“You’re radiating some serious concern. Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It just freaks me out thinking about you being shot, okay?” And it did. The idea this guy could be hurt hit the panic button on my emotions, though I couldn’t explain why.
He stood rooted in place as his chocolate gaze raked over me. When it reached my face, he nodded softly, with the slightest of smiles on his face. “You often freak out about people who just walk in out of the blue?”
“If I say yes, will you think I’m crazy and not make me feel bad for letting you down?”
“No.”
Rolling my eyes, I snarled playfully at him. “I need to get this class started. If you’re coming along, you’re helping. But watch where you aim those big brown eyes. Shona’s right, the girls eat that kind of stuff up.”
“Oh, I’m coming along all right. I’m a little too curious about you to want to miss a thing.”
“I bore the hell out of me, so good luck with that.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
6
Chapter 6
Tossing my hands in the air, I let my magik out and changed the song to another Eighties tune—this one with a darker tone. Had I had my way, classic rock would have been the choice, but the girls weren’t as into it at their ages. Not yet anyways. Maybe one day they’d learn to appreciate it. For now it was good they weren’t biting on the current trends but rather going with Eighties. “I’ll get these girls rockin’ if it kills me.”
Hudson laughed. “That would be something to see, especially with this crappy music.”
“Not a fan of this?” I questioned.
“More of a classic rock kind of guy myself. That and some country music even.”
I grinned. “I love classic rock.”
“Sort of thought what was playing was more your speed.”
“I’m looking forward to you being around all evening now. If for no other reason than to point out you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“If you’d like, I could open the cover and peek in now. Shouldn’t take me too long to see what’s on the inside,” he said suggestively. The idea had merit. My body heated at the thought of being intimate with him, and that right there should have sent me running. I was on borrowed time. I didn’t need to spend what time I had left panting over some hunk.
Snorting, I rolled my eyes. “Do you try this hard with women all the time, or do you find they generally fall at your feet without any effort on your part?”
Like I wanted to but was doing my best to hold back from doing.
He jerked back a bit. “Well then, I know who to come to in the event my ego starts to get bigger. And no, I don’t normally try this hard. I normally don’t have to try at all.”
“I can guarantee you’ll stop trying by the end of the day. I’m a handful, more trouble than I’m worth, and really not all that I was advertised to be.”
Hudson pursed his lips. “Care to make a friendly wager?”
Arching a brow, I waited to hear his proposal. “Go on. What is the wager?”
“Okay, if I can work my way through that wall you’ve got around yourself then you’ll agree to let me take you out to dinner and for a night of fun. If I surrender and toss a white flag in the air, then I’m at your mercy to do with as you wish.” The hopeful tone in his voice made me laugh.
I didn’t want to like him more but I did. He reminded me so much of the man I’d grown up around, being told over and over I was his mate, that it was hard not to develop a soft spot for Hudson. Didn’t matter that in the end the man he reminded me of hadn’t ended up picking me as his mate. I still had feelings for Cowboy. I still missed him.
“Sounds to me like you win either way. And the answer to dinner is no. It’s firm, so don’t think if you manage to skate under my radar I’ll agree to it. We can agree on something else in its place.” I couldn’t hold down food very well anymore, because my body was that starved for my mate, and I didn’t want to have to choke down food in front of a hot guy only to have said food come right back up. Dinner was out of the question.
“Ouch, well okay.” To his credit he didn’t attempt to act as if I’d shot him.
“It’s not you, Hudson. It’s personal.” Turning, I waited as he moved up next to me before I headed towards the dance floor in the back. A change of subject was in order. “Being sent here must mean it’s bad if Jude called Franco to have a Guardian placed on someone. It’s odd too, because Jude usually tells me everything.”
Or rather, Jude used to tell me everything when he and I were a couple. As of late he’d been secretive and quiet around me. He also had taken off on a business trip out of the blue. I wasn’t sure when he was coming back. It could be any minute or days. Who knew?
Hudson shrugged. “He may have hesitated because of just how bad it truly is. It’s not something someone like you would want to hear about.”
Chuckling, I brushed my hair back from my face. Guardians always seemed to think slayers were their weaker counterparts. Typical male mentality. It was hard to be too angry with them because most were hundreds of years old or even older. Back in their day, all women were viewed as weaker. Hell, even in today’s society women were often viewed as the weaker sex.
I watched him closely. “So, is this bad in a way that leaves one peeking over their shoulder and feeling a bit off? Or is this bad in a way that says get under the bed, hide and start praying?”
Hudson sighed. “Unfortunately, in a ‘be afraid of your own shadow and stick close to the Guardian’ kind of bad. Apparently, the head generals and the lead warriors of the dark are out for this guy’s head. He’s got someone else with him too, someone I’ll need to protect as well. I don’t know,” he sounded annoyed with the entire thing, “the rumors that are flying around on what they want to do to the guy made me shudder, and I don’t tend to do that. But looking after a charge will give me something to do since I moved back.”
“Moved back?” Intrigue filled me. So did the idea that higher up dark warriors were out for this guy Hudson was sent to protect. All walks of supernatural had their own leaders, their own versions of alphas who were in charge. Most had many different generals, so to speak, different captains (not that they were called that) and a few who were supreme rulers, for lack of a better description. Basically, there were a lot of badasses but everyone answered to someone. It was rare to see what would be considered management peek their head out to do any dirty work. I’d run into some of them in the past. It hadn’t been pretty. Knowing they were hunting for someone now was troublesome because I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
“Yeah, I was out east for a while. I’m back for good now though,” he said.
I toyed with my silver chain again, wanting desperately to clutch the ring for some reason. For all the hurt I’d gone through in my life because of its owner, I should have wanted the thing buried far from me. I didn’t. In the end the ring would serve a purpose, saving the person I loved most in the world. “Well, it’s good for the guy they want to peel the skin from and pin all over the city. Though, you don’t seem too enthused to have him as a charge.”
“Wow, Shona wasn’t kidding,” he said with a smirk. “You can fool men with those dimples. I never thought the skinning-a-man-alive comment would come out of your mouth. I thought slayers were more stake-em and leave-em types. Not hold them and torture them. And you’re right. I’m actually not that enthused about having this guy as a charge. The fights will be fun, but I’m not a Guardian who has charges. I’m—”
I let go of the chain, impressed by him. “You’re one of the head Guardians, aren’t you? One of the leads on the side of the light? I guess it would be like a general or something to the Guardians.”
“Yeah. Now that you know, is it helping my chances of getting a date with you?” he asked, his grin sexier than before. “Chicks dig a dude with power and status.”
Ignoring his comment, I smiled. “Well, let me know if yo
u need any help killing the other sides’ generals and lead warriors.”
Hudson offered me a very sweet look when his eyes told me he was clearly amused by my suggestion. “I think I’ll be fine, but thanks.”
The girls saw us coming and squealed. All of them came running at us. I laughed. Hudson moved in close to me, pressing his body to my back, making me shiver with delight. He needed to stop that or risk me pinning him against the wall.
“Why do I feel like I should pick you up to keep you from being trampled?” He wrapped his arms around me, gave me a quick squeeze and then let go.
“Probably because they’re my size. Heck, some of them are taller than me.”
“What do they want you to do?” he asked, laughing as all the girls swarmed around us. “They aren’t going to drag us under, are they?”
“Maybe.” Taking pity on him, I took his hand and pulled him through the gaggle of girls. It was kind of cute to see a man as big as Hudson clearly nervous being surrounded by all the girls. “I take it that you don’t have any kids.”
“No,” he said, a sad look on his face.
My ovaries took note of the disappointment I’d heard in his voice.
I pulled him forward and came to a stop in front of the stage. “Is that regret I’m sensing?”
“Yeah.” He looked as though he were seeing through me. “I’ve been searching a long time for that special someone. A family is something I’ve always wanted to have.”
I backed up a bit, fearful my ovaries might actually make me do something stupid like throw myself at Hudson. “Please don’t show me the man you carry beneath the cocky exterior. I’ll lose the wager.”
“Totally my game plan. I never lose out on a bet.” Hudson blushed, and from the way he immediately dropped his head down, I could tell it wasn’t something he did often. That only served to make me like him more. Like he needed any help.
“My heavens, I’ll marry him if you don’t want to,” Tess, a tall, beautiful redhead said as she approached from the side. I hadn’t heard her arrive. She was half Fae and oozed sexuality. It sort of leaked off her like fairy dust, leaving the rest of us, who didn’t come by it so naturally, standing in her wake. I wasn’t really sure how old Tess was. Someone had told me they thought she was in her thirties. Another said early twenties, and when I talked to Jude he said she was timeless, so there was no help there.
“Can we stop trying to marry me off yet?” I asked. “Shona already made a go at it.”
Steffy laughed, her blonde curls bouncing a bit as she hopped slightly around us. “But we can’t stop. It’s fun to watch you make up reasons why you can’t go on dates with the guys who ask you out. I think my favorite was when you grabbed hold of some of us and told the one guy that you didn’t have anyone to watch your daughters—all twenty of us. He was a box of rocks. You’re barely into your twenties. It’s not even possible for you to be our mom. And I think your hips would be bigger, don’t you?”
Hudson laughed.
Wendy, a redheaded slayer-in-training, grinned from ear to ear. “Remember that one guy, the blond one who made us all drool?”
Steffy smiled. “He was a slayer in from down south. Yeah, he was hot.” Her gaze flickered to Hudson.
I just laughed.
Wendy giggled. “Yeah, he brought you flowers every day and kept trying to take you to dinner. He was nice but you didn’t want to go out with him so you mystically made that rash appear all over your neck and arms, pretending to be allergic to him.”
Shona lost it. “Ohmygod, I forgot about that one. That was classic. It didn’t do the trick though. Jude ended up having to tell the guy she wasn’t interested. But the length she went to in an attempt to let him down nicely was epic.”
I glanced at Hudson. He arched a brow as if asking me if I was planning on doing that to him. Winking, I shrugged. He faked shock.
“Then there was the ultimate turn down,” Wendy said. “The mother of all let downs.”
I zapped tape over her mouth. She got the point and nodded. We were not going to discuss how I’d left Jude at the altar. It was a touchy enough subject as it was.
I cringed. “I really love how much you all are growing.”
“Shona has no problem talking about guys with us. Why do you go all weird when we start?”
Steffy was only an inch shorter than me. That never helped me to feel like a qualified adult. “Hon, when I was your age, I couldn’t think about boys like that.”
“You mean wouldn’t.”
I shook my head. “Nope. I said what I meant. I couldn’t.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened and the rest of the girls moved in.
Hudson moved in too. “Yeah, I’d like to hear more about this one.”
I jabbed him lightly in the ribs and laughed. “The Powers That Be made sure I couldn’t see boys in that light. When I was twenty that changed.”
“Why twenty?” asked a girl.
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
The Powers That Be were in charge of everything. So much more than people even gave them credit for. There were Elders among them. Some Elders even lived among us all, blending in, acting as if they were as common as the rest of us, but they weren’t. They had a lot of power. Total power? No. But a hell of a lot. And yes, they had to answer to one another for their actions but if enough of them got together and decided on something, not much would be done to stop them. The system was flawed.
“What made it change?” Jessie asked, giving me a soft smile.
Putting my hand up, I used my power to open the wall between the bar and the training room. It was a trick the girls liked us to do. The girls smiled at me and I waved my hand in the air. Instantly, they were all in navy shorts and white t-shirts.
“That’s an interesting power,” Hudson said. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone but the nymphs and their keeper do that. Are you a nymph?”
Shona snickered and arched a blonde brow. “That would depend. Are there any additional letters in that or does it end there?”
“Shona!”
Hudson gave me a sexy smile. I blushed.
“Hmm, he’s in for a treat if that impressed him. Are you changing too?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What am I dealing with today? If it’s shifters, I’ll stick with what I have on. If it’s anything else, I’ll put my normal training clothes on. I’ve got enough scars on me from vamps. I don’t need anymore.”
Hudson touched my arm. “Wait, you train with live vampires?”
Grinning, I shook my head. “No, they’re technically dead.”
“Aren’t they all?” Shona mused.
“I’m suddenly feeling very bad for Jude.”
The look on Hudson’s handsome face warmed me. “You know, we hear that a lot.”
7
Chapter 7
Shona leaned over, took a folder off the stage and flipped through it. She glanced up at me. “The Elders put a call in and are going to pull from the bad guy lots. Should be here soon. Figured we can use them as part of the exercise for the girls. There has been an increase in murders associated with this incoming lot and The Powers That Be need to have them thinned out a bit.”
Hudson snorted. “You can’t possibly be the slayers who handle the random evil culling. The rumors they spread about the three who do that have grown to whale-sized proportions.”
“Whale-sized?” I asked. “How old are you?”
“I’m up there.”
Shona locked gazes with me, a knowing look on her face. “He’s turning out to be like the rest of the men, a non-believer.”
We’d met with a lot of surprise and resistance when we’d started culling the herd, so to speak. Guardians in particular weren’t keen on the idea that slayers were being handed this much responsibility. They’d been the front line—the special forces of the supernatural world for so long that they didn’t like sharing. They were all men, save one woman who I’d recently heard joined
the ranks. A group full of all men was bound to have issues with women being in control.
“I’ll see what I can do to change his mind.” At the click of my fingers, techno mixes of classic rock songs sounded all around us. I just shook my head as the girls finished warming up. “Okay, go ahead and run through the routine once without me.”
The girls ran out into the gymnasium and immediately went to the weapons wall. “If one of you tries to use a real stake again, I’ll let Lou teach the class all next week.”
They groaned. Lou was a very nice lycan who taught gym and was the head football coach at the local high school. The girls hated it when Lou filled in for anything. He treated them like his football team.
“That’s right, girls. One week of calisthenics from a lycan who doesn’t want to be doing it. And I’ll let him bring his whistle again.”
They couldn’t have run faster to the rubber stakes. I just shook my head. “Shona, what environment am I using today?”
“You okay, hon? You know these files by heart for every level.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I wrinkled my brow as I thought about why I couldn’t seem to stay on task, “It’s just that the minute I bumped into the overconfident Guardian there, my thoughts and senses went haywire. And before you both take it there—I didn’t just mean that way.”
Hudson’s eyes widened. “Just that way? Mmm, there’s hope for me yet. I may actually make it past the twenty kids, rash phase.”
Snickering, I checked on the girls.
“To hell with the schedule. If your head isn’t in the game, then you aren’t doing this.” Shona had a tendency to worry about me too much.
“Hold up,” Hudson said moving closer to me, “what are we talking about here? What exactly do you all do for The Powers?”
My gaze met Hudson’s. “I’m sure you heard the horror stories of the Elders executing innocent supernaturals because the bounty hunter who brought them in wasn’t qualified enough to know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
Crossing Hudson Page 6
