Bloodhunter Read online

  But soon, please, she’d stand face to face or, rather, face to chest with him and learn what she longed to.

  How tall was he? Did he know that his dark, thick, rich brows and lashes added to his animal-like qualities? That his bold and steady stare was reaching places she didn’t know she had?

  “What are you doing here?” she mentally demanded. “I know I didn’t take your picture.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Her breath came out a squeak. Pressure on the back of her wrist reminded her of where she’d left that hand, and she drew it out from under her bra. With both hands now pressing against her belly and her heart on fire, she surrendered to his eyes’ seduction.

  “I—I asked a question.” Startled by her voice, she straightened slightly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “What—what do you mean?”

  “It isn’t yet time for you to know that.”

  Where was his voice coming from? By focusing, she acknowledged that the sound was reaching her through her pores more than her ears. His voice was deep and strong, confident and yet hollow, maybe lonely. Lonely like her?

  “Yet?”

  “You’ll understand in time. Until then, listen to the whispers inside yourself. Feel the heat.”

  Her tattoo started burning again. Alarmed, she stared at it. It hurt and yet it didn’t, the fire putting her in mind of a lover’s passionate caress. She half expected the symbol to move, for her jaguar to open his mouth even more or stretch out those powerful paws, but it remained nestled beneath her flesh.

  What was it about being in a crisis that made it possible for her to concentrate on what she needed to while dismissing the non-essential? Her car had once been hit from behind by a truck that had skidded on black ice. Despite her shock and bleeding chin from striking the steering wheel, she’d calmly gripped the wheel while applying light but steady pressure to her brakes. And later when the highway patrolman had complimented the way she’d handled the situation, she’d said that she’d simply done what she knew she had to.

  It felt like that now: calm in the midst of insanity. Sitting naked from the waist down with her cunt staining someone else’s chair, while she carried on a conversation with someone who couldn’t possibly exist.

  Whose image hadn’t moved since she’d first seen it.

  No. The slide show hadn’t stopped. Rather, it no longer existed because this strong and dark aberration had taken over the monitor. Because he needed to get in touch with her, to reach out and connect.

  To change her world.

  “What do you want?” she managed.

  “You.”

  Her? Her body or mind or soul or maybe all three? “Why—why me?”

  “You’ll understand in time, Dana.”

  How do you know my name? “What should I call you?”

  “It doesn’t matter, yet. You’re a sensual woman, even more so than I’d thought you’d be.”

  Panic nibbled at the base of her spine, but she fought the emotion that would prevent her from learning essential things and waited for him to go on. As she did, heat in places other than her tattoo began to build again. There were times for sex and times when it had to be tamped into submission, but which was this? Should she be trying to cover herself up, or was nudity a core part of what was going on?

  “Relax, Dana. Concentrate on what it’s like when you’re photographing a wild animal. You become part and parcel of your environment, patient, content. You cease to be you and enter the creature’s heart.”

  How did he know that? And why was he able to articulate what she couldn’t?

  “Think of yourself now, slip into your skin. Listen to the song your heart is singing.”

  A heart’s song? What an incredible phrase!

  “Forget everything beyond this moment, dismiss where you are. Feel the blood in your veins and the air in your lungs. Imagine your womb and the portal to it. Feel the energy and strength that protects not just your womb but your entire body.”

  She could do that, close her eyes again and slouch with the back of her head pressing against the chair.

  “What makes you a woman completes you. Without a cunt you would be only partly alive. Your femininity is both your master and slave, as vital as your mind.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Feel now, experience.”

  Feel what? Before she could form the words, there was no need because cool lightning had found her cunt. It danced around her entrance, softening and soothing her, promising the world and yet demanding patience.

  “Think about what I said and explore the difference between slavery and freedom. Accept that you will never be satisfied until your body and mine have united.”

  Our bodies uniting! “Don’t say that! I can’t think.” Unable to stop herself, she clamped a hand over her sex, then shivered because she’d trapped the lightning inside her and now housed it against her inner folds.

  “Now isn’t the time for thinking, Dana. Feel. Experience. Anticipate and prepare.”

  “I don’t want this. Make it go away. You—go away!”

  “I can’t.”

  Touched by his lonely melancholy, she opened her eyes, but all she saw was a blackened monitor. A cry rolled up her throat and would have escaped if she’d truly thought she’d lost him, whoever he was. But he was still here, not physically, but as real as the lightning. He existed as mist and sound, promise and warmth.

  Something or someone pulled her hand off herself. Far from being alarmed, she burrowed deep inside the knowledge that she wasn’t alone in this room scented by the wilderness. Still relaxed, she dropped her arm and waited.

  “Trust. Trust and offer.”

  “Offer what?”

  “Your body.”

  Yes, she could do that. Yes, her trust in the incomprehensible ran that deep. Bending her legs slightly, she rolled her knees outward. The scent of an aroused woman drifted through her and imprinted her with the truth.

  “Good. It has begun.”

  The same strength that had pulled her hand away now hovered over her pussy. Although he—yes, he—hadn’t yet touched her, she felt his force along her labia. The promise of pleasure swirled over her.

  Promise became reality with the first whisper of a man’s rugged finger stroking her slit, teasing, not entering. Retreating.

  “Oh, god.”

  “Easy. Easy.”

  Anticipation so intense it bordered on the painful made heeding his caution impossible. Suspended between a powerful need to fuck right now versus lengthy foreplay, she rocked from side to side. She made small animal sounds, moans and sighs and a whispered “please”. Just when she didn’t know how she could keep from touching her clit, he did it for her.

  As the barest contact went on and on, she buried herself in the gift. This was satisfaction and agony, male flesh on the center of a woman’s sex—her sex. “Ah, ah.”

  “Feel. Believe.”

  A shift. Another finger brought into play. Both were instantly drenched by her juices and now glided effortlessly over her.

  “Ah, ah.”

  No response this time. Only his fingers settling over her labial lips, one tapping at her entrance.

  “So—fast.”

  “Because that’s the way it must be.”

  Too far gone to be alarmed, she slipped even deeper into this thing that had been created between them. When she gradually became aware that both his hands were between her legs, she gave brief thought to where the rest of his body was. Then he took hold of a swollen lip and drew it away from her opening, and she ceased to care.

  The drawing sensation continued, asking her to give it her full attention. She did, at least as much as she was capable of, but she was still trying to put it all together when he started tracing one outline after another around her clitoris with his other hand. The contrast between light tension and equally light fingers sent an endless current through her. Gripping the chair arms, sh
e arched upward. I need this! Oh damn, I need this!

  “Easy, easy.”

  Easy was no longer possible. Still, she fought the tension in her arms and legs. Her toes curled and dug into the thin carpet while her practical nails carved small indentations in the chair arms.

  Change. Circles ceased and swollen flesh released. Mouth hanging open because she now lacked the strength to control her jaw, she waited. Panted. Sweated.

  Ah, there. His hand again. Thumb on one side of her vagina and fingers on the other. Pressing down just enough, spreading her once more.

  She mewed when he expelled his breath there, then started panting again. He spread his other hand over the first, holding her in place. She loved the feel of him everywhere. Some part of her must have anticipated his next move because she only shuddered and sighed when a finger closed down on her bud. Keeping the pressure constant, he worked a tiny circular motion.

  Her mewing began again. There was something she should be saying, something she should do, but she existed only where his fingers were, wanted only this. So fast. Too fast.

  But nothing else mattered.

  “Today this is what you and I are about. It’ll change and grow with time, but not now. Not until I’ve staked my claim.”

  “What—claim?”

  No answer. Only moist warm air again, hands embracing her sex as if it belonged to him, that single masterful finger against her clit. Unable to take it anymore, she surged upward. The moment she did, he dove into her, wet finger curving, curling, zeroing in.

  The instant he touched her inner trigger, she climaxed.

  Chapter Four

  Heat seeped up from the earth to caress Dana’s bare toes. All around unseen insects whispered their secrets, and the lush vegetation kept hidden the location of countless animals, snakes and frogs. Although she acknowledged the hidden creatures’ presence, they mattered little. Her journey, this instinctive placing of one foot ahead of the other, claimed her full attention. And yet she didn’t know where she was going, where she’d been when she started walking, even who she was. She was naked, her arms empty. Her eyes adjusted to the scant illumination offered by stars and moon. Weariness, thirst, even questions didn’t touch her mind. She walked because that was her task, her passion.

  Counting distracted her from what she was doing, but a skimming sensation along her shoulders brought her head up.

  She slowed then stopped, somehow knowing she’d reached where she was supposed to be. Her arms settled along her sides and started working her hips, fingers caressing exercise-heated skin. Although she wanted to work her way to her core, the sudden need for answers kept them on safer territory.

  The trail ahead of her snaked into a great thicket, making her wonder if it ended there. This was her destination?

  “Am I alone?” she asked the night.

  “No.”

  A voice like a distant and lonely guitar played by a master. A male voice.

  “Are you waiting for me?”

  “I believe— Yes.”

  The dangerous words burned her nerve endings and sent her to trembling. Her cunt’s demands became harder to deny. Unable to speak for the dry knot in her throat, she widened her stance. She became as wild as the land she was in.

  Now the male voice spoke to her without words, the weight and warmth of him straightening her spine and hardening her nipples. Her breasts throbbed and memories of countless fuckings pooled around her labia. “I’m sex,” he was telling her in that secret language they shared. “I may be other things to other people, but to you, nothing except what my cock offers your cunt matters.”

  “How arrogant you are! To think that’s the only thing I care about.”

  “It is, Dana, it is. Put your hands on your breasts,” he said in his silent way. “Massage them and accept that those fingers belong to me, not you, and that you need this to live.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “Because I now know I’ve been looking for you for thousands of years.”

  He didn’t mean that; he couldn’t! But how could she tell him when her breasts were so hungry and she might climax if she so much as pressed her legs together? He wanted her to massage her breasts, so she did, sometimes courting pain, sometimes barely touching herself with butterfly fingers. These weren’t her fingers, she told herself. They belonged to him. Her back arched, and her mouth parted. She heard herself breathing, quick and loud and heavy with need.

  Need! Clawing and crying need for whatever the stranger granted her.

  “So many years of searching, but I found you. Even when I didn’t know what I was searching for.”

  Ah, back to using his seductive voice again. “How did you find me?”

  “A million ways, whispers and light, the smell of you.”

  She smelled of her hot juices, primal scents that aroused and demanded. “What do you want from me?”

  “To believe in me. And once you have, to travel with me.”

  “Travel? Where?” Closing her thumbs and fingers around her nubs, she squeezed. No pain, just more of the melting heat in her core. “Where do you want to take me?”

  “To where the answers lie.”

  A spark of something she couldn’t name struck the base of her throat only to quickly spread down and out. His voice, his damnable voice was responsible! As the ever-growing ember crawled over her belly and sent lightning fingers along her inner tissues, she lost all interest in their conversation and the finger of fear that had briefly touched her. One thing and one thing only mattered. Seeing him. Touching him. Claiming and being claimed.

  Infused with this single all-encompassing reason for living, she stepped toward the thicket. With her second step, she knew without a doubt that he was in there, waiting for her, challenging.

  Promising?

  No fear now. No hesitation. Nothing except sex-scent in the air and hot explosions threatening to turn her into an animal in heat. Cupping her breasts, she held them up as gifts. They were so heavy, heavy like the weight and warmth between her legs. Animals fucked and mated. When nature’s primal need controlled them, they knew nothing of restraint or embarrassment. They needed to mate, only mate. They sought and demanded sex.

  She’d do that. Pull the man behind the voice out of the brush and throw him down and mount him. With her teeth on his throat and her hands hard on his sex, she’d demand her rights. Ride him. Ride him until he had nothing left to give her and she’d screamed out her release.

  Naked, he’d be naked. Erect and aroused with a staying power to match hers, and animal lust coursing through his veins.

  Nearly insane with a power she couldn’t comprehend or control, she reached the great vegetation. But before she could plunge into it, everything went still. Waiting. The world was waiting.

  Not the naked male animal she craved after all. Instead, the tall, strong creature emerging from his hiding place wore a cape that caressed and cradled him from shoulders to mid thighs. The instant she saw the cape, she knew what it was made from, but revulsion and disbelief came before unwanted but necessary acceptance.

  A jaguar pelt. Beautiful and awful. Stripped of the big cat’s living heat.

  Screaming out her rage, she tore the pelt off its owner and pummeled his chest. Then, sobbing, she clutched the pungent smelling skin with its whisper-soft fur to her breasts.

  “You killed it! You bastard, you damned bastard, you killed it!”

  No denial. No words at all. Instead he stood with his arms at his sides as she’d done earlier, with his head high and his hard, hot, uncircumcised cock thrusting toward her.

  “Accept me. Believe in me.”

  “No, I can’t! I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  Screaming again, she turned and ran.

  Dana was on her feet beside the bed. With the dream still gripping her, she couldn’t put her mind to the question of what she intended to accomplish so she stood while circulation returned to her legs and clarity to h
er mind.

  That’s all it had been, a dream, albeit a vivid and disturbing one, especially the part about the jaguar skin and the detail about him not having been circumcised. But there was no reason why life as she’d always known it should cease to exist. All she needed to do was become clear-headed again. Maybe a trip to the bathroom followed by a drink of water followed by…what?

  The more she thought about it, the more the bathroom seemed like the logical starting point. Fortunately, the cabin was so small that that task called for taking only took a few steps. After tending to nature’s needs, she ran the water and cupped her hands under the cold flow. Once she’d satisfied her thirst, she ran her dripping hands over her face and shivered.

  She’d plugged in a night light right after moving in here which meant she was now staring at her refection in the mirror. Not a good idea, not at all. Train wreck about said it, especially with her shoulder blade length, reddish-brown hair shooting off in all directions and her brown eyes struggling to put sleep behind her. Staring at her lean, naked form wasn’t doing enough to put the world back on course. Hell, without a stitch on, she looked as if she was ready to fuck.

  Except it would have to be a solo job.

  For a moment she actually considered distracting herself with a little old fashioned self-play, but it held no appeal, not after the appearance of the dark-eyed, dark-skinned man in her thoughts, twice.

  Damn it, only the real thing would do.

  Not that she was that insane.

  Not that Dark Eyes was real.

  The moon had called to Dana for as long as she could remember. Sometimes she would stare up at it and wonder if her usually absent father was doing the same, maybe sending her a mind-message she didn’t quite get, but most of the time, the cool, distant light simply quieted and settled her.

  Tonight was different thanks to the dream. At least that’s what she told herself as she headed toward the enclosure where the big cats were held. She wore slippers designed for surviving going outside and had pulled on a zip-up robe just in case she wasn’t the only one suffering from insomnia tonight.