by Moira Rogers
“Ophelia…” Hunter reached for her but froze, staring down at his malformed fingers that looked more like claws. “Shit, I don’t know how—I can’t—”
Shame. She recognized it well but refused to accept it, not from him. So she wrapped her fingers around his, drew his hands to her mouth and kissed them.
A shudder worked through him. His hands trembled in hers, and the change slowly reversed itself, melting away. “Are you all right?”
“Are you? He shot you.” She repeated the words with numb lips. “He shot you, Hunter.”
“Thank God.” He shook free of her grip and framed her face. “Thank God it was me and not you.”
“No, not me.” Whatever McCutcheon had really wanted of her, it had involved keeping her alive. “The train?”
“We’d taken care of most of it…” He winced. “I think I’m bleeding on the floor.”
“Shit.” They needed Dr. Kirkland, and who the hell did you go to for help when the town sheriff was lying dead in your foyer? “I can fashion a bandage, and we’ll get you to the doctor, all right?”
Hunter shook his head and stepped back. “Help me get out of my coat and shirt. We can get the doctor, but more likely than not, we’re bringing him to the depot. Emmett’s hit too, and Tobias took glass shards to the face. God only knows if any humans were injured, beyond the ones the vampires turned.”
So much carnage, and someone would have to take charge. Ophelia braced herself with two deep breaths and nodded as she tugged at his jacket. “I’ll take care of everything. We’ll get through it.”
As much as it had to hurt, he silently endured the process of stripping away all of the clothing above the waist. But when she reached for his bleeding arm, he caught her wrist, his eyes serious. “You saved my life, Ophelia, because I’m dumb as fuck about you. I’m the one who needs protecting.”
The words warmed her even as they made her heart ache for him. Admitting weakness—any weakness—so soon after a fight was unheard of for a bloodhound, especially one still on such shaky ground. “Why don’t we agree to protect each other?”
He barked out a laugh and dragged her against his chest, his good arm sliding around her waist. “How can I argue? You drove a scythe into the last man who pissed you off.”
Her eyes burned, and she could barely speak around the lump in her throat. “He didn’t piss me off. He hurt you.”
All mirth faded from his expression, and he bent to press his forehead to hers. “I’m fine, sweetheart. I’m here, and I heal awful fast, and I love you.”
Her vision blurred from unshed tears, so she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. I love you. Later, she’d think of something as moving as those three little words, something she could give him in return.
For now, she was speechless.
Chapter Twelve
Hunter cradled his glass of whiskey in one hand and watched Emmett settle into the seat across from him. The older man moved slowly, but damn nimble for someone who’d been shot twenty-four hours ago. “How’s the wound?”
“Side hurts like hell, but I’ll live. What about you?”
His shoulder had begun knitting together by the time the doctor got Ophelia’s makeshift bandage off. “I guess I heal up pretty good.”
“I guess you do.” Emmett finished off his whiskey in two long swallows. “Ophelia told me that Wilder and the others are on their way back to town. I hope you’ll understand that Tobias and I must be gone by the time they arrive. The less contact we can report to the Guild, the better, in case they double back to check up on us.”
“Understood.” Hunter sipped his liquor and waited for it to burn its way to his stomach before tilting his head toward where Nate and Tobias talked in low whispers in the corner, both looking over one of the weapons Nate had invented. “What about Nate? He’s what they sent you to find.”
“Mmm, and I have his marker now. He owes me, and one day I will collect.”
Some tension in Hunter’s shoulders unwound. “I don’t doubt you will. I get the impression that things are interesting in the Guild these days.”
Emmett leaned forward. “That’s one way to put it. Another would be to say there’s a war coming, son. One within the Guild, not without, and none of us will be removed from it. Not even you.”
That brought a chill the liquor couldn’t banish. “Does Nate know?”
“Nate’s known for years, whether he wanted to admit it or not. How do you think a man of his brilliance ended up in Iron Creek instead of New York?”
Hunter looked at Nate again, looked at the way Tobias seemed fascinated by the weapon set on the table between them, and Hunter turned back to Emmett. “Nate’s really that much better than the rest of them?”
The old hound snorted. “With him, it’s more art than science. Inspiration, Hunter. If an inventor doesn’t have it, he can still be capable. But he’ll never be Nathaniel Powell.”
No wonder the Guild wanted him back. “I can’t speak for Wilder or Archer…but I owe you too. This town owes you. Without you and Tobias, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Bullshit. You did all right. Better than you should have, given your circumstances, and that’s the truth.”
Hunter couldn’t help but smile. “Maybe I’m not as broken as I thought.”
“Not nearly.” Emmett grinned. “Especially with Miss Ophelia to help patch you up.”
“She helps,” Hunter agreed. “I owe you for that most of all. For giving me the ugly truth when I needed to hear it. When this war comes…”
“I know.” He nodded. “I’ll be expecting you to fight it, but in your own way. As we all will.”
Hunter lifted his glass in silent toast and tossed back the rest of his whiskey. “I’ve got to go out and meet with the men who stepped up as deputies. When will the two of you be riding out?”
“Before morning.” The old man winked. “Best to steal away under cover of darkness, yes?”
Tobias dropped to the sofa beside Emmett. “Are you revealing all our secret plans again? Christ, but you are bad at this, old-timer.”
Hunter grinned at him. “I see your pretty face is healing up. Too bad. A few scars might have given you some help with the ladies.”
“I don’t happen to need help with the ladies, thank you very much.”
Emmett laughed and poured him a drink. “No, the ladies need help with you.”
Tobias came up with a suitably disrespectful retort as Nate joined them, and Hunter let Emmett refill his glass. Liquor and jesting and entirely inappropriate laughter—it was like having friends again, only deeper. Deeper than the bonds of family too—blood and magic bound them together, a brotherhood that went beyond anything humans could comprehend.
It was companionship. Understanding, from the only men who knew what it was like to be part monster, and in their company, a monster didn’t seem such a terrible thing to be.
Ophelia tucked the basket under one arm and opened the door to the sheriff’s office. “Am I interrupting?”
Inside, Hunter stood at a desk in front of two of his newly deputized assistants. Both averted their gazes as they rose, the younger blushing straight to the tips of his ears, but Hunter just smiled at her. “Not at all. Lee and Bert here were just about to take their first evening patrol.”
The older seemed to realize the statement was meant for them more than her, and he dragged his blushing partner toward the door while still managing to get his hat off. “Ma’am.”
“Gentlemen.” She hid her smile until the door closed behind them. They seemed terrified, but who could blame them after what had happened to the previous sheriff and deputies? Even Miller had lived through his ordeal only to hop the first train back East. “How young are they?”
“Young enough to be flexible in their thinking.” Hunter didn’t look like a man who’d been shot a scant few days earlier, and didn’t move like one, either. He covered the space between them in two long strides and caught her around
the waist before claiming a soft kiss.
She wanted to drop the basket and slide her arms around his neck. Instead, she pressed one more kiss to the corner of his mouth and leaned back. “I brought supper. You need to eat.”
“Lord, do I ever.” Hunter lifted the basket from her hands. “Compared to the work that goes into upholding the law in a town this size, Wilder’s training routines are downright lazy.”
But he’d thrown himself into the work, and he seemed to be enjoying it. “Is it rewarding, though? That’s the true question.”
He set the food on the desk and held one of the deputies’ abandoned chairs for her. “It’s good work. Hard, but good. But the people…well, the rich don’t adapt easily.”
“Will you petition for the job? There are other towns along the border where bloodhounds serve as the law, you know.”
Once she sat, he lingered behind her, fingertips ghosting up the side of her neck in an idle caress. One of a dozen ways he touched her every day, as if even the innocent brush of skin against skin soothed something inside him. “That’s what Emmett told me. He said the hound who was here before Wilder had done it once…”
Levi had done plenty before Satira’s mother died. With her had gone his light and his will to work hard for the betterment of the town. “Levi was a wonderful sheriff. And you would be too.”
“Sheriff.” He circled the desk to settle into his chair, his expression thoughtful. “It’s a different sort of job than chasing vampires up and down the Deadlands.”
“That’s what you think.” She reached across the desk to grasp his hand. “Wilder wants a meeting—you and Archer and Nate. To discuss what they discovered about the drug trade. And to talk about Emmett and Tobias.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Figured that was coming. Haven’t quite gotten around to mentioning that I might have signed on to a bloodhound rebellion. Reckon Wilder’s going to shout at me?”
“Only if he doesn’t agree, which I seriously doubt.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes as he rubbed his thumb along the edge of the desk. “Do you really think I’d make a good sheriff? Wilder didn’t seem to mind letting me handle it for the short term…but I never made much of myself as a human, even with all the advantages I had.”
“You never had much of a chance,” she countered. “You were groomed to be a gentleman, and now you’re a bloodhound. A head for politics and the soul of a fighter, perhaps?”
His lips twitched. “When both of them are working together, which is mostly when you’re around to ground me.” Hunter lifted his gaze to hers, and for the first time she saw his naked uncertainty. “Is it too much?”
“Being with you?” She didn’t have to cast about for the right note of reassurance, because the answer was stamped on her soul. “It’ll never be enough, Hunter, never mind too much.”
“My needs…” He gripped the edge of the desk. “Sometimes I still feel like two people. The pieces are falling together, a bit at a time, but only because of you. Because you’re the one thing that makes sense, to the man I was and the bloodhound I am. I need you. I need you until I think I’ll crush you under the weight of needing you.”
“I’ll be here,” she promised. “You know I will.”
“I want to be here too. Here, in Iron Creek. With you.”
The words held a note of anticipation, as if he had more to say. “Hunter?”
“Marry me.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “I don’t give a good goddamn if bloodhounds are supposed to. I never signed up to be one, and I never took any oaths. If this is the life I’m going to have, I want to have it with you.”
Marry me. The words echoed in time with her thumping heart. “You—you want to get married?”
He looked a little wild-eyed, on the verge of purely masculine panic. “You don’t?”
“No! I mean, I do.” She stumbled over the words. “But are you sure? This soon?”
He laughed and leaned across the desk. “Sweetheart, you’re the only one who can decide when. If you left it to me, I’d be dragging the preacher back here by the scruff of his neck. I’m just praying you don’t run from me, because I don’t know if I could keep from chasing you.”
Ophelia launched herself across the desk and into Hunter’s lap, sending his chair skidding back into the wall. She didn’t care, just clung to his neck and whispered, “I love you.”
“Thank the Lord,” he muttered, burying his fingers in her hair. “If you’d run… I wish I could say I’d do the right thing. Let you go. But there are parts of me that’d hunt you to the ends of the earth.”
She knew. “Shut up and kiss me.”
He did, slow and deep, tongue coaxing her lips to part before he closed his teeth on the lower one with a hungry growl. “Should have locked the door.”
If only. “Can’t,” she groaned. “You’ve been summoned, remember? Official bloodhound business, and all.”
Hunter grumbled against her cheek, then sighed. “Fine, but as soon as official business is over, I’m going to do things to you that’d strike that preacher dead just to hear them.”
“Only if you promise me something.” She bit his ear. “Promise we can have our own place. Away from the manor.”
“Away from Archer? Hell yes.”
“Away from prying eyes and ears,” she clarified.
He didn’t seem to care much about his official summons, because he tilted her head back and grinned down at her. “Away from everything but this.” He claimed her mouth with every ounce of the possession she’d felt in their very first kiss and more—affection, need. Possibility. The world was wide open, hers for the taking. She could have everything.
And she did.
About the Author
How do you make a Moira Rogers? Take a former forensic science and nursing student obsessed with paranormal romance and add a computer programmer with a passion for gritty urban fantasy. To learn more about this romance-writing, crime-fighting duo, visit their webpage at www.moirarogers.com, or drop them an email at [email protected]. (Disclaimer: crime-fighting abilities may appear only in the aforementioned fevered imaginations.)
Look for these titles by Moira Rogers
Now Available:
Red Rock Pass
Cry Sanctuary
Sanctuary Lost
Sanctuary’s Price
Sanctuary Unbound
Southern Arcana
Crux
Crossroads
Deadlock
Cipher
Building Sanctuary
A Safe Harbor
Undertow
…and the Beast
Sabine
Kisri
Children of the Undying
Demon Bait
Hammer Down
Wilder’s Mate
Coming Soon:
Archer’s Lady
Impulse
Enigma
Think a vampire-hunting bloodhound is dangerous? Try threatening his woman.
Wilder’s Mate
© 2011 Moira Rogers
Bloodhounds, Book 1
Wilder Harding is a bloodhound, created by the Guild to hunt down and kill vampires on America’s frontier. His enhanced abilities come with a high price: on the full moon, he becomes capable of savagery beyond telling, while the new moon brings a sexual hunger that borders on madness.
Rescuing a weapons inventor from undead kidnappers is just another assignment, though one with an added complication—keeping his hands off the man’s pretty young apprentice, who insists on tagging along.
At odds with polite society, Satira’s only constant has been the aging weapons inventor who treats her like a daughter. She isn’t going to trust Wilder with Nathaniel’s life, not when the Guild might decide the old man isn’t worth saving. Besides, if there's one thing she's learned, it's that brains are more important than brawn.
As the search stretches far longer than Wilder planned, he finds himself fighting against time. If Satira is still a
t his side when the new moon comes, nothing will stop him from claiming her. Worse, she seems all too willing. If their passion unlocks the beast inside, no one will be safe. Not even the man they’re fighting to save.
Warning: This book contains a crude, gun-slinging, vampire-hunting hero who howls at the full moon and a smart, stubborn heroine who invents mad-scientist weapons. Also included: wild frontier adventures, brothels, danger, betrayal and a good dose of wicked loving in an alternate Wild West.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Wilder’s Mate:
He’d almost managed to get to sleep when a timid knock sounded on the door that led to Satira’s adjoining room. “Wilder?”
He fought the urge to slam a pillow over his face. “Yeah?”
She must have taken his reply as permission to enter, because the door inched open and she slipped through, a slight shadow wrapped in a blanket. The floorboards creaked as she took a step closer to the bed. “Do you mind…?”
She looked like she thought he’d growl at her until she ran screaming from the room. “Come on in.”
“I can’t sleep.” Her voice held more than a little shame at the confession. “If people are expecting you to bed me, it can’t hurt our disguise if we sleep in the same room, can it?”
Now he wanted to slam a pillow over his lap. “Can’t hurt our disguise.” It could only hurt him if he had to control himself around her. She grasped her blanket tight around her shoulders, but the gauzy fabric brushing the floor as she walked was sheer, flesh-colored silk.
She stopped next to the bed. “If you don’t want me here, I’ll go. I’ll understand.”
“Do you?”
“I think so.” She stared at the floor. “Men have needs, but you’re not interested in complicating our already difficult situation by giving in to them.”
