Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

by Sarra Cannon

  She drew in a sharp breath, followed by a quiet moan. “Yes, I know your name, Mr. Horan.”

  “Well, that’s unfair. You should tell me yours.” He could discern from her scowl that she wanted to rebut, but in the end, likely knew he’d find out, anyway. As soon as he was dressed and back with his crew he’d know. Thom would tell him, and all that haggling and negotiation would have been for nothing—wasted words.

  “It’s Simone,” she said.

  Perfectly regal. Simone Horan had a nice ring to it. She’d have to take his name, if only for practical reasons. Perhaps a few caveman reasons, too.

  “Simone, I’d love to have sex with you. Plow you into the headboard until you didn’t know whether you were coming or going, but alas, I don’t have the energy.”

  She blinked. Stunned. Understandable.

  “Not even sure I could manage you being on top. Might kill me at the rate I’m fading. Right now, I just need you to say yes, and I’ll get what I need from your proximity. Just a sip.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “My mother calls me daft. I’m used to hearing it. You wouldn’t say no to me, would you? It’s just a small favor.” And she smelled so good. Edible, practically. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind just a little nip…

  His lips hovered over the bend of her neck, his tongue prepared to lash, when she pushed up onto her palms and glowered at him.

  “Am I going to recover from this?”

  It took all the self-restraint he had to keep the smirk off his damned face. “I won’t take too much. And like I said, I’ll give it back later. With interest. Will you do it?”

  “I can’t say no. I’m not allowed to say no if I’m able to do something. I, um…” Her body tensed against his. “Just, don’t—don’t tell anyone.”

  He grinned against her neck. He wouldn’t have to.

  He freed the hand entwined with hers, and relocated it to her backside, drawing her more firmly against him and making her aware of his body’s unavoidable response to her sex appeal.

  Before she could balk, he pressed his mouth against hers, silencing her, and took just a sip of the energy that made her a living, breathing, sentient thing into himself. Her eyelids fluttered, and she moaned, her body melting against his.

  He leaned back after a moment, just as he promised, and her eyelids sprang open.

  Evidently aware of his nudity and the probable wolfishness of his grin, she scrambled up to her knees.

  “We could probably have that sex now,” he said.

  “There I can draw the line,” she said, backing away from him and off the bed. “Besides, you reek.”

  “What’s a bit of earthiness between friends?” Friends, future lovers, spouses, whatever.

  “A girl’s gotta have some standards.” She stomped to the dresser, picked up her bucket of cleaning supplies, and said, “There’s soap in the bathroom. Your gang is currently in my tiny cottage probably burning the hell out of a side of beef from a cow that likely died in vain. I’m sure there’s plenty of charred meat to go around.”

  “I’ll be there if you will.” He stood, now feeling downright spry, and completely unabashed in his nudity. Stretching his arms over his head, he sighed, and grinned at the sight of her averting her eyes. Cute. She’s a prude. That wouldn’t last long with him around. Fairies tended to be more sexually needy then the average two-legged creature. She’d be begging for him before long. Once she stopped suppressing that part of her she likely didn’t understand or maybe didn’t even know about. There were lots of reasons a person of Sídhe descent would keep their heritage from his or her children, most having to do with personal safety, though occasionally parents did it to keep their children’s mates from finding them. The children could live their entire lives never knowing the gods had assigned them perfect mates. Heath thought that strategy was excessively overcautious, though he understood why they did it.

  “I have other things to do. Rooms to clean. Laundry to wash.”

  “You’ll be there. Next to me.” And it wasn’t a request. It was an order, no matter how sweetly he said it. Not just because he was who he was, but also because for some reason, she couldn’t refuse him.

  Her shoulders slumped, and she strode toward the door with him on her heels.

  He flicked on the bathroom light as she pulled the room door open, mumbling under her breath.

  “I’ll bring you more soap. You smell like what the cat dragged in.” She let the door close behind her.

  Heath let out that chuckle he’d been holding in. She was gorgeous, witty, and disinclined to take any shit from him. His perfect mate. The signs were clear. Innkeeper Simone was going to be fairy princess soon. Assuming his mother didn’t kill her first. And he knew his mother. Once she learned of her new competitor, she’d certainly try…and maybe Heath would finally have a good enough reason to kill her before she could succeed.

  Chapter 3

  Standing outside Heath’s room door, Simone closed her eyes and shook her head hard.

  What the hell was that? A heavy warmth settled low into her core, and she rubbed her thighs together to slake off some of the arousal. God, it’d been too long since she’d let anyone touch her. For that matter, it’d been too long since she’d been so near a man she actually craved the touch of. Obviously, her standards had fallen during the time she’d been confined at the motel. Before she’d come to the place, she’d preferred men who were nicely dressed and well groomed. Men with upward ambitions and responsible five-year plans.

  The disgusting grease ball in the room behind her probably didn’t have a five-year plan. Hell, he didn’t even look like he had two nickels to rub together. She couldn’t explain what his appeal was beyond being unreasonably attractive—for a fairy grease ball—and owning a dick that seemed to be the size of a baseball bat. Not that she’d been paying any attention to it.

  None.

  Well, maybe the littlest bit. After all, it’d been right there pressed against her, and he wasn’t exactly shy. With a body like that, he didn’t have to be.

  She dragged her shirtsleeve across her damp forehead and started around the building and toward the rear parking lot.

  She couldn’t contain her sigh when she shouldered open the door to her little cottage behind the motel. It was cramped even in the best of times, but stuffed to the gills with a bevy of supernatural whatchamacallits made it feel a lot like a full clown car.

  She set her cleaning supply tote on the floor near the coatrack, and crossed her arms over her chest, taking in the sight. The three women were fussing over the old gas stove, arguing about obscure spices Simone had never heard of, and discussing the timing of when things should go into the unreliable oven for simultaneous service.

  “Good luck,” Simone murmured. Only two of the stove burners worked, and the oven sometimes stopped heating for long stretches, leaving the operator confused at why cupcakes resembled soup at the end of twenty minutes of baking.

  Three of the men were squeezed onto Simone’s wicker sofa, booted feet up on the abused coffee table, watching the football game. Yet another lounged in her recliner, ogling the screen.

  Apparently fairies liked spectator sports?

  That’s seven, so who’s missing? Oh, yes. Thom and… Simone scanned the room. There was one missing—the sweet one she always thought looked way too innocent to be hanging out with this band of thugs. Perry, his name was. And another one—one younger even than Perry.

  She snapped her fingers. Matt. That was his name. Turned out, he was only quarter-fairy and was as new and green as a sapling. She’d learned that and many other trivia items the previous night when the girls had kept her up to talk. And talk. And talk some more. Simone had drawn the line and kicked them out when they asked to play with her hair. She wasn’t anyone’s life-sized Barbie doll, and she’d outgrown slumber parties more than ten years ago.

  “Where are Thom and Perry?” she asked the right-most fairy thug on her sofa, stifling a yawn because
suddenly she felt very tired. A wave of exhaustion rolled over her like an unexpected current she’d haplessly walked into. Except she knew this was no natural occurrence.

  A stinky, blue-eyed, giant fairy who’d said he would “Give it back later” had brought on this particular tidal wave. How had he stripped her defenses so easily? Even if she couldn’t refuse him simple favors, she didn’t have to be nice. She’d been nice! Well, nice for her, anyway. She shuddered just from thinking about how he’d brazenly pressed his naked body against her, and about how warm his lips were. When he’d touched her, for a moment, she thought the lights had gone out. She couldn’t see anything, only feel. And his skin against hers had been like some kind of exotic taboo, it felt far too sinful. Their edges seemed to blur, and she would have sworn his heart had beat in sync with hers.

  She could imagine the swivel of his hips, and him breaching her. She’d wanted him to, and that was what had freaked her out: considering having sex with a man she hardly knew, and a vagrant at that.

  Yuck.

  Ethan, the man on the recliner, stabbed a nacho chip in Simone’s direction and said, “They’ll be back soon. Went out last night to do cleanup from that job we were on before we came here. Last time they called, they were back on the coast.”

  “What, exactly, did you people do? I can’t kick you out over whatever it is, but the least you can do is tell me if I should be afraid of being smothered by one of you freaks in my sleep.”

  “Hey!” The black-haired woman named Siobhan, in the kitchen, balked and crossed her arms. “I’m more of a lover than a fighter.”

  “But the company you keep, Siobhan…”

  “Eh.” Siobhan went back to beating some sort of batter in Simone’s big blue plastic bowl, shrugging her narrow shoulders in acknowledgement.

  When the screen door behind Simone squeaked open and snapped closed, she didn’t turn around, suspecting Thom and crew had made their triumphant return.

  “What’s that about the company she keeps?” came the deep, accented voice behind her. It sure as shit wasn’t Thom’s.

  She cringed, and turned slowly to meet the chest of her least, or most, favorite giant fairy, who had showered and dressed in faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. His jeans’ legs pooled into the tops of untied combat boots.

  She cleared her throat and met his deep, blue gaze. The rules said simply that she had to be hospitable. There were no explicit restrictions from being a little snarky. “The company she keeps,” Simone started, “could do with some upgrading.”

  The fairy-boys on the sofa chuckled behind her.

  Heath clamped his arms over his broad chest and shifted his weight, raising one black eyebrow at her in warning.

  Nice try, bub. She cleared her throat again. “Nice to see you made use of all that soap. Since you’re up and about now, I guess I need to go strip your sheets and boil the hell out of them in my cauldron out back.”

  She tried to sidle around him, but he was too big and blocked her egress while wearing a shit-eating grin.

  “Since you’re here, you might as well hang out,” he said.

  “I’ve hung out enough with you bozos over the past few days. Right about now, I would probably give up my less favored pinky toe in exchange for some peace and quiet.”

  “You’re looking spry, Heath,” Ethan said with another of those damned chuckles.

  Heath nodded, locking his gaze on Simone and leaning against the doorframe. “Mm-hmm.”

  She needed to install a back door, and immediately. Why did the house only have one damned exit?

  “How much did it take to get ya going?” Ethan asked.

  “Not much, actually. Obviously, I was disappointed. Was hoping for a little more skin contact.”

  Someone in the kitchen mumbled, “Oh, gods,” and when Simone turned her head to the right to look over the kitchen island, she saw Siobhan’s face turned heavenward. Siobhan shook her head at the ceiling as if she were commiserating with some unknown entity. Given the circumstances, maybe she was.

  Turning back to Heath, Simone narrowed her eyes. “I guess it was pointless for me to ask you to keep it a secret because you knew full well everyone would know what you had to do to get on your feet, huh?”

  He shrugged.

  “You couldn’t have asked one of the girls there?” She crooked her thumb toward the kitchen, only to met with a chorus of “Ew!”

  “Hey, imagine how I felt,” Simone balked. “He smelled like sweat and motor oil and God knows what-all.”

  He straightened up and stalked toward her, pulling her body against his hard one before she could refuse.

  Not that she would have. Heath clinching her as if she were a virgin maiden was an unexpected turn-on. It took everything she had not to press her hand to her heart and swoon.

  Leaning down to her right ear, he whispered, “And how do I smell now?”

  Simone swallowed, and tried to register her legs beneath her, but couldn’t. If he were to let go, she’d be a helpless blob of woman on the scarred wood floor. “Uh. You smell like soap. A lot of tiny soap bars.”

  “I was disappointed you didn’t join me when you brought them in.”

  “Like I said, that’s one of the few things I can say no to.”

  “What immortal thing did you piss off anyway, love?”

  She gulped. No one had ever asked her directly. In fact, before the crew showed up, no one who’d stayed at the motel had ever so much as hinted they owned knowledge of such superstitions. She could barely meet his heated gaze, but somehow she managed, knees knocking all the while. “It wasn’t me. It was my paternal grandmother. I’m just the sucker who stumbled into it when the last idiot walked off the job.”

  “She really can’t say no,” Ethan co-signed. “If it has to do with this place or its guests, she has to be hospitable.”

  Some dark emotion flitted across Heath’s face, but he said nothing for a while. Just held her tighter. Finally, he said, “Don’t give her a reason to wish she could say no. I mean it.”

  Simone had a vague notion of the crew behind her making small movements, probably nodding. She appreciated him saying it, but she didn’t really need the help. She’d already come to an understanding with her lodgers. If they didn’t annoy the shit out of her, she wouldn’t yank the satellite feed. They really liked that satellite feed.

  “I need to go strip those sheets,” she said to Heath’s chest. She had no true compulsion to move. She wanted to stay stuck to him, and even more so when he chafed her back with one large hand, calming her from the hysteria that had been building up for far too long.

  How? Magic? She couldn’t bring herself to care at the moment. He was probably like some drug with awful side effects, but that she needed so badly.

  “Simone,” he said into her hair. “Can you leave this place?”

  “The motel, you mean? Why?”

  “Have to ask. I’ve seen hospitality curses before. I’m wondering if it’s like the ones I’ve encountered.”

  “I can go five miles in any direction. Far enough to pick up groceries, if I need them, and the rare odd or end. Everything else, I have to have delivered. I can’t leave, unless another eligible party takes my place. Has to be a family member, and for obvious reasons, they don’t visit me. I was the last one out of the loop, and they dumped it on me. Said I owed them.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?” she asked, looking up and feeling quite confused at the perplexity sagging his elegant features.

  “Bollocks.” Ethan tipped his head and banged it again and again on the recliner back, as if he were beating out some despicable notion.

  “What?” This time she gave Heath’s chest a little pound for emphasis. “Tell me.”

  Siobhan glided over with a grimace and rested a hand on Simone’s shoulder. “You can’t leave, and my brother’s not going to want to leave you here.”

  Brother? Oh. That explains the “Ew.” “You people are insane. Yo
u hardly know me.”

  “That’s what you’re not understanding, Simone,” she said. “We’re not people. We’re Aos sí. Daoine Sídhe. We don’t pair off the same way humans do. Forever is a long time to be with someone, so we don’t settle.”

  Simone’s head swam. Forever? She had another fifty, maybe sixty years left in her. If they thought she was this guy’s long lost love…

  She looked at him, and the anguish on his face indicated that, yes, he thought that exactly.

  “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “Sucks to be you.”

  “I’m wondering which petty god I must have pissed off, too.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Heath.” Siobhan gave her brother a hearty thump on the shoulder and strode back to her place at the stove.

  “I don’t understand why this would be a problem for you. You could just go,” Simone said.

  Heath sighed and pulled her toward the small, cluttered kitchen table and sank onto one of the seats. “This is complicated.” He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.

  She tried to pull away, but it was no use. She’d have better luck peeling a bug off a glue trap. Her friend Dasha had once picked up a clingy weirdo through one of those Internet dating sites and had learned pretty quickly that the best tactic was to play possum. If she were very still, maybe Heath would get bored and go away. If memory served her correctly, though, Dasha’s weirdo had only been a four or a five on the delectability scale. Heath easily scored a nine, and that was with the stringy hair and sloppy clothing. Gods forbid he actually fixed himself up, then he’d be…well, he was already irresistible, so what could possibly be beyond that? Somehow, he’d broken her brain. She tried to squirm off his lap again, only to stop once more upon brushing against a suspiciously turgid lump. She drew in a sharp breath. She had been better off playing possum.

  “I’m…well, we—Siobhan and I are high-court Sídhe,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”