The Huntress (12 page)

“You’re not ready to hear it,” she answered calmly.

He looked ready to bite through metal.
“What?”
he snarled and stalked toward her. He moved like a jungle cat.

She watched him hungrily without backing away. “Tell me how you feel about Regan.” That made him pause. “Tell me why you would protect her. Why you would take care of her and sacrifice yourself for her.”

“What the hell does that have to do with—”

“Just tell me.”

He shifted in place, his expression uneasy. “I’m responsible. She’s alone ‘cause of me.”

She smiled bitterly. About this, she’d hoped she’d be wrong. “If you can’t admit what you feel for her, you aren’t ready to hear what I have to tell you.” She began to circle him and he turned to track her, hands clenching into fists.

“Just what the hell does one have to do with the other?”

Watching the muscles flex in his forearms and shoulders, she felt a reckless urge to tell him anyway. It was a long shot, but as a hunter she gambled with her life every day. What was a little heartbreak? Besides, she might be wrong about him.

“I was hunting you, at first.” She saw his lip lift in a silent snarl and chuckled, still strolling around him. “Oh, don’t worry, that was over in a hurry. Part of it was Regan. I fell for her right away and her love for you was obvious. But then I looked into your eyes.” She slanted him a smoldering look through her lashes. “No man has ever rocked me like you do, handsome. I couldn’t hunt you, but I followed the two of you anyway over the next couple of days. You see, I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I’ve never given up a hunt before.”

She passed closer to him and he tensed, clenching and unclenching his fists in a violent rhythm.

“I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about you. Either one of you. You want to know why I gave you a new life?” She stopped directly in front of him and dropped her voice to a throaty murmur. “I was in love.”

His reaction was explosive, hands locking with bruising force around her upper arms. He shook her and roared, “Bullshit! I’ve seen the twisted games you play. Tell me your plan, woman. Why are you hunting me?”

With an angry snarl, she twisted out of his grip, stinging with disappointment. “Hunting you? Do you honestly believe that I couldn’t have taken you at any point? Maybe you need to be shown.”

Moving like lightning, she kicked his legs out from under him, slamming him to the ground and twisting to straddle him. Her anger evaporated with the action, and she couldn’t hold back a wicked grin at this new, delightful position. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on either side of his head, dark hair drifting down like a curtain. “Believe me, darlin’, if I wanted you for anything else, you’d know it.”

He tensed beneath her and Mea relaxed, knowing what was coming. She laughed softly as he knocked her arms away and flipped her, reversing their positions. Now he was crouched over her, the familiar knife pressing into the skin over her jugular while he held her down with one hand around the throat. His grip was tight but not painful, and it was all she could do not to wrap herself around him, knife be damned. It felt as though an electric current steadily flowed from his touch through her entire body.

“If you wanted to be on top, all you had to do was ask.” Laughter trembled at the edge of her words, but Stone didn’t seem to be in a humorous mood. She felt the cold edge of his knife press harder as he bared his teeth in silent fury. She made a casual gesture to the weapon at her throat. “Is this foreplay or fear?”

“What’s wrong with you?” he growled, his muscles flexing as if he was on the verge of true violence.

She wished she could see his eyes. “I told you what’s wrong with me. So what are you going to do about it?” She stretched her arms above her head, arching her body in sultry provocation and baring her throat further. “I said you weren’t ready to hear it,” she sighed, watching him through lowered lashes. “Prove me wrong, Stone.”

With a wordless growl, he pushed to his feet, the momentum giving her a shallow slice in her skin. With an indrawn hiss of aggravation, she rolled to her feet and watched him stalk through the exit.

Moving after him, she braced herself in the doorway, putting pressure on the cut and calling down the corridor to his retreating back. “Shuttle port’s to your right as you leave the ship. If you’re ever planet-side again, look me up.” Her tone was light and mocking, but a bitter pain burned in her chest as she watched him duck through the hatch. She took her hand away from the cut and looked down at the blood on her fingers with a twist of her lips.

Regan popped out of the mess. “What happened?”

Mea looked into those big, dark eyes and couldn’t speak for a moment.

But the girl must have seen it in her face. “He’s gone?”

“I’m sorry, baby,” she sighed and moved forward as the girl’s face crumbled. Mea wrapped comforting arms around her thin shoulders, clenching her jaw against a painful ache deep inside when Regan burrowed against her.

“Why?” Regan asked in a forlorn little voice that drove spikes through Mea’s heart.

She rocked the child for a moment, working hard to order her thoughts. She understood Stone but wasn’t sure she’d be able to explain it adequately for this innocent child. “Stone’s been in hell for fifteen years. For most of his life, really. He survived by turning into an animal, all instinct and savagery. He can barely comprehend freedom, let alone love. Sweetheart, he’s just not ready for us.”

“So he’s gone for good?” Regan whispered, turning a tearful face up to Mea.

“Well,” she mused, biting the inside of one cheek, “there is one way to tell. Come on.”

She led Regan up the corridor to the control room. Sliding into a seat, she moved swift fingers over the panel in front of her. “Let’s see where Mr. Stubborn has gone.”

“Running a trace?”

“Yup.”

Mea waited with increasing tension as the system tracked him down. Finally, his white silhouette appeared on the screen, pacing back and forth.

“He’s at the edge of the port,” Mea said.

“What’s he doing?”

“Deciding.”

Regan settled a cold hand on her arm, and Mea covered it with one of her own. It would hurt like hell if he left on a shuttle, but at least she would understand why. This poor girl, though, was watching her hero turn his back on her. It would be hard to understand that.

The silhouette went still for a moment before pivoting and moving away with hard purpose. Mea took a careful breath before speaking. “Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

“What?”

“He’s not going to the shuttle port to leave the planet. However, he
is
headed into the worst damned part of the city.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

Mea chuckled, rising to her feet. “Knowing Stone, probably not.” Seeing the stricken look on the girl’s face, she smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m going after him. Can’t let him wreak havoc on my own turf, can I?”

Regan gave her a tentative smile and followed as she moved down the corridor to her quarters. The girl paced in front of the door while Mea changed into a body suit and threw on a jacket to hide her weapons. Snapping a genetic tracer to her forearm, she headed back up the corridor to the hatch.

“Can I come with you?”

“No, baby. It’s a bad neighborhood. Besides, I need you to babysit Warren for me. The techies drive him nuts and he’ll need moral support. Where is he, by the way?”

“I don’t know. There was food in the warmer but he wasn’t there.”

“They probably have him cornered somewhere. Watch out for him, would you? This shouldn’t take too long.”

“Will you bring him back?”

Mea turned reluctantly and looked down into Regan’s solemn little face. She desperately wished she could say yes. “Probably not. I won’t force him and he’s—just not ready.”

The child pressed her lips together and dropped her chin, looking like a lost kitten. Mea gave her a swift hug and left before she did or said something stupid. Promising to make it all better wouldn’t fix anything and might make matters worse for the girl. Activating the tracer, she moved with long strides across the port on Stone’s trail like a shadow in the sun.

Chapter 11

Stone watched the lights from the dance floor flash and flicker in his drink. Every once in a while the reflected light would stab at his eyes, but he didn’t look away. The bar was packed with people, gyrating on the dance floor or gathering around the bar, but a wide space had opened around Stone. He radiated a certain menace that had people detouring warily around him.

He didn’t know why he was still there. He’d come in the place because the name,
End Game,
fit his mood, but it was loud and crowded, and the erratic, flashing lights hurt his eyes even through the goggles. He’d sat at the bar and ordered a drink but hadn’t touched it.

Instead, he concentrated on not winging it into the crowd like a missile. Holding himself still, he watched his drink turn color and tried to picture killing the hunter. He couldn’t do it. Every time he got to the part about putting his hands on her, the picture would turn erotic and carnal. And that was his whole problem. He wanted her. She knew it and used it, taunting him with it every chance she got.

She also knew he wouldn’t hurt her. He had no idea how, since he hadn’t known it himself until he’d tried. Pulling his knife out, he held it against his forearm to hide it from the crowd and eyed the trace of blood on the blade. The best he’d been able to do was nick her. The memory of the hunter stretching her arms above her head defenselessly, baring her throat to his knife and watching him with those fearless green eyes made his whole body burn. It also pissed him off.

Using sex to lure and manipulate was the oldest female trick in the book, but like the android had said, no one could say no to her. He couldn’t deny that she was the most beautiful, blood-boiling woman he’d ever seen, but that just made her the most dangerous woman he’d ever seen. She knew what she did to men—she knew what she did to him. Most of the men at the bar on the moonbase would have given their right arm to have her. She had a willing android at her fingertips and an ex-husband who looked like an ad for the rich and perfect panting after her.

He was an escaped convict with an ugly mug and a bad attitude; there was no way she could want him for anything but deceit. He just couldn’t figure out what that would be. Maybe she was going to blame the genetic switch on Conley since she’d used his codes. But no, that didn’t make sense; Conley had no motive for the switch. Maybe she wanted him to assassinate somebody—killing
was
his greatest talent.

Whatever it was, he was likely to end up frying for it. He wasn’t keen on that idea. Survival was his strongest instinct, and it was telling him to get the hell away from her. As far away as possible.

Trouble was that meant leaving the kid. He wasn’t ready to do that until he knew she was well on her way to being settled with a family. Until she didn’t need him anymore. He didn’t try to analyze why; Mea’s questions about his motives made him uneasy enough. He just accepted that he had to watch over the kid.

He was wondering just how the hell he was going to do that and stay away from Mea at the same time when he sensed someone approaching. A woman. She smelled of alcohol and cheap perfume.

“Hi! You look lonely. Wanna dance?”

He turned his head slowly to look at her. She was attractive enough—blonde hair carefully arranged, decent features, skimpy blouse and short skirt covering a nice body—but she also smelled like desperation. “No.”

“Aw, come on! You didn’t come here just to stare at your drink, did you?”

“Go away,” he said without infliction and turned back to his drink.

“You don’t know how to dance?”

He ignored her, wondering if she was stoned or just stupid. When she leaned in closer, he decided it must be both.

“How about a good, hard screw?”

Habit made him pull the knife. “I said—” He jammed it with brutal force into the bar and let it quiver there while she jumped with a high squeak. “—go away.”

The woman had no time to react before a shadow cut between them.
Mea.

“Okay, I think this one’s a little too much enraged manhood for you, sweetheart,” the hunter drawled, hooking a hand around the woman’s elbow and turning her back to the crowd. “Why don’t you run along?”

The blonde went in a hurry, and Stone scowled as Mea snagged his knife from the bar. The artificial bartender approached, but she waved it off with a negligent hand. Leaning against the bar, she gazed down at the knife. He saw her lips twist when she caught sight of the trace of blood. The thin mark he’d made on her pale throat mocked him.

“I tell you I love you and you go looking for trouble. Not very flattering, Stone.”

It wasn’t any easier to hear the second time. Love was a myth. It wasn’t a concept he understood, let alone believed in, and he sure as hell didn’t believe this woman could care for someone like him. Careful not to touch her, he plucked his knife from her hands and tucked it away. Turning back to his untouched drink, he tried to ignore her tantalizing scent. “Leave me alone, Hunter.”

“Well, I would, but you owe me a life and I’m here to collect.”

He raised his head slowly.
Here it comes,
he thought.
The end of the game.

“You can repay your debt to me with a promise,” she said, studying his face.

He recognized the darkness in her eyes, but didn’t understand it. It looked like pain.

“Be good. Stay out of trouble. Promise me that and—you’re free.”

What the hell?
Bewildered, he just stared at her.
More games?

“Promise me, or I’m your new shadow.”

That was definitely a threat. Grinding his teeth together, he searched desperately for a catch. There had to be one, but if there was, he couldn’t see it. “All right,” he finally said and watched a bitter smile twist her lips.

“I thought that would motivate you. A couple of things before I go. You have a fair chunk of credit to your new name—Stone was good at his job. You can go pretty much anywhere you like in the galaxy. I would recommend not staying here so close to Hunter Headquarters and Uncle Mike. But before you go, I ask that you please say goodbye to Regan. She’s…” Her voice trailed off and she looked away into the crowd.