Hunter

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Then he pulled that glorious contact away, grabbing her thigh instead and dragging it up along the outside of his own, settling himself against her completely in an invasion of rock-hard flesh and scorching heat. His kiss plundered her mouth, his erection ravaged her through their clothing with an all-too-keen stroke and thrust that had her gasping into his mouth when the eroticism of it began to overwhelm her. He was exhaling hard and harder into her mouth as he rocked forward and she reached to meet him with a wild undulation of female sensuality. Her hands joined the effort, gliding down to grasp the tight, straining muscles of his ass, pulling him forward and urging him on.

  Suddenly Hunter’s hands dove beneath her skirt, shoving it up her thighs to her hips so he could stroke his hot palms over her bottom, his fingers curling around the fabric of her panties. He was going to pull them away. He was going to free himself as well. He was going to put himself inside of her and thrust so deeply he would send shockwaves through her entire body. He was going to make her scream his name until the whole damn house came running.

  Hunter ripped himself away from her when the sheer violence of that need left him shaken and shocked. He was leaving them both blind and breathless as he staggered back until he hit the opposite wall of the corridor, but she had reached much too deep inside of him. Somehow, she had tapped into the part of himself that he reserved for his duties as Sentinel, the brute ... the primal warrior.

  “I must be mad!” he rasped hoarsely, bending weakly at the waist as he struggled for breath. “The more I keep apart from you the more I want you, Tatyana.” Hunter resisted the urge to roar like a savagely wounded beast even though that was exactly how he felt. “I can’t ... I can’t do the right thing! I don’t know what it is!”

  His honest and devastating pain hurt her, like blunt, stinging slaps of reality. She didn’t mean to upset him and torture him. In fact, she’d set out to avoid doing exactly that. She had avoided him to ease his need for her, to learn about the people he loved ... and to learn about him from them. She didn’t want to be just a bed partner to him. He had been right about that. She suspected that he had something so special within him, waiting for her to uncover, and she wanted so badly to find it. She wanted to know who he truly was. What his dreams and wishes and hopes were. No one here could tell her those answers because he had been gone so long they hardly knew him anymore. At least, not outside of the essentials of his personality that would never change. He was the only one who could tell her all she wanted to know, but every time they came close, their physical bodies overruled their minds. Purpose blurred. As did boundaries. His honor pained him greatly, and she adored him for how hard he fought to treat her well, but they couldn’t get anywhere if this hunger was always going to overwhelm them.

  The intensity of the attraction was supposed to have eased, he said, the first day promising to be the worst, but it had done just the opposite. She could see it in every part of him. Hunter was straining for control with a fury that had not been there yesterday. She longed to go to him, to comfort him, but she would be no comfort to him if she closed the distance between them.

  Tatyana wanted to close that distance more than anything. Her heart throbbed with the need to do it, as did her body, and she didn’t hesitate to admit it. She needed to be with him. In all ways possible.

  Suddenly Tatyana knew a moment of pure stillness. Even her heart seemed to go quiet, although she knew very well that it still raced to the tempo of their passion. Then, in that self-silent instant, clarity rang a gentle bell through her mind. As it grew in resonance, she felt the bracing hit of it like she had felt the shock of the snow Hunter had thrown her into the day before.

  He is a white witch, her mind whispered logically, and white witches do not control their familiars. Apprentices. Using the word familiar was something of a misnomer. Familiars were slaves, controlled completely by another for their own selfish ends. Hunter would not ... could not be party to anything remotely like what dark warlocks put their emerging witches through! So why ... ?

  Why on earth would he treat the volatile chemistry between them as anything other than it was? It was powerful, perhaps even a bit wild as it was enhanced by their raw sensuality, but she could feel the conduit between her nascent power and his masterful resources, and she had to believe ... no, she was positive she would know if she were being manipulated in any way.

  She wasn’t being played by mystical forces. These forces were purely natural. The only manipulation going on here was in Hunter’s own mind as he tied himself into knots with laces of nobility and integrity that she suspected might just be more about protecting himself, rather than about protecting her.

  Tatyana smiled widely, straightening from the wall and smoothing her clothes into place. She knelt quickly to retrieve her candy from the floor, wiping a hand over the wood to remove any stickiness. She headed for the nearest bathroom without looking back and washed her hands after throwing out the lollipop. She didn’t need to turn or look in the mirror to know he was looming in the doorway, staring at her with covetous, famished eyes, his hands gripped closed in restraint.

  Her fresh understanding of the connection between them allowed her a new freedom, but it was freedom he didn’t yet share. He was still bound by the idea that her reactions, as well as his own, were influenced.

  Hunter’s eyes, already riveting, swept around like those of a lazy predator sizing up an approaching mate. Then there was the moment when he shifted to the stalker, the moment she knew damn well that he had marked her for his own. Even now, in the doorway, as he leaned his forearms up against the frame, his eyes were fixated on her like those of his namesake. A hunter. Born and bred and determined to take down his target.

  Her.

  All she needed now was to coax him into catching her. Since he was the only one who knew the truth of who he was now, in the present and not ten years ago, he was the man she must spend time with in order to get to know him better. But besides that, she was eager to begin learning what direction she would be going in as a witch. From all she had seen, there were almost no two witches alike in the entire house, except maybe Ryce and Hunter. They were both Spellcasters. Annali was an Alchemist. Kaia a Healer. Gracelynne was an Elemental witch, able to call elements by will without spells. Lennox called himself a Symbolic witch, able to cast magic by drawing symbols in the air or on surfaces. Dimitre, amazingly, was known as a Tempus witch. A witch who could control time, or jump his consciousness into the past memories of another person. A way to observe history without influencing it. She knew now there was a seventh member of the house, a witch called Asher, who was off somewhere unknown to the rest of the coven at present. Ryce said Asher was a Spiritus witch, a witch who could call spirits and things beyond ‘the Veil’ to do his bidding.

  Where would her power lie? What would her abilities be? There was truly only one individual who could show her. Yet, how could she learn when he was avoiding her? There was only one solution, and that was to stay as close to Hunter Finn as was humanly ... and even supernaturally ... possible.

  The thought pleased her and she smiled a wicked, tempting smile as she angled her face away from the mirror so he couldn’t see it and try to decipher her thoughts. Her heart was racing in her breast. Hunter might be infused with animalistic passion, but at his core he was a principled man who couldn’t live with himself if he thought he’d done something to harm another. That was why he kept doing what seemed to be the impossible, pulling away from her when he so clearly didn’t want to. How to surmount that logic? she wondered.

  “Hunter,” she said softly, keeping her face averted, her back to him, “what is the difference between what’s happening between us and when a witch controls his familiar?”

  Tatyana might as well have slapped him across the face, that was how much the query startled and stung. His head even jerked back as if she’d actually struck a blow. Apparently she did feel she was being controlled after all, he thought bitterly. Frankly, he couldn’t bla
me her. It was why he couldn’t even resolve the conflict within himself. He could see no lines between what was genuine desire and what was the influence of their magical bond.

  But there was a difference, he amended with a frown, between the passion passing between them and the depravity of what he had known dark witches to visit on their familiars. He refused to have her equating the two and making this into something black and evil. It was a little out of control, yes, but its origins were genuine and not dissolute.

  “What passes between us is a mutual attraction, Tatyana. When a warlock forces his will on his familiar, she’s like a puppet to him. A doll whose life and spirit are repressed. She is forced to merely watch from behind distant eyes while her body is violated. Or, worse, the warlock can temporarily convince the familiar she lusts after him. He can make her crawl and beg and...” He stopped, swallowing hard and looking down at the tiles of the floor angrily. “He can turn an innocent into a whore, make a slut of a virgin, and make her think she loves every minute of it until the crushing moment he releases awareness back to her.”

  “I see. So I’m lucky then that my rather whorish behavior of late can only be blamed on myself.”

  Hunter sucked in a shocked breath and burst into the bathroom, finally crossing the threshold he’d been using as an invisible barrier. He came up behind her and grabbed her shoulders roughly. He spun her around and forced her to look up at him with a palm clasping her chin, fingers and thumb pressed into her face tensely.

  “You are not a whore! You wouldn’t have the first clue how to be one! Is that how I’ve made you feel? Do I make you feel used and ... and devalued? Just a body with no personality, unique existence, or special soul? Because I will damn myself straight to hell if I have! I never meant—!”

  “Shh ... no ...” she soothed him quickly, her hand coming up to cover his mouth, cutting off the stream of self loathing before it could get any worse. “No, honey, no. You haven’t got it in your soul to treat a woman in such a terrible way. Why in the world would you ever think that? Why would you think any intention you’ve had toward me would be a bad thing? Because our sexuality is being magnified? Because who we are is being magnified? Don’t you see, Hunter? If a scientist scraped you up and put you under a microscope, he could magnify you a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, and all he would ever see is Hunter. He would only see you. The good in you. If there is no evil in you, how can it possibly be made larger?

  “If you want me, Hunter,” she whispered, her fingers releasing his mouth in order to trace its fullness and beautifully sculpted lines, “and it’s magnified a thousand times, it’s still only you wanting me. Me wanting you. No wickedness, no badness, no deceptions or mistakes that will ever need apology. Do you understand me? You’re not a warlock, and I’m no slave. You sacrificed yourself to make very sure of that. I’m free to decide, just as you are. So decide, Hunter, once and for all. Not in the heat of the moment when you might feel guilty later, when your thoughts are hazed over, but now, when your feelings are all focused on protecting me. I trust you to listen to the honesty inside yourself.”

  Hunter looked down into her eyes. Strange, how right before a moment of truth there was first a mad rush of chaos. As he focused on the pretty jade gaze waiting patiently for him to wade through his confusion, she seemed, suddenly, so wise and at peace, as if she knew a secret he didn’t understand. But he wanted to understand. He needed to. He felt that truth beating in his brain like a drum.

  He had continually devalued this connection between them, treating it as something base and unnatural that must be stopped, but the bitter taste of that truth didn’t set well with him. It never really had. Because the reality of the matter was this connection was as legitimate a fruit of nature as his magic was. If the enhanced nature of it came through his magic, it was still coming through a source of white magic, and Hunter didn’t want to doubt the purity of his power.

  So ... perhaps it was the past looming over him, influencing his choices with her? Was he afraid of repeating the same mistakes he had made so many years ago when last he was in this house? Hunter wanted to believe he had learned from that long-ago tragedy and wouldn’t repeat it.

  Chaos calmed to the sudden stillness of understanding as he realized it was all about fear. He had never claimed to be a fearless man, but was he letting it control him? Through their magical link, she had a direct line into the heart of everything that he was. He felt her pushing into places no one else had ever had access to within him. If she continued getting so close, so deep inside of him, what would she see? What would she feel? What would she think of the savage within him that wanted her with such blind craving and intensity? What would she think of the witch who was, for all intents and purposes, an assassin for his coven? What of the man and his past saturated with mistakes?

  Despite these fears, a part of him realized he needed desperately to finally pull someone in that close. He was so tired of his solitary ways, and weary of fearing no one would ever truly know and accept him, mistakes and all. And it scared the holy hell out of him to think he could possibly want or need another human being so very much. He had essentially been wandering the world without any deep attachments for a decade. Now he’d stumbled back into the nest that had birthed him and his worst mistakes. So far, his family here had given him blind love and acceptance, just as family should. But what Tatyana offered was neither safe nor comfortable. It was well beyond that blindness of a family who no longer truly knew him.

  Yet, he found he craved his connection to her just as deeply as he had longed to return home. He craved her. He needed her, and wanted to be needed by her. No, not just physically. How it had gotten beyond that so quickly he didn’t know, but so it was. Where it would end was also a mystery, but these were natural human mysteries, not magically induced ones. Magically enhanced perhaps ... but not magically generated.

  Wise little witch, he thought as he looked at her. Age and wisdom, it seemed, didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. Too young for him? Hardly that. Too smart for him was more likely, he thought with a chuckle. She smiled at him when she heard the soft laugh, her eyes sparkling knowingly. Goddess, she was breathtaking.

  “I’m a damn lucky man,” he murmured to her.

  “And don’t you ever forget it,” she rejoined.

  He laughed at her, catching up her hand so he could bring her palm to his lips. “There is so much more to you than meets the eye. You’ve charmed me, and my coven, all in a day or two.”

  “Well, I’m a stray. Good-hearted people can’t resist a stray,” she said with an easy shrug.

  “A very good point.” Hunter began to kiss the tips of her fingers slowly, one at a time. “So, angel, you’ve duly conquered my reservations.” He smiled a wicked little smile that darkened his gorgeous eyes to a sinful shade of sapphire. “What would you care to do with me now?”

  “I’m so very glad you asked.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The door to the bathroom slammed shut as Hunter stumbled back into it, all of his grace abandoned for the sake of trying to maintain balance. Tatyana had turned into a snake, a serpent with a sinuous body, taut muscles, and a voraciously curious mouth. She had stripped his chest of his shirt, the article of clothing hanging useless off his arms while her hands slid eagerly over his skin, molding willingly to every contour and muscle she could find. Her mouth, meanwhile, was drifting teasingly over his left nipple, her tongue and breath just barely ghosting over the sensitive spot until he was hissing a soft, sibilant sound between his clenched teeth.

  His hands tangled blindly in her glorious auburn hair and he coaxed her head back until he had her mouth under his. The eager sweep and flick of her tongue filled his brain with explosions of pleasure. The kiss became so rough that their lips bruised against each other, though without any complaint from either of them. Hunter finally released her captive head and sought the curves of her writhing body as they slithered against him in a sensual crush that overloa
ded his senses.

  Tatyana felt his palms rushing down the curve of her spine, cupping and gripping her ass and drawing her in tight to his solid body. He burned with heat from head to toe, making her skin mist damply and her breath pant in short spurts into his mouth. He had eased his possessive kiss into long, lapping strokes of his tongue, making it clear how much he savored the taste and feel of her mouth. She was dizzy with the sheer sensuality of his kisses, but more than that, she was provoked.

  The deep ‘v’ of her neckline and the soft material of her dress allowed her to pull it off her shoulders, wriggling it down until her breasts were plumped out above the neckline just to the line above her tightened nipples. She drew one of his hands from her backside and placed it on her left breast, letting him feel the warmth and luscious fullness of it, the tease of the nipple hidden just beneath. He tried to pull back and see her, but she renewed the fervor of their kiss instead and the persistent massage of her body against him until she was fairly sure he didn’t know which end was up and couldn’t figure out which curiosity or fantasy concerning her wild body to fulfill first.

  Once she had Hunter’s every sense occupied in a whirl of sexually charged input, Tatyana slid her hands down over his ribs and traveled the fine contours of his hard belly. She felt the muscles beneath her fingertips contracting tighter and tighter the lower she went. By the time she passed his navel, he was completely tensed and breathing as though he’d run a marathon. Her fingers slipped past his belt, beneath his waistband, then curled around the slim leather from both the back and the front, gripping it tightly on either side of the shiny buckle.