The Dark-Hunters (215 page)

Bride went running after her wolf.

“Vane!” she called, rushing to the door. She couldn’t see a trace of him anywhere.

“You called?”

She jumped, then turned to see the human Vane behind her. “No, my wolf—”

“Is named Vane?”

She opened her mouth as her face heated. “It’s a long story.”

He just smiled at her.

Oh Lord, how did she get herself into these predicaments?

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him. I’m sure he’ll come back.”

“I hope so. I’ve gotten kind of attached to him.”

Vane’s heart sank. That was the last thing he wanted her to tell him. But in truth, he’d gotten attached to her, too. Something that was lunacy.

He dropped his hand from her hair even though what he really wanted to do was pull her into his arms and kiss those lips. Both parts of him wanted nothing more than to strip their clothes off and rub himself against her. To feel her soft skin sliding against his. Taste her flesh with his tongue …

Bride swallowed at the look on his face. He stared at her as if she were a cake he was about to devour.

No man had ever given her such a hungry, needful look. She was paralyzed by it.

“Hey, lady?”

She jumped at the mover’s call. “Yeah?”

“Where do you want us to put the bed?”

She looked up at Vane. “I’ll be back, okay?”

He nodded. She left his side and felt his hot, heavy stare on her the whole way as she went to the movers.

Vane struggled to breathe as he watched her walk away from him. That woman had the best-looking ass he’d ever seen. And he loved and hated the way she wore her hair up. Tendrils of it hung down, grazing her neck, making him want to lick every inch of that tantalizing flesh.

Did all wolves feel like this with their mates? Or was it something about Bride?

He didn’t know for sure.

But he was now human with her.

God help them both.

Chapter 4

Not once in her entire existence had Bride ever felt more awkward. What did a woman say to a man who had bailed her out of one of the worst moments of her life?

“Thank you” was so inadequate for what she felt for him. He was truly a hero to her.

She left the apartment and headed back toward her store while the movers continued to unload her belongings.

At first she didn’t see Vane anywhere. Had he left?

His motorcycle still stood where he’d parked it.

Frowning, she looked inside the store and found him browsing through a rack of slinky dresses that had come in earlier that morning.

He paused at a snazzy black number that had caught her attention. It was made of heavy silk with a halter top that would look great on someone built like Tabitha. She’d ordered them on impulse because she knew instinctively that the dress would really set off the beaded choker Vane had bought for her.

She’d originally planned on displaying the two items together.

Bride opened the door and headed toward him. “Would you like to try one on?” she asked playfully.

He laughed at that. His entire face lightened and his green eyes sparkled. Gracious, no man should be so handsome.

“I don’t think I have the cleavage to pull it off and it’d probably make my ass really flat.”

She laughed.

He pulled the largest one out and held it up to her. “You on the other hand … beautiful.”

“Oh no,” she said, smoothing the cool silk with her hand. “It’s too clingy for me. Besides, I don’t like anything that shows off my upper arms.”

He looked confused by her words. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It makes me really self-conscious.”

He looked at the dress, then at her, as if he were imagining her in it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Too many guys would ogle you, then I’d have to hurt them.”

He was serious. Amazed by that, Bride arched her brows as she took the dress from him and returned it to the rack.

Vane watched her closely as her scent wrapped around him. The thought of her in that dress …

He was so aroused by her that it was all he could do to stand here and not leap. He stared at the bared flesh of her neck, wanting to press his lips there and taste that delectable skin.

In the wild, he wouldn’t have hesitated to pull her to him and kiss her until she begged him for mercy. But the humans he’d seen didn’t behave that way. There were protocols to courtship that he wasn’t sure about.

She turned toward him.

Vane looked away, afraid she could sense how badly he wanted her. How uncertain he was.

In his realm, a timid wolf was a dead one. In the human realm …

Did timid win or lose?

Damn, he should have paid more attention.

“So how about that dinner?” he asked, trying the middle ground between timid and forceful. “Want me to give you a couple of hours to get the movers straightened out and then come back?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

“Please?”

She nodded, then blushed prettily.

For some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt like howling in triumph. He reached for the dress on the rack and pulled the skirt of it out. “Would you wear this?” he asked hopefully.

Bride looked at it doubtfully, but the expression on his face made her reach out for it. He’d been so nice to her so far …

“Only if you swear you won’t laugh at me in it.”

His look seared her. “I would never laugh at you.”

She swallowed at the fierce tremor that went through her at the deep sincerity of his words. He really was too sexy for his own good. “Okay. What time will you be back?”

He checked the time on his cell phone. “Six?”

“It’s a date.”

The satisfied look on his face sent an unfamiliar thrill through her.
Bride, don’t. The last thing you need is to have your heart broken by Mr. Bodacious.

Maybe he would be different.

Or maybe he’ll be worse.

She wouldn’t know unless she took a chance.

Breathing in deeply, she took the dress from his hands. Bride McTierney had never been a timid woman. Occasionally she’d been stupid, such as when she’d let Taylor use her, but never cowardly.

Bride met life head-on and she wasn’t going to be afraid with Vane. “Six o’clock,” she repeated.

“I’ll see you shortly,” Vane said. He bent down and laid an extremely chaste kiss on her cheek.

Even so, it warmed her every bit as much as a fullblown caress. Bride watched as he made his way out of her store.

Outside, he actually paused to look back at her and smile before he put his sunglasses on.

Hissing at the splendid sight of him, she watched as he started the bike, then rode it off the sidewalk, into the street.

“Oh please, Vane,” she whispered under her breath. “Don’t break my heart, too.”

Bride took the dress to the dressing room and did her best not to remember how fine Vane had looked naked in here. How good he had felt inside her. The look of supreme satisfaction on his face as he rocked her gently in his arms.

She hung the dress up and went to find accessories for it. She didn’t know where he was going to take her, but she was going to look her best if it killed her.

*   *   *

Vane made his way back to the doll store where he’d left Ash.

He had a date.

With Bride.

Panic was already setting in. What on earth did humans do on a date besides have sex?

He’d seen humans in the bar interact with each other, but those encounters had been similar to what wolves did. Someone would come in, look around, find the partner they wanted to claim, and take them home to screw them. Dev had told him from the very first night that that wasn’t the way the human world normally worked. That some things at Sanctuary were different.

The other, more subdued humans who came in were already dating or married to each other. They usually seemed to be having a good time … unless they were fighting. But Vane had never paid very much attention to them.

He didn’t know anything about trying to make a human actually “like” him. He’d spent the last four hundred years of his life either killing those who threatened his siblings or trying to scare the rest away.

What would make Bride fall in love with him enough so that she would agree to be his mate?

After parking his bike on a side street, he went back to Liza’s for some help.

Vane hesitated as he entered the front room where two women were browsing the doll collection while talking to Liza. One of the women was an exact copy of Tabitha, except she didn’t have the scar on her face.

She must be Kyrian Hunter’s wife, Amanda. Vane had crossed paths with the ex-Dark-Hunter from time to time, but had never met his wife. Marissa was in Amanda’s arms, playing with her mother’s hair. The other woman, a short brunette, he knew well. She was Dr. Grace Alexander, the human psychologist who kept telling him nothing would help his brother until Fang was ready to be helped. Grace held her son in her arms while Amanda stopped mid-sentence.

All three women turned to stare at Vane, who hesitated just inside the door.

“He’s in back still,” Liza said, as if she knew who he was looking for.

“Thanks.”

He heard Liza explain who and what he was to Amanda as he headed toward the back room.

Vane passed through the curtains to find the demon gone and Kyrian, Nick Gautier, and Julian Alexander talking to Ash.

He knew Nick from the number of times the young human had come into Sanctuary to see his mother, Cherise. Nick was strange, but since he served the Dark-Hunters and they loved his mother, the bears treated him like another one of their cubs. Kyrian was slightly taller than Julian, with blond hair that was a shade darker. Even though they were mostly human, the two men possessed enough authority and skill that Vane respected them.

“What’s up, wolf?” Ash asked as he reclined against a worktable that was littered with doll parts and fabrics. Ash had his butt resting on it, with his legs stretched out before him and his hands braced on either side of his long, lean body.

Nick, Julian, and Kyrian stood in a semicircle between him and Ash.

Vane hesitated. He didn’t relish the idea of a public consultation, but since two of the men were married to modern-day women and Nick was known to date a lot, maybe they could help him out.

“I need dating advice. Fast.”

Ash arched a single brow at that. “I’m useless. I’ve never been on one.”

The three human men turned to gape at him.

“What?” Ash asked them defensively.

Nick started laughing. “Oh man, this is priceless. Don’t tell me the great Acheron is a virgin?”

Ash gave him a droll look. “Yeah, Nick. I’m lily-white.”

“How did you get through life without a date?” Kyrian asked Ash.

“It wasn’t an issue back then,” Ash said curtly.

“Yeah, well, it’s a serious issue to me,” Vane said, nearing them. “Julian, how did you meet your wife?”

Julian shrugged. “My brother the sex god cursed me into a book for two thousand years. Grace got drunk on her birthday and summoned me out of it.”

Vane rolled his eyes. “That’s useless. Kyrian? What about you?”

“I woke up handcuffed to Amanda.”

Vane could work with that. “So I need to get a set of handcuffs?”

“Not on a first date,” Ash said with a smirk. “You’ll scare her to death if you handcuff her.”

Kyrian scoffed. “It worked for me on a first date.”

Ash gave him a bored stare. “And so did having an insane Daimon out to kill the two of you. But I don’t think Vane wants to go that route.”

“So what do you wolves do to date?” Nick asked.

“We don’t date,” Vane said. “When a woman is in season, we fight for her and then she picks who mounts her.”

Nick gaped. “Are you kidding? You don’t have to buy her dinner? You mean you don’t even have to talk to her?” He turned to Acheron. “Dayam, Ash, make me a wolf.”

“You wouldn’t like being a wolf, Nick,” Ash said. “You’d have to eat raw meat and sleep outside.”

Nick shrugged. “That sounds like a typical Mardi Gras to me.”

“What else?” Vane asked them, interrupting Nick’s recitation of his Mardi Gras habits. “What did you guys do when you were human?”

Kyrian thought about it before he answered. “Well, in our day,” he said, glancing at Julian, “we took women to chariot races and plays.”

“Oh jeez,” Nick said. “You guys are pathetic. Chariot race, my ass.” He stepped forward and draped an arm around Vane’s shoulders. “All right, listen to me, wolf. You get some cool clothes and impress her with a lot of cash. You need to take her somewhere good to eat. There’s a place down on Chartres where you can get a two-for-one dinner—”

“Nicky!”

They all turned to look at Amanda, who stood between the curtains, glaring at them.

“What?” Nick asked.

“Don’t you dare tell him how to date.” Amanda came over and handed her daughter to Kyrian. “Have you ever noticed that Mr. Suave here seldom dates a woman twice? There’s a reason for that.”

Grace clucked her tongue at the men as she joined them. “I swear, we should make all of them take a rudimentary dating course. It’s a wonder any of you got married.”

Julian offered his wife a devilish grin. “I didn’t hear you complain when—”

She covered his mouth with her hand, then placed her son in his arms. “You two go home before you get into any more trouble.”

“And you,” Amanda said to Ash, “are old enough and wise enough to know better.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ash said, but there was a gleam in his silvery eyes that belied his denial.

“Yeah, right.” Amanda shooed him toward the door.

Ash sauntered out as if greatly amused by the women.

Nick started out after him, but Amanda grabbed his arm.

“You wait here.”

“Why?” Nick asked.

Amanda pulled a set of car keys out of his shirt pocket. “Because you are going to loan Vane your car tonight.”

“Like hell. Since when can a wolf drive a Jag?”

Grace looked at Vane. “Can you drive?”

“Yes.”

“It’s settled, then,” Grace said. She turned back to Nick. “Take the Jag to the car wash and for heaven’s sake clean the McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes out of it.”