Hunting His Vampire Mate (Blood Bonded Mates #4)

CHAPTER TWO || MICHAEL

F uck. Fuck. Fuck.

I drove down the block and around the corner, then I pulled over and parked in a grocery store parking lot. I whipped out my phone, opened Grindr, and navigated to the conversation with the guy I had been chatting with.

If he looked anything like his profile picture, he was smoking hot.

With a regretful sigh, I texted him. Hey, sorry. Can’t make it. Something came up.

Then I closed the app, without waiting for his reply. For good measure, I uninstalled it from my phone. But that wasn’t going to help me long-term. I knew that I was just going to install it again tomorrow once we’d made our way to Ontario and accomplished our work. Then it would be another shitty motel, maybe for a couple days this time until Danny found us a new case to go take care of, and then there would be another couple of rounds of this.

Of me finding some nice guy, making plans to go and have a good time with him, leaving Danny behind in the motel room, with him all bent out of shape, canceling on my hookup at the last minute, and then sitting in my car and questioning pretty much all of my life choices.

I would have loved to go and mess around with this dude tonight. I was pretty sure I would’ve had a blast, too. He looked like a lot of fun. A little twinky, which wasn’t usually my speed, but then I had lots of different types, didn’t I?

The problem was Danny.

I had been in love with him since about five minutes after meeting him. After losing my boyfriend at the time, Joshua, and learning that the monsters under the bed were very real, I had been shattered. Danny had been my only way through the darkness that had descended afterward. He had helped me put the pieces back together, one case at a time. And even though I had been filled with such rage and hatred that I felt like a man possessed, I had still somehow found it in me to love him.

With his flawless brown skin, high cheekbones, straight black hair that he kept short and spiky, and his dark eyes, so deep I couldn’t see the bottom, he was objectively gorgeous. Plus, he was a little smaller than me—a hair shorter than me and definitely more compact, but still lean and masculine, something I fucking loved. Not to mention the literally perfect ass that I had found myself staring at more than once.

But that wasn’t what I loved about him.

Even though I tried my best to ignore it, my heart still swelled so much it almost hurt every time I walked in to find him hunched over his laptop, his face all scrunched up in concentration, his eyes alight with excitement as he looked up at me and hurriedly explained his research into whatever monster we were about to go hunt, so intense about it that he sounded halfway to madness. He knew more about obscure folkloric monsters than anyone else I had ever met.

Or the way he looked after he’d hacked into somewhere that should’ve been squarely off-limits to him. Even though he didn’t brag much—that was mostly a me thing—in those moments, I could still always tell from the almost-smirk on his lips that he was proud of himself and trying not to be obvious about it.

Or my favorite of all, the quiet moments after our hunts when we’d just hang out in the motel room, passing a bottle of booze back and forth, not even bothering with glasses, and just talk, like we still knew how to be regular people after all. Those were the very best moments, where I saw him without any defenses.

They were the moments when I saw the real Danny: thoughtful, wounded, brave, and somehow—impossibly—still hiding a goodness that an entire lifetime of darkness hadn’t quite been able to destroy. And sometimes he’d look at me like I was something special, too. Something other than a small-town mechanic from the backwoods of Colorado turned monster hunter who was filled to the brim with such rage that it might snap me in two at any moment. Sometimes he’d look at me like I mattered to him just as much as he mattered to me.

But then he had gone and messed everything up. Because he had confessed that he was in love with me. And now everything felt insane. And there was nothing easy between us anymore. Everything was weird fucking silences, hurt feelings, and defensiveness. Every single day, the chasm between us seemed to get bigger and bigger.

More impossible to cross.

I knew I was the problem. But knowing that sure as shit didn’t fix anything. Because I didn’t know how to not be the problem. Ever since Danny had admitted he loved me, all my fears had all come rushing back to the surface and they hadn’t really left.

Joshua had been the last man I had loved. He had been murdered right in front of me. And I had just stood there, frozen in panicked disbelief, as a pair of vampires had drained him dry. My world had careened off its tracks that night. And the part that haunted me the most was the fact that I hadn’t even been able to make myself move at all. All I could do was watch, my body rooted in place in numb shock, as monsters ate the man I loved.

I had been helpless. Useless. Powerless.

But then Danny had come crashing through the doors. He had killed both the vampires with a machete, one right after the other, and I had somehow gotten it into my head that he was invincible. I was pretty sure I had needed to believe that at the time. Until our first near miss together. And then our second. Then our third. And I had seen, all over again, just how fragile a human life really was. Especially a human life I couldn’t help but care about way too fucking much.

Danny kept calling me reckless, because I rushed in first, always.

But better something get me rather than him.

I would never be helpless like that again. If I went down, it’d be fighting. Fighting to protect him. Fighting to save him.

And if I let myself feel it back? If something happened between us, if that was even possible, it would give me so much more to lose. What if I was helpless again, when it mattered?

But this was completely ridiculous anyhow, wasn’t it? After all, he’d made it pretty clear to me on numerous occasions that he was straight. I’d made a couple of misguided passes at him early on and he’d shut me down in a heartbeat. I’d accepted a long time ago that it wasn’t going to happen between us. So I had taken my feelings for him, locked them into a little box, and stuck them on a forgotten shelf somewhere deep inside of me, where they’d been happily collecting dust, not hurting anyone.

And yeah, it was better that way.

But if something had changed in him somehow and he wanted to give this a shot after all, and then it didn’t work out, it would destroy everything I had been living for over the past five years. And even if it did work out, I would have so much more to lose every time we went into battle.

Not a good idea. Hell, my heart already wasn’t in it anymore, when it came to hunting monsters. That was dangerous and I knew it. But I couldn’t make myself leave, either.

Yet the hatred and fury that had been driving me for half a decade was gone. The monsters who had killed Joshua and shattered my life were both long dead now. And knowing that there were good people out there who also happened to be vampires had somehow erased years of hatred and fear, even though I hadn’t really wanted it to.

And without it…

I still didn’t really have any problems with hunting the real horrors of the world: the ones who had killed before and would happily kill again, but I didn’t need to do it anymore. I could have done something else, if I wanted to. I wouldn’t have been able to walk away before. But now I could.

Except for Danny.

He was the only reason I was still doing this.

And now he looked at me with moon eyes all the time. Or, worse, with hurt clearly visible in his face every time I shut his shit down. Like I was somehow the bad guy here, just because I didn’t want to have a conversation that would ruin everything good between us.

I sat there like that for a long time, watching the shoppers come and go, almost able to pretend I was one of them. That I didn’t eat all my meals out of a greasy fast-food bag. That I didn’t go from town to town and slay monsters that most people on earth didn’t even know existed. That I didn’t have to use a dead guy’s name whenever I wanted to buy something. That maybe I could go into the store and get groceries for the week and that maybe I’d go home afterwards and eat a home-cooked meal for a change. And that maybe my husband—who, yes, in my head, now looked suspiciously like Danny—would text me at any moment and tell me not to forget to buy eggs, because we were out. Sitting there, watching the mundane folks pass me by, seemingly without a single care in the world, I could almost pretend that I still had some semblance of normal.

Rather than whatever the fuck this was.

Then, after enough time had gone by that it would be plausible that I had gone and hooked up, that I had gotten my rocks off—though, sure, maybe in a hurry—I turned the car back on. Then I headed back to the motel, trying to ignore the longing in my chest. If I ignored it long enough, I could almost pretend it wasn’t there at all.

* * *

Danny was already passed out on the bed when I came back.

The nearly full bottle of tequila he’d slipped into his pack earlier was now on the nightstand, half-empty. Given that I had only been gone for about two hours and change, that had to be some sort of record. I was almost impressed.

The spirit traps and warding sigils had been drawn and activated, though. And his laptop was still open on the small table next to the window. The smiling face of a pretty twenty-something blonde girl stared back at me from the screen, perpetually frozen in time, like she thought her whole life was in front of her.

I clicked through the tabs Danny had open on the laptop. The headlines read: Local Girl Slain: Third Death in Past Month; Is there a Serial Killer in Eastern Oregon?; Ontario’s Missing Person Epidemic; Three Boise State University Students Found Dead in Local Park.

I skimmed the articles. Then I paused in my reading and scrolled up slightly, expecting it to be an article from the website of the local paper in Ontario, but instead found that it was a big-name national news site.

I let out a low groan.

The articles all mentioned throat wounds. And everyone was apparently real confused about the lack of blood at the kill sites—where could it have all gone?

Fucking mundanes.

The bad news was threefold.

The first was a near certainty; there would be lots of sudden attention on small, sleepy Ontario. Which meant that the locals would be jumpy about new folks since reporters, bloggers, and looky-loos would all be flooding into their town in droves. No one was going to be as willing to talk to us as they might have been otherwise. Plus, getting a motel room would probably be harder. We might even need to stay in Idaho. Maybe in Nampa, which was about a half hour drive from Ontario.

The second bit of bad news was a little less plausible. If the vamps were even a little bit smart, they would probably skedaddle now that they had made national news and move on to some other town, which meant that we might show up to find zip, zilch, nada. But that would only be if they were actively paying attention to the news and if they had connected the dots that national media attention on their activities meant that tons of hunters would come for them. And given the fact that they weren’t even trying to hide their kills, or to disguise their handiwork as animal attacks, they were probably blood-drunk and high on their own immortality or whatever. Or maybe they were new and inexperienced and didn’t know any better. Most of the vamps we ran across were like that—not to mention so far gone into their bloodlust that they were practically feral. The folks who had been undead for any length of time had figured out that there are eyes literally everywhere, which was why hunters rarely ended up bagging the older vamps. And, according to Bryan and Tobias, the vast majority of vampires out there didn’t kill their victims. They blended in and tried to still maintain relatively normal lives.

The third bit of bad news was that we might encounter other hunters who were already in town. The etiquette was that whoever shows up first gets to slay the monsters. If the monsters eat the other hunters, then it’s cool to step in and take over. But not before that. So, if Danny and I weren’t fast enough getting to Ontario, we might end up cooling our heels while we waited.

“You’re back,” Danny muttered from the bed on the other side of the room, awake now. He was only slightly slurring his words. But I wasn’t fooled. Danny had a crazy ability act way more sober than he really was, but lately that was usually a trap, and I wasn’t fucking falling for it again. And when I looked up at him from over the laptop screen, I saw that he was sitting up in bed, bleary-eyed, fully clothed, and giving me a decidedly un-straight drunken smile.

Two months ago, the night we’d come home from the bar after making a deal with Bryan and Tobias that we should all work together after randomly running into them while on the trail of a murderous fae creature, we’d both been drunk.

And we had gotten even more shitfaced together. He’d been sitting next to me on the bed when I’d passed the bottle of Jack Daniels back his way. He’d taken a long swig of it, wincing just a little at the burn, and then put it on the bedside table beside him, very deliberately.

After that, he had given me the strangest look—hungry and filled with drunken desperation—and he had kissed me.

And I had kissed him back, something finally tearing free in my chest, so drunk that I forgot all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea. It was only when he had reached down to start undoing my belt that I had finally stopped him.

He either didn’t remember the encounter the next morning or he wanted me to think he didn’t remember it. Either way, we hadn’t talked about it. We both pretended that it hadn’t happened. But it was seared into my brain. And maybe into his, too.

Now, I felt a flicker of sudden desire burn its way through me. Would it really be so bad to go and take him up on whatever offer he might put on the table? Would it be so bad to let him pull me close and kiss me again? To hold him close to me?

My arms ached for that. I crossed them over my chest instead.

“Yup. I’m back.” I turned my attention back to the laptop so I could avoid the temptation. Still not looking at him, I added, “I had way too much fun. Probably just gonna steal a pillow from the bed and crash out on the floor before too long.”

But then I couldn’t stop myself from looking back up, feeling an immediate—and insane—flash of guilt. I felt something in my insides twist up into knots as I watched Danny’s drunken smile crumble to nothing like a hydra with no more heads. True story, actually. We’d killed one in Cleveland together, about two years back. Nasty buggers.

“It’s a king-sized bed,” Danny informed me, his words slurring around ‘king-sized’ just a little, which probably meant he’d been trying to emphasize just how much space there would be for us. Like he wasn’t going to fucking pounce on me the second I climbed into bed with him. Naturally, I didn’t believe that for a single goddamn second. A little more seriously, he added, “You’re driving tomorrow. You don’t need to take the floor. It’ll screw up your back. You should at least let me take the floor.”

He did that all the time now and it was confusing as hell. He was constantly tuned into what was going on with me, with a goddamn eagle eye. No one had ever given two shits about my needs before, except for Joshua. If only we still knew how to fucking talk to each other. If only every single conversation didn’t feel like a landmine, waiting to blow us both to bits if we stepped down wrong.

“The floor is fine for me,” I replied. “You take the bed.”

I heaved up from the chair with a sigh. Then I popped open my backpack and fished out my aspirin and bottle of multivitamins. I popped the tops on both and shook two of each into my hand. Then I went and grabbed him a flimsy plastic cup of water from the bathroom tap.

Danny watched me without comment, still propped up on one elbow, though he did sway slightly, like he was trying to keep the room from spinning all around him.

“Water. Aspirin. Multivitamins. Take all three,” I told him shortly, putting the glass of water on the nightstand and holding the pills out to him. “You’ll thank me in the morning, I promise.”

When he grabbed for the tequila instead, I wrestled it from his hands and held it out of reach. “You’ve had enough. I promise. You’ll be hating life in the morning if you drink any more than this.”

Danny caught me by the wrist instead. And I couldn’t help myself. I met his eyes. They were glassy from the booze, but they were still filled with… something. It looked dangerously close to desperation.

“You’re drunk,” I informed him, something inside my chest twisting itself into painful shapes. “Get some sleep, buddy. Seriously.”

“I see through you,” Danny told me, releasing my wrist. “You want more. I know you do.”

“More what?” I asked, though I knew I shouldn’t have.

“More than… this.”

I grimaced at that. It was way too close to the truth.

“Take the pills,” I told him flatly. “And drink the water.”

Danny surprised me by obeying without further objection. He grabbed the pills from my outstretched hand—it took him three separate tries, but he managed it—and then he gulped down the glass of water. Surprisingly, he didn’t spill it like I thought he was going to.

Though, he gave the bottle of tequila still clutched in my hand a forlorn look afterward.

Then he staggered up from the bed, his legs all wobbly and brushing way too close to me for comfort. He tried to pull the covers back, and his hands missed the mark entirely.

He straightened up and grimaced, glaring at the bed. “Fuck. So, it turns out that I might be a little drunk.”

“Ya think?” I muttered. But I couldn’t stop myself from pulling the comforter back for him. And I couldn’t help but notice he was still fully clothed. Though his shoes were off, thankfully. “Hey, do you want to get undressed?”

“Give me back the tequila and maybe I will.”

“We don’t need you dancing on the tables,” I told him, ignoring what he had undoubtedly meant by that. “No more giggle juice for you.”

“Clothed it is, then,” he slurred out, shaking his head at me. Then he climbed into the bed. And fell flat on his face into the mattress, all sprawled out in a truly spectacular display of adorable drunken boyish splendor.

Literally two seconds later, he began snoring.

Though nothing was funny about the situation at all—another near miss for the books, for both of us—I still found it impossible not to smile. I tugged the pillow more firmly under his head, so he wouldn’t have a massive kink in his neck in the morning, then I pulled the covers over him.

After, I crossed the room again. I removed my jacket and slung it over the chair, then my gun from its holster, setting it down on the table next to the laptop. I unclipped the leather harness that had held my weapon, and then slung it over the back of the ugly motel chair, on top of my jacket.

I sank down into the chair in front of the laptop, next to the window. The curtains were drawn, so just a crack of garish orange light filtered in from the streetlights in the parking lot between the panels of rough fabric. I knew I should sleep. And I knew that if I really couldn’t sleep, then I should still at least be reading through the numerous articles I would undoubtedly find about the victims the vamps were leaving behind, to try to identify some sort of pattern that might help us out tomorrow. Or, barring any of that, maybe I should try to get wasted myself—now that Danny was safely passed out.

But I couldn’t make myself do any of it. Instead, I sat there listening to Danny’s quiet snores, surrounded by darkness. The fact that he was here, only a few feet away, the one person in the whole world who would kill for me—and who I could and would kill for too—was a lifeline.

But I couldn’t help but admit to myself that I did, as a matter of fact, want more.