The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

  “Can you force this bond on somebody who doesn’t want it?” she asked, a frown furrowing her brows. Part of her rebelled at anybody taking a choice from her, but another part, something inside her heart she had barely even known existed, rebelled at anything that could separate her from Declan—even her own anger. And it wasn’t like she had ever had a true choice anyway. They were meant for each other.

  “No. It cannot be forced,” he said, his accent thickening into that rough brogue that had shivers running down her spine. “The bond goes both ways. It’s not a marriage, but a union, our hearts and minds and souls melding to one. That cannot be done to one who isn’t willing. But that doesn’t mean I had the right to let it happen, if I could have stopped it. Or let you know it was likely.

  “I knew it would happen, if I let it. I could have stopped it, simply by not touching you.”

  With a brush of her fingers against his mouth, she asked, “Is not touching me a simple thing?”

  He seized her hand, pressing a kiss to her sensitive palm, stroking it with his tongue before taking one finger into the wet cave of his mouth and sucking it, his rough tongue caressing and stroking before he drew it out. “No. It’s the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done, to not touch you. But—”

  “No buts. Declan, I love you. I think I always have and while I don’t like having choices taken from me, this isn’t a choice. It would have happened, it was meant to happen. And I can’t think of being without you, when you are so much a part of me now,” she said, staring into his face, caressing his roughened cheek as she kissed his chin. “I love you.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was later in the day that she grew aware of the malevolent force that was battering at her mind. It was like a battering ram that was trying to get in, and the longer it fought and failed, the more the anger grew.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?” she asked quietly, braving the sunlight at four in the afternoon to stare briefly out the window. The blinding light hurt her eyes, and as moments passed, it started to sting her skin, but she stared into the woods beyond the wood and glass houses, beyond the small guesthouses, wondering where he had gone to ground.

  “I do not think he is on Eli’s territory yet,” Declan said, taking her hand and guiding her from the window, letting the heavy, light blocking drapes fall back down. He had carried Eli into a middle room, his bedchamber, a windowless room that was protected from any and all sunlight. It wasn’t a basement room, though. Eli had a dislike of such things, a remnant from his human days.

  “He is,” she whispered, her eyes closing while her mind went drifting down a dark mental path.

  “He is close,” the wise old woman whispered. “He had his slave bring him while he slept. He must hate you very much, to have traveled in his sleep to get to you. He is certain you will run, and he doesn’t want you to have the chance.”

  “I’m not running,” Tori said softly, pacing the room.

  “What?”

  Tori ignored Declan’s voice while the old woman murmured, “I know you will not run. That is why I chose you. I need your help. Until Manuel is gone, I cannot rest.”

  “Can you tell me your name? Why would you help me? I will see him dead—you know that, don’t you? Why help me when you know I will kill your son?”

  “My name is Rosa, and I help you because I do know you will see him stopped, I know Manuel better than all others, and his evil, foul deeds. I help you because he must be stopped.”

  “Why me?”

  The old woman laughed and replied, “Why not you? You threw off his compulsions. You fought against him. You hurt him. Manuel hasn’t been hurt by a human since before he was changed.”

  “How long has he been a vampire?”

  Tori stumbled in her tracks and came to rest against the wall as Rosa said sadly, “More than five hundred years. Manuel was an Inquisitor before he was changed.”

  “Inquisitor?” Tori thought, her mind whirling.

  “The Spanish Inquisition, when Isabelle sought to purify all of Spain. Her purifying was the most foul and evil deed I had ever seen done…at the time. So much evil in the world, so many evil, terrible things I have seen. I am weary and long to rest.”

  Death toll in the hundreds of thousands, people pulled from their homes and cast into fires. Tori’s mind stumbled to a halt and stared unseeingly out the window. “He was alive then?”

  “He was. It was how he met the man who changed him. He took pleasure in what he did, in the suffering that he caused.” Her sad, mournful sigh brushed through Tori’s mind like a cold wind. “He was always evil, from the time he left my body.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “God had nothing to do with it. He was just…evil. Always evil. Five hundred years he has traveled this world, inflicting his evil and malice on others. It is time he be stopped.”

  “Five hundred years? Vampires get stronger with age, don’t they?”

  “They do. But you are not just a vampire. And you are not alone.”

  Declan’s hands landed on her shoulders as another voice joined in. Declan’s mind was troubled and in turmoil but his mental voice was strong and clear. “She will never be alone, old woman.”

  “Old woman, handsome wolf?” Rosa asked, her voice light with amusement. “Hmm. Go, Tori McAdams. Go be with your mate, but be ready. Manuel is too foolish to fear the wolf.”

  Her mental touch faded and Tori fell back against Declan.

  “She was his mother,” she murmured a few moments later. “I don’t know much, but I know he sought out the vampire and wanted to be changed. And then he fed from his own mother and killed her.”

  “Five hundred years,” Declan whispered. “He was born about the time the Spaniards settled in Florida. Manuel will be strong.”

  “She said he was an Inquisitor, as in the freaking Spanish Inquisition. Burning people, torturing people, dragging them from their homes at night and killing them,” Tori murmured, her head spinning. Too much. Too much to take in.

  “She waited for me,” Tori said, her voice gruff and thick with tears. “I might have died, if she hadn’t been whispering in my head. She helped me, but it was because she thinks I can kill him.”

  “She’s caught, Tori, tied to her son for always, unless somebody is able to kill him. Can you blame her for taking a chance on a strong woman?”

  Shaking her head, she wiped away one tear with the back of her hand. “I don’t blame her. I pity her, I hurt for her. But what if I fail her?”

  “We won’t,” Declan whispered.

  Failure wasn’t an option, not to him.

  Failure meant death.

  Tori prowled the house, as the sun edged down lower. It was late afternoon, but sunset was still hours away. The summer brought long hours of daylight, confining the creatures of the night to their lairs.

  “Stop pacing, Tori,” Declan said in exasperation. “You’re making me nervous.”

  The roiling energy in her gut was begging for release. She had noticed, after feeding from yet another of Eli’s people that her body was eased and the aching between her thighs had faded.

  And she recalled the euphoric, powerful strength that rolled through her after sex. She turned and propped her back against the wall, her fingers going to her shirt, watching Declan as he tried to focus on a book. She caught his attention before her shirt had opened to her navel. Peeling back the sides, she opened her bra, the lace cups falling away to frame her breasts. “Change,” she ordered in a soft voice as she flipped open the button of her jeans.

  “Excuse me?” Declan asked, his eyes latched on her naked breasts as he rose from the chair.

  “Change,” she ordered in a hot, smoky voice, rolling her shoulders and sending her shirt floating to the floor. “You fucked me your way last night. Now I want to fuck my wolf.”

  “You’re too sore,” he rasped, his erection pressed against his jeans. Mouth dry, he stared hungrily at her naked breasts and licked his lips.

  “No.
I’m not. Change. Or don’t you want to?” she asked with a pout.

  His head fell back, his teeth bared in a pained, silent snarl as the flow of fur started the change—his hair lengthening, thickening and spreading down his neck, back, and chest.

  Fur flowed downward and his arms flexed, shifted as the muscles bulged outward and enlarged while the hair raced down his arms. His nails shot out, became longer, curved and deadly.

  The ridged muscles of his chest and belly became more obscured as the fine line of hair between his nipples spread outward and became a furred pelt that covered his entire torso, spreading around his trunk and back.

  His jeans fell around him in shreds moments later as his enlarged muscles tore the seams, his hide darkening and mellow gold fur spreading to cover his body. His cock rose, naked and ruddy, from the thinner hair that covered his groin. Longer and thicker, it jutted up and Tori licked her lips when Declan closed one clawed hand around it, stroking carelessly while the change completed.

  His muscles shifted and bulged as he moved slowly toward her. “Suck it?” he asked, the words a soft growl as he guided her to her knees and urged her mouth open with a clawed finger. Her mouth stretched tight, too tight, around his thickness and she whimpered, her pussy wet and hot, tight and hungry. She couldn’t take him all the way down her throat like this. He was too long, and too thick; the feel of him bruised her throat as she took him inside in slow, hesitant strokes.

  He pulled away a moment later and stared down at her, his hooded eyes glowing and green. “On your knees. Fuck you like that.”

  She turned slowly, presenting her ass and bracing her weight on her hands. “Don’t want to hurt,” he said, his voice deep and growling, sending shivers down her spine as he dropped to his knees behind her.

  “I want you to,” she said darkly, rocking back and brushing her ass against his pulsating length. “Hurt me a little. I need it.” Reaching out, she felt for him along the mental path that joined them and felt his need. “You need it, too, Declan, don’t you? I can feel it inside you, like an animal caged. You haven’t let him out once with me. Let him out now.”

  In answer, his hands, big and hard, covered with fur and tipped with ebony claws, closed over her hips and he drove inside her. Halfway in, her body started to resist and he pulled out, worked his cock back in again a few more inches, then out. Back in a little deeper, out, over and over again until the tawny gold of his furred belly stroked the pale curves of her ass as he drove inside her, forcing her to take his entire length, a rough grunt falling from him as he stared down, watching his ruddy cock, wet with her cream, spear the swollen lips of her sex.

  He lifted his hand and smacked her ass roughly, shuddering as her flesh pinked under his sharp slap.

  Tori mewled and thrust back against him, the burning, biting pain in her pussy making her delirious. She yelped when one hand landed hard on her backside in a slap. A second one had her keening, and the third one had her bucking up.

  She could feel his hot cock as it stretched her sheath almost unbearably, her flesh resisting his brutal intrusion while it held him deep each time he started to pull out. Another hard slap on her bottom, followed by another, and she pushed back, taking him inside again. “Harder,” she begged. “Deeper. Faster.”

  Declan went wild, shuttling his cock in and out while she screamed and pleaded beneath him. He shoved her hips lower, angled her ass a little higher until her torso was flat on the floor and her ass was in the air, canted up so that he slid across the bundle of nerves deep inside her passage with every stroke. She closed over his cock tightly—making him growl as her passage fought it every time he plunged back inside her sweet depths. Sweet little fuck, Tori, he thought, feeling her along the mental paths, speech coming easier through their bond than it did vocally in this form.

  He felt the silent pleas racing along the bond and raised his hand, spanking her again, admiring the way the cheek of her ass went pink under his blows.

  “Like fucking your wolf?”

  “My wolf,” she whispered, her body shuddering as he lodged himself deep inside her. She felt the silken hair of his pelt caressing her ass and wondered how it would feel to take him in this form with her on her back, him between her thighs.

  “Find out,” he offered, pulling out and flipping her onto her back before she had even realized he could sense what she wanted.

  But once she figured that out…He lay between her thighs and, using two claws, spread her lips gently before sliding his long tongue out of his mouth and into her sex. Tori screamed as he flicked and stroked inside her, pulling away to lick and nuzzle her clit with his nose. He grabbed her behind her knees and shoved her legs high, lifting her bottom off the floor as he pierced her vagina and pulled her onto his length roughly, forcing her thighs wide, staring down at her.

  “Feel good?”

  “Oh, yes,” she murmured, relishing the tight swollen fit of his body inside hers, the gentle, alien brush of his fur on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

  “Slow?” he asked, stroking his length in and out gently.

  “Or fast?” And he drove his length inside her, hot little licks of pleasure pain flooding her body.

  “Fast, oh, please, Declan, fast,” she begged, her head thrashing on the floor. “I don’t want gentle right now.”

  “My baby,” he purred inside her mind before lunging and driving deep inside her body, the flared head of his cock leaving her vagina before driving back in, each rough stroke dragging across her swollen engorged clit until she was panting and pleading and begging.

  “Look…” his rough urging forced her eyes to their joined bodies and she sobbed as she watched him surge into her, his thick width pulling out, wet and gleaming, the dark curls at her mound caressing his length, and then he was driving back inside, as they both watched.

  They both heard the door open, and both were aware of the vampire watching them, well away from the partially open blinds and the sunlight that filtered through.

  Tori shuddered as Declan whispered in her mind, “He likes to watch almost as much as he likes to fuck.” The touch of his mind on hers was almost as intimate as the feel of his cock pulsing inside her, almost as arousing.

  With a smile, she rolled her head until she could see the handsome blond vampire in the door. Clenching tight with her inner muscles, she smiled slowly as Declan growled and lifted her hips, cupping her ass in his hands, thrusting more deeply inside. Eli closed his eyes and muttered, “Evil little bitch,” under his breath before opening his eyes and continuing to watch.

  Declan’s hands stroked up and down the back of her thighs before he pushed her knees to her chest, and fell forward onto her, driving his cock in deep, stretching her to the point of pain. He caressed her arched neck with his muzzle, nipped gently at her shoulder while he shafted her, driving her closer to orgasm, relishing each tiny plea and broken scream. Rolling his maned head, he glimpsed Eli and his mouth gaped in an evil grin, causing Eli to laugh weakly. “You’re a bloody bastard, Declan.”

  Declan lifted his weight slightly off of Tori, keeping her knees hooked over his arms as he pulled out and surged slowly back into her, shuddering at the hot wet clasp of her swollen tissues around the engorged flesh of his cock. Taking her legs, he pushed them together, grunting as it caused her sheath to clasp him even tighter, and then he propped both her legs on one broad shoulder, holding them there with one hand and working the other one around until he could scrape her clit with a gentle claw.

  “Scream again,” he told her, reveling in the bond that allowed their minds to meld just as fully as their bodies. One hand lifted and landed sharply on her ass and she jolted, a weak scream falling from her lips as her muscles tightened. Declan slapped her butt again and she vised down around him, her walls milking his shaft as she came, ripping his own climax from him in a long pulsating blast.

  He growled in approval as he filled her wet depths with his seed, her body slowly relaxing around his. Her bonele
ss arms fell to the floor and she lay there, panting, her legs still propped on Declan’s shoulder as he rolled his hips, rocked inside her a few more times, letting her drain him dry, before he released her legs and curled up next to her on the floor, smiling at Eli over her body. He cupped her breast in his hand, stroking her softened nipple with his furred hand. The palm was smooth and hairless, broader and longer than a human hand.

  Tori felt it, sighing in pleasure, curling up against Declan’s furred chest, feeling the familiar touch of his hand on her body. Her lids lifted and she met Eli’s eyes before her gaze drifted down and encountered the thick heavy bulge behind his flowing linen trousers.

  “You’re such a naughty little thing,” Eli murmured, stroking one hand down the length of his covered, throbbing cock, his back propped against the wall. “If I was still human, I think I would have died of jealousy. Or a heart attack.” He rubbed the base of his palm against his chest, drawing Tori’s attention to the slow, steady pounding of his heart.

  A low ripple of power sighed through the air and she felt the fur receding from Declan’s body. Soon, he was curled around her—human, smooth, sexy—so damned sexy he made her mouth water just looking at him. Lifting himself onto his elbow, he peered at his old friend through his shaggy bangs, a smile curving his mouth as he continued to fondle and tweak Tori’s nipple.

  “You cannot say you did not know what was taking place, old friend,” Declan said with a shrug. “If you didn’t want to be watching, then why watch?”

  “I never said I didn’t want to watch,” Eli said, his hot eyes trailing from Tori’s glowing face and the smug smile on her mouth to where Declan held and plumped one white globe in his hand, the nipple red and hard once more. “I’d prefer to play with you, but I doubt I’ll be invited again.”

  Tori’s lids drifted down slowly before lifting back up and meeting Eli’s golden gaze. “Not now, but you’ll be invited again,” she promised, her tongue wetting her lips.