Primal Desire (Heart of the Huntress Book 6) Read online

  Atreides would show the woman how wrong she was to have entered the vampire’s lair. He truly didn’t think Basil had ordered the bartender to lace her drink with drugs, but he couldn’t be certain. However, if it made the huntress wise up that she risked her life by coming into the place, spilling her drink was well worth the effort.

  Who knew if any of Tamblyn Dance Club’s patrons might be renegades? Any of them might be on the huntress’s target list, and any would be ready to fight her if she made a move to take him or her down. Hunters were as arrogant as the vampires, though this one was more so if she thought to come to a vampire club and leave unscathed.

  What Atreides hadn’t expected was her offer of a dance. Did she think getting in thick with the vampires who weren’t rogues would give her a way to locate those who were?

  He grunted under his breath. It was the hunters’ jobs to locate and terminate the renegades. They got paid for it, not the vampires.

  But the feel of her soft buttocks and the way she moved against his hard body enticed him to want more, made him forget what she’d come here for, made him forget his own mission. Or that she was a huntress.

  Hell, all evening he’d declined every offer from vampiresses to blood bonds alike to dance when Iconia was so late coming to the club, so why had he accepted the huntress’s offer? To show her that she could not dance like the women here, that she didn’t belong, and she should give up whatever game she was playing?

  He released her hand and planted his free hand on her other buttock, lifting her higher against his thigh. God, she felt good, yet he tried to concentrate on his reasoning for dancing with her. To scare her off.

  Yet some dark part of him remained intrigued. She’d offered herself to him like a blood sacrifice, yet if he moved in that direction, he was certain she would have wished she was armed. No huntress had ever offered to dance with a vampire in the club. Hell, none of the hunter kind would be so forthright as to walk into a vampire’s dance lair. Something deep inside him wanted to experience the sensation. Not that he thought she would live up to the way his usual partners danced. However, Iconia was late, and what the hell, he was always looking for some new diversion in his life. After having lived so long, life did get dull at times.

  He could barely move on the floor he was so enraptured with the feel of the huntress, the way her jasmine fragrance tantalized him, the whisper of her breath against his neck, the racing beat of her heart that sent his senses reeling. All her soft curves pressed against him, molding to him, making him all the harder. He fought the insane urge to taste the huntress’s blood. He hated the hunter kind, he vehemently rebuked himself.

  Many hunters loved their job too much when terminating rogues. Some killed vampires who weren’t even killers. And then the hunters had to eliminate their own kind. But sometimes the hunters got away with the deed, the murder covered up, or explained as an accidental killing. Vampires who were on the right side of the law tolerated the hunters, but that was about it.

  Although he had to admit, he did feel a brotherly affection for his brother’s mate, a huntress turned vampire, and her younger sister. But she and her sister were exceptions to the rule.

  Most of the telepathic communication between the vampires had stopped because they were so intrigued that he would accept a dance with the huntress. Iconia was not happy. He’d seen her enter the club right after he’d taken the huntress to the floor, and she was glowering at the both of them at the edge of the dance stage. The vampiress would have words with him later, which might help to spark their dreary relationship of late.

  The huntress leaned into him, pressing her soft body against his hard one, rubbing her mound against his thigh, and he nearly lost it. She had no business using her feminine wiles to attempt to ensnare him. He’d meant to scare the huntress off with his erotic moves. Normally a good judge of character, he hadn’t believed she would have the fortitude to dance like this. What else had he mistakenly misjudged about the woman?

  Instinctively, he knew she had to leave before she became a rogue’s target. But part of him wished to know why she’d come here. He refused to get sucked into caring. Getting rid of her remained his priority.

  If she’d been Iconia and heated him the way the huntress had, he would have left the club and finished the dance moves in private. Still, he couldn’t rid himself of the elicit thoughts of taking the huntress away from here and showing her some new moves to see if she was as willing to play the game further. Which was downright madness. He despised the hunter kind, every last one of them, except for Tezra and Katie, he reminded himself.

  “Why are you here, huntress?” He meant to sound forceful, gruff, but his voice sounded husky and drenched with lust, which irritated him all the more.

  She looked up at him with eyes as luring as green emeralds sparkling in the sun and she smiled in a not-so-innocent way. “I asked you to dance and you accepted.”

  Yeah, but she wasn’t supposed to react the way she had, nor was she to feel this provocative.

  He wanted to talk some sense into her and warn her to stay away again for her own good, but when she reached around his back and clutched at his butt, his arousal jumped.

  Hell, woman, he seethed. He had no intention of allowing a huntress to turn his body into a raging fire. With every stroke of her hands on his chest and ass, she was turning the heat up higher.

  Brushing his lips against her bare shoulder, her skin satiny, begging for his ministration, he felt his bloodlust rising. In a hundred years, he hadn’t felt such desire, such an uncontrollable thirst. The huntress shivered when his tongue licked at her throat, spurring him on. Sensing everyone in the club waited for him to lose control, to take the hauntingly seductive creature for his own, Atreides bit back on his natural inclination. His brother, Daemon, who was in charge of the vampires in this region, would have had a conniption if he’d seen Atreides dancing with the woman like this.

  Atreides glanced in the direction of the band, knowing damn well the song should have ended several minutes before this. The band leader bowed his head with a devilish glint in his gray eyes, but the music played on. The huntress tilted her chin up and gazed into Atreides’s eyes. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she had been drugged. Every one of her actions, the innocent, sweet lure of a huntress, beseeched him to take his fill.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said breathlessly.

  Her silky voice entranced him, held him hostage.

  Saved her? For an instant, his hand stilled on her breast, the soft mound begging for his touch, the nipple peaked and straining against her silky red dress. Red, the color of fire and burning straight through him all the way to the core.

  “Thank you for knocking the drink out of my hand,” she said, her full red lips turned up just a hint. Lips that tasted as sinful as they looked, no doubt.

  He preferred blonds to brunettes, he reminded himself. And vampiresses, never a huntress, not even a human. He’d seen his brother agonizing over a human who didn’t wish to be turned. And then Daemon found himself falling for a borderline rogue huntress. No one in their right mind messed with a huntress, normally. Vampiresses on the other hand were willing and available. A much more suitable match.

  In truth, this woman appealed not in the least.

  The huntress pressed against his groin again, and he groaned. Okay, so she slightly appealed, at least to that male part of the equation that stood up and took notice.

  Her dark curls drifted over bare shoulders in an avalanche of silky tresses, and her floral fragrance tempted him, but that’s all that interested him. Well, and the way she fit so snugly against his body and tilted her head up to face him, her expressive eyes locked on to his like a vampire’s gaze would try to mesmerize a blood bond.

  He dipped her back, wanting to feel her pressed tight against his rigid cock, to see if she would expose her throat willingly to him. And she did. Arched her back, exposing her sensual throat, her hair falling away from h
er shoulders, so vulnerable, so enticing, the vein in her neck calling to him, begging to him to take a taste. He dipped his face to her throat, licked his lips, took in the heat of her skin, the fragrance, listened to the drum of her heart, the rush of blood through her veins.

  Grinding his teeth to keep his canines from unsheathing, he turned his head and telepathically snapped at the bandmaster, “Enough!” It would not have been chivalrous to end a dance before the music was finished, but he would have no more of the bandmaster’s wry sense of humor. Atreides was not here to entertain the masses. And he didn’t want to fight the bloodlust escalating in his system any longer.

  The music wrapped up, and in the ensuing silence, everyone waited to see what Atreides would do now. The huntress still clung to him, every inch of her naked skin covered in perspiration, the softness of her form pressed against him. He knew what he had to do. Force the huntress to leave the place, never to return. But she’d stirred his blood and sexual lust beyond reasonable levels, dictating him to choose another course—take her home and prove to her how vulnerable a huntress could be who dared play with them.

  With as much dignity as he could muster, he released her and bowed his head. “You dance better than I thought your kind would.” He meant to sound cruel, daunting, but his voice was drenched with arousal.

  He thought she would frown and give him a smart ass reply like most any huntress might with his goading, but instead, her teeth shown in a sparkling grin. “Why thank you. I thought you danced well also. Want to do it again?”

  Before he could hide his surprise or say hell no, Iconia shoved the vampires in her path out of her way.

  “Get lost,” she said to the huntress, her voice dripping with poison, low and menacing, “if you know what’s good for you.”

  The black gown she wore wasn’t half as appealing as the red dress the huntress wore, now that he could compare the two. And the huntress’s coloring made her stand out more, while he thought Iconia looked a bit washed out tonight, her blond hair paler, not as thick, or long, or seductive.

  Ignoring the vampiress, the huntress waited for Atreides’s word on the matter, which amused him. “Another time, perhaps,” he said with as much aplomb as he could manage. Although, he had no intention of ever touching the seductive woman again.

  Selena gave him another brilliant smile, then nodded. “All right. I’ll take a rain check.”

  She couldn’t have been serious.

  Then she turned and waited for the vampires to move out of her path.

  “A dance?” Basil asked her again, when the crowd parted, and she stood face to face with the owner of the club.

  “Thank you, no,” she said again.

  Which for some reason pleased Atreides when it shouldn’t have mattered in the least. But he couldn’t help but wonder why she had danced with him, and no other. Then again—he had saved her. He snorted. Right. Basil would have a word with him next about breaking the lady’s glass and implying he had drugged it. They had been friends for too many years that Basil wouldn’t wonder what was up.

  The huntress made her way to the exit like a queen among her courtiers while Atreides, like everyone else, watched her disappear into the dark.

  An unbidden feeling swept through him—like the effervescent bubbles in a glass of champagne suddenly vanished and left a flat, lifeless form in its place. Both anxiety for the huntress’s safety and the lingering arousal she’d left him in, compelled Atreides to follow her. He doubted anyone here worried about her safety like he did. Which didn’t make any sense as much as he hated hunters. But she wasn’t armed for one thing, like her kind would be, and she’d stirred up a hell of a lot of vampiric interest on the dance floor that he was certain she couldn’t deflect if she was forced to outside.

  “Maybe I should see her safely to her car,” Iconia said with a hint of malice.

  Atreides saw the venom in the vampiress’s blue eyes and seized her wrist. “We’ll dance.”

  But when two of his friends exited the dance club right after the huntress left, Atreides forgot all about the vampiress he held stiffly in his arms. What the hell were Renault and Colt up to?

  He had no reason for concern, he told himself. But he released Iconia so suddenly, she stumbled backward, and he headed for the door anyway. The music instantly stopped, and the telepathic communication began again.

  “Atreides is not so immune to the huntress as he attempts to pretend,” a vampire Atreides didn’t recognize said.

  “Can you blame him? If she’d been grinding against my body like she did his, she’d have been with me in my pad next,” another male said.

  Atreides had no intention of taking the huntress to his home. He merely wished to see her safely to her car and on her way with one last warning to stay away. But when he exited the dance club and heard Renault and Colt badgering the huntress somewhere in the dark near the edge of the parking lot, his teeth instantly extended.

  Like a raging bull, Atreides charged into battle.

  Chapter 3

  Selena wasn’t as much worried about the two vampires attempting to seduce her as the eerie feeling someone watched her hidden somewhere in the trees flanking the parking lot on the misty night. Was it Twilight?

  Not one of the blood bonds had approached her in the dance club, and she still wondered if her friend, Tara, had gotten the information wrong. But if it was Twilight, Selena needed to rid herself of these men—who were not making it easy—so she could speak to the woman alone.

  “Are you sure, darlin’, that ya don’t want to go with me?” the grizzly bear of a man asked, his blond hair tied back, his blue eyes expressive.

  He wore black denims, though the rest of his outfit was more like something from the old west: a satin vest, a black shirt, a red neckerchief, and cowboy boots. She imagined he thought he was a cowboy without his horse. After giving it another thought, she realized he might have been a real cowboy in the old west. Woe to the horse who had to carry such a big man.

  The other vampire was tall and lean, darker hair and eyes. He dipped his head and gave her an uplifting smile. Dressed in classy formal black attire, he was much suaver. “The lady would prefer a gentleman rather than a bowlegged—”

  “Renault, you uptight, French milksop!”

  “Or maybe the lady would like to share?” Renault said. A brow rose while he waited for her response.

  “I was…” She almost mentioned Twilight, but then thought better of it.

  “Yes?” Renault asked, his interest piqued.

  The other man looked just as intrigued. She figured if she told them what she was doing here, they would inform the rest of the vampires at once and make points for themselves. But what if one of these guys, or someone they talked to, really did have something to do with her sister’s disappearance? What if someone tried to silence Twilight?

  Normally, Selena wasn’t that suspicious of people. Then again, she didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with vampires either socially or otherwise. They were the stuff of legends—able to control mere mortals with their vampiric charms and though they couldn’t control her, as far as she knew, she didn’t want to prove herself wrong.

  She shook her head.

  Renault reached for her arm, but before she could push him aside, Atreides swooped in for the kill, his wicked canines bared. Startled out of her skin at his deadly intervention, Selena screamed.

  Tackling Renault with as much force as he could muster, Atreides knocked him to the asphalt. Colt bellowed with laughter.

  Finally getting over the shock of Atreides’s forcing him to the ground, Renault cursed out loud. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  A car door slammed, then an engine roared to life.

  Leaping to his feet, Atreides watched the cherry red Firebird speed away. Part of him was relieved to see the huntress tuck tail and run. But the other part, he couldn’t account for as his blood still coursed through him like a raging river, his anger smoldering bene
ath the surface.

  Renault rose from the pavement and brushed his clothes off. “I never would have wagered your interest in a huntress, Atreides,” he said darkly, though a glint of humor touched his serious expression.

  Colt snorted. “She’s fair game comin’ here like she did, wearin’ that blood red, silky dress, stirrin’ us up. There wasn’t a vampire in the joint who didn’t want her.”

  That’s what had concerned Atreides, though he told himself he shouldn’t have cared. If she was witless enough to enter the lion’s den, it served her right. Yet, her vulnerability touched him somewhere deep inside in the place he attempted to hide his darkest feelings. The same innocent susceptibility reminded him of his cousin, whom he’d felt brotherly toward, when she had lived. But then again, he didn’t feel in any way brotherly toward this woman.

  “Who’s she after?” Renault asked. “Did she tell you?”

  How the hell would Atreides know? From the beginning, the woman was a puzzle.

  “She came to the wrong place.” Atreides gave his friends a hard look. “Being a huntress, she was too proud to admit it. Anyone could have seen from the expression on her face when she first walked into the club that she hadn’t realized it was one of our hangouts to begin with.”

  Colt shook his head. “I’ll buy that she might have ordered the drink, but dancing with you?” He cocked a brow.

  “She was grateful.”

  “Did Basil lace her drink with drugs?” Renault asked.

  “No, Basil did not,” the owner of the club said, joining them. “What the hell was that all about? In the over one-hundred years I’ve been running this establishment, even in the days of the speakeasies, not once has a hunter so boldly walked into the place.”

  “She got lost,” Renault said and gave Atreides a half smile.

  Basil cast a questioning look at Atreides, who shrugged in return. “I have no idea why she came here. Your guess is as good as mine. Though I still suspect she thought it was just a human dance club.”