Home > Primal Desire (Heart of the Huntress #6)(4)

Primal Desire (Heart of the Huntress #6)(4)
Author: Terry Spear

But she had no trouble with fighting rogue vampires. Or renegade hunters, for that matter. Even if the League said it wasn’t fully convinced the hunter she had killed had been a rogue. Yet, she knew differently, or they would have terminated her for killing the hunter.

Her mind still mulling over her choices, she watched the dancers and listened to the beat and rhythm of the music stirring up the heat. Against her express permission, she moved slightly to the music, then caught sight of a couple of blood bonds whispering to each other while their gazes remained glued on her.

She frowned. Even most humans, if they knew the truth about her, wouldn’t have anything to do with her. After all, what good was a huntress who couldn’t terminate vampires legally if the humans needed protection? At least that’s what she’d heard a few say.

As much good as a dentist who wouldn’t take care of someone’s bad teeth, or a lifeguard who wouldn’t save a swimmer in distress.

Tara Green was the exception. For whatever reason, the human liked her.

Basil, the club owner, lingered near her as if he was a bouncer, waiting for her to reveal wrist daggers or pull out a sword from her silky dress, then he would toss her out of the building. Did he think she had a death wish? And heck, couldn’t he see she was totally unarmed? Nowhere to hide anything in this clingy creation. Besides, that was one rule she didn’t violate—the no-weapons-in-a-club rule. Drinking and weapons could be a dangerous—and deadly—combination.

It was bad enough that vampires carried their own weapons intact.

Once she realized this was a vampires’ place of entertainment, she really wouldn’t have been that stupid to walk in armed to the teeth anyway.

Coming here had to have made her more of an enigma in the vampires’ eyes. Any hunters who were different should be warily watched. Who knew what crazy things a person who wasn’t like the others might do?

Before she could take a sip from her drink, she noticed a man sitting at a table observing her. Not that most weren’t already, but something about him caught her attention.

Maybe it was his dark brown eyes the color of Brazil nuts narrowed in dissatisfaction, bordering on contempt, or the way his body language shouted at her to go away, or the way his umber hair was cut short, making him look roguish in appearance when all the other vampire males wore theirs pulled back in tails and looked much more vampirish. Not only that, but when most of the males were a bit dressed down compared to the women who were dressed to the nines, the vampire was dressed in a tux, like the one who had been dancing with the vamp. She was…impressed.

Though somewhere in the crowd she’d seen a guy who looked like a cowboy—one of the bad guys all dressed in black—that had caught her eye also.

“Who are you searching for?” Basil asked, as if he were her friend and wished to help.

“I came for a drink,” Selena said, sliding a look at him.

“Yet, you are not drinking it.” His mouth turned up slightly. This time his eyes sparkled with mirth.

He was right. She tried to raise the glass to her lips, but she couldn’t. What if the drink was laced with something that would make her pass out? Make her more vulnerable than she already was in a dance club full of vampires, any of whom could possibly be renegades? Any one of them who might think he was on her terminal list?

“The drink is safe,” Basil said, as if reading her mind.

But she knew he couldn’t. Her hesitation at drinking it was what clued him in.

Human males were so unobservant, she had concluded early on. But vampiric males and hunters had the same intuitiveness that nearly all females had, whatever their kind.

She was not afraid. Trying to keep her hand from trembling, she lifted the glass to her lips, but the man with the dark brown eyes and the short-cropped hair suddenly appeared beside her and bumped against her arm. Before she could stop herself, she dropped the glass on the floor, shattering it into a hundred pieces and quashed the swear word that rose to her lips.

“You will leave here, huntress,” the man whispered harshly into her ear, his hand grasping her arm in a decisive grip. “And never return.”

Having been thrown out of so many hunter establishments over the years because of constantly being on the outs with the League, she wasn’t surprised to be treated similarly here. Well, especially here.

She raised her chin and gave him a slight smile. “Apology accepted.”

His eyes widened slightly, and for an instant, his threatening posture dissolved.

Seeing his surprise, she couldn’t help that her smile broadened. As a kid, she’d learned to deal with other hunters who treated her meanly, just by doing the opposite of what they expected. It threw them off-guard. It seemed the trick worked on vampires too. Glancing at Basil, she found him glowering at the other man, but she assumed whoever the roguish-looking guy was, his spilling her drink saved her from some kind of trouble.

Yet, defiance stirred deep inside her, and she would not be bullied into a hasty retreat.

“Wanna dance?” she asked the man she assumed had saved her butt.

For an instant, he stared at her with a modicum of disbelief, but then the condemning look returned. “You would not do the moves justice.” Yet despite his harsh words, he took her arm and led her to the floor.

 

 

Chapter 2

 

 

When the vampire took Selena to the dance floor—led would not be quite the way to describe it, more like he practically lifted her off her feet to get her there—his action surprised the hell out of her. She’d expected him to sneer at her, then move away. And when he didn’t, a strange quiver of intrigue raced through her blood when his fingers held her arm tightly in his grasp.

Did he think she would change her mind? She wanted to. She’d been a fool to enter the dance club once she’d figured out who the clientele was despite wanting to meet Twilight.

Walking onto the parquet floor, the colorful strobe lights shining greens, blues, yellows, and reds dancing across its surface, she felt her nerves tingle with apprehension. The notion had flitted across her brain that if she had to do this, she’d expected other dancers—as crowded as the floor was—to hide the two of them from view. Not that she couldn’t dance. But dancing like some of the others had? And with a vampire? No way.

She reminded herself the vampires had probably been with their mates, and this one wouldn’t expect her to dance in that manner with him. She didn’t care one whit whether she had any of a vampiress’s exotic moves or not. She would not back down.

Everyone cleared the floor as if they were specters fading into the mist—or in this case, the dark building where colorful lights flashed all over them, the dance floor, Selena, and her dance partner.

She was left standing in the middle with tall, dark, and vampiric, and no matter her bravado, she wanted to melt into the parquet. Even the music had stopped, and she felt her lioness heart shrivel into a mouse’s as the whole building was cloaked in absolute silence.

The man’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners, but the humor did not reach his darkened eyes. She knew then he laughed at her, as much as everyone else did. But when she glanced at the others, vampires and blood bonds alike, she didn’t see a smirk among them, just intrigue, anticipation, wonderment. Well, except for the vampiresses. She saw a lot of rabidly, venomous looks from them, and she was certain they were barely keeping their fangs hidden.

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