On the Hunt

She moaned, digging in her fingers, urging him onward, inward, but he kept going with an insistent rhythm that drove her up, far beyond any place they had been before. She cried out—his name, a plea, she wasn't sure—and he answered by kissing her deeply, thoroughly, pressing his body into hers without completing the act she craved.



Instead, he slid his hard length between her legs, along the slick cleft that wept for his entry.



Then he anchored her with his hands, spreading her and holding her exactly where and how he wanted her.



"Now," she said, not caring that he'd made her beg. "Now, damn you."



His chuckle was low and masculine, with an edge of the effort it cost him to set a torturous pace, pleasuring her without penetrating. She moaned with mounting frustration, then again as the rhythm caught fire within her and she tightened around the empty place where he should have been.



The water was cooler than her body now, cooler than the friction they made together. That contrast, along with the slap of water and skin, the wet slide of his body against hers, combined into a brutally erotic thrill that caught her up, turning her inward. She clung to him, kissed him, tasted his excitement and fraying restraint. And she went over.



She cried out against his lips as the throbbing pleasure took hold, gripping her and leaving her helpless to do anything but dig in, hang on, and ride it out. She said his name, cursed him, begged him, thanked him; she didn't know what she was saying, didn't care as long as he kept sliding against her, hard and full.



Then the storm passed and she went limp. He let her down from the wall; his chest was heaving, his eyes wide and almost wild. His hand shook as he slapped the toggle to killthe water; his steps were slightly unsteady as he led her out of the shower. "Bed," he grated. "Now."



She wasn't arguing.



They toweled each other off and headed for the bedroom, weaving, drunk on lust. The hot, humming power raged through her, making her ache when they lay down together and he kissed her, his hands framing her face, his heavy erection trapped between them, throbbing against her skin.



Then he shifted and slipped inside her. She saw stars and comets, felt the pounding of her blood and his as he shifted to match their palms on one side, and then twine their fingers together.



Her eyes fluttered open and she looked down at their joined hands. She had lost the bandage in the shower, but the cut must not have been that bad. It was barely a faint, faded line now, matching up with the word tattooed on his left forearm: FREEDOM. The alignment seemed somehow profound, sending a new spear of sensation through her as his eyes met hers, and he began to move within her.



It would have been smarter to look away, to close her eyes and lose herself to the physical pleasure. Instead, she stayed locked on him, looking into him and letting him see too much.



New needs rose up in her, clawed at her until she surged against him, clung to him, urging him on and then racing ahead, her body bowing beneath his as the leading edge of another orgasm caught her unaware. It took her outside herself, to a place of push and pull, action and reaction, until she would have done anything, given anything, to reach the climax that beckoned just out of reach.



Her vision blurred; her eyes drifted shut. He whispered to her: "Natalie." Just her name, yet in a soft, moved voice that touched her more deeply than it should have.



"I missed you." She hadn't meant to say it again, hadn't really meant to say it the first time. But



"I missed you." She hadn't meant to say it again, hadn't really meant to say it the first time. But he answered with a body-locking shudder of passion, a surging stroke that put her over and took him with her.



She clung to him as the world shattered around her, pulsed through her, lit her up with warm liquid gold.



Crying his name, she pressed her face into the crook of his neck so he couldn't see into her eyes, where she knew there was no hiding that she had lied when she said she could handle a no-harm-no-foul night with him. Because if she had been in danger of falling before, she edged that much closer now as he came inside her, grating her name and a male litany of, "Oh, yes, oh, there, oh, gods, oh, fuck, yeah."



They clung, shuddering, and then easing as their bodies unlocked. Then, though she knew she probably shouldn't, she curled naturally into the too-familiar cuddle they had developed in their six-week stint as lovers.



Her heart hurt from the comfortable warmth of his body against hers, the touch of his breath in her hair, the pressure where he still held her hand, and the way his grip gentled when he slipped into a doze. That in itself was a sign of his exhaustion. Always before, he had fallen asleep after her and woken before she was up. Not so now. His arms went lax and heavy around her; his breathing slowed and deepened.



Cuddling in, she closed her eyes. And didn't come anywhere close to faling asleep.



She was wide-awake, her brain churning. Oddly, though, she wasn't overthinking what had just happened between them; her mind was caught on something else, something that stayed tantalizingly out of reach when she tried to focus on it.



She frowned and opened her eyes, then eased back to look at him, trying to find the tiny detail that had caused her instincts to kick in.



Rather than softening in sleep, his features had become even fiercer, as if he couldn't let go even when unconscious, afraid that something important would slip away.



Tenderness tugged at her. She touched his jaw, tracing the rasp of stubble. He hadn't shaved since they'd broken up, she thought, and wondered whether he'd been out hunting the creatures all that time, keeping moving, not slowing down long enough to think. Restless. Itchy. Twitchy. Like her.



Don't talk yourself into something that isn't there, she told herself. But warmth coursed through her as she let herself mentally replay their lovemaking: his deep rumble of sexual completion, his earthy praise, his—



Her belly knotted when she figured out what had been bothering her.



Just now, in the throes, he had said gods. Plural.



Oh. Shit.



There was nothing wrong with polytheism . . . but it was an almost unthinkable choice for a man who had grown up, as he had claimed, in a deeply religious family smack in the heart of the Bible Belt. Which meant he hadn't, or at least not entirely.



Was it another lie? Or something that went deeper?



Her heart thudded as the getting-to-know-you stories he had shared about his childhood suddenly seemed too pat, almost rehearsed. More lies. Who was he, really? How did he fit into this place, with these creatures? He was one of the good guys, a soldier, just as he'd said—that much she was sure of. But she didn't know who he was beyond that.



Thoroughly chilled even though she was still lying beside his big furnace of a body, she slipped out of bed and pulled on borrowed clothes, adding a sweatshirt against the bone-deep cold that had chased away the golden warmth.



Pausing in the doorway, she looked back at his sleeping bulk. "Who the hell are you?" she whispered. Inwardly, though, she was thinking, Who the hell am I ?



Was she a piece of whatever was happening in this place, or was this just the ultimate in orphans' fantasies: that she was the lost child of powerful people, abandoned with a magic necklace that brought her back to where she belonged?



Or not, she thought, still staring at JT. She didn't do lies, didn't do liars.



But what was the truth?



Turning away from him, she padded out into the main room and took a long look around, not sure what she was searching for, but figuring she would know it when she saw it.



A half hour and two cups of coffee later, she found it: the seam of a hidden door disguised to look just like the rustic, exposed-beam interior of the main room. After that, it wasn't hard to identify the pressure pad that triggered it—the disguise was cursory, more to fool casual visitors than to evade a determined search.



She hesitated, nerves sparking even as her instincts said, Do it.



Blowing out a breath, she whispered, "Okay. Down the rabbit hole we go." She wanted, needed the truth about what he was hiding, what it had to do with her.



As she opened the door and pushed through, she was braced to find almost anything. What she got was a plain, workmanlike space with a computer, filing cabinet, and other office detritus.



Not letting herself hesitate—she had already crossed the line—she woke the computer, wincing when a solar converter kicked on somewhere else in the house. But the machine was password-protected, and she was no hacker. So instead of messing with that, she searched the rest of the small space, rifling through desk drawers, and then the filing cabinet. There, she found four journals, arranged by date, going back nearly a decade.



She pulled out the oldest one and cracked it open, but then stalled at the sight of his distinctive, crabbed writing.



Did she really want to do this? He had lied to her, it was true. But reading his personal papers wouldn't make that better; it would just make her guilty of something, too. Maybe finding the office was enough—she could call him on it and see what he said. More lies, probably. But with her body still warm and loose from their lovemaking, she wanted to give him the chance.



She moved to shut the journal, but then a word jumped out at her, and she froze. Xibalba. It whispered in her mind. Xibalba. It was the Mayan underworld, the root of evil and the source of the villagers' bat-demons. Which most definitely weren't the cryptic species he had claimed them to be.



Another lie.



Damn it, JT.



Taking a deep breath, knowing she wasn't going to like what she found but unable to walk away now, she opened the journal all the way, and began to read.



When the demons first come through the barrier, from Xibalba to the earthly plane, their flesh is raw and exposed, and they're newborn-weak. They hunt animals in the beginning, the bigger the better, because they need the blood volume to power up. They drain the bodies dry, then take the skins to cover themselves—it knits somehow, so the skin becomes theirs, everywhere except the wings. In order to fill in their wings, they need human skin.



They were sneaky this time, taking only a few animals from each herd. It wasn't until Rez's family went missing that we knew for certain. And even then, they hid the bodies in their damned burrow. Skinned and drained, and left there for the poor bastard to find.