Hunter

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “I can control it,” Hunter said quietly.

  “Can you? Does that mean my hands will remain fork-free?”

  Hunter winced. “It’s some kind of impulse control problem. I’m hoping, now that we are aware of the trouble, we can avoid most confrontations that might develop.”

  “Hmm. An assassin who cannot control his impulses. I’m still not comforted here.”

  “Damn it, Ryce! What do you want me to do?” he demanded. “I can’t change what has happened. Did you want me to leave her out there where someone could snatch her up and spend two weeks fucking up her mind and body? Don’t you think what we did to Annali was enough? I took one look at Tatyana and I knew I couldn’t hesitate. Hesitating and carelessness is how Evan found our Annie in the first place, remember? None of what happened to her would have happened if it weren’t for us leading him right to her. That was not going to happen again!”

  “Of course I didn’t mean you should have left her unprotected,” Ryce snapped, the reminder of his part in Annali’s past not sitting well at all. He didn’t need his old friend’s memories of it to feel guilty as hell. He had his own. “I’m just trying to encourage you to find a solution!”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” Hunter returned with hard sarcasm, “and so far my only solutions are to lock her up for more than a month, although there’s that whole pesky brother thing to deal with. Or, I can tie her to my bed stark naked and exhaust myself on her. Unfortunately, there’s still that pesky brother issue about to come up and, also, last I checked white witches didn’t do things like that.”

  “Well, they do,” Ryce stipulated with an unexpected grin, “but it’s got to be consensual.”

  The observation took the steam out of Hunter’s anger and frustration, making him chuckle softly. Nodding, he toasted his friend with a brief raise of his glass. “Blessed be, my brother.”

  Ryce sighed, rubbing the tension in the back of his neck. “You know, it can’t be coincidence that two blood bonds in this family have gone wonky.”

  Hunter looked at him with surprise. “This is the first I am hearing of it.”

  “At first, Dimitre’s bond with Annali was normal. She was immune to his power, etcetera. Then suddenly the immunity failed for no explainable reason. Now you are connected to his sister and experiencing this hyperactive impulse effect? Not to mention the physical attraction, too, by the sound of it. I have had five blood bonds. I felt increased sexuality and even some strong attraction to my students, but I could easily ignore it. Not saying that makes me better than you, mate.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Hunter said with a shrug.

  “Just that even with ten years in the wind I know this isn’t normal for you.”

  “Yeah,” Hunter agreed darkly. “Just what we need, right? Me, involved with another witch’s sister. Again. We both know how that turned out the first time.”

  “That’s not fair. Not to you or anyone else. You always took too much responsibility for Amber.”

  “I didn’t have any other choice. There was no one else to blame. Now it’s ten years later and I come back just to make the same mistake all over again? Gracious Lady, I thought I’d become better than this.”

  “You cannot liken this to what happened ten years ago. You’re a different person and these are extreme circumstances.”

  “Maybe you could have convinced me of that if it was just the blood bond attracting me to her, Ryce, but I promise you, I was hot for our new little witch the instant I touched her, and finding out she was Dimitre’s sister didn’t faze me in the least.”

  “Annali and Dimitre went through this intense attraction, too. It was wild for them as well. There is no rule saying that you cannot touch your apprentice if the familiar consents, and if you never touched anyone’s sister ... your dating options would truly suck. If you recall, Tatyana is very vehement about living her own life with her own choices. You don’t even know Dimitre. He shouldn’t be a factor in your decisions just because you think history is repeating itself. That’s an insult to Tatyana.”

  “An insult? Where do you get that?”

  “Because she isn’t Amber. Amber was so vastly different from the woman I met last night, it’s like tomatoes and strawberries—only the color is the same.” Ryce shot him a sly smile. “But you always had a thing for redheads.”

  “Yes, I know,” Hunter replied with a groan. “I cannot afford this distraction right now. You are so right.”

  “Then change it from a distraction into a strength. Maybe instead of fighting with yourself and with Tatyana, you should seriously consider that ... maybe it’s not wrong for you to be attracted to this woman. Maybe she is something ... someone you need. You and I both believe that things happen for a reason. The Mother Goddess sent Dimitre to heal Annali for us. Maybe, just maybe, Tatyana is Her gift to you for the same reasons.”

  “You think I need healing?”

  “There isn’t a person on this planet who couldn’t stand for some healing. But witches, those of us who have to see hard things and make hard sacrifices in the name of the Mother and all things good, I think She rewards us for the things we do for Her. I think it keeps us honest and faithful. And sane: ”

  “I don’t feel very sane at the moment,” Hunter remarked, dropping his empty glass on the table.

  “Right. I hear that’s normal when there’s a woman involved,” Ryce chuckled.

  Tatyana didn’t sleep.

  She couldn’t. Not while knowing her brother and Kaia were traveling in this horrible storm completely unaccounted for. Not while knowing there were evil witches out there who would do anything to get hold of a Willow Coven member. It was bad enough this witch Asher was completely unaccounted for. Now Dimitre, too?

  Strangely, of great comfort was the fact that no one else seemed able to sleep either. She’d been given her own rooms, but she was too restless to stay in them. So, she wandered all over the house. One after another she encountered Dimitre’s new friends, in various places doing the various things they did for comfort. Annali was in the conservatory bent over her beakers. She invited Tatyana in for an impromptu lesson on potion making and how magic was used in the process.

  Nox was playing billiards. This time she invited herself. Konnie had taught her to play since she’d been tall enough to reach the table and she really enjoyed giving Nox a run for his money. She also enjoyed his irreverent personality and the British native’s love for storytelling. He told tales about every one of his friends, and she knew them better for it already.

  She purposely sought out Gracelynne when Nox said she was awake in her rooms and that she wouldn’t mind a visit at all since she couldn’t come down yet. So she paid that visit and got to see the tragic courage of a woman lost. But instead of giving Gracelynne the sympathy of a stranger, she treated the visit just like the others, as an opportunity to learn from an incredibly gifted witch. Whether it was learning about magic or those within the house, no opportunity was to be wasted, she felt. Tatyana knew that there was a very real possibility any one of them could fall victim to the threat of war that hung silently over the house.

  Hunter didn’t see her again until the next morning. He had been aware of her the entire night, hearing her and glimpsing her through doorways and around corners. It was amazing, he thought with consternation, how two people stuck within the boundaries of the same house could actually manage to not meet. Wasn’t she at all interested in making some form of contact with him? Some kind of recompense or apology or ... contact?

  There was no logic to it. No matter how big the house was, it seemed unlikely that they wouldn’t trip over each other at some point. Especially when one of them was purposely looking for an opportunity to run into the other.

  Tatyana always seemed to be with someone else. However, since he wanted her to get to know his family, he didn’t disturb her when she was engrossed in conversation or activity with one of them.

  Or all of them.

&n
bsp; There wasn’t a single member of the household, except the still absent Asher, whom she hadn’t talked to during the course of those hours. Now it was just before noon and Hunter could hear her laughing in the library, and it was Ryce’s deep voice egging her on into further gales of the luscious sound. Every time she laughed, it cut through him like a siren’s song, calling to his every last nerve and vital function. His heartbeats and breaths quickened, his skin shimmered with anticipation. He imagined outrageous and decadent things about her laugh and how he’d coax it out of her while she rolled across his bed in her delight. Just the thought of it shortened his patience to a near zero.

  Unable to tolerate not seeing her any longer, he impatiently pushed into the back entrance of the library, edging around the far stacks until he could see her at last. She was on her back on a brown leather couch, her long, beautiful hair hanging over its edge, gleaming with the burnished gold hue of the lights. Ryce sat on the end of the couch where her feet lay. Her feet were crossed at the ankles, bare, and resting by the heel of her bottom foot on Ryce’s thigh. Ryce had a casual hand around the top ankle, which was twitching rhythmically back and forth.

  Tatyana was, of all the worst possible things she could be doing, casually sucking on a round lollipop. The confection was the size of a golf ball. She gestured with the candied stick as she spoke, sucking it between points she was making in the conversation.

  “A lift,” she was correcting her British compatriot, “is what you get when you’re a movie star past your prime. When your face or boobs sag.” She ticked the pop back and forth between her breasts for emphasis, although there was positively nothing sagging about the fully taut globes that were, even without benefit of a bra, exactly where they ought to be. “It’s called an elevator.”

  “And a flat is what you get when the lift on a movie star goes awry?” Ryce queried devilishly.

  Tatyana immediately tore into peals of laughter, her pretty toes lifting up to nudge Ryce in a pectoral muscle as punishment when she couldn’t speak to him for lack of breath. Ryce was chuckling and fending off her pedicure. The laughter calmed and the lollipop began to slide in and out of her mouth again as Ryce extolled the virtues of the Queen’s English. Then Tatyana pooh-poohed the Queen and war was declared. Before Hunter knew it, she was calling Ryce a limey bastard and telling him to go back to his bloody Queen if she meant so bloody much to him. Ryce told her bloody Americans have no right to use words like bloody and limey and he dumped her off the couch and over onto the floor so her belly was down and her backside was up and she was cussing and giggling and trying to talk around the candy in her mouth just as Ryce leaned over her, drew back his hand, and whacked her on her bottom quick and sharp.

  Tatyana squealed, laughed, spat garbled invectives, and struggled to right herself as Ryce threw a leg over her knees and pressed a hand onto her back to hold her in place while he whacked her again. Tatyana was red-faced and screaming with laughter and curses, the lollipop removed as she hurled all over her shoulder and tensed in preparation for his next assault.

  There was a resounding smack, but Tatyana was surprised when she felt nothing and suddenly Ryce let her go. She wriggled around until she was face up and saw Hunter and Ryce looming over her, Hunter’s hand gripping Ryce’s in what looked like a very painful grasp as the two men stared hard at each other. Hunter looked furious, his cobalt gaze spitting raging fire at his friend. Ryce was struggling to maintain his composure, but Tatyana could see he was disturbed to be nose to nose like that with Hunter. Tatyana realized that Hunter had stopped Ryce from striking her and was now letting the other man know how much he resented him putting his hands on her body.

  He was jealous.

  That meant trouble. After getting a blow by blow from Annali about her own behavior in the conservatory the day before, Tatyana knew it as sure as she knew her name. Hunter looked as if he had been pushed to the edge of a mighty cliff, and someone had just snuck up behind him and screamed. Tatyana flew to her feet, flinging her body between the two men with a laugh and a hasty, “Hey, hey, Hunter, how’s it going? I was just coming to look for you. I was wondering if, while we’re waiting for Dimitre, you could show me a spell or”—she grunted as she pushed against his powerful frame with all of her weight and leverage—“two. Don’t want,”—she managed a half-inch of movement before she gave up being subtle and bored her shoulder into his solar plexus and put everything she had into shoving him away from Ryce like a linebacker pushing back a training dummy—“to waste the opportunity.” She panted when he finally lost balance and stepped back two steps. “Whew!” She grabbed his arm, linked hers through and began to tug him toward the main doors, waving Ryce off surreptitiously; glaring at the witch when he had the balls to smother a chuckle while Hunter was still within punching distance.

  Tatyana was all but exhausted by the time she forced Hunter out of the main doors with a shove. She slammed the doors closed and pulled her treat from her mouth with a pop as she glared at Hunter.

  “Are you out of your mind? What were you going to do, punch your best friend in the nose?”

  “That,” he hissed, “would have been the least of his injuries. And while you are questioning my actions, Lolita, you might want to look at your own behavior!”

  “Lolita!” Her hand fisted around her lollipop with annoyance right before it landed on a thrust-out hip.

  Hunter groaned inwardly. She had no idea how fetching she looked standing there like that in her bare feet, with her red toenails peeping out beneath the swing of the skirt of yet another dress she had borrowed from someone. Not to mention she was still rosily flushed all over from her earlier play and laughter.

  “Do I look like some oversexed teenager to you?” she demanded.

  Yup. She surely did. Especially with that damned lollipop in her hand. She was at least a decade his junior, probably barely in junior high school when he had left the coven. She was tall and beautiful, undeniably a full-grown woman, but there was an unquestionable innocence to her personality and her youth. She was able to laugh with that lack of restraint that told him she hadn’t yet known any of the real heartaches of the colder adult world. The ones that made even your laughing moments come up a little short and speculative.

  As for oversexed ...

  She looked like a siren. A beauty only myth could capture and no man could bear to look away from. Certainly not this man, Hunter thought with agony as his body instantly rippled with awareness and very blatant need. Her eyes skimmed over him with that hooded, sultry contemplation that she didn’t even know she was employing. She held every inch of her body in constant sensual motion, small shifts so subtle that they could be seen only in the overall effect, but the impact was felt like an earthquake shaking his libido. Her hair flowed around her in wild streaks of color ranging from blatant cherry to mahogany. She reeked of sex. The potential of it; the nature of it. She smelled of it, he noted as he inhaled deeply of her. Musk, promise, and femininity. The sweet scent of the sugar melted on her tongue, the flowery aroma of shampoo in her hair, all a lure that taunted.

  Tatyana’s indignation evaporated as Hunter leaned nearer and nearer with every increasingly labored breath he took. The intensity in his indigo eyes kicked up her pulse and made her breath stop in her throat. She bumped back into the wall behind her and his hands lifted to box her in by pressing to it on either side of her shoulders. She saw him inhale, long and deep, his eyelids lowering slightly with a flicker of blatant pleasure as he came always closer to her. Her mouth was gaping slightly in shock, though she didn’t realize it until he let his electric blue eyes rest on her lips. Before she could close them, his mouth lowered to hers, his tongue darting out in a slow, sensual sweep across her bottom lip. He moved back, tasting what his tongue had found, his sexy mouth gleaming wetly at her as he did so.

  “Sweet,” he murmured, reminding her that her mouth was covered in sugar.

  “It’s the ...” She gestured with the lollipop vaguely, holdin
g it between them.

  “Taste it,” he bade her, the rough vibration in his voice making it sound like a growl.

  Suddenly, finally, she understood. Fiery intent lit the jade gems of her eyes, a sultry smile curved her lips. As erotic as her unconscious sensuality was, when she put effort behind seduction it blew Hunter completely away. She took the time to twirl the pop deftly between her fingers, and then slowly rested it against her lower lip. She rubbed it there, to and fro, for a smallest moment of motion, and then her tongue came out to flick against it suggestively. Hunter’s hands fisted against the wall, knuckles and tendons creaking with the violence of his grip on himself as his eyes followed every motion of her wicked mouth. She kept her eyes on his even though his focus shifted back and forth between them and her mouth. Finally, she fully sealed her lips around the round candy and sucked the globular sweet deeply into her pink mouth. When it popped back out at last, sugar and wetness coated her lips and her tongue came out to lick it away.

  Hunter didn’t give her the opportunity to steal the treat from him. He swooped in to claim her, wrenching her mouth under his savagely as his hands sank into her hair and his body slammed hers up against the wall. The lollipop hit the floor with a clunk as her hands came up to clutch at his back and shoulders.

  Tatyana felt the barbaric claim of his tongue plundering her mouth and she welcomed him with equal wildness. Sugarcoated and heated, she took him prisoner in her mouth, sucking on his tongue and dancing a needy tango with him until she made him groan. Her mouth was full of the rough, masculine sound. His hips met hers, grinding forward with a deft shift that made his hunger so clear. She felt him throbbing with it right through both of their clothing, so full and so much like smelted steel as he rubbed, hotly aroused and in need, against her. Then his hand skimmed fast and blistering down her body, making her twitch and strain for him as he swept over her breast, her belly and then insinuated his hand between their melded hips. His palm cupped her, seeking heat and finding it, his fingers spreading over her through her dress, making her gasp and surge up on her toes excitedly. A tornado of fire swirled up through her, starting at the center point of his touch and whirling wildly across branches of nerves she’d never known she had. Her belly clenched and liquid slid from her body in hot invitation, drawn to his seeking fingers.