Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) (6 page)

“I will never hurt you,” he whispers. With both hands he cups my face. “Challenge you, give your body what it craves, seduce you, of course. But never wound you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

But I
am
afraid. I’ve never been more afraid of him than now. Not even in the second when I thought he might’ve murdered Cooper. And I know he can feel it. I’m trembling in his arms, leaning toward him. Not because I’m afraid he’ll hurt me. But because I’m afraid he won’t. I’m afraid that beneath his cold blue eyes and hunter’s instinct, there isn’t a monster at all, but a man. A man who could make me feel things not by commanding me to, but by simply being present.

And kissing me.

He’s kissing me, and it is so sweet. Soft lips press into mine, downy hair tickles my cheeks, hands slowly slide down until they rest at my waist.
 

I let him, soaking in his attention like it’s the sun, melting in his embrace. And when his tongue peeks through my lips I moan against him shamelessly.

“Please,” I whisper. I don’t know what I’m asking for, but I know that whatever it is, it’s not just more kissing.

He smells like fresh forests, like mint. He smells like a beginning and tastes like coming home at the end of the day.

He breaks the kiss, but brings me closer into his embrace until my head is resting against his shoulder again. I could stay like this forever.

“I’m sorry that our kind has given you such cause to fear us. Taking your friend, and whatever else we’ve has done that has made this so much harder for you than it needs to be.”

Perhaps the inevitability of his phrasing — that the only reason I could ever not want him would be because of my past — should annoy me, but it doesn’t. All I can feel for him in this moment is grateful. Grateful that he hasn’t pried further, grateful that someone, anyone is apologizing. For my parents, for Lawrence, for everything. Not because it makes things any better, but because if all this is someone else’s fault, maybe it won’t be mine.

“It’s not your fault,” I say, and for the first time I actually believe it. An arrogant bastard Orion may be. Dangerous, and with more secrets and darkness in him that I can bear. But he’s not the one who killed my parents. And I’m not the only one who’s suffered.

“I know,” he whispers. “And it’s not your fault either.”
 

My heart sinks. It
is
somehow my fault, what happened to his kind. While it took Timothy Higgens transforming on national television to finally convince the public that werebeasts had returned, I have no doubt that it was pictures of my sad face that mobilized people into action. Like it or not, I was the poster girl for the movement that forced him into hiding. Forced him to endure years of abuse at the hands of his father, just so he wouldn’t go insane.

Orion leans in closer, until the warmth of his body and the coolness of his breath intermingle into something poignant and seductive at the same time. I can hear my heart beating in time with his and the world narrows until I live only between each of those beats, those moments.

That’s all we have, a handful of heartbeats. You can never be sure when they’ll be up.

Cooper’s are done. So are my parents’. I wonder how many I have left. I wonder why I suddenly want so badly to spend mine with Orion.

He strokes my cheek once before he sighs and hands me the gun. “We don’t have any more time. We have to go. You’ll need this.”

“You’re not worried about me having a gun?” I take it from him reluctantly. Even after last night and this morning, holding it still feels like holding a snake. I’m never sure if it’s going to attack me or not.

He smirks. “I’m pretty sure you’ll wait until after we find your friend to shoot me.”

“Will it hurt you to have the bullets nearby?”

“As long as you don’t fire any at me, I’ll be fine.” Orion shakes his head. “Most likely you won’t need to use the gun, anyway. As long as you do as I say you’ll never be in any real danger, but—”
 

“Better safe than sorry?” Happy for any excuse to tear my gaze away from his, I bend down and collect the silver bullets from the pockets of the duffle, threading them into the chamber before reloading the gun.

His grin returns. “Better safe. I’m never sorry.”

“Eugh.” I roll my eyes and pick up the rest of my loose clothes and throw them back into my purse again. “Sometimes I think you want me to slam you up against the wall and punch some sense into you and you’re just pretending to be an obnoxious asshole to torment me.”

“Punch away, just do it quickly.” He grabs my arm and, practically yanking it out of its socket, drags me down the stairs until we’re in the living room once more.

“Wait.” All the false ease leaks out of me as I stare at the obstacle still standing between us and the exit. Cooper’s body. “What if the police or the FBSI find him and think we murdered him?”

Orion winces. “They won’t think that.”

“And why not?” I stare around the house. Other than the body in the middle of the room it’s almost sterilely empty. It even has that same strange chemical smell, like a photography darkroom. Like the dream. Silver. Of course.

I wasn’t best friends with Cooper, but it seems unreasonably harsh to just leave him in my house. “Someone should bury him.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Orion says. He tilts his head, as if looking out a window.

I follow his gaze and notice three black cars slinking down my suburban street. Hell. I know those cars. They’re the same ones that visited this house seven years ago. They’re the FBSI. “Shit, Orion! Did you see that!?”

He gives an exasperated sigh. “You’d think they’d try to be a little bit more inconspicuous.”

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” My heart thrums in my chest. I glance back at the window. They’ve pulled up to the curb and stopped. A woman with dark hair and a darker, crisp suit steps out of the car.

“Someone must have called them. Damn it! What do we do?”

“Not someone, Artemis. Me.”

“You?” I whirl. “Why would you call them?”

“Because I’m one of their top agents.”

Chapter Ten

   “You work for the FBSI,” I repeat for what must be the sixtieth time as I buckle up in Orion’s surprisingly unflashy Toyota Camry.

   The last five minutes have been a blur as Orion rapid-fire explained to me that his boss and co-agents would take care of the body while we got started on tracking Lawrence’s kidnapper. The moment I saw them I was ready to leave, to run, so it didn’t take any cajoling on Orion’s part to get me into the car. But as he pulls out of the parking space in a jerky turn — not bothering to signal — I’m beginning to move from confusion to suspicion.

“You work for the FBSI.” I rap the leather dashboard a few times with my knuckles. “Not only that, but you’re one of their top agents.”
Rap.
“How is that even possible? I thought the FBSI was all humans.”
Rap. Rap.

Orion’s only answer is to run the yellow light at the end of the street, even as it ekes dangerously close to red.

“Not very law-abiding for being a policeman,” I comment, still thinking aloud.

“I’m not a policeman.”

“Secret agent, whatever.”

“It’s not a secret. I don’t keep secrets.” If he was speaking with anything but that complete cool control I’d think he was referring to me. But as usual he’s inscrutable.

I still wince, though. That’s me, secret keeper. Bond resistor. I wonder what my parents would say if they saw me now? What would they want me to do?

Probably not have sex up against a wall with a supernatural being in my dreams to avoid having to deal with my emotional baggage and then make out with him only one floor above a dead body. Probably not that at all.

Eugh. I turn away from Orion and look out the window. The weather outside seems to be in just as much turmoil as my mind.

Despite it not raining, the storm has settled in to stay. The sky is overcast, and the puddles dotting the road don’t seem in danger of evaporating. Humid air presses down on me, hot, heavy and churning with the promise of more rain soon to come.

Thwap.
I switch from tapping my fingers on the dashboard to slapping my palm against it.

With one hand Orion executes a sharp turn onto East Ave, heading out toward the inner loop, and with his other hand he grabs my wrist. “Stop that.”

I freeze at the contact. His grip is strong, but not painful. I try to wiggle out of it by collapsing my fingers, but I’ve never had tiny wrists, and even if I did that wouldn’t work. I glare at him. “Let go.”

“It’s annoying. Enough.”

“No.” Even through his light but unmovable grip I still manage to tap the leather.
Thwap.
“It’s been almost twenty minutes since you told me that apparently you work for a secret government organization, and you still haven’t answered any of my questions.”

With his index finger he strokes the inside of my wrist, tracing the veins with his fingernail, before pressing down with his thumb. The pressure sends a tendril of desire weaving through my blood. “Ask me a question, Artemis. Any question. And I’ll answer.”

I stop tapping.

He gives me one last appreciative stroke before letting go of my wrist and sliding his eyes back toward the road.

“Okay, so how does a werewolf come to work at the FBSI?”

“I got into a lot of trouble when I was younger after I left the safe house. My friend Cal and I liked to play at vigilante justice,” Orion recites dispassionately. “Some of that trouble got me in contact with the FBSI. When they realized I had a unique skill set, they hired me instead of throwing me in the cage.”

“The cage?”

“As I said, werebeasts don’t like to be confined.”

“Right.” I shiver at that, and look away. “Is it hard working for someone so” —
evil
— “ready to threaten you?”

He laughs. “I’m much more experienced now than I was when they first found me. Now I do it because I enjoy it. As I said, I like to hunt.”

I start at the sound of his laugh. I’ve never heard him laugh before. Smirk, smile, sure, but laugh? It transforms his face completely.

“Any more questions?” he practically purrs. “Or is it my turn?”

“Still my turn,” I say, my voice cracking on the last word. “So why you? Why did they pick you to work for them? Weren’t there a lot of werebeasts, umm, captured in the early days?”

“None that are as good at tracking as me. Or as strong as Cal.”

“Who’s Cal?”
 

“A friend.” Without looking he takes his hand off the wheel again, but this time he doesn’t grab my wrist. Instead he reaches out to touch my hair.

I still, suddenly cognizant of the sensation. His touch is like no other guy’s I’ve been with, not just because of the instant heat it awakens in my belly — although if I’m honest my panties haven’t been dry since I first saw him — but because of the way I can’t predict what he’s going to do next.

For example, I’m sure that when he touches my hair he’s going to weave his fingers through it and play with it like he did every other time before. But he doesn’t. Instead he moves my hair away so my neck is exposed.

I arch my back slightly, my skin feeling sticky against the leather seat behind me, even though I haven’t sweated that much. My body instinctually wants to give him access, wants to present itself. I clamp down on the urge and cross my arms over my chest.

Eyes still focused on the road, Orion says, “You can cross your arms if you like. But I’m still going to touch you unless you tell me to stop. And you won’t. Because you like it.”

“Where exactly are we going?” I clench my teeth.

“I’m not sure,” Orion says. “Normally, I can intuit the direction clearly, but they’ve covered their tracks, so it’s more moment to moment.”

“But you can still follow them.”

“Of course I can, Artemis. I’m the best.”

I roll my eyes. “Did anyone ever bother teaching you humility?”

“Almost everyone I meet. But usually I teach them in the end.” I wait for his hand to move, but it doesn’t, it just rests on my neck with an unnervingly casual possessiveness, as if we’ve been lovers for years. “You’re the only one who has ever given me any real trouble.”

I’m as disarmed by his honesty as I am by his touch. Despite the darkness surrounding him, Orion almost makes it a challenge not to trust him. “So how much longer do you think we have left?”

“I’d say a couple of hours at most.”

I nod, not knowing what else to say. A couple hours of driving and then what? I don’t ask, afraid of the answer. Will we have to fight? Will he kill?

The next couple of hours pass slowly. Despite Orion’s assurance that he’s caught the trail, all I can smell are the exhaust fumes from the highway. I wish there was something I could do to speed up the process of finding him, but all I can do is sit here.