Hunter's Salvation

by Shiloh Walker

  But Vax hadn’t planned on it hurting like this, lingering with him, riding his back like some hell-born monkey.

  He couldn’t keep going. He wasn’t going to go back and beg for forgiveness, plead with her to take him back. Hell, they’d never really had each other, so how could one of them take the other back?

  Vax did have to tell her he was sorry, though. Maybe explain why he had ended it like that. Yeah. Good idea. Smooth things over, apologize, say whatever he had to say to ease the pain he’d put in her eyes. It wasn’t going to completely erase the ache in his heart, but maybe he’d sleep.

  The drive took too damn long. Way too long. He tried not to think about how he could have done this a few weeks ago. He’d never fly again, not unless he was in a plane. Vax didn’t really care for planes.

  By the time he reached Indianapolis, he’d gone nearly twenty-four hours without sleep. He was punch-drunk with exhaustion, and nervous. Nervous—it was weird, but Vax couldn’t remember the last time he’d been nervous. Had nothing to do with the magick, though.

  Had to do with the fact that he was standing at Jessica Warren’s front door, freezing his ass off and too aware of the fact that he probably wasn’t going to make it inside, not if he knocked. So maybe he shouldn’t knock. Vax looked behind him. It was quiet on the street, and late, pushing eleven o’clock. The lights in Jess’s house were out, although he knew she was there. Sleeping, deep and dreamless. He could sense her. At least that much hadn’t changed.

  He had a feeling that if he knocked, she wouldn’t let him in. Vax wasn’t leaving until he said what he had come here to say.

  After one last look at the door, he went to his bike and retrieved a small black case from the leather pack strapped to the back. More often than not, when Vax had needed to get inside someplace, he’d used magick. But that hadn’t always been possible. Any Hunter worth the name knew how to break into places. Vax might not be much of a Hunter anymore, but he figured he could still do the breaking-and-entering bit easily enough.

  He kept his senses wide open as he worked. It was weird having to rely on the five human senses again. He heard a car coming, and just as it turned onto Jess’s street, he heard the final little snick. He grabbed his tools and opened the door, closing it gently just as the car passed by her house. He didn’t bother packing away the lock picks. Jess was still asleep, but he wasn’t going to count on her staying that way. If she woke up before he got into her bedroom, she was likely to call the cops. He imagined that seeing him get his ass thrown in jail would be sweet revenge.

  Jess didn’t wake up, though. He stood in the doorway to her room, staring at her in the dark. She lay on her side, one hand drawn up. Pale blonde hair lay in a tangle around her shoulders. The moonlight streaming in turned the blonde strands to silver.

  She wore a top with skinny straps, and it clung to her slender form. She sighed in her sleep and Vax tensed, waiting for her to oepn her eyes. All she did was roll over. One hand reached out, as though she were reaching for something. Or someone. His heart knotted as her fingers closed into a tight fist and she sighed again, a sad, broken little sound.

  Silently he crossed the room. Should he wake her up? Let her sleep? There were bruised-looking shaodws under her eyes. She didn’t take very good care of herself. It had been months since she’d had a decent night’s sleep. With that on top of the hell she’d gone through recently, she had to be exhausted.

  The considerate thing to do would be to leave. Come back in the morning and talk to her then. But Vax hadn’t ever bothered much with doing the considerate thing. Why start now?

  Instead of leaving, he took his jacket off and crossed the room. All he was going to do was lie down beside her, watch her sleep. That was all. He wouldn’t even touch her. But the second he lay down, she cuddled up against him. Her fisted hand unclenched and slid across his chest, resting just above his heart. He tensed, and swore silently. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

  There was no way in hell, though, that he was going to move. She’d take care of that herself as soon as she woke up. Most likely this would be the last chance he had to touch her, or at least to have her touch him. He wasn’t going to miss a second of it. If that made him more of a bastard than he already was, he could live with that.

  Need, a low-level burn whenever he was near her, pulsed and flared, but he throttled it into submission. Jess sighed and tried to squirm a little closer, rubbing her cheek against his chest. Through the cotton of his T-shirt, he could feel the warmth of her skin, and he muffled a groan. This was going to be both heaven and hell. And if she didn’t wake up, it was going to be a long-ass night, too.

  Surprisingly enough, though, he felt sleep weighing down on him. Too heavily to fight, in fact. He felt his eyes closing. With Jess, soft and warm, pressed up against him, he stopped fighting it. A few minutes. Just a few…

  JESS was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming. She knew she needed to make herself wake up. The last thing she needed was to have another dream centered around him. But he felt so good against her, so right. Cotton bunched under her hands as she pushed his shirt up. She pressed her lips to his chest and felt his heart pounding with a fast, erratic beat. She wanted to see him. If she looked at him, would she wake up?

  It was a risk she had to take, because not looking at him just didn’t seem possible. She lifted her lashes and stared at him. Jess held her breath, waiting for something bad to happen. He’d disappear. She’d wake up.

  Neither happened. Instead his hands closed over her bare hips and pulled her against him. The heat of his body was a sweet, erotic pleasure against her own, and for a second she wondered at how real this particular dream seemed to be. Was he…No. The arms around her felt sure and strong. It was a dream, had to be. Vax was still in the hospital and would be for a while yet.

  Good. She was too damn pissed to deal with him in reality. And she was hurt. But in a dream? Oh, yeah. That was all good. She bent her head and pressed her lips to his. Her hair fell around them like a curtain, cutting off the rest of the world. Then Vax slid a hand into her hair, using it to anchor her head as he pushed inside her mouth, kissing her as though he was as starved for her as she was for him.

  Not possible…Another sign she was dreaming. In reality he hadn’t given a damn about her, not once he’d done his fucking job. Fury blistered through her, even here. She bit his lip as she tried to move closer. His hands moved gently over her as though he wanted to soothe the rage she felt. But Jess wasn’t in the mood to be soothed. She wanted to get as close as she could, wanted to take him deep inside and never let go, never wake up—and at the same time she wanted him to hurt.

  She reached between them, jerking at his jeans. The silver buckle felt oddly cool against her hands, and it resisted. She kept fumbling with it until she freed it, and then she went to work on his jeans. As she lowered the zipper, he groaned against her lips. His hand tightened on her hair, and Jess pulled away. When he reached for her, she evaded his hands, moving down his body until she could take him in her mouth. He bucked against her. She raked her teeth gently over the thick head of his cock and sucked on him.

  “Fuck, Jess…” It was the first thing he’d said. No sweet, tender words, no soft apology, just those two guttural words. He arched up against her, pushing his length farther inside her mouth. Jess took as much as she could, and then she slid back up. She stared up at him through her lashes.

  The words he’d said to her in the hospital came back to haunt her. It was sex, blondie. She lifted herself and looked down at him, snarling a little. Sex. Just sex…She crawled back up his body and rubbed herself against him. Through the thin silk of her panties, she could feel him. Thick, hard, and full, throbbing against her. She pushed herself up, bracing her weight with one hand on his chest and using the other to catch her panties and pull them aside. She took him inside with one quick, hard stroke, and fell into a fast, furious rhythm.

  His hands went to her hips, trying to slow her down.
She didn’t want slow. “Easy, Jess. Slow down a little,” he whispered against her lips. He touched gently, spoke gently. He slid his hands up her back, over her neck, before he cupped her face and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

  Soft and sweet—here, lost in a dream that should be hers, and he was trying to be in control. Acting like he wanted to make love to her. Such a damn joke. “You want slow, go find some stupid bimbo and pretend to make love to her,” she said. “This is just sex—no reason to take it slow and easy.”

  Part of her realized now that she wasn’t dreaming. But she didn’t want to acknowledge that. Just as she didn’t want to acknowledge the pain simmering deep inside. Acknowledging it would be throwing a match inside a gas tank. It would explode inside her and consume her.

  He tensed below her, his lashes dropping low over his eyes, shielding them. Then he moved, slipping his arms around her and locking her tight against him. He rolled, putting her body under his and catching her wrists, pinning them down by her head. His hands were gentle but unrelenting, and she couldn’t break free. His weight crushed her into the mattress, and she could feel him pulsating inside her. She rocked her hips upward, and he swore.

  “Damn it, Jess…Slow down. I didn’t plan on this….”

  Hell, no. He hadn’t planned on this. Sleep a few minutes, and then he’d wake up and get out of bed before she awoke. Instead he woke up with his dick in her mouth while she stared up at him with fury in her eyes. The fury he could have handled. He’d earned it. But the pain there was eating at him, and he couldn’t bear it. He lowered his head and kissed her. She turned away, and instead of trying to follow her mouth with his, he kissed her neck.

  At the same time, he started to rock gently against her. She kept up that mad little shimmy with her hips, trying to take him deeper, harder, and faster, but he wasn’t going to do it. He’d done a damn good job of convincing her that he’d just fucked her because she was handy, and now he had to undo that damage. Words alone weren’t going to do it. Even thought he wanted to give in and take her with hard, quick greed, he wasn’t going to.

  Propping himself up on his elbows, he released her wrists and cupped her face once more. “I love how you taste,” he whispered against her lips. She kept her mouth shut, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue. Her mouth softened just a little, for just a second, and then she jerked her head away again. “And the smell of you,” he murmured, burying his face in the crook of her neck. He rolled his hips against hers. She clenched around him, and he heard that quick, unsteady gasp leave her lips. “And I love how you feel.” He traced a hand down her side, pausing at the covered curve of her breast. The silky material of her chemise was little obstacle, but it was in the way. He wished she were naked, completely naked in his arms, but he didn’t want to risk pulling away long enough to fix that. “Soft, strong…”

  Vax shifted his weight until he could slip a hand between them. He circled his fingers over the tight knot of her clit. “Wet—tight.” So damned tight. He groaned as the muscles in her pussy flexed around him. Her hands came up, resting on his shoulders, hesitantly at first and then firmly. One hand slid over his shoulder, fisting in his hair. When he went to kiss her again, she sighed against his lips and opened her mouth, letting him inside.

  He wrapped his arms around her and had to fight against pounding himself into her now that she’d relaxed a little. Instead he kept up that slow, almost lazy rhythm. As though he’d be content to do nothing but make love to her for the rest of the night and into the morning. Yeah, that would suit him to a T, but there was no way he could make this last much longer.

  Her breathing hitched. He felt her stiffen under him, felt her clench around him as she moved closer and closer to orgasm. “That’s it, Jess,” he muttered against her mouth. “Come for me—let me feel it again.”

  She climaxed with a gasp, and he captured that soft, broken sound with his lips, riding her through the orgasm until she stopped bucking and thrashing under him. Her hand stroked down his sides, stopping at where his jeans rested just below his hips. He gritted his teeth and pulled away. His cock ached and throbbed, and his body screamed at him to climb back on top of her, push inside her, and fuck her until he exploded.

  He wasn’t going to, though.

  It took some doing to zip his jeans up over himself. He was hard, pulsing, and wet from her, and shoving his rigid flesh back inside his jeans was a little piece of hell. Jess lay on the bed, unmoving. She stared at him with dark, shuttered eyes, and he shifted until he could lie down and pull her against him. “I didn’t come for that,” he said softly. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s a fact.”

  Her voice was remote as she responded, “Well, then why did you come?”

  For the longest time, he wasn’t sure how to answer. He knew what he wanted to say. But he didn’t have the right to say it, and not just because he’d hurt her before. He’d meant what he’d said to Kelsey at the hospital. Even if Jess did think she was falling in love with him, it couldn’t work.

  He couldn’t think of anything that could describe his sudden descent from witch to mortal man. But even if it hadn’t happened and he was still a witch, he knew it wouldn’t work.

  He couldn’t fit into her life here, and beyond that, he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with his own. He recalled what he’d said to her, and wondered if maybe those words were directed more at himself than at her.

  Let me go, Cora had said. Vax had meant it when he’d told her that he didn’t know how. Guilt over his dead wife had been his companion for nearly a century. Let me go. And tell her you love her.

  It wasn’t that easy. It couldn’t be that easy.

  “Did you know I was married?”

  She tensed against him, and then she jerked back. She sat up and stared down at him, and then she rolled away, getting off the bed as though she couldn’t move away from him fast enough. “What?” she demanded.

  Slowly Vax sat up and climbed out of the bed. She was pissed. He didn’t have to be an Empath to sense that. He might be a little dense, but he wasn’t totally stupid, so instead of going after her, he just stood by the bed and repeated what he’d said.

  Her reaction wasn’t exactly what he’d been prepared for. She crossed the room and balled up her hand. He saw the punch coming, but not soon enough to evade it. His preternatural speed was gone, yet another thing he was going to have to adjust to. His head snapped with the force of her blow, and blood flooded his mouth. Gingerly, Vax probed the cut on the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Feel better?”

  “No, I don’t, you son of a bitch. You’re fucking married?”

  Maybe he was totally stupid, Vax decided. The reason for her fury finally penetrated, and he couldn’t help but smile a little.

  “You think this is funny, you prick?” She swung at him again, but this time he evaded it. He caught her clenched fist and lifted it to his mouth, kissing the back of her hand.

  “No. No, Jess, I don’t think it’s at all funny. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I was married. A long time ago.” He let go of her hand and turned away, staring out the window. All the houses seemed to crowd in on him. Now that he was awake and aware, he could feel the presence of others. If he relaxed his shields even a little, the thoughts and dreams and emotions of all those sleeping people would crowd in on his mind. Losing his magick had weakened his shields. Vax didn’t think he’d ever felt this exposed, this raw and open before.

  Turning away from the window, he leaned back against the wall and looked at Jess. She was staring at him, still furious. Still enraged. So fucking beautiful, it made his heart hurt just looking at her. “She died before you were even born.”

  Jess opened her mouth to say something. Then she closed it without saying a word. A thoughtful look crossed her face, and she whispered, “Fitzpatrick—he said you had a wife.”

  “Yeah.” Vax had all but forgotten that.

  �
�He also said you killed her,” Jess added. She turned away from him, her movements tense and jerky as she strode to the wardrobe across the room. As she opened it, she said, “How did she really die?”

  “He wasn’t lying, Jess. I killed her.”

  At those flat, emotionless words, shock rippled through Jess. The jeans she had pulled out of the wardrobe fell from numb fingers, and she never even noticed. Slowly, she looked back at him and asked, “You’re not serious…are you?”

  Instead of answering her, Vax asked, “Did Kelsey tell you…tell you what’s happened with me?”

  Jess blew out a breath and stared at him. Okay, so was he going to answer her or not? Getting answers out of him was like pulling teeth. But instead of demanding he explain what the hell he’d meant when he said I killed her, she answered his question. “No, but I figured it out when you didn’t Heal like you should. Somebody pumped you full of that poison, didn’t they? You’re human now.” She cocked her head, studying his face closely. Her ability to sense emotions was seriously limited, although she was getting better at reading him. But she couldn’t decide one way or another how he felt about this new change in his life. “You okay with that?”

  Vax snorted. It was the same derisive, cynical sound she’d heard from him on a regular basis. Amazing how sarcasm could be such an endearing quality. “Don’t have much choice in the matter, do I? Would you believe it, though? Being normal was really all I ever wanted.”

  “You wanted your wife. You loved her.” He didn’t have to say it. She could tell. Jess wondered what had happened to her—he couldn’t have killed her, though. Jess couldn’t believe that.