Hunter's Prey, A

by Cameron, Sarah

  Feeling herself sweat already, Zoe stood up when her good friend Jones entered, sitting down at the round table built for ten. She had counted the seats.

  Actually, even the room was intimidating. When she had been ushered inside her breath had caught in her throat at the mysterious air that surrounded her. Coated in fine, dark wood, it spoke of secrets and shadows. She'd wondered if she was about to be introduced into a secret society, and by the way this meeting was being conducted, it was not excluded.

  She'd admired the fine crystal chandelier that hung from the tall ceiling, the many details carved in the wood she'd recognized as Viking-like carvings, the plush seatings and expensive decorations. The room was normal in size, perhaps in order to enhance the thrilling air of mystery that permeated it, but not a detail was cheap or out of place.

  Her mouth dried at the sight of Damian Hunter, the man she was secretly craving like nothing else. Behind him was his brother Amar, who entered right after him, and then followed Dominic and Gabriel.

  Her disappointment was acute when she realized she was not going to be meeting Leon, but still – the honor to meet and sit at the same table with four of the five Hunter brothers was great.

  Beside Jones was Maximiliano Herrero, MedFuture's ex-CEO. After Max followed two more gentlemen that she didn't know.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, remembering that most of the day had passed with her seeing to her luggage and getting comfortable in her appointed room in the mansion.

  She wasn't even sure what to call this house. It resembled a palace in size, yet it could hardly be called one. The other option was villa, but the term was too tame for this beautiful monstrosity of a house.

  The Hunter family had been around for ages and it stood to reason that they had a large number of homes in all parts of the world, but to own such luxury seemed obscene.

  Beside the butler, she'd noticed a couple servants, but they had evaporated like the wind, leaving no trail.

  She understood that discreetness was necessary in these men's lives, but this was ridiculous.

  'The quirks of the rich,' she thought.

  “Welcome, Miss Jameson,” Gabriel Hunter greeted, his face an evil-looking smile. She knew that this was the adventurous brother, the one in all Hunter brothers who could hardly stay still. Still, he made her feel small and insignificant. Those lips weren't made for kindness, she thought. They had seen and done cruelty. She, of course, had no proof of that, but it was what he inspired. In any case, that he'd come here to meet her made the young woman feel privileged.

  “Thank you,” she said, walking to him and shaking hands, as this was the first time they were meeting. One by one she greeted all of them, then they were seated. The butler came out of nowhere – she hadn't even heard the door open – and silently poured water into their respective glasses.

  Zoe shivered at the intensity with which everyone was looking at her, particularly avoiding Damian's gaze with fanatic zeal. She could feel him assess her mood, her nerves, her adequacy for the job. That he was only interested in her work-wise betrayed the quiet intensity with which he regarded her. If there was even one small chance of landing Damian, she would fight tooth and nail to get him, but first she would have to summon some courage.

  Exhaling deeply to soothe her nerves, Zoe listened to Dominic's introduction to the Hunter family, one she had heard a dozen times.

  “But behind all this is what we never tell people.”

  Shoulders tense all of a sudden, her breath caught in her throat as Dominic looked her straight in the eyes.

  “Miss Jameson, are you convinced you can hold our secrets for the rest of your life? If you are to become CEO of MedFuture Enterprises and a member of the HUNTER Club, then you need to know what you're stepping into, but first I will have your solemn promise that you will never disclose what goes on inside these doors to anyone as long as you are alive.”

  Swallowing thickly, she nodded, confirming, “Yes. I swear I will tell no one about your secrets or about what goes on during HUNTER Club meetings.”

  Sighing, Gabriel spoke to her next, his voice surprisingly soft. He was a beautiful man, almost the most controversial of the Hunter brothers, because while the possibility of all other four Hunters belonging to a same parent was plausible, if you judged by their looks, Gabriel was the only one who could not have been born of the same parents. The way he looked, one would assume he was fully African. He wasn't a mulatto – his skin was dark chocolate, the kind that hinted he could not have been born of a white parent, but the Hunters insisted they were blood-related, and so no one dared argue with them, anymore.

  Someone had tried to get their DNA in the past, but the whole attempt had become a massive, never-got-to-be-published story. Zoe remembered reading about the scandal for months, though the whole thing had been buried so efficiently that everybody had wondered how they'd done it.

  “Miss Jameson, what you will be told today will change your notion of reality. We're talking things that stretch your imagination, things that may appear unlikely at the beginning. Are you prepared to know it all?”

  After she had seen what Akiko could do, nothing seemed unlikely to her. If this was a secret club that ruled the world from the shadows she wouldn't be surprised. And curiously, she wanted in.

  “I am.”

  “Very well, then,” the oldest Hunter brother in the room said, standing up, his presence commanding. “I will show you-”

  “No. Let me,” Damian interrupted, looking straight at her as everyone else stared at him openly.

  Swallowing thickly, Zoe giggled nervously, trying to keep her smile. “Show me what?”

  Standing before her, Damian didn't speak. Instead, his mouth turned into a lopsided smile and then it happened. Slowly, as though he were playing the process in slow motion for her to take it in, his body morphed and morphed, shapes twisting into different forms until his size was reduced considerably and he was... a Husky.

  No, he was a wolf.

  Frozen in shock, Zoe felt the blood drain from her brain, the organ that permitted cognition. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, could do nothing else but stare. For a moment she was terrified, but fear dissolved, leaving tendrils of disbelief. In the distance she heard isolated words such as “in shock” or “faint” or “water”, but she had no idea what these people were saying. All she knew was that Damian Hunter, the man she had craved for so long, was not even human.

  'Fuck, what the hell is he?'

  He was... an animal. One that could turn into a man. Or was that a man who could turn into an animal? Sudden mythological concepts flooded her brain as it rushed to make sense of this situation.

  “Are you a wolf,” she wondered, “or a dog?”

  When he growled, sharp fangs looking threatening in the chandelier light, she knew. He was no dog. An animal so easily tamed? He could be no such thing.

  She seemed to snap out of her shock-induced trance right then, walking slowly around him as though he were an exhibit in a museum and she were studying him, assessing him like an eager scholar.

  First she wanted to see him from all angles. Circling him, she noted he had no tail and remembered this was also a supposed trait of werewolves, if such things existed. Al of a sudden it seemed she was reluctant to discard the possibility. He was no werewolf, though. He was a wolf – a fine, mighty one. His fur was splendid and shiny, silver and black. His eyes were a turbid blue, enchanting and mysterious. Those were also his human eyes and only now did she understand why they'd always seemed to her so inhuman, so enigmatic. The animal in front of her seemed nervous, impatient, as though being under scrutiny put him off considerably.

  But she was too fascinated to care. Instead, she decided to touch him.

  “My God,” she said as her fingers ran through his fur, caressing his back gently.

  His reaction was not something anyone would have predicted.

  Shuddering violently, he backed away from her and she y
elped in surprise as he turned into a human once again, something he'd had no intention to do with her around. Still, the shock of her touch had been so rattling that Damian had had no choice but to escape his animal form, where every emotion and every sensation was intensified a hundredfold, making him vulnerable to impulse and sheer instinct. His instinct right then had been to pounce on her and take her just like that, as a wolf, for everyone to see. Now he was naked and quivering, the human skin on his back still reacting from her touch in a way he knew to mean one thing and one thing only: she was his mate.

  How he'd let such an important fact escape him he didn't know, but his subconscious seemed to whisper the answer: You knew – you just ignored it.

  So maybe he had known, but nothing could have prepared him for the potency of her touch when he was in his animal form. It angered him to be so out of control of his own reactions, but he couldn't help it. That his brothers and their most trusted friends were staring at him as though he'd surfaced from a mine after inhabiting it for a century didn't help matters at all. And Miss Jameson's gaze on his erection made it all worse.

  Zoe. Zoe's gaze on his cock.

  'Good God,' he thought, growing harder when she licked her lips as she looked at him, her eyes stopping on what was between his legs. It was no secret to him that she was hot for him, that she wanted him to take her and possess her, but the problem was...

  … so did he.

  And he could not have that.

  “Shit,” he muttered right before his baby brother rushed to do some damage control.

  “Miss Jameson,” Dominic said, “my brother was startled by the, uh, unexpectedness of your touch, and so he-”

  “Does this happen every time?” she interrupted, a wave of lust hitting her fully, letting all the males in the room know she was very interested in what she was seeing.

  Gabriel lifted an eyebrow, looking at her quizzically. “Does what happen all the time?”

  When her eyes fell directly on Damian's blood-engorged cock, her arousal skyrocketed and it was suddenly quite clear what she was referring to.

  Before anyone could answer, though, Damian's need got past the point of control. “Fuck,” he muttered, moving to her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her with him. “Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” she squeaked when he wouldn't let go, dragging her out the door and down a long hallway. She'd looked behind her as they'd left the meeting room, seeing the Hunter brothers and their confidants rush after the pair then stop right at the threshold. They must've decided not to interfere, though she wasn't sure that was the right call. Clearly Damian was out of his mind right now, somehow affected by his animal instincts, or so she thought.

  The sound of her lovely, feminine voice made him even harder and he growled. “Don't speak. You're making it worse.”

  Effectively silenced by the gravity of his voice and unable to decide whether she should be terrified or thrilled, Zoe followed him wordlessly, her abdomen clenching when she saw where he was taking her.

  Opening two large doors to something that appeared to be a master bedroom, Damian slid his hand to the small of her back, applying small pressure that made her aware of every inch of him behind her. Suddenly breathless, Zoe was confronted with the biggest conflict yet: run or be ravaged.

  Her mind, which had lusted for Damian's attention for a long time along with the rest of her body, provided the only option it would take: ravaging.

  With her heart trying to beat right out of her chest she pushed the door open, gulping at the sight of the massive living room that extended into a bedroom through a half wall. She knew what he wanted her here for and couldn't help but want it too – desperately. Ever since she'd met him she'd felt she was wired to want him, to open to him sexually. It had come as a surprise to her, as she's never allowed any one man to hold so much power over her.

  'Except him,' she thought, then immediately shook her head, as though to dispel any images it might conjure. 'Get the hell out of my head, father!'

  Sweet relief was provided in the form of a hand caressing the small of her back and she fought the urge to moan. Goosebumps pricked at her skin tauntingly, reminding her this was way over her head. She was about to be taken by a beast with little self-possession and a lot of lustful rages. She could feel it in the tense air wrapping around them. She'd always been highly intuitive, and what her senses were alerting her to was the presence of a predator in her proximity.

  She knew it. She felt it in her bones. He was a hunter and she was the prey.

  Hunter's prey.

  Zoe laughed to herself at how accurate of a description that was.

  “I've just about had it,” he said, his voice nearly unrecognizable as he bent his head over her shoulder slightly, gruff words caressing her ears with little gusts of air that made her tingle all over. “You don't know what you do to me. If you hadn't touched me, we might have been able to keep this charade indefinitely, but you strip me of my will, woman. I'm tired of hiding behind my anger. I'm tired, and I want to give in to what your body is offering me.” His lips touched her temple and a shiver coursed through her. “What you're offering me.”

  For a moment he turned away from her, locking the door and pulling out the key, then walking all the way to the coffee table to place it there. He was making it clear that if she wanted to leave, she couldn't. Even if she picked it up from the coffee table, she would never get to the door in time to unlock it. He'd make sure of it.

  A current of fear traveled through her, immediately replaced by sheer lust, shivers overwhelming her body in a way that made her feel she couldn't stand up straight for much longer. He noticed and approached her, even as she stepped back instinctively. In a second he was a hair's breadth away from her, their bodies not quite touching. Yet he was such a striking presence that she could feel him in every pore, just as she always had. His scent clung to her senses like a drug and it was all she could do not to bury her nose in his chest and take him in like an addict.

  Her eyes, beautiful wide orbs that they were, traveled up to his, regarding him uncertainly, like a deer caught in the headlights. She knew that any time now he would be invading her like a raider, tearing her apart and putting her back together again, never to resemble what she'd been. Zoe knew that after this one night, she would never be the same again.

  ***

  Damian fought the aggressiveness of his urges with all his might, somewhere in the back of his mind worrying he might hurt her irrevocably, a thought that horrified him.

  All the conflicted feelings he'd ever felt for this brown haired goddess with gold in her hair surged to the front now, confusing him with mixtures of rawness and tenderness. There was a deeply ingrained instinct to protect her that he had had to endure during every meeting, desperately trying not to come to her rescue when she was cornered by board members and left to fend for herself. He should have realized from the beginning what she was to him and they might not have come to this moment, when he was feeling so volatile he couldn't even predict what was going to happen the next second.

  Yet he hadn't, and now he was going to take her.

  But not to keep her – he had no use for a mate.

  Resolved, he brought his hand to the side of her neck and cupped it gently, but with a firm grip that spoke of possessiveness. She was his – to take, to fuck, to leave. She belonged to him.

  Inflamed by the direction of his thoughts, he ignored her gasp and the heady musk in the air that signaled her readiness to receive him, bending his head and taking her lips with his, seizing her mouth with all the brutality of an animal.

  Her breath caught and he felt her shock, swallowing it along with her small grunts as he plunged his tongue inside, caressing hers, tangling with it and showing her what it would feel like to be inside her. Feeling more empowered than ever before, Damian walked her back against the nearest wall, trapping her there and expending no real effort to lift her up against him and wrap her legs around his hips. An end
earing little whimper tore out of her throat at the abruptness of his moves and he smiled despite himself. She was no match for him in strength and speed, yet this only meant that he could position her just the way he wanted, making her easily bend to his will. The thought brought him so much satisfaction that he ground his hips against her, rubbing his aching bare cock against her designer suit pants. He loved her slightly masculine outfits bearing sharp edges and bold colors, shocking with their rugged simplicity and saying a lot about her no-BS approach to business.

  He'd like her more without them, though.

  His mouth devoured hers as though he were starved for the taste of her, wordlessly indicating how he would eat her out, how he'd fuck her. He could feel her trembling in his arms, her muscles already too weak to support her, her body overcome with liquid passion. She was like molten lava, his own little volcano just waiting to erupt.