Hearts of the Hunted (8 page)

The spark of desire was
slow to catch in my traumatized body, but when it did, it blazed
with something pure and bright. "You're amazing," I murmured. I
slid my hands up into her hair and sighed as she tipped her head
back, arching into the sensation. The shift exposed the white
column of her throat, so I placed kisses up and down the entire
expanse of flesh from her jaw to her collarbone and up again.
Shivers ran through her, feeding that place deep inside of
me.

Her clothes began to feel
like a wall between us, and I sat up and stripped her slowly,
watching her face for signs of fear or hesitation, but she only
showed pleasure and desire. When the last bit of clothing was gone,
I pulled her back down with me, and she kissed me again, her tongue
darting into my mouth in a teasing dance of desire.

"Will you taste me?" I
asked when we paused for air. She smiled, not hesitating for a
second, and moved downward. It eased something I hadn't realized
had been clenched inside me—some fear that she would balk despite
her words to the contrary—and when her tongue moved over my clit, I
felt her burn away the residual horror of his hands on
me.

She licked gently at my
clit for a moment, and then shifted her attention downward, tasting
my arousal. I opened up for her, and she moved to slide her fingers
inside me, curling them slightly to make me moan for more. She
laughed at that, and I moaned again as the vibrations moved through
her lips to tease me.

"You're beautiful," she
said, pausing just long enough to speak before returning her
diligent attention to my clit. She sucked it into her mouth and
fluttered her tongue over the hard peak, making me buck against her
and dig my fingers into the sheets. She pulled her lips away again.
"And I want to taste your orgasm," she said.

I made her work for it,
holding back and clinging to the edge even as she pushed me further
and brought me to new heights of pleasure. When she finally won our
little tug of war, I threw my head back and screamed. The pleasure
that knifed through me when I finally went over the edge was so
sharp and bright that my vision went white as it crashed over me
and broke me into little bits.

I was still whimpering
with the aftereffects of pleasure when Hannah came laughing back
into my arms and pressed her lips to mine. She tasted like me, and
I licked my cream off of her lips, dipping my tongue into her mouth
for more.

"When you're ready, I'm
going to make you come twice that hard," I said when I paused for
air.

Hannah shifted until she
lay on top of me, her warm wetness pressed hard against my thigh.
"In the meantime, we can still have plenty of fun," she said. She
turned to bite my neck as she ground against me, and I raised my
knee to bring my thigh into more solid contact. Her breath came
fast and high against my ear as she rode me, and I grabbed her
waist, digging my fingers in as I helped her toward
orgasm.

I groaned as her breaths
turned into small pants of arousal as she ground against me faster
and faster. Then, she let out one long, low moan and her body
trembled hard when she came. She kissed me then, and I happily
swallowed her mewling pleasure as her orgasm peaked and trailed
away.

I sighed and felt more at
home than I had in years. Hannah's arms had become a sort of home
for me, and buried my face in her hair, suddenly afraid that I
would never find home anywhere else again. She enjoyed me—desired
me—but when we found the rapist, what would happen?

I pushed the thoughts
away, afraid to confront them. "You can go back to work tomorrow,"
I said. "There's no point in you staying here waiting
anymore."

Of course, ignoring the
thoughts couldn't make them go away. She went back to work in the
morning, and I stayed in the apartment or went for long runs,
trying to pound unwelcome thoughts out of my head with the steady
drum of my feet on the pavement.

Will she want me when I'm
not useful anymore? Could she possibly feel as strongly for me as I
feel for her? What comes next?
That last
thought echoed through my mind every day like a mantra, following
me as I ran. Left, right, left right.
What. Next? What. Next?

I felt like I would go mad
trying to outrun it.

And each evening, she
would come home from the dentist's office where she worked, change
out of her scrubs, and sit across from me at her kitchen table,
chatting intimately about her day and driving me insane with the
questions I was too afraid to ask.

At night, we would curl up
under the covers of her bed, and I would hold her close to me,
breathing in her scent. Our lips would meet in the darkness, and we
would kiss drowsily until passion brought us into awareness, and
then her fingers would drift down my body, plunging into me and
bringing me to an aching, desperate orgasm.

She didn't ask me to touch
her, and I was careful not to push. I finally understood the line
I'd crossed by pressing the issue in the first place, and I stayed
well back from it now.

Chapter 9

Hannah was at work when I got the call on Friday afternoon.
The finder, Sharon, had gotten our package and was ready to help.
She thought she could find him, and she just needed to know when
and how she could help. I asked her to be ready that evening, and
took down her number on the little pad by the phone.

Then, I put on my running
shoes and fled. But you can never outrun yourself. Every fear that
had teased me over the last week came flooding forward as I ran,
pushing myself to the limits. My fears about Hannah were
heartbreaking, but I also faced the horror of confronting the man
who had hurt us both. Could I really risk putting myself in his
power again? Could I lead Hannah into his clutches? I vividly
remembered the chilling devastation of being his prisoner, and how
Hannah had frozen on that first night when we had hunted him. Would
I freeze? Would she?

I was exhausted and
dripping with sweat when I got back to the apartment, no closer to
a solution. But as I washed the sweat away from my body under a
cool shower, I realized that we had a weapon he would never
expect.

Hannah arrived shortly
after I got out of the shower, and my hair was still dripping as
she changed out of her scrubs, and I explained how we could catch
him and stop him once and for all. She kissed me and called me
brilliant, and I basked in the glow as I called Sharon back and
asked her where to find him.

"Let me get a map online,"
she said. "You have no idea how much I love being able to zoom in
and out of any map in the world. What city was it again?" She
focused in more and more, muttering as she went, "North part of the
city, near the freeway, past Evergreen Expressway..." Until she had
a street, then an intersection, then a guess at the address. "If I
were there I would come with you and be able to tell you what room
the bastard is hiding in, but from here..."

"You've been amazing," I
assured her. Adrenaline flooded through me. He was a few miles
away, not quite in the suburbs, but away from the rush of downtown,
about ten minutes by car. Apparently, he hadn't wanted to hunt in
his own backyard, though I doubted he thought the prey would ever
turn out to have the kind of claws that Hannah and I were prepared
to turn on him.

"I'll keep checking in and
see if he's moved. Let me know when you get to him," she
said.

I agreed and hung up, and
then the hunt was on.

Hannah called a cab, and I
played around on the computer. "The address is a rundown little
house on a rundown looking street," I said. I looked up the address
of the nearest police station from there.

The cab pulled up, and
Hannah dragged me out of the apartment. Her hands were hot and
sweaty, and I thought that mine must be as well. I stared out the
car window and tried to slow my racing mind, unable to concentrate
on any single thought until we passed a sports supply store. "Pull
over!" I called. Hannah waited with the cab while I ran in, and
when I showed her what I'd bought, she grinned and kissed
me.

Hannah had asked the
driver to drop us off at a corner near the rapist's address, and we
called Sharon as soon as the driver pulled away.

"He's still inside," she
promised us. "Good luck, girls."

And then, we were on our
own. I squeezed Hannah's hand, and then set off toward the house,
my heart pounding in my throat. My mouth was dry, and I longed to
turn to Hannah and clutch her to me, but she had hung back,
according to plan, and was well out of my reach.

I took a deep breath, my
pulse pounding in my ears, and then walked up to the front door and
knocked. So much blood rushed to my limbs to support the urge to
flee that I thought I was going to faint, but the sight of the
rapist as he swung the door open was enough to quell the
sensation.

His face registered shock,
then anger, and I heard a low buzz as he spoke. I shook my head and
stepped back, and his face went red with rage as he stepped out
after me, his voice rising. I hummed softly, tunelessly, and my own
voice drowned him out.

Then something in his face
went slack and his mouth fell shut. He turned to glance beyond me,
and Hannah stepped up to my side, her hands curling around my arm.
I sighed and went light-headed again, this time with relief as I
turned to her. Her lips were moving steadily, and her eyes were
clear and bright with power.

I smiled as I reached up
and pulled the swimmer's wax from my ears. "—would love for you to
just be calm and quiet," she was saying. "Can you tell me if anyone
else is in the house?"

"No one," he answered,
sounding calmer than I had ever heard him so far. I shuddered at
her voice and Hannah did the same, but she continued the patter in
her steady, cool tone.

"Thank you; I'm so glad
you're able to help me! We'd like to take you for a drive. Do you
have a car or something that we can drive?"

She kept up the flow,
steady and melodious as he led us to his beater. I was so
hypnotized myself that she had to ask me very politely to drive to
the police station before she returned her attention to him, and I
happily complied, wanting nothing more than to please
her.

Her voice had started to
go rough by the end of the short drive, but we had agreed that we
were in serious trouble if he broke her spell, so she went on
without pause. Even in the slightly hazed state she had put me in,
I burned with pride for her. Or maybe I was even more proud because
I was under her spell. Who could say?

We led him into the police
station, Hannah drawing him along behind her like a pied piper with
her evil mouse, and she sent me to the desk to tell the
receptionist that we wanted to report a crime. I smiled when I saw
that Jack was the one they sent out. "I think it would be lovely if
we all went to one of your interrogation rooms together," she said,
"and we can all talk this out."

Chapter 10

Jack was more than happy to lead us deeper into the station,
though Hannah may have had something to do with that. Hannah gently
asked the man to tell the police what he had been doing with his
Saturday nights, and Jack's eyes bugged as he took the
confession.

It turns out that our
'friend' had been attacking women for longer than we could have
known, but it wasn't until a few weeks before that he had
unknowingly raped a Transformed woman, and gained the ability to
take the fight out of anyone he chose. He hadn't even realized that
he'd been Transformed, preferring to think that some higher power
had blessed his actions.

Hannah was drooping with
exhaustion by the time the police finished taking his confession,
and then our own statements. We had just happened to recognize him
and followed him home, we said, and Hannah had bravely confronted
him, daring him to test his supposed 'divine blessing' by
confessing what he'd done. No one really believed her, of course,
but he had confessed his crimes before 'going mad' and raging in
his cell, and the DNA evidence was there in the mattress
pad.

Jack took us aside as we
were preparing to leave, and assured us that as soon as the DNA was
matched, they would have enough to put him away for a long time.
And based on his descriptions of his own activities and victims, he
would be charged for a handful of other unsolved rapes as well.
"He's going away, and he won't hurt anyone again" Jack
said.

Hannah sagged against me,
too exhausted to react, and I squeezed her shoulders. "Thank you,
Jack. You gave us what we needed to hunt him down."

"I'm sorry you had to," he
said, "but we'll do the rest."

With that assurance
ringing in our ears, we were free to go. I called a cab, and then
went into the café next to the police station and bought a hot tea,
pulling the bag out and adding a squeeze of honey before bringing
it to Hannah. She took a cautious sip, and then smiled, thanking me
with her eyes. I called Sharon and Riley while we waited, and Riley
promised to pass the news to anyone else who needed to
know.