The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

  Shadoe felt his words in the very depths of her core, cream flooding her. Her skin felt five sizes too small and hot, achy. Her nipples drew tight, her clit throbbed and she was so damned turned on, one touch on her swollen clit and she knew she’d come. Sliding her mouth up and down in a shallow caress on his cock, she continued her teasing, even with his warning grip on her head.

  She was playing with fire and damn it, she loved it.

  Especially after the gut-wrenching fear, thinking she’d never see him again.

  With one hand, she cupped his sac, stroking the heavy weight of his balls as she licked another slow, teasing trail up and down his length before taking the head of his cock back into her mouth.

  His sex jerked and throbbed in her mouth, thick and hard, salty and warm. A drop of fluid seeped out and she sucked it down eagerly, swirling her tongue across the head before resuming her slow, shallow caresses.

  “Deeper,” he ordered, and then he just pushed deeper, holding her head still and starting to fuck her mouth, as though tired of her teasing.

  Staring up through her lashes at him, she shivered as she saw the dark, hungry look in his eyes. For a moment, Shadoe resisted as much as she could, just to tease him, using the considerable strength in her neck and mouth to pull back, to bite down gently until he was swearing.

  “Damn it, suck me, Shadoe,” he barked. “Take me in deeper.” His voice was ragged and his body trembling.

  In response…she bit him. Gently, but still, she bit him.

  He roared and jerked her to her feet, throwing her to her back and sprawling across her, yanking her hands over her head and holding them in one of his. With his other hand, he spanked her pussy and growled, “You like to play with fire?”

  She came, in one quick hard burst that soaked her thighs, and racked her belly with tremors. When she could breathe again, she grinned up at him and said, “I like to play with you…does that count?”

  He froze, and then a grin cracked his face. “Tease.” Lowering his head, he nibbled her lips gently, kissing her sweetly, all desperation and roughness just suddenly gone. “I love you so much… Are you going to marry me and put me out of my misery?”

  A grin so brilliant, it damn near eclipsed the stars outside in brightness, lit her face. Tugging her hands, she waited until he let her go and then she threw them around his neck and murmured, “Damn straight I’ll marry you. Just as soon as you make love to me.”

  “Hmmm…with pleasure,” he whispered, hooking his arms under hers so he could cup her head in his hands, slanting his mouth over hers and pushing his tongue into her mouth. He probed between her thighs and slid easily into her wet core, groaning into her mouth as she closed around him like a hungry, silky fist.

  Pumping his hips slowly, he made love to her, feeling her heart pounding against his, her tongue tangling with his. The walls of her pussy hugged his cock tightly and her nipples stabbed into his chest, sharp, hot little diamonds of sensation.

  The hot walls of her sheath clenched and tightened around him, milking his cock as he stroked deep inside her. A flush spread from her breasts up to her neck, pinkening her cheeks as she watched him through slitted eyes.

  “You’re so damned pretty,” he muttered against her lips, shifting his grip on her hands so that their fingers were laced palm to palm.

  Each time she started to near climax, he backed off, shifting his angle, changing his pace. “Not yet,” he whispered when she sobbed out her frustration. “Not yet…just feel it. Do you feel me inside you? Damn it, I can feel you, so tight, so hot. You’re mine—all mine.”

  “And you’re mine,” she gasped, as he moved higher on her body, dragging his body teasingly against her clit. Her clit ached and throbbed, the need for climax riding her so hard, she could barely breathe with it. “Damn it, Ben…let me come!”

  “No,” he whispered against her ear with a grin. “I told you I was going to fuck you until you screamed.”

  Her lashes lifted as she stared at him, her body shivering all over with the need to come. He stared right back at her, a teasing light in his eyes, as he lowered his head to her ear and whispered, “You have to scream…”

  She did scream, then, with sheer frustration, arching her hips and hooking her legs around his waist, tightening her pussy around him in a slow, sensuous caress, narrowing her eyes to slits as she stared up at him, her hair damp and tangled around her shoulders.

  A look of tortured bliss crossed his face and she bore down on him again, squeezing his cock with her inner muscles, flashing him a slow, sultry smile.

  He groaned and slammed into her, lowering his head and sinking his teeth into her shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark, to brand. He pulled out, driving into her again with bruising force, over and over, until she shrieked, the climax storming out of her and racking her entire body with shudders, her pussy clamping forcefully on his plunging cock.

  “Baby,” he grunted. “So fucking tight…” He sank back in and held still as he started to come, his cock jerking as his seed spilled into her, hot thick streams that flooded her womb as she floated down from her orgasm.

  Still hard, he pulled out of her, and flipped her over onto her belly, staring at her exposed rump with a smile. Stroking his finger down the crevice of her ass, he purred, “Get ready for this.”

  The bed squeaked as he moved away. Shadoe couldn’t even breathe, much less move. When he returned, she wheezed out a tortured, “You’re insane…” as he started to coat her anus with something cool and slick.

  “No. Just dying for you,” he said softly, pushing a long, slick finger inside, probing, wiggling. Then he added a second. She sobbed, heat sparking in her belly. Pushing tentatively back against him, she gasped as a pleasurable bite of pain lanced through her belly.

  “My Shadoe,” he purred. She shrieked as his hand landed sharply on her ass—one, two, three times. “Your butt just turned the prettiest shade of pink. And I can smell your hot little pussy. You like being spanked, don’t you?”

  She whimpered, her head thrashing back and forth on the bed. “Ben, yes, hell, yes,” she groaned.

  Her breath froze in her lungs as she felt the head of his cock probing at the entrance to her ass. Thick, hot, harder than a length of iron, he pushed, his hands gripping her hips firmly as he forged deeper, unrelenting, until he was embedded completely inside of her. Shrieking, stuffed full, impaled on the hot length of his cock, she was caught between the pleasure and the pain.

  He reached around and pinched her clit. She keened, a mini-orgasm tearing through her.

  Bracing one hand low on her spine, he started to shaft her, slow and deep, as he whispered, “I love fucking your ass. You don’t know whether you like it or not…even now. Even after you’ve come. I love watching this tight little hole opening for my cock, and I love listening to you whimper and moan as I drive inside you. You want it, even if you don’t know if you like it or not…”

  Shadoe screamed as he drove inside her with one particularly deep thrust, her body shuddering under the impact of it. She started to circle her fingers around her clit with quick hard strokes, her breath hitching in her lungs.

  Deep inside her ass, he pushed, his cock searing hot, throbbing. He pulled out slowly, groaning as she pushed back instinctively, aching to keep him inside her.

  He slapped her ass again and she sobbed.

  The next thrust sent her soaring into climax, a dam breaking open inside her as she came and cream flooded from her cleft, soaking her busy fingers and his balls as they slapped against her.

  “Hmmmm…perfect,” he groaned. He threw back his head, and a long, eerie howl rose from his throat as he came, his cock jerking inside the snug glove of her ass as he pumped inside her, filling her with hot jets of sperm.

  He sank down to rest against her quivering back as the milking sensations of her climax emptied him. His breath wheezed out of him and he asked weakly, “Are you ready to beg for mercy yet?”

  “Uh-huh,” she whimp
ered.

  “Good. I think I need a nap now,” he murmured. Easing them to the side, he slowly slipped out of her, shushing her softly as she flinched. And then they slid into sleep, their bodies spent.

  Malachi alighted on the small strip of sidewalk, cocking his head. The hotel room was finally silent. “They are done… I think,” Leandra said from behind him, her voice wry.

  He turned and met her eyes, not sure what he would find there.

  When he saw acceptance, plain and simple, he didn’t know what to think.

  She smiled at him. Folding her arms around herself, she rubbed at them, feeling cold, and weaker than she had ever felt in her life. “I can’t say that I ever wanted to be a vampire,” she told him, a smile canted that pretty mouth upwards. “But I’ve learned, over the past few months, maybe I’m not an evil person. It’s been driven home hard, over the past few weeks. I can live this life. And it is a life… I’m thankful to have it. I didn’t want to die. You saved me from that.”

  Malachi stood, shocked as she moved up to him and rose to her toes, pressing her lips gently to his. “Thank you, Malachi.”

  Settling back on her heels, she studied him, a smile dancing around her lips. “You expected me to hate you, didn’t you?” she drawled, sounding more like her wry, sarcastic self.

  “Yes,” he said, simply. The burning in his eyes wasn’t the sting of tears. He didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t tears. He hadn’t cried in…centuries, at least.

  She grinned. “Well, if it would make you feel better, I can always pretend for a while,” she offered. “But I’d rather you offer to help me out with this new…vampire thing.”

  “Vampire thing?” he repeated, dismayed.

  Her eyes sparkled. “Yes, vampire thing. You know, the feeding and all. And I don’t plan on being a plain vampire,” she teased. Her eyes glowed for the briefest second.

  Malachi rolled his eyes skyward and whispered quietly, “Please help me.”

  So after centuries, he was finally roped into taking a student.

  Shadoe studied the pile of stone in front of her.

  Okay, so it wasn’t a pile.

  It was a rather elegant setting, this place Ben called Excelsior. But she didn’t want to go to school.

  Sliding him a narrow glance, she demanded, “Why can’t you just teach me?”

  “I’m not good enough,” he said flatly, resting his hand on her neck.

  The dominance of the gesture wasn’t lost on her, and the wolf inside her sensed it, and shushed the part of her that would argue.

  “I’m a decent witch. You are an exceptional one. I always knew I’d have to bring you here.” His eyes closed and he licked his lips. “If I had brought you here from the first, maybe what happened could have been avoided.”

  A soft comforting presence surrounded them and the Wolf whispered into his mind, Brother…then perhaps, the vampire Dumas would still be unknown to the Council. The witch Leandra and Malachi even now Hunt him. He will no longer prey on the world, unbeknownst to us. All things happen for a reason. All things.

  “He’s right,” Shadoe whispered, wrapping her arms around Ben and snuggling her cheek against his chest. “Besides, I doubt I would have listened to you at first.”

  He cocked a brow at her and asked, “Does that mean you’re listening now?”

  She smiled sunnily. “When it’s in my best interest—of course.”

  “You’re a brat, Shadoe, you know that?” he said levelly. But the pleasure, the laughter in her eyes made his heart dance. He doubted she would have been able to laugh even two months ago. He knew she hadn’t ever had that kind of joy in her laughter.

  Odd, how damn near losing her life a second time had given her that kind of freedom.

  With a tug on her silky brunette curls, he led her down the path to Excelsior. “Come on. I’ve been promised a temporary teaching position…oh, the joy…”

  Epilogue

  Sheila glanced up as she sensed somebody new entering the school. She knew Cross—distantly.

  Her eyes passed over him without much interest before they landed on the woman next to him. She smelled witch, she smelled shifter… A frown briefly marred her face before she turned back to the book she held.

  It was a gory, bloody mystery.

  And it wasn’t holding her interest worth a damn.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of Rafe.

  The bastard.

  Those wicked black eyes, that clever mouth…she never should have slept with him.

  That was her first big mistake.

  The second was falling in love with him.

  But she had done what she could to fix it. She had begged Eli to let her leave…he had agreed. To a vacation.

  A vacation wasn’t what she wanted but it was a start.

  She wanted, desperately, to find some sunny beach, and some sexy surfer boy that she could use to forget Rafe. That is what she would have done, when she had been alive. Back in the eighties…all of thirty years ago.

  What had she been thinking, falling in love with Rafe?

  Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the wall and let the tears fall. She needed to get out of Excelsior and find a man. Have an affair—a hot, wild affair. No man could make her forget Rafe, but maybe she could get his smell off of her, and the memory of his touch would fade a little.

  * * *

  Rafe hadn’t been able to find Sheila for three days. Not that he had been looking.

  But when the sweet scent of plumeria started to fade from Eli’s enclave, he knew something was going on.

  Stalking into the Master’s quarters with hell in his eyes probably wasn’t the best way to start the day…but then again, for some odd reason, Rafe seemed to be spoiling for a fight all the time lately.

  “Where’s the little southern belle?” he demanded, flinging himself down onto a long leather couch.

  Eli glanced up from his desk just in time to see the leather molding itself to the long, rangy vampire’s form. And to see the fire in Rafe’s gaze. He couldn’t help the smile that filled his eyes, but he did manage to keep it from curling his lips.

  “She’s gone away for a while,” he said, leaning back and folding his hands across his belly. “Sheila has been rather—unhappy,” he mused after a moment. “She petitioned at first to leave, but we decided a vacation might suit.”

  “To leave?” Rafe growled.

  “Yes. A new Master, she thought a new home might solve the problem she’s been dealing with.”

  “What problem?” Rafe demanded, shooting to his feet. “She Hunts once a week, takes Erika shopping and acts like a babysitter for the kid. And cooking. Cooking, for crying out loud. What fucking problem?”

  His black hair tumbled into his eyes and he shoved it aside as he started to pace, mumbling and swearing under his breath.

  Eli heard every word.

  “I believe she is lonely. I suggested she go find a man and get…fucked six different ways to Sunday. Well, that was Sarel’s phrase. But it suits, I think,” Eli said, bracing himself, and reminding himself staunchly that Rafe was a friend, and that killing him wouldn’t help Rafe or Sheila’s predicament.

  Of course, when Rafe leapt over the desk and tore him out of his chair with startling speed, Eli did have to admit, he may have a bit of a fight on his hands. But he hadn’t been planning on fighting at all. Throttling down the instinct to battle, he gave Rafe an innocent look and forced a fake bellow, “What the hell is your bloody problem?”

  “You told her to what?” Rafe demanded in a low, deadly whisper.

  “Fuck me, she’s a lovely, loving young woman. And she’s lonely. You don’t want her anymore, but nobody here will give her a damn glance for fear of insulting you. She needs a man, so I told her to go find one,” Eli said, reaching up and shoving Rafe back.

  Rafe went flying, but he took a handful of Eli’s silk vest with him. Glancing down, Eli scowled. “Now that was just uncalled for. Sarel bought that for me,�
�� he snapped as he took the tattered remains off and held it up. Even Sheila, with her talented hands couldn’t fix this one. If she was around.

  “You told her to go find a man,” Rafe repeated, his fangs protruding past his upper lip, his black eyes gleaming red in his rage.

  “Aye. I did.” Eli allowed a tiny smile to appear as he cocked his head. “That really shouldn’t be a problem for you…but it looks like it is. Why is that?”

  Rafe went completely still as he glared at Eli.

  And then he stalked out.

  Hunter’s Choice

  A Hunter’s World Short Story

  By

  Shiloh Walker

  Copyright © 2009 Shiloh Walker

  All Rights Reserved.

  "Shit."

  The cold wind cut through her clothes like she wasn't wearing anything, blew her hair into her face, made her eyes water, and generally made it twice as hard to do what she needed to do. But she didn't look away from the couple in the alley, and other than that quiet curse, she made no noise, made no movement.

  She held a crossbow in one hand, kept the other on a pair of military-issue binoculars with night vision capabilities and a built-in digital camera. She was more used to using the crossbow than the binoculars, but up until a year ago, the only she’d ever used the crossbow was out on a shooting range.

  That had been another lifetime ago.

  Before 22 February 2007.

  The day her life changed forever–the day her twin brother and his wife, Sara’s best friend were found murdered in their hotel room while on their honeymoon.

  Joseph and Darla had been the only family she had left and to lose them would have been devastating, no matter what. But to have them so brutally murdered and to live with the gut-deep belief she’d never know who’d killed them, made it so much worse.

  The question of who would go unanswered. But Sara knew what had killed them. A creature that couldn’t exist, that shouldn’t. A monster that looked just like a man, acted, walked talked, sounded like a man. She’d been watching this one for a week now. Something about the way he moved, the way he watched people, had set off an alarm in her head.