Heart of the Hunter

by Chance Carter

  “You always this friendly to your potential partners?”

  “You’re not my potential anything,” I said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  I looked into his eyes. Something about his confidence bugged the crap out of me. I couldn’t say what. Usually when people came to Los Lobos, they were scared to death. This guy looked like he was on a morning stroll through the park.

  “Yes, I do,” I said, pointedly.

  He held me in his gaze, then shrugged cheekily. “You might be surprised.”

  “Might I? I doubt it.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  He was infuriating.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Whatever you’re thinking, forget it. Then forget what you forgot. You look like the kind of guy who could manage that.”

  He let out a laugh.

  My eyes glanced over his chiseled chest and torso. God, he was sexy.

  “God, you’re touchy,” he said.

  I sighed. “I have my reasons.”

  “I bet you do,” he said, looking around the bar.

  I didn’t know if he was agreeing with me or challenging me. I didn’t know how to read him. He was frank and direct, didn’t play games, and in the world I lived in, games were the only thing that mattered.

  “We could do this all day,” I said, “but I’m not in the mood for banter.”

  “Have it your way. You know where I can find him?”

  “Who?” I said, knowing full well who he meant. I was prolonging our interaction without even realizing it. Was I that lonely for real contact?

  “Wolf.”

  “I’m sorry, is there something about me that gives you the impression I’m his secretary?”

  “Jesus. What is it with you? Just tell me where he is.”

  “Fine. He’s gone. They all are. You missed them.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  I nodded. “So, you know, don’t let me keep you.”

  I’d become a bitch and I knew it. He knew it too, but he took it as a challenge. He was one of those guys who wanted what he couldn’t have.

  He looked at me and a smile crossed his face that drove me mad. He was so sexy I had to bite my lip. I won’t say what I really wanted to bite. It wasn’t every day I was alone with a guy like this. Wolf was too jealous to allow it. The way this guy looked at me made my heart speed up.

  “Girl, you’re lucky I don’t come over there and teach you some manners.”

  A mental image of him bending me over the bar and spanking my naked butt flashed before my eyes. It made my cheeks flush.

  I knew I was being a bitch. I didn’t mean to be. He was charming as hell. He was just my type too, sexy, the bad boy look, muscles, tattoos, a raw attitude that exuded confidence. I wanted him to leave so that I wouldn’t be reminded of all the things I couldn’t have. I already knew he was nothing like Wolf. This guy would be good to his girl. He’d treat her right. He wouldn’t hit her. I had experience in that department, and I could tell. The truth was, this guy was everything I’d given up forever by getting involved with Wolf, and it was torture to see it.

  I wanted him to turn around and walk out the door so I didn’t have to look at him, but another part of me was desperate for him to stay.

  “Manners?” I said.

  His grin stretched from ear to ear. “The manners your daddy should have taught you.”

  I couldn’t resist. “You wouldn’t have the nerve,” I said and, despite my intentions, gave him a sly smile.

  That got his attention. He looked at me again as if seeing me for the first time. His eyes drank me in from head to toe, staring at my ass and tits longer than was necessary.

  “Try me,” he said.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to get mixed up with a girl like me.”

  “Are you that dangerous?”

  “Let’s just say, if you messed with me, you’d be taking your life in your hands.”

  I don’t know what got me talking to him like that. It wasn’t like me to flirt with the lowlifes that did business with Los Lobos. I despised all of them. But everything about this guy was different. He had balls. In all the months I’d been with Wolf, this was the first time I’d met anyone who seemed to have the nerve to rival him.

  “Don’t you know?” he said, “Some things are worth risking your life for.”

  “Some things?”

  “Sure. Some things,” he said and looked down at my ass again as if assessing me, checking if I was one of those things worth taking a risk for. Cocky prick. The way he looked at me made me feel the need to prove myself. I realized I was sitting up straight in my seat, shoulders back, breasts pushed forward, the way my mother had always wanted me to sit when I was a kid. For the first time in months, I actually cared what someone thought of me.

  He melted my resistance. I struggled not to show it. I couldn’t let this go anywhere. As tempted as I was to flirt, I would be literally taking my life in my hands if I did.

  “Let’s you and me go for a walk,” he said.

  I laughed. “A walk?”

  He winked. God he was arrogant. I loved it.

  “What makes you think I want to go for a walk with you?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Shapely legs, tight ass, I bet you can walk the fuck out of those pumps.”

  I burst out laughing. “Walk the fuck out of my pumps?” I repeated out loud. I couldn’t believe he’d said it like that.

  “Girl, I can tell an assassin when I see one.”

  If Wolf ever overheard anything like this, there’d be hell to pay. He’d string me up and have his thugs beat the shit out of me. But he’d left for Vegas.

  “An assassin?”

  “An assassin of the heart.”

  That did it. I burst out laughing even louder than before. I laughed harder than I had in months. He was playing, being intentionally ridiculous, but it worked. If it hadn’t been for the threat of Wolf’s jealousy, I’d have gotten on the back of his bike and ridden with him wherever the hell he wanted. I’d always been a sucker for a cocky bad boy with the guts to let me know what he wanted from me.

  “I’ve never heard anyone use that line,” I laughed.

  He was smirking now. He knew he’d won me over. “It’s not a line.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  His eyes crawled over me, lingering on all the hotspots. He had some nerve. I had to give him that much. He knew how to walk into a room, spot what he wanted, and go for it.

  “Well, before you get carried away, you ought to know I’m Wolf’s girl.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “I’d just hate to see anything bad happen to you.”

  He took a seat at the bar next to me. It was a bold gesture given that every other seat in the place was empty.

  “Why would anything bad happen?” he said.

  “Well, you seem to be getting ideas.”

  “What sort of ideas?”

  I looked away. He was trying to goad me. “You know what I mean.”

  He looked right at me with those intense eyes. His jaw looked like it was cut from marble. I wanted to rub my hand against the shadow of his stubble, just to feel its roughness.

  “What if I told you I don’t care whose girl you are?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What if you got on my bike right now, and rode back with me to Rio Secco?”

  “Wolf would kill you,” I said.

  “Wolf can go fuck himself.”

  No one spoke that way about Wolf. Was this a test? Had Wolf sent this guy to see how I’d respond? I wouldn’t put it past him.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Listen, I’m not kidding. I can see you don’t like this shit hole. I don’t blame you. Your boyfriend’s scum. You’re too good for him. Los Lobos are heartless bastards. There’s something better, and it’s just a ride away.”

  “As easy as that?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “
We’d go back to your place?”

  “Yes we would.”

  “What then?”

  “Then we’d fuck like rabbits.”

  “Charming,” I said, but I wasn’t as unaffected as I put on.

  My lip quivered with emotion that seemed to rise up from nowhere. It was raw, a mixture of anger and sorrow. I wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at the situation I was in, and the fact that I couldn’t take him up on his offer, no matter how right he was about my life. I wanted to cry but I held it in.

  “Don’t think, just do it,” he said. “We’ll be in California before Wolf even knows you’re missing.”

  “Just do it?”

  “I’ll show you what it’s like to be with a real man.”

  For a second I lost it. I slapped him across the face. That surprised him. It had seemingly come from nowhere. Where did he get off? Did he honestly think I’d throw myself at him for saying something like that? Even if I could? He was insane. I put force into that slap, really hit him hard. I knew it hurt.

  “What was that for?”

  “Don’t ever speak to me like that. I’m not perfect, but the least I deserve is respect. You don’t even know me.”

  “Don’t I?” he said, trying to lighten the mood again, but I wasn’t having it.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  I was being unfair. I was blaming him for all that was wrong in my life. Through his shirt I could see the tattoos inked into his skin. They were intricate and so sexy on his perfect chest. I prayed he couldn’t tell how attracted to him I was.

  “Look, I know Wolf. I know Los Lobos. I know how they treat their women.”

  “You don’t know shit about me.”

  “Everything doesn’t have to be the way Wolf says it is. Not everyone’s afraid of him and his cocksucker friends.”

  “They’re killers.”

  “They’re not the only killers.”

  “Oh, that’s supposed to make me feel better? Leave one criminal to get in bed with another?”

  “Now you’re talking,” he said.

  He made me so angry. This was my life, and he was treating me like some random pickup in a bar. I suppose to him I was a random pickup in a bar.

  “And what then?” I said. “After you’re done with me? After you’ve had your way with me and I’ve given you everything you want? What the fuck then?”

  “Then we get married. Make babies. White picket fence.”

  I slapped him again, harder than the first time. It was so hard my hand stung. I took pleasure from the fact his cheek reddened.

  He shook his head. I’d angered him.

  I was wearing a cheap necklace, a heart pendant on a silver chain, and he grabbed it in his fist and yanked it. The chain snapped and he put it in his pocket. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? That he’d stolen my heart? He hadn’t stolen shit.

  “You’re cruel,” I said.

  “Maybe I am, but I meant every word I said to you.”

  “Give me my chain back.”

  “I will, some day far in the future, when you don’t even remember I have it.”

  I was going to cry, and I didn’t want him to see. I didn’t even know why. This guy was a primo asshole. He was toying with my emotions, pushing my buttons. He should have known better. He should have known I was trapped. You don’t walk up to a slave and ask them to go for a walk. It’s not fair.

  I stormed out of the bar. As soon as the door slammed, I burst into tears. Fuck him. How dare he play with me like that. It wasn’t right. You don’t take the one thing a person wants most in the world and dangle it in front of them for fun. Talk is cheap. Where I come from, you either give a girl what she needs, or you shut the fuck up.

  You don’t get to talk the talk and not do anything about it.

  He could keep the shitty chain. Twenty bucks would get me a new one.

  In the coming weeks, I forced myself to push him from my mind. And yet, nothing was the same after that.

  Days turned to weeks and then months, and Wolf treated me worse and worse.

  I didn’t even know the name of the jackass from the bar, but I couldn’t forget him. I couldn’t forget that there was someone out there with the balls to say, ‘Fuck Wolf Staten.’

  And if he could say it, why the hell couldn’t I?

  Chapter 2

  Jackson

  THE DAY OF MY FATHER’S FUNERAL.

  I always knew it would be a violent death. What I hadn’t counted on was it having such an impact on me. It shook me up, brought me face to face with my own mortality. I was an only son, the last of the line, everything would end with me. That didn’t sit right.

  I was out on the highway, headed to the Los Lobos hangout. I hated meeting those guys. They were nasty, and they had no clue how to live—no clue how to be men. I’d seen the way they locked up their women, terrified them, turned them into slaves. There was no honor in that.

  Los Lobos was a syndicate of twelve grade-A assholes. They were killers, drug-runners, human-traffickers. All twelve deserved to be put in the ground. The fact that I was doing business with them made me sick to my stomach.

  I was buying information from them for the Brotherhood. That’s my group. Four grade-A assholes, but not like Los Lobos. We’re different. We steal money, but we don’t hurt people. That’s a subtle distinction to most people, but to us it’s real. People think all criminals are the same. They’re not. Maybe I’m biased, I love the other three members of the Brotherhood as if they were my real brothers. They’re real men. Men you can trust—rely on—men who’ll do what needs to be done when the chips are down.

  At sundown it started to rain. I was on a lonely stretch between Reno and Carson City and the glow of a vacancy light called out to me like a beacon.

  I walked into the motel bar with one thing on my mind—getting fucked up. It’s not every day they bury your daddy.

  There are certain nights in your life different from the others. The force of destiny weighs down on you. Everything that happened before seems to have led to that fateful moment. Everything after is a consequence.

  This was one of those nights. I could feel it in my bones. I can’t say I was particularly close to my father, but his dying, it took the ground out from under me. It made me realize I hadn’t yet achieved the most important thing in life. I was risking everything on a daily basis, but I hadn’t planted the seed of the next generation.

  I was soaked from the rain but didn’t care. I took a place at the bar and slapped my gloves and helmet on the seat next to me.

  “What can I get you, cowboy?” the bartender said.

  I looked around the room. It was a dingy place. Not too many customers.

  “You got sugar back there?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll have a bourbon with sugar. The way the old man used to drink it.”

  “I can make you an old fashioned,” he said.

  “No. Just the bourbon and sugar.”

  He put a shot glass in front of me. I downed it in a single motion and asked for another. As I downed the next, the door slammed behind me. I turned.

  In walked trouble.

  Chapter 3

  Jackson

  IT WAS A GIRL, little more than a kid, soaked to the skin, makeup running down her face in long, black streaks. She cut a tragic figure—a drowned kitten—desperation written all over her.

  There was something familiar about her, and then I remembered. A few months earlier, the Los Lobos bar, she was Wolf Staten’s girl. Instantly, I could see what was going on. She was on the run.

  She’d actually done it. She’d taken her life into her own hands. She was fleeing the most savage group of men you’re ever likely to hear of.

  And how did I react? I’ll tell you.

  My cock stiffened.

  I’m not ashamed to admit it. I wanted this girl badly ever since that first time I set eyes on her. It wasn’t any normal lust, it was a hunger. I had to have her. She’d invaded
my fantasies and I couldn’t get her back out. It was months since our first meeting in that bar in Reno, and every night since, I longed for her. I craved her.

  I stared at her.

  Twenty-four hours.

  That’s how long I gave it until Wolf caught up. She’d be dead by sundown the next day if I didn’t help. There was no way in hell Los Lobos would let a woman like her escape them. They’d make it a matter of pride, and let me tell you something about the criminal underworld I inhabit—the bigger the asshole, the greater the pride.

  She needed help, and whoever got involved would pay a hefty price. Twelve members of Los Lobos, all killers, all mean as fuck.

  I looked at her more closely and fuck, if she didn’t take my breath away. Light brown hair, big blue eyes, a mouth made for pleasure.

  She walked straight to the bar, and when she spoke, it was like the rest of the world went silent.

  “Bartender,” she said, “a beer.”

  The bartender’s eyes widened when he saw her. “Miss, are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You look—”

  “What?” she said, her eye steady.

  He shrugged, and got her a beer.

  She picked up the bottle, brought it to her lips, and when she slammed it back on the bar it was empty. I was impressed. She drank like she meant it.

  Her soaking dress was completely see-through. My dick pulsed with desire. I wasn’t going to let her slip through my fingers this time. Even as she stood at the bar, shivering from the cold, I promised myself I’d fuck her. I’d dominate her. I’d become her master.

  She looked up and caught my eye. I nodded to her and told the bartender to give her another drink.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You seem like you could use it.”

  She looked back at me, a challenge in her eye, but she took a swig from the bottle all the same. She was acting tough, I admired that, but it was clear she was in trouble. She was running out of time, and she knew it. Wolf and his cocksucker friends would be tracking her down, coming closer with every minute that passed. It would take them a while, but they’d find her. And when they did? Bye-bye birdie.

  “I know you,” she said.