“I’m making breakfast.”
His voice, pitched low, drifted through the wall. Mouth dry, she stared toward the door. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear anything other than a faint sizzle coming from the kitchen, but he’d heard her, knew she was awake.
Breakfast.
Duke was making breakfast.
Duke was here.
Swallowing, she glanced toward the foot of the bed, spying the plain T-shirt she usually wore on summer nights. Pain sliced through her as she stood up. The muscles in her thighs ached and with every move, they screamed at her. Sensing his approach, she grabbed the shirt but he appeared before she managed to tug it on. She stood there in front of him with the shirt pressed to her breasts and feeling like a fool.
He didn’t come toward her, just stoodthere, bare-chested, one shoulder braced against the wall. “You’re sore,” he said quietly.
She shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”
He nodded and then shoved off the wall, crossed the floor to stand before her. She tensed as he laid a hand on her shoulder, tugging. “Duke—”
“I know about the scars, Ana. I felt them last night.” And saw every damn last one of them when I woke up, he thought, still burning with fury. Ten scars. Ten times, she’d been sliced up with a knife. He didn’t need to ask to know who’d been holding the blade.
She blushed and looked away, humiliation hanging around her like a cloak. She stood malleable in his hands and this time, when he tugged for her to turn, she did so. Her head hung low, her long pale hair hiding her face from him. He could hear each ragged, uneven breath, and it was like a shard in his heart.
“Cat,” he said flatly.
She swallowed and nodded. Carefully, he traced one finger over the longest one. “Why?”
“Because she could.”
A growl rumbled out of him and his skin itched, burned hot. The animal inside him screamed. Wanted out. Wanted blood. But the bitch was dead. Gently, he pressed his lips to first one scar, then another, then another. When he’d kissed every last one, he straightened and tugged her back against him, wrapping his arms tight around her. “Don’t hide them from me,” he said quietly.
She didn’t respond.
Blowing out a breath, he skimmed his hands up over her arms and made himself take a step back. Then another. Made himself stand still as she fumbled with the shirt she held and tugged it on. But she didn’t turn to face him until he made her. “I don’t want you hiding from me,” he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m not hiding—”
“Yes, you are. That’s why you didn’t want me taking your shirt off—you didn’t want me seeing the scars.”
She swallowed and licked her lips. “They’re ugly, Duke.”
“No.” He flicked a glance at his chest, studied his own scars. Some of them were puckered and tight, others were long slender slices similar to the ones Ana had on her back. The scars he had from psycho bitch had all been done within a matter of days. Cat had tortured him and enjoyed every last second of it, but his abuse at her hands had been short-lived.
But without her saying a word, Duke knew it wasn’t the same with Ana.
“If you can look at my scars without flinching, I can do the same to you.” He brought her up against him, caught a hand and guided it to his chest. “If you can touch mine and still want me, I can touch yours . . . and still want you.”
He slipped a hand under her shirt, tracing the scars. Then he nudged his hips against her belly and rasped, “And I definitely want you.” He caught her mouth with his, kissed her until she was rocking against him, shuddering in his arms.
Stop. Stop it or you won’t be able to.
He stopped. Barely. Gritted his teeth and made himself take a step back. Then another. Distance. He needed some distance. That was the key. He settled by the wall near the door and tried not to think about those sweet, warm curves and soft, white skin.
Of course, it would be easier if he wasn’t staring at all those sweet curves and soft skin. Tearing his gaze away, he glanced toward the kitchen.
“Come out here and eat. We need to talk . . . ” His gaze flicked over her, taking in every single inch from the top of her head to her feet. “And if you stand there looking at me like that for too much longer, I’m going fuck you again.”
Ana’s heart fluttered in her chest and her mouth went dry. He wanted her, scars and all. “I . . . ah . . . I’m fine with that.”
Duke cocked a brow. He pushed off the wall and stalked toward her, his body a beautiful work of golden skin, sinewy muscle and feline grace.
“No. You’re not.” He laid a hand on her belly, held her eyes as he slid his fingers down, pushing just the tip of one inside her sex.
Ana flinched and stiffened. Blood rushed to her cheeks as he pulled his hand away and lifted his fingers to his lips, watched her as he licked them. “You’re not fine. You’re sore. And as much as I want to, if we have sex again right now, it’s going to hurt you, probably worse than before. I don’t want to hurt you this time.”
He rubbed his lips across hers and whispered, “Come out here where we can talk.”
“I . . . ah, I need to go to the bathroom.” Brush her teeth, her hair, wash her face—get a fucking grip.
“Okay. Then come out. Talk to me.”
SHE emerged from the bathroom nearly ten minutes later. Duke watched her from the corner of his eye as she slipped into the small kitchen. Two more minutes and he had been ready to go get her himself.
Her hair was neatly combed, twisted up into a knot on her head and secured with some sort of clip. He could smell soap, water and toothpaste—and himself, his scent, permeating her skin. Unable to stop it, he smiled. He liked the way she smelled with their scents merged.
“What . . . ah . . . what exactly do you need me to tell you?”
He flicked a glance up and then looked back down at the skillet, eying the eggs he had sizzling in there. There was a plateful of bacon already done. Some eggs for her, butter up the toast, then they could sit down and eat.
“I’m not going to ask right now,” he said carefully, resisting the urge to do just that. “But soon, you’re going to explain to me about those scars on your back.”
Ana blushed. “I don’t like to talk about that.”
“Ana.”
Her eyes met his and then darted away. Sighing, she said, “Fine. Just . . . just not now, okay?”
“Good enough. We got other things we need to talk about, anyway. How do you take your eggs?”
She blinked. “That’s what we need to talk about?”
“No,” he said, flipping the eggs and letting them sizzle for a few seconds. “But we need to eat and we might as well eat while we talk. Over easy work for you? Scrambled?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He watched as she shifted on the stool, flinching, then blushing as she realized he was watching her. “How sore are you?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Not too bad.”
“Good.” He slid his eggs onto his plate and then cracked open two more. “Two enough?”
“Two is too much,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“I’ll eat what you don’t.” He was fucking starving. Sex, stress, they burned through his resources quicker and a shifter’s metabolism was through the roof anyway.
“Okay. I don’t have much time anyway . . . I need to get to work.”
He frowned. “Take the day off.”
“I can’t. I took two days off last week.”
“I need you with me right now.”
He finished her eggs and dished her up a plate, four slices of bacon and the two eggs. Slathering some butter on the toast, he added it to her plate and pushed it across the counter to her. “Eat.”
She ate less than one egg. One piece of bacon. Two bites of toast. Then she tried to slide the plate across to him. Duke scowled. “Eat more.”
“I have to shower still.” Ana s
hook her head and glanced at the clock. “What . . . what do you need me to tell you? The bus leaves in less than an hour, so I’ve got to hurry.”
“Take the day off.”
Exasperated, she blew out a breath. “I can’t. I already took two days off last week trying to . . . ” Breaking off in midsentence, she shook her head. “Look, I’ll leave you my cell number. After I shower, I’ll have about twenty minutes before I have to leave.”
“Two days off trying to do what?”
She gave him a baleful stare. “Nothing, Duke.” She slid off the stool and winced, ignoring the way his eyes lingered on her body, drifting low and settling on her hips. “I’m going to take a shower.”
He caught up with her before she’d taken three steps. Caging her up against the counter, he said, “Two days doing what?”
She shoved against him. “Damn it, Duke, I’ve got a job to get ready for.”
“Answer me and I’ll leave you to it,” he replied easily.
His lips brushed against her cheek and she averted her face, but he wasn’t too put off. All he did was nuzzle her neck, nip on her earlobe as he waited for an answer.
“I did just what you told me to do, Duke—or at least, I tried,” she finally said, shoving against his chest and trying to twist away from him. He let her get one step and then he caught her arm, spinning her around and tugging her back against him.
“What did I tell you to do?” he asked.
“You told me to handle it.” She curled her lip at him and added, “So I tried. And won’t you just be surprised to know that I totally and completely failed.”
She jerked her arm away and this time, surprisingly, he let her and he didn’t try to follow her, either.
DUKE watched her disappear into the bathroom and then he swore, scrubbing a hand over his face. Stubble scratched against his palm.
Closing his eyes, he thought back and mentally played back his conversation with her from a few days earlier.
Something’s wrong up here.
Handle it yourself, princess.
He hadn’t been serious. Granted, he hadn’t put much weight in what she said. He’d planned on passing the message to Kelsey and then disappearing, getting a lot of distance between himself and any reminder of Analise Morell—or at least he had tried to convince himself into thinking that.
Kelsey had other plans, and Duke was honest enough with himself that he would have ended up here sooner or later anyway. He might have tried to pass it off as curiosity, but Ana had been under his skin too long and he wouldn’t have been able to stay away.
He spent the past few years deluding himself about how he felt over her. He’d convinced himself that it was distrust, dislike, even hostility that kept him so on edge around her.
Those days were over.
All it had taken was feeling her body pressed against his again, tasting her soft, pretty mouth. Knowing that she’d wanted him—still wanted him. Seeing the sadness in her eyes. Even before he’d seen the scars on her body, he’d been lost.
You are so fucked, he thought miserably.
Shit.
You told me to handle it. So I tried. And won’t you just be surprised to know that I totally and completely failed.
Shit. Shit. Shit. He’d told her to handle it, but he hadn’t expected her to try.
Ana had some limited psychic abilities, but nothing she’d ever managed to use in much of an offensive manner. Even the way she used her gift to block out the presence of others was more of a chameleon trick than anything else. She hid herself, and their bad luck was that she couldn’t isolate her gift and it spread out across huge swaths of land, sometimes miles. Her way of controlling it was just to lock the gift down.
Up against some of the things the Hunters had to face, she was all but helpless. A growl vibrated out of his chest as he thought about what could have happened.
Her instincts were better than a mortal’s. As required of all students at Excelsior, she’d learned basic fighting and self-defense skills, but just the basics. None of it would do her much good against something more than mortal.
Handling messes was his area, not hers. Never mind his random moments of stupidity. He wanted to storm into the bathroom and yell at her. She should have known better—
So should you.
He stopped in his tracks and scowled, shoving a hand through his hair. Yeah, he should have known better. Ana had made some serious errors in judgment in past years, but she’d done it for the right reasons—if doing the wrong thing could ever be for a right reason. To protect her brother. It took a spine of steel to live with a monster like Cat and come through with any semblance of sanity. Ana had lived with the monster for years, even though she could have run. Lived in a place where she’d been tortured, and she’d done so without letting Cat break her.
How bad, he wondered. How bad had it gotten? He wanted to know, but now wasn’t the time to push.
She’d stayed, because she wanted to keep her brother safe.
A spine of steel, a good heart—shit, yeah, he should have known better.
He glanced toward the bathroom and then turned back, studying the living room. Without a qualm, he crossed the room and settled down on the floor by her overnight bag. Tucked inside the interior pocket, he found a file folder full of copied newspaper articles and neatly made notes.
He’d only managed to get through the first page of notes, though, before he heard the bathroom door open. He flipped over to the next page and kept reading as Ana came padding out of the bathroom. She stopped in the doorway and he glanced up, met her gaze.
“What are you doing?”
He looked pointedly at the file open on the floor in front of him. “It looks like I’m reading.”
“Yes. It does look like you’re reading. Its looks like you’re reading my stuff.”
Quirking a brow, he said, “This is why you called me, right?”
“Yes.” She crouched down beside him and smoothed down the long skirt she wore. It pooled on the floor around her and absently, he caught some of the silky fabric between his thumb and forefinger, stroking it. “You know, I don’t much care for having somebody go through my things without asking.”
Duke shrugged. “Asking takes time. I’m not big on wasting it.” He lifted one of the copied articles. “Who is this?”
She didn’t bother looking at the image on the paper. Sighing, she straightened and moved over to the couch. “Her name is Marie. She disappeared from here back in the seventies.”
Duke frowned. Hell, he’d thought it looked kind of old. But not that old. “I’m not exactly the Cold Case files type of help you might need, Ana. Going to be hard for me to find a trail that’s more than thirty years old.”
“It’s not just her,” Ana said, her voice faint. She put on a pair of sandals, taking her time with each buckle. “There’s something else going on—I don’t know if it’s connected to her, if it is her, or what. I just know there’s something weird going on.”
Duke blew out a breath and then brought up a hand, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ana, I don’t know if you know how this works or not . . . when there’s something weird, our kind of weird, going on, we feel it. It’s kind of like a magnetic pull. We feel it. I’m not feeling it here.”
Ana opened her mouth, but then closed it. Her gaze lowered to her hands and he watched as she rubbed her palms together. “Maybe you should give it a little bit of time.”
“It’s not like I’m just going to walk around for a couple hours and then disappear. I’m going to hang around a while, see what happens,” he said, grimacing. He gathered up the folder, all the loose articles and the book he had yet to look at. Tucking them back inside her carry-on, he zipped it closed and then rose. “Just don’t expect much of anything, okay?”
Ana laughed. “I stopped expecting much of anything a long time ago.” She sighed and smoothed her hands back over her hair. “I need to get to work.”
He watched as she moved arou
nd the house, gathering up her purse, a lunch box. She stopped by the counter and jotted something on a notepad. “Here’s my cell phone if you need it,” she said softly.
“Ana, I can’t do much of anything but walk around this city and hope something pops. You’re the connection here—if something is going to pop, it’s going to have to do with you.”
“Duke . . . ”
“Fine.” He scowled. “Go punch a clock. Have fun with it. I’ll try to muddle my way through this on my own.” Turning his back, he stared out the window at the green mountains.
Behind him, he could hear her moving around, heard the quiet click of locks, the door as it opened. He tensed, ready for the door to shut.
“It’s not that I have fun punching that clock, Duke. I like my job well enough—and I need it. I don’t have some clandestine, uber-rich assembly of superheroes around to pick up my tab. But if I thought I could help, I would.”
Duke shot her a narrow glance. “Hell, Ana. It’s not like anybody made you leave Virginia. You chose to come here. If money’s the issue—”
“It’s not . . . or at least, that’s not all of it. You don’t get it. I’m not extraordinary, Duke.” A sad, bitter smile formed on her lips, wobbled and then fell away. “I’m not. My mother was telekinetic. My brother is one of the most powerful psychics the Council has ever seen . . . and he’s still a kid. Me? I’ve got a weird gift that doesn’t really do me a damn bit of good, and that’s it. I’m not extraordinary. I’m not going to lead an extraordinary life. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a life. That doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself. It doesn’t mean I have to be a burden to others—not anymore.”
Ana shut the door behind her and headed down the stairs before she could say anything else. It’s not like there was really that much to say anyway. Right now, she had nothing that could help him and taking a day off wouldn’t be doing her job any favors. She needed the job. It was nothing less than the truth.
She needed the job.
Hunter's Need Page 10
