The Huntress

by Lisa Childs

  He pushed her legs apart, but he didn’t thrust inside her. Instead he kissed her there, at her core, his lips skimming across her before his tongue slipped inside. As his hands cupped her breasts, his tongue lapped at her. And his fangs scraped across the most sensitive part of her.

  A scream tore from her throat with the intensity of the orgasm slamming through her. She shuddered and cried, writhing beneath him until he pulled back. Then he joined her on the bed, his naked body covering hers.

  Her boots still on, she lifted her legs and wrapped them around his back. Then she reached between them and stroked her fingers over the length of him as she guided him inside. He thrust hard, and she arched, trying to take him deep. But he was so big. So strong…

  She cried out.

  And he tensed, holding himself perfectly still. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against her ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you…”

  Her skin tingled from his hot breath. She moaned and stretched, taking him deeper. She dug her nails into his hard buttocks, pulling him closer.

  He groaned, sweat beading on his upper lip, as his body remained tense and still. “Eve…”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  He began to move, and she moaned as the pressure built again, winding her tight inside. She’d never wanted a man so much, had never felt so much before. She nipped his chest and shoulders with her nails and then her teeth, teasing him into losing control.

  He thrust harder, driving deeper as his mouth covered hers. He kissed her as deeply as his body joined hers, his tongue sliding in and out of her mouth.

  Gasping for breath as she arched, meeting each of his thrusts, Eve tore her mouth from his. His lips slid across her cheek and down her throat, his fangs lightly scraping her skin. She tensed, with fear, then shuddered with pleasure as he reached between them and stroked through her light curls. When he flicked his thumb across her nub, she came—screaming his name.

  He nipped her neck, lightly with his mouth, before pulling back. He arched away from her, his body tensing, every muscle rippling beneath his taut, glistening skin. With a guttural shout and one last, deep thrust, he came, filling her.

  Their bodies still joined, he rolled them, so that she lay sprawled atop him. His arms held her tight against him, as if he never intended to release her.

  Instead of feeling trapped or afraid, Eve felt safe, and for the first time in her life, wanted. Her pleasure complete, she released a wistful sigh and settled her cheek against his chest. She felt as well as heard the strong beat of his heart and cringed as she remembered what she’d wanted to do to him. What she nearly had…

  Because she’d thought he’d killed Jennifer. He hadn’t, but he obviously knew her older sister. How well?

  Was Eve really the woman he wanted or only the substitute again? Afterglow damned, she had to know. “Are you and my sister…”

  “No.” His fingers stroked over her shoulder and down her back, following the rigid line of her spine.

  “Were you…ever?”

  “No.” His chest rose with a heavy sigh. “She was only ever my student.”

  Sensing that he left so much unsaid, she blinked back tears. “I was hoping you’d tell me the truth.” She was hoping that she could trust him. Although he’d bitten her neck, he hadn’t broken the skin; he hadn’t attacked her. If anything she’d attacked him.

  But still, there was something he was keeping from her. Instinct, and the sense of foreboding pricking the skin on her nape, warned her that it was something she wouldn’t want to hear. That was why she’d stopped him from talking earlier. She’d wanted to make love, to feel alive, after nearly taking his life. But she couldn’t put off the conversation any longer. No matter how much pain it might cause her, she had to know the truth.

  “I’ve been in the dark for twenty years about what happened to my sister. Tell me everything,” she requested, even as her stomach knotted with dread over what she might learn. “I need to understand.”

  “You’ve already learned too much,” he warned her.

  She turned her head, tipping her chin up, so she could study his face. “What do you mean? I don’t know anything.” And she couldn’t figure it out on her own; she had to trust someone to give her answers.

  His voice deep with regret, he said, “You know about the secret society.”

  “Secret society?” She realized what the society was. “Of vampires…”

  “And no human can learn of the secret society and live.”

  She shivered over the threat. “So what are you going to do? Kill me?”

  Andre’s heart beat slowed with dread. “It’s my responsibility to kill you,” he admitted. “You followed me to Club Underground. It’s because of me that you learned of the society, so it’s my responsibility to eliminate the threat you pose against us.”

  “Threat?” she repeated, her voice cracking with fear.

  He stroked his hand over her back again, but her skin chilled beneath his touch. “There is no greater threat,” he said. “You are a huntress.”

  She shook her head. “You were the only one I was hunting. Because I thought you killed my sister. But she’s alive.”

  “She’s not alive,” he clarified. At least not like Eve remembered her.

  “I saw her,” she insisted. “She’s not a ghost. She’s not dead.”

  “She’s undead.”

  She shivered again and pulled away from him to wrap one of the sheets around herself. “Undead? She’s one of the…” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “…society?”

  Unwilling to force the word and his true identity on her, he just nodded.

  “I don’t understand.” Her brow furrowed in confusion. “How did it happen? Did someone attack her?”

  “No.”

  “Then how—”

  “She asked me to turn her.” And in doing so, he’d risked his own safety.

  “And you couldn’t refuse?”

  “I should have,” he admitted. “I put myself in danger. A vampire is not supposed to turn a human unless that human vows to spend her eternity with the vampire who turned her.” Some other vampires had broken that rule and not been punished, but as a Vossimer, he was held more strictly to the rules because his grandfather had enacted most of them.

  Hurt flashed in her eyes. “But I thought you and Jennifer weren’t involved?”

  “We weren’t,” he said, wanting to soothe that hurt and her doubts. “We had no personal relationship,” he insisted. He’d heard the vulnerability in Eve’s voice when she’d asked him about his relationship with her older sister.

  “Then why would you agree to turn her?”

  “Because I couldn’t let her die,” he explained. Because he usually only guest-lectured, he never got attached to students. But Jennifer had been different, so fragile and needy, that she’d drawn out his protective instincts. He usually only used those for the society, but she’d been different from any other human he’d met. She’d felt more like family than any of his cousins, uncles or even his grandfather. “She was sick. I knew it even before she told me.”

  Tears streaked from those mesmerizing green eyes. “I knew it. I knew it had come back.”

  “The cancer.”

  “But she’d survived it before,” Eve said.

  “Because of you.” Jennifer had told him about her baby sister. “Because your parents had you to use as her cure.”

  She flinched.

  And he reached for her, to offer the comfort she’d never been given before. According to her sister, their parents had never really shown Eve the love she’d deserved.

  She pulled back and shook her head. “It’s okay. I know that was the only reason they had me. For my bone marrow. And it worked, you know. Jennifer could have gone through that procedure again, whatever she needed to do.”

  “She could have,” he agreed, “but she didn’t want to put you through it.” He reached for her again, needing to wrap her in his arms and keep
her safe. Not from the society but from all the pain she’d endured in her young life. “She told me how your parents treated you…”

  She uttered a bitter laugh. “Like replacement parts for the child they really loved?”

  “She was afraid that they would put you through too much, that they would take more from you than you could give.” And it was that concern for her little sister that had convinced Andre to turn Jennifer. He’d known he could trust a human that selfless. “She couldn’t risk your life for hers.”

  “But why did she leave me?” Eve asked, blinking away the shimmer of tears. “Why couldn’t she explain what she was doing? And why?”

  “You couldn’t learn about the society.”

  “I was only ten when Jennifer left,” she said. “If I told anyone what had happened to her, they wouldn’t have believed me. She could have let me know what she was doing, so that I wouldn’t think she just left me alone.”

  “She couldn’t tell you. She couldn’t talk to you at all,” he said. “She promised that she wouldn’t have any more contact with her family.”

  “Jennifer wouldn’t have made such a promise,” she insisted. “If she wanted to keep me from getting hurt, she wouldn’t have agreed to never have contact with me again.”

  “That’s why she made it—to keep you from getting hurt. Your life was threatened if she broke it.”

  “Who was so cruel to use me to force her to keep such a horrible promise?” she asked, sobs shaking her shoulders now.

  His heart heavy with remorse for the pain he’d caused her, he admitted, “Me.”

  She shook her head. “No. It couldn’t have been you. Not you…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  As if unable to bear his touch, she pulled away from him and scrambled out of bed. “You told me you’re not a killer. But you threatened my sister—you threatened my life?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You gave her no choice.”

  “If I hadn’t turned her, Jennifer would have died,” he reminded her.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she argued. “You cared enough to keep her alive—why would you cut her off from all the people who care about her?”

  “She couldn’t stay around people who knew her, who would have noticed that she was strong now and that she never aged,” he explained. “She would have exposed the society.”

  “Damn your society!” she yelled, her voice cracking with emotion. Tears dripped from her chin onto her bare breasts, but then she pulled her sweater over her head and stepped into her skirt. Next she stabbed her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

  “Eve, you can’t leave,” he said, leaning out of the bed to reach for her. “It’s too dangerous for you out there. Someone from the society might have realized that you’ve learned the secret.”

  She jerked back, so that he couldn’t touch her. “I felt bad about threatening your life earlier,” she said. “I had no idea that you had already threatened mine.”

  “I had to make sure that Jennifer wouldn’t break her promise.” But he’d hated having to make the threat and had hated himself for making it.

  “And if she’d broken her promise, would you have kept yours?” she asked.

  His grandfather always insisted that all Vossimers follow and enforce the rules. But Andre could have never hurt a child. After they’d made love, he’d hoped Eve would have realized that about him.

  “I knew it wouldn’t come to that. Your sister loves you too much to break it.” Until last night. Now she’d put Eve in danger; she should have let her sister drive the stake into his heart instead.

  “I wasn’t wrong to threaten you,” she said, her eyes dark with pain and anger. “Because I wasn’t wrong about you. You are the one who took my sister away from me.”

  “I’m sorry, Eve,” he apologized, his heart aching with sincerity. “I’m so sorry. But the society has rules that we have to abide by or we’ll all be in danger.”

  “I was ten years old,” she said again. “And I needed my sister. She was the only one who loved me.”

  “She loved you so much that she knew she had to let you go,” he explained, “for your protection.”

  “Because you threatened my life—for your protection,” she snapped back at him. “And for the protection of every vampire in your damn society. You didn’t care about me!”

  “Not then, no,” he admitted. “But I care about you now—too much to let you leave me. You’d be crazy to go out there—to risk your life” He slid out of bed and reached for her again.

  But she stepped back and held up her hands as if to ward him off. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Eve, I’ll keep you safe,” he promised. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “You’re the one who threatened me. You used me. You’ve already hurt me.”

  “I was doing what I had to do.” At the time. And he’d hated himself for doing it. Hurting her now would kill him.

  “So am I,” she said and she pulled the makeshift gun from the pocket of her coat and pointed it at his chest. “I’m doing what I have to do.”

  Chapter Four

  The darkness of the alley wrapped around Eve like her leather coat. But the darkness offered her no comfort, no warmth—nothing like what she had found in Andre Vossimer’s arms, in his bed. Maybe he was rightwhen he’d warned her that leaving his place would be crazy.

  But in that moment, feeling betrayed once again that he had used her to keep Jennifer away, she’d gone mad. Not mad enough to pull the trigger on Liam’s vicious, little gun and shoot the stake through Andre’s heart. But crazy enough, reeling from the betrayal and heartbreak, to threaten to kill him.

  Andre had heeded her threat and had let her leave him. Had he really believed that she might kill him—even after what they’d shared? Her skin tingled now as she remembered his touch. His hands, his mouth—caressing every inch of her. Despite the cold night air, heat flashed through her, and her anger ebbed away.

  Sure, he’d used her, as everyone else had, but she didn’t believe that he really would have carried through on his threat. He’d been so gentle and tender when they’d made love that she had trouble imagining him capable of violence—no matter what he was.

  She probably should have stayed in bed with him. She certainly never should have come back here—to the alley behind Club Underground. What if one of those creatures realized what she was and what she knew?

  She would be in the danger of which Andre had warned her. But had he been looking out for her or had he been trying to protect himself, too? If the society discovered that he was aware she knew about them, and had let her live, then he’d violated their rules. Would they punish him with death, too?

  She shivered. She wished him no harm—either by her own hand or anyone else’s. If only she could trust him…then she might be able to accept the feelings she was fighting, her feelings for him. Could she care already? Wasn’t it too soon? Wasn’t it too much?

  She shook her head, trying to deny those feelings and the doubt that kept niggling at her. If only she could be certain that he really cared about her.

  But what did she know about that? Had anyone really ever cared about her? She’d once thought Jennifer had, before her older sister had disappeared. She should have been thrilled she wasn’t dead, but disappointment—and guilt over that disappointment—plagued her. Jennifer had chosen to leave her. Could she believe Andre about her sister’s motives? Had she done it for Eve’s protection?

  A shoe scraped loose stones and sent them skittering across the asphalt as someone else walked into the alley. The darkness still all-encompassing, Eve couldn’t see who had joined her. No match was struck to provide any illumination.

  “Jennifer?” she asked. That was why she’d risked returning here—because it was the last place she’d seen her sister. And she wanted to—had to—see her again. “Please, Jennifer, come out.”

  But her sister didn’t step any closer.
No match flickered to illuminate her presence. Did she think that Eve wouldn’t be able to accept what she’d become? To assure Jennifer, Eve said, “I understand why you did what you did.”

  “That makes one of us,” a deep, masculine voice murmured. Finally a light burned, just the small circle of a flashlight beam. It glanced across her face, momentarily blinding her, but she didn’t need to see in order to identify the man who’d joined her in the alley.

  Her stomach muscles tightened with apprehension. “Liam…”

  “I don’t understand what she did. I’ll never be able to understand that,” he continued. “And I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  “She’s alive,” Eve said, no less awed by the revelation than she had been when Jennifer had revealed herself earlier that evening. Hell, Eve had been in shock. If only she could use that as an excuse for having made love with Andre.

  But the truth was that she’d been attracted to him since she’d sat in on his first class. Every girl in the room had been drawn to his good looks, his charm, his charisma…even she, who’d thought he’d killed her sister.

  As if trying to regain her attention, Liam McKiernan directed the flashlight beam near his face. But the redhead’s handsome features remained hard, as if chiseled from stone. He wasn’t at all surprised that Jennifer lived.

  “You knew she was alive,” Eve realized. “You knew but you told me…” She swallowed hard as bitterness and pain rushed over her. “You told me she had died a horrible death, that Andre had killed her, like one of them had killed your brother.” He’d even showed her his brother’s autopsy photo. She shuddered as she remembered the picture of the slain teenager, his skin translucent because all the blood had been drained from his body.

  “Not one of them,” he murmured.

  “Not Andre,” she defended him. A lover that gentle and generous didn’t have it in him to be the killer she’d once believed he was.

  “No,” Liam admitted. “But I hold him ultimately responsible. He turned the person—the monster—who killed my brother.”