She didn’t know how the hell it worked, but still. And then, because she was an idiot, she grabbed him and kissed him. Bethany didn’t hold anything back. She kissed him with all the pent-up emotion and need she had inside of her simmering just close to the surface.

Grabbing her up, he lifted her and put her back to the wall as he kissed her hard and fast. He wasn’t a saint. No one would ever dare accuse him of that. Stroking his hands down her side, he wrapped her legs around his waist so he could press closer to her. Thrusting his tongue into her mouth he stroked her tongue with his.

There was no time for thought, no time for anything except her. She rubbed her body against his and pulled him even closer. Growling against his lips she pulled back only slightly. “I’m not a liability, Zaidu. I’m a woman. A woman that could give you what you so desperately need. A woman that could love you. Let me in,” she begged softly before kissing him again.

Shoving his hands into her hair, he tipped her head back so he could dominate the kiss. He didn’t feel like talking or dealing with anything just then. He just wanted to drown some of his sins in the goodness that was her.

She was more than perfectly content to kiss him. Holding onto him she rubbed tighter against him and nipped his lips as she did so. Then, because all sense left her, she began to tug at his clothes, pulling off his shirt first and pushing it down his shoulders before raking her nails over his shoulders and chest in a desperate attempt to get closer to him.

Lifting his head, he caught her hands and pressed them up against the wall. Staring at her as he panted hard, trying to suck in some air, Zaidu forced his heart to stop racing. “My father wasn’t a Hunter. The gene jumps from line to line.” He breathed out, trying to get his brain to stop shorting out. “No Hunter has a mate, no Hunter has children,” he whispered, loosening his hold on her wrists. But he wanted to have those things, with her. Damn fucking Gaia to hell and back again for breaking with the unspoken tried and true tradition. Dropping his eyes to her lips, he leaned in to brush his lightly to hers. He couldn’t help himself.