The Dark-Hunters (284 page)

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to do it in the middle of my movie.” She sighed as she raked her hand through the popcorn. “It’s always white unless you put stuff on it.” She held the bowl out to him. “Want some?”

“There’s no need. I can’t taste it,” he reminded her.

“It’s air popped without butter or salt. There’s not much to taste, but you can feel the texture of it, right?”

He supposed. Reaching out, he took a small handful and ate it. True to her prediction, it did feel odd in his mouth. It was crunchy and light. “Why do you eat this if it has no taste?”

“I like it. It’s good for you.”

“You’re immortal. Nothing foodwise is bad for you.”

She gave him a menacing glare. “Would you just watch the movie?”

Danger was a bit stunned when he shifted so that he could sit beside her on the couch. He also continued to eat her popcorn. It was really odd to have someone here with her. Not even Keller shared her late-night/early-morning movie. It was something she’d always done alone to unwind after her duties. There wasn’t a great deal of Daimon activity in Tupelo. Most Dark-Hunters got rather testy when they weren’t busy, but she kind of liked it.

So she spent many nights at home alone with her DVD collection or on the phone talking to other female Dark-Hunters. Her favorite ones to talk to were Ephani, who was a local Huntress and Zoe, who had just been moved to New York City. Both of them ancient Amazons, they had some interesting takes on how to treat men.

Most of which involved whips, chains, and handcuffs.

Alexion’s hand collided with hers as they both reached into the bowl. She was still surprised by the coldness of it. No wonder he kept his coat on.

“Why are you so icy?” she asked.

“I’m cold?”

“Like a corpse.”

“Oh,” he said, as if he really weren’t aware of the fact that his body temperature would rival an ice cube’s. “Well, I am dead.”

“So am I, but I have a pulse and some warmth.” Which gave her a strange idea. Taking his wrist into her hand, she realized that he didn’t have a pulse.

She swallowed as he watched her. “Why don’t you have a pulse?”

No sooner had the question left her lips than a heartbeat started. His skin actually warmed while she held on to it.

Dropping his hand, she shot to her feet. “That ain’t right. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said honestly. “The only one who touches me is Simi and she’s cold too. I didn’t think about what my skin would feel like to you or I would have warmed it up first.”

She was completely confounded by his words. He could control his heartbeat and body temperature? That was unheard of. “How do you do that?”

“I think it and it happens.”

Danger sat back down and reached out to touch his face. It felt like any other man’s face. Granted, his skin was warmer than before, but it still wasn’t quite the temperature of a normal human.

His dark whiskers were rough against her palm, prickly, and it sent a foreign ache through her.

He closed his eyes as if savoring the feel of her hand on his skin. He turned his face ever so slightly in a gentle caress. When he opened his eyes, the deep-seated hunger in his gaze almost frightened her.

Before she realized what he was doing, he dipped his head and captured her lips.

Her first inclination was to pull back and slug him, but there was another part of her that sparked to his gentle kiss. And it was gentle. Tender. It was a lover’s kiss and it set her blood on fire.

She could only barely remember the last time she’d slept with a man. One-night stands had never appealed to her. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. For a brief time, when she had first become a Dark-Hunter and learned of her freedom from disease and pregnancy, she had explored her sexuality.

But that hadn’t lasted long. Since Dark-Hunters were forbidden to develop romantic relationships, it left her with nothing but sex. And sex without some kind of mutual caring wasn’t fulfilling to her.

She pulled back. “I’m not an easy lay, Alexion.”

He actually smiled a real smile at her. It was charming and unexpected. “I am.”

Shaking her head, she laughed at him. “Most men are.”

Alexion didn’t respond to her comment. How could he while his body and lips were still burning from the sensation of her mouth on his? That woman had a tongue that set every fantasy in his mind alive. It made him wonder what else she did well along those lines …

“If you change your mind, Danger…”

“I won’t.”

Damn. It was one of the reasons why he wished Acheron had sent him to a male Dark-Hunter. By now a man would have been on the prowl for a woman of his own which would have allowed Alexion ample time to find a bedmate for himself.

He somehow doubted Danger would be open to taking him out to get laid.

“I understand,” he said to her.

Yeah, right. He might mentally understand, but his body wasn’t listening. It wanted a taste of her so badly that it was all he could do to remain seated.

His celibacy was hard enough on him in Katoteros. On earth, it was unbearable. To be so close to a woman and not have her …

He actually whimpered.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said, wishing a cold shower would work. But he was long past that. He’d been so long without a woman’s touch that nothing except release would help him.

“So do you have any cheap friends?” he asked.

She gave him a disgusted glare. “You are a pig!”

“You go two hundred years without sex and see how you feel,” he said defensively. “It’s easy for you to sit there sanctimoniously while you condemn me, but you can have sex anytime you feel like it. All I have are the next few days. After that, I have to pray for a Dark-Hunter uprising to have another shot at a woman. Have you any idea how often those happen?”

“So you look forward to killing us?”

“No, but after a couple of hundred years, you do start having some radical thoughts.”

Danger stared at him in disbelief.

“And it would help if you had chosen a movie where people kept their clothes on. You know, Disney makes a damn good movie too.”

He was unbelievable! “I can’t believe you’re Ash’s chosen whatever and all you can do is think of getting laid. You are such a man-slut! You don’t even care who you sleep with.”

“That’s not exactly true. I do have some standards. Granted, not many, but still…” He sucked his breath in sharply. “I’m so hard it’s painful and when you consider the fact I don’t really feel pain like a human does, that says a lot.” He actually pouted and that succeeded in making her feel sorry for him. But only a little.

“You’re just having a really bad night, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea.” He expelled a heavy sigh before he got up and headed for her hallway.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to walk around your house and try to think cold, disgusting thoughts.”

Danger didn’t laugh until he’d left the room. Part of her really did feel for him. Then again, it’d been nearly that long since she’d last slept with someone. She just didn’t like getting naked with a stranger. Like many other female Dark-Hunters, she wanted the one thing she could never have again—a relationship. That was the hardest part about their immortality. With the exception of the Amazons, who were born to never have a relationship with a man, the rest of the female hunters missed what they’d had as humans.

It actually bothered her some nights how much she missed her husband. Up until the moment he’d betrayed her, she had loved him more than anything else in the world. Michel had had that debonair charm that won over everyone he met. Unlike Alexion, her husband had never once placed his foot in his mouth.

But then, Alexion, according to his words, hadn’t been around many people.

“Oh, don’t do it, Danger.”

But it was too late. She was already getting up to go check on him.

She found him downstairs, holding one of her DVDs as if it were a foreign object.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded even though he was scowling. “What is this?”

“It’s a DVD. That’s what we were watching upstairs.”

“DVD?”

He didn’t know what a DVD was? Was that even possible? “Yeah, isn’t that how you watch movies at home?”

“No. They just play.”

She scowled at that. “What do you mean, they just play?”

He acted as if there were nothing unusual about his declaration. “Whenever Simi or Ash want to watch something, it just comes on.”

“Without a video?”

“Yes.”

Such a thing wasn’t possible. “You mean you have streaming movies?”

“We have anything we want whenever we want it. At least I do if Simi’s not there. She tends to be a movie hog when she’s home.”

There was that name again. “Who is this Simi person you keep talking about?”

Alexion stood up. At first he wasn’t going to answer, but there really wasn’t any reason to keep it from her. It wasn’t as though the information would cost him anything. “She’s a cross between an adopted daughter and an annoying little sister.”

“And she lives with you and Acheron in his house that no one knows exists?”

“Yes.”

Danger was actually surprised she was getting something personal out of him. Hoping for more, she asked, “No one else ever comes to visit?”

“Only Artemis and Urian.”

Artemis she knew. “Urian?” Before he could respond, she answered for herself. “Wait. Let me guess. He’s ‘other.’”

“Yes.”

“Is Ash the only non ‘other’ there?”

His features immediately went blank, as if he were hiding something.

Danger caught herself before she gaped. “Are you telling me Ash is ‘other’ too?”

“I’m not saying anything about him.”

He didn’t have to. His omission said it all. She wanted to ask more about what Ash and Simi were, but it had been futile enough tonight. She was rather tired of banging her head against the proverbial wall.

Sighing in defeat, she looked over at her plasma TV, which had had a miraculous recovery while she’d been upstairs. “Did you fix my TV?”

“It only seemed right since I was the one who broke it.”

She walked over to it to inspect it. Everything looked normal. As soon as she was in front of it, it came on.

Danger jumped, especially since its remote was lying on the bookshelf in front of her. “How did you do that?”

“Same way I always do it.” The television shut off.

She quickly moved away. Just how much power did this guy wield?

He moved to stand behind her. His presence there was disturbing to her well-being. She was more aware of him than she had ever been of any man before. There was something about him that was electrifying and magnetic.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Danger,” he whispered near her ear. Chills shot through her body. “Unless you threaten Acheron, I will never harm you.”

“No, you just intend to harm my friends.”

She felt him pick her braid up and hold it close to his face so that he could inhale her scent. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.” He set her hair down and moved even closer. His presence was overwhelming. Powerful. She could feel his desire to hold her.

Yet he refrained.

Alexion ground his teeth as he imagined what it would be like to pull her flush to his body. To reach around her and cup her breasts in his hands. It would be so easy to slide his hand underneath the waistband of her flannel pajamas … To brush his fingers through the triangle of hair between her legs so that he could stroke her. Touch her. Hear her moaning in his ear as her breath tickled his flesh.

He could already feel the slickness of her.

His mouth watered hungrily for a small taste. Carnal pleasure was the only thing that he could still experience as an immortal with the same degree that he had known as a human. It was why he craved it so much. There for a few minutes, he could forget his icy, lonely existence and feel truly human again.

He could feel connected, almost wanted.

But she didn’t want him.

His bitter loneliness tore through him, shredding his heart. It was ever his destiny to want and not have. In many ways, he was Tantalus. He could see what he wanted, but every time he’d ever dared to reach for it, something came along and took it away just as he grasped it.

Damn.

Grinding his teeth, he stepped away from her. He sensed her instant relief and that saddened him even more.

“So, do all the male Dark-Hunters pimp for you?”

He shook his head. “No. They just tend to frequent places where … shall we say … loose women congregate.” And normally those women threw themselves at him. It was a pity Danger didn’t follow their actions.

“I’ll bet they do.”

He ignored her dripping sarcasm. She had no idea how important such contact was to him. She interacted with other people nightly. He didn’t. His only contact with the world was through the monitors and the sfora in Katoteros. It was cold and sterile.

Like me.

That was true enough. Every century seemed to get a little harder for him. Like Acheron, he lost more and more of his humanity. That was one of the reasons why it was so important for him to try and save Kyros. This was the first time in centuries that something had truly gotten to him.

He really did want to save his old friend.

But that would have to wait for now. He could already sense that dawn was about to break.

Danger looked to the window as if she sensed it as well. “It’s getting late. I think I’ll turn in.”

He nodded as she left him alone.

No sooner had she vanished from his sight, than he felt the prickly sensation of being watched again.

Alexion rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. “I swear, Simi, if that is you messing with me, I won’t lock up your credit cards next time. I’ll shred them.”

Chapter 9

Danger spent a fitful day in her bed, trying to sleep and finding it almost impossible. It was barely six in the evening when she woke up, her heart racing, her mind whirling from horrible images.

Wicked dreams of Alexion had mixed with nightmares of him trying to kill her. No matter how hot the dream started out, it always ended the same way—Alexion locking her into a cramped, dark room that held other Dark-Hunters. Ragged and ill-kempt, barely more than human skeletons, they begged for mercy until they were led outside, one by one, to the Place de Grève where the guillotine in its red-painted frame waited to behead them.