The Hunter

by Theresa Meyers

  He pressed two fingers to her sternum right above her breasts, and the touch went all the way down to her heart. “You feel it in here, way down deep. Friendship don’t do that.”

  Her breasts tightened and ached, waiting for his touch to glide just a bit farther to one side or the other along the inside swell of her breast. But he didn’t, and the ache increased.

  “Neither does honor,” she countered. She’d had enough of waiting for him to admit the growing attraction between them. She grazed the back of her hand lightly against his hardened length.

  His lips twitched. Desire flared in his eyes.

  She lowered her lashes. “What are you thinking about right now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “How good you looked in britches.” He cupped his other hand around the smooth roundness of her bottom, pulling her in tight against him. Lilly gave a little gasp at the sudden counterpoint of soft against hard. Colt might be good at playing stoic, but he couldn’t hide the evidence of his desire. “I’ve been thinking about it since I watched you walk around in them things. They’re like a kidskin glove, hugging your curves. Give a man plenty to fantasize about. I think they might be even more tempting than that little scrap of silk you were wearing in the circle in the desert,” he added.

  Lilly gave a husky laugh. “Don’t get used to it,” she said as she purposely rocked against him. “It’s a sight you’ll likely never see again. Skirts are more my style. I’d prefer not to be in britches at all.”

  Colt’s dark pupils swallowed up the blue. The scent of leather and wild places that clung to him sucked her in and made her heartbeat thump hard and her stomach dip. “I can arrange that,” he said, his voice deep and low as he reached for her buttons.

  She grabbed the fabric of his shirt in both hands, pulling him even closer so they were nose to nose, hip to hip, and looked deeply into his eyes so he couldn’t mistake her intentions. “So what’s stopping you?” she breathed.

  There was nowhere for them to go, not until the room stopped its rotation and revealed the next exit to them. The vibrating movement of the floor only agitated his state to a higher level.

  His voice sounded rough and ragged, a man on the brittle edge of control. “It’s wrong. Darkin and Hunters don’t do this. There’s rules.” He slipped his hand slowly up her spine and into her hair, stroking his fingers through her curls, cupping the back of her head. The light throbbing in her blood grew more insistent in response.

  “So?” Lilly went up on her tiptoes and grazed his lips lightly with hers in a teasing, seductive touch that twisted the need building inside her into an even tighter knot.

  “I know you’re a succubus, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting you.” His eyes intently searched her face, looking for answers and lingering on her mouth, making it tingle, his shoulders rock hard with tension. “It just plain don’t make sense. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t give a damn.”

  He pressed his mouth hard to hers in a kiss that speared right to her very core, making her temperature soar and her bones liquefy. They melded together in the searing heat between them. There was no more him or her—only them. His touch ignited a breathtaking fire that threatened to consume them both from the inside out. She arched into him, wanting, needing, greedy for more.

  He broke their fevered kiss and pulled back, his shallow and fast breathing matching hers as he rested his forehead against hers. “I can’t think straight when I’m around you,” he said, fine lines of pain appearing around his eyes as he closed them. “How do I know you aren’t just using your succubus powers on me?”

  Lilly only wished she had, and far earlier. She gave him a slow, wicked smile. “If I were, there’s no way we’d have lasted this long.”

  “I think—”

  She kissed him hard, nipping his lip. “Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking at all, just feeling.” Lilly rucked the ends of his shirt up out of his pants, then ran her hands underneath the cloth. Her hands glided along the ridged planes of muscle along his abdomen and sides, then up and across the broad expanse of his back. His skin was hot, gloriously hard and smooth beneath her fingers.

  Colt sucked in a hissing breath. “Still don’t make it right.”

  Lilly placed a finger over his lips to silence him, then replaced it with a lingering kiss that was part nibble, part flick as she slowly undid the buttons of his shirt and peeled it down his muscular shoulders. “Maybe this doesn’t fall into wrong and right.”

  Colt groaned. His hands spread and tightened on her sides, his thumbs rasping back and forth over the soft sides of her breasts. “Everything falls into right and wrong.”

  “Not everything.” She snapped her fingers, replacing her boots, buckskin britches, short blue jacket, and broadcloth shirt with the black silk sheath he’d summoned her in, placing only the most insubstantial barrier between his touch and her skin. “Like this. Is it wrong or right?” she teased.

  His eyes widened a fraction and then he shut them tight and blew out a harsh breath as he cupped the globes of her breasts in his heated palms. “Very right,” he growled.

  She leaned in close, pressing herself to his chest, with only the hot silk between them as she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. “That’s my Hunter.”

  Colt cried out, kissing her hard, his arms tightening around her as he lifted her up off her feet hard against him. His tongue was slick and soft, brushing, feasting on her mouth. Lilly thought she might just explode. Slowly he lowered her to her feet, her whole body brushing the full length of him as they both panted. But as she reached for the buttons in the rough fabric of his pants, the rotation of the room stopped abruptly and another grinding of gears filled the chamber.

  He tensed. “Something’s wrong. It’s a trap!”

  There was nowhere to go. No exit.

  “But you said the lion’s head was the Hunter’s signal of what to do next!”

  “It was, is, but maybe that one was intentionally placed there to mislead.”

  The floor in the circular room shifted beneath their feet, lifting to one side, creating a smooth, angled surface with nothing to hold on to. Colt slid, trying to climb up the floor as it tilted higher and higher, opening into a dark chasm beneath them. He grabbed the upper edge of the floor as she went sliding past him with a scream. He reached out to grab her, the yank and pull of contact making her whole arm burn, but he held fast to her wrist. He groaned, clenching his teeth, his jaw flexing and muscles in his arm bulging as he held them both by his one hand clamped on the edge of the upended floor. Their contact was smooth and slick and his fingers slipped against her skin, making the bones in her wrist twist with the pressure.

  “Don’t let go!” she begged, eyes wide and terrified.

  Her skin was too slick, too smooth. The muscles in his arm burned and the metal edge cut into the palm of his gun hand as he held both her weight and his by one hand as they dangled precariously above the abyss.

  “I can’t hold us much longer,” he muttered through tightly clenched teeth. “But we’re going to go together. On the count of three, ready?”

  “What? No! I’m not ready!” she said as she twisted frantically beneath him, grabbing hold of his arm with her other hand, her fingers digging into him hard enough to bruise.

  Colt caught her panicked gaze and held it. “It’ll be all right. Trust me.” He had no idea if that was true or not, but her movement was shortening what little time they had left to hold on. It made no sense. Why had the lion head led them to a trap? The blood oozed out of the cut, making the metal slick beneath his fingers. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe this was the only way through this metal rabbit warren. His grip on the edge of the metal began to slip.

  “One.”

  “Colt! You don’t know what’s down there.”

  “Two.”

  “Don’t do it!”

  “Three.”

  At the same time he let go, he pulled her up with every ounce of his remaining
strength to hold her against him and cushion their fall into the darkness.

  The drop was fast, a skidding free fall that sent them spinning off in the darkness on a slide that looped back on itself over and over in a spiral like a giant corkscrew. His hat came flying off, and with a thud they came to a stop on a pile of filthy rags.

  The bronze walls were less tarnished here, and parts of their original golden luster showed in spots of the verdigris. The space they’d been unceremoniously dumped in was not much bigger than a sleeping compartment on a train, with four walls and only one, regular-sized, bronze door with a crystal doorknob and a keyhole beneath it.

  Colt glanced upward at the smooth rounded tube they’d just fallen through and pulled his shirt back up around his shoulders. “There’s no way we can get back up that way.”

  A stunned expression made Lilly’s green eyes even wider. The hem of her black silk chemise had ridden up high, nearly to the juncture of her thighs. Colt’s pulse pounded hard and he cleared his throat. “Allow me.” He offered her his uninjured hand.

  Lilly glanced at the black grease smeared on her legs from the pile of rags and grumbled in disgust. “This will never do.”

  She snapped her fingers and the boots, buckskin britches, white shirt, and short blue jacket reappeared as if they’d never been gone. “Much better.”

  Colt suddenly felt exposed. He buttoned up his shirt and quickly located his hat, tugging it firmly back into place. He picked up his pack, which had slid down with them, and put it into place on his back.

  “Well, shall we?” Lilly asked, looking at the door.

  “From the looks of things, sweetheart, it’s try it or plan on staying here for an extended visit.”

  Lilly eyed the thin red line of light coming from beneath the door. “Do you hear that?”

  The vibrating thrum of moving gears and shushing steam was louder in the room than it had been their entire trek through the death machine.

  Colt touched the door with his fingers. “It’s warm. Maybe we’ve reached the heart of the machine.”

  He turned the crystal knob in his hand. The door didn’t budge. “Locked, and we don’t got a key.”

  “We may just have to improvise,” Lilly said, pulling the copper wire and a nail from her pocket. She knelt before the door, sliding the tip of the nail into the rounded part of the keyhole and sliding the end of the wire in alongside it.

  “Lock picking?”

  “Another skill my father insisted I learn.”

  She wriggled the wire and listened carefully for the lock to give way. She straightened up and gave Colt a grin as she twisted the knob and opened the door.

  A blast of wet, stagnant air hit them. Lilly covered her mouth, gagging at the stench of death and decay and sulfur that permeated the air. It reminded her so much of Rathe that her skin tightened in revulsion.

  Skeletons lay scattered about in different poses of their last moments in what seemed to be an engine room. One sat propped up against a wall, dressed in dusty gentlemen’s clothes, grasping an empty bottle whose peeling label read absinthe. Another dressed like a roughed-up miner had a bony hand clutched at the dagger handle stuck firmly through his plaid shirt in one of his ribs. A third dressed in a lab coat and goggles lay facedown at the table, his bony fingers uptilted in a last fruitless effort to beg for help.

  “Whatever happened here wasn’t pretty,” Colt muttered, taking her hand firmly in his as they walked into the room and he looked from one body to the next.

  Behind them the door slammed shut, making a fine powder of rock dust drift down from the exposed ceiling. There was no knob or lock on this side of the door. “We better start looking for an exit, if there is one,” Colt muttered.

  Lilly surveyed the room cut into the bedrock. The only metal wall was the one behind them. Along the rough rock wall ahead of them were the men in different stages of decay, wooden crates full of gears and equipment, and a small rickety table with two chairs, one occupied by the skeleton with the goggles. On their right the rock wall curved away. A small pool of water bubbled and boiled, sulfur-laced steam rising in wisps and curls from its surface. Huge black pipes of cast iron with pressure gauges and wheel-controlled valves twisted from the pool and disappeared into the rock. And to the left there was a large bronze door similar to the one behind them.

  Colt touched the pipe. “Damn.” He shook his singed fingers. “Hot spring. Must be what provides the steam to power the machine.”

  “Do you think they”—she indicated the bones of the men behind them—“were in charge of the machine?” Lilly skimmed her finger along the curve of one of the cracked pressure gauges above the pipes.

  “Judging by what they’re wearing, they were treasure hunters who ended up trapped down here, just like us.” Colt pulled the goggles off the skeleton’s shriveled face, and they tangled in the long, stringy hair still clinging to the skull of the corpse. “Whoever they were, they’ve been here a long time.”

  The fact that Colt believed them to be treasure hunters, and that the bones had been there a long, long time, wasn’t exactly encouraging to Lilly. She could imagine herself and Colt only too well as one more pair of fools to be caught in this maniacal death trap machine. “Do you think they were looking for the Book?”

  Colt kicked a mining headlamp on the floor aside. “Nope. I think they were looking for the Lost Dutchman’s gold and stumbled into more than they bargained for and went mad.”

  Lovely. One more thing she’d considered, but didn’t need to hear. “They had to be pretty good to make it this far.”

  “Either that, or this is where everyone ends up sooner or later to die.”

  “Do you think you could try a little harder to be optimistic?” Lilly rubbed her arms, suddenly cold in the room. “Let’s try to figure out how to get out of here, rather than pulling up a chair and waiting to die of old age.”

  Colt pulled off his hat and plowed his fingers through his hair. “How do I know?”

  “You’re the Hunter!”

  “Yeah, well, Pa’s notes on hunting down supernaturals didn’t exactly cover disabling a dynamic killing machine,” he said, settling his hat back in its customary place.

  He glanced to their left at the silver door set into the rock, embossed with the head of a roaring lion. His mane flowed away from his head in silver streamers and his glittering eyes were cut golden topaz. There were no handles, no hinges on the beautiful door. But beside it was a silver plate set into the wall, with three small round openings as large as a quarter and a series of dials and a hand crank.

  Lilly had never seen anything like it. She followed Colt as he walked over and began his examination. “It’s beautiful, but how is it going to get us out of here?” she asked.

  Colt cracked his knuckles and gave her a grin. “It’s good luck.”

  “What?”

  “I recognize it. It’s a frequency transponder mechanism. Marley gave me a set of crystals with strict instructions to only use one type of crystal at a time. Each crystal resonates at a different frequency, giving it different levels of power, which technically should do different things. At least I think that’s most of the theory he was blathering on about.” He swung his pack off his back and dug into it.

  Colt swore under his breath, then dug deeper. “Where are those damn crystals?”

  A chill threaded through Lilly’s veins as her hand slipped into her pocket and closed around the small velvet pouch. “What do they look like?”

  “Three sparkly rocks, velvet drawstring bag,” he said, digging farther into his pack. “Marley said only to use them in an emergency.”

  “Well, I’d say this qualifies,” Lilly muttered as she gave the small velvet pouch in her front pocket a squeeze.

  His eyes narrowed as he glanced at her hand. “You took them.” It wasn’t a question, but an accusation. “Why?” Hurt mingled with suspicion in his eyes. Lilly didn’t like either one.

  Lilly’s heart shrank a size smal
ler at his accusation, and the fury on his face. “Just when I begin to trust you,” he muttered. “Serves me right.”

  “I—I didn’t think it’d matter to you,” she stuttered as she pulled the pouch from her pocket and proffered it to him. “I’ve always had the habit of picking up things like the wire and nails, especially when I’m nervous. It makes me feel more secure.”

  Colt took the bag from her. “That doesn’t mean you had any right to take them.” He gently pulled the puckered edge of the velvet, opening the pouch, and withdrew a small bit of clear quartz about the width of his thumb.

  Heat suffused Lilly’s cheeks. She balled up her hands on her hips. “If that’s the worst thing I’ve done, I hardly think that’s reason for you not to trust me.”

  “Oh, really?” He grasped the bag tighter, crushing the velvet.

  “You’re just mad that you liked kissing me. That you wanted more, even though you knew you shouldn’t,” she challenged.

  Colt cursed under his breath. “You’ve been using your succubus powers on me all along, haven’t you?” His knuckles tightened white as his grip on the crystal increased.

  All the starch left Lilly’s spine. All they’d been through and he still didn’t see what was happening to them. She leaned against the rough wood of the stacked crates beside her. “No. I haven’t. If I did, the moment you were satisfied, you’d go numb to everything else around you except the sound of my voice. Has that happened?”

  Colt didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. While she sure as hell had set off sparks in him and given him heart palpitations fit to kill a man, she knew he’d never once lost his ability to feel around her. Hell, if anything, all his feelings became so intense they were difficult to bear.

  “So what I’m feeling—”

  “Is coming straight from you,” she finished for him. “What’s happening between us is as real and honest as it gets.”

  “Then I owe you an apology.”