Twilight Hunter

She gave him a rueful grin. “I know.”

Jace poured the liquid over her flesh. The chemical sizzled and popped as soon as it hit the wounds. She hissed in pain, but her gaze didn’t falter. She took it like a pro.

“You do this often?” he asked.

A little smile curved her lips. “More than you’d think.”

“No offense, Princess, but you don’t really seem like the fighting type.” He paused as he patted the toilet paper across her skin, cleaning off the blood and excess peroxide. “You’ve got the attitude, but you just don’t look the part. I’ll have to see how you handle yourself in a fight.”

She cocked her head to the side and eyed him up and down. “You’re not going to pull the whole ‘I’m a big bad wolf’ and ‘I don’t need any help hunting this monster’ crap?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need any help. But considering you want revenge and someone needs to be by your side protecting you, I think taking you with me is the best solution.”

Her eyes lit up, a beautiful burn behind them like when they’d...made love? Was that what they’d done? His stomach dropped down into his feet, and he looked away. Son of a bitch. “Although, who am I to make your choices for you?”

“Un amante.” Her voice barely registered above a whisper.

Jace froze. He didn’t speak Italian, but he sure as hell knew what that meant. A lover. His mouth went dry, and his stomach churned as if someone had grabbed his insides and twisted his intestines into knots. He released her hand.

Rushing to the other side of the room, he searched through his trench-coat pockets for his cigarettes. “You mind if I light up in here?” He pulled one out and stuck it in his mouth before she could answer.

“I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Flicking the lighter, he puffed out his sweet smoke. Shit. Shit. Shit. He glanced in her direction and his stomach flipped again. Just a quick bang, that’s all it was.

He burned halfway through the cigarette, sucking the gray fog into his lungs. The smoke gave him just enough calm to keep his cool. A bucket of ice dumped over his head would have been better.

He took another drag. “Pack your bags. We need to get out of here.”

Her head snapped toward him, her eyes wide-open and attentive. “We’re going hunting now? Don’t you think that’s a little stu—”

“Don’t get your panties in a knot. We need to get our shit together first. But we can’t talk here. We need to be prepared before we go at him, and because he’s a sexual sadist and gets off on all this, it’s likely he’ll come back here to...” He shrugged.

She walked over to her wooden wardrobe and sifted through the clothes. “To what?”

Jace sighed. “Flog the bishop.”

Her long hair whipped through the air as she spun to face him, gaping like a waterless fish. “You can’t be serious?”

“Who knows what this bastard is capable of? You’ve heard of crimes of passion? There isn’t much that’s more passionate than sex, and everything this guy does is so he can yank his own chain. Much as I’d like to camp out here and stake him out, we’d be just as likely to trap ourselves. We do this, we do it right.”

She bent down to grab something from the bottom drawer, treating Jace to a prime-time view of her tight, round ass squeezed into a pair of low-cut jeans. His cock jerked, bulging against his pants.

Damn.

He ripped his eyes away and shook his head. He was a sick pervert for ogling her in the middle of a crime scene after she’d been traumatized by a serial killer. He scanned the room. The sound of Damon’s voice mocking him earlier that morning pounded in his head.

“That’s disgusting,” she said, interrupting his self-loathing.

He shifted and rearranged himself. The last thing he needed was for Princess to think he was some creep who got his jollies off scared women. “You bet. Now grab your things and let’s get outta here.”

When she finished stuffing everything into a purple backpack, she threw the bag over her shoulder.

He nodded to the door. “Let’s go.”

She headed out, but paused near the entryway, stopping by a photo the sicko had knocked askew on the wall during his rampage. She took it down, and he looked at it over her shoulder. The big grin she wore in the photograph highlighted the beauty of her features—he’d never seen her smile like that. The man next to her wore a puffy white shirt, like the ones on the covers of the old romance novels his mom used to read. But whoever the pansy was, he was holding Jace’s girl in his arms.

He indicated the photo. “Who’s he?”

She stared at the image, and a small smile crept onto her face. “That’s Alejandro.”

“He your cousin or something?”

A blush blossomed across her cheeks. “No, he’s a member of my pack...and my partner.”

Jace’s jaw clenched, and he ground his teeth as he contemplated punching the wall.

* * *

A RUSH OF heat prickled underneath her skin. Frankie ran her thumb over the edge of the snapshot. A member of her pack, a strong Alpha male, her salsa partner and a very good friend, Alejandro Miguel Diaz was everything she should have wanted in a man. She’d long ago accepted Alejandro as her fate and convinced herself she would eventually come to love him, to want him. But her decision to hunt the killer, followed by Jace kidnapping her, had saved her from the long-arranged mating, and she’d never felt freer.

Without another word, Jace brushed past her and stormed into the hallway. She straightened the photo and trailed after him. His face looked strained, his mouth drawn into a thin line. She could tell he wanted a fight—and soon.

Her brow furrowed as she watched him stomp down the stairs. What was his problem? She hurried after him, following him to the Hummer while ignoring the searing pain in her hands as she gripped her bag strap.

The drive back to Jace’s apartment was long, tense and awkward as hell. Jace stared at the road with extreme tunnel vision, his fingers white on the steering wheel. His tension was suffocating in the small, enclosed space. Frankie didn’t know what caused his sudden shift in mood, but from the angered look on his face, she wasn’t about to ask. Yes, Alejandro was her dance partner. So what? She’d told Jace that she loved Alejandro only as a friend. Had their mating really made him this ridiculously possessive?

When they finally pulled up in front of the apartment complex, she leaped from the car, eager to escape the toxic atmosphere. Jace followed more slowly, stalking from the vehicle to the door. Short of steam coming out his nose, everything about him reminded her of an angry cartoon bull, ready to charge. He punched in the combination and headed up the stairs. She jogged after him, admiring how swiftly he moved despite his massive frame. She remembered the sculpted muscles hidden under his trench coat shifting beneath her hands as she lay underneath him.

She swallowed the huge lump in her throat. She needed to stop this. Even though Jace was gorgeous, masculine eye candy, even though his ferocity and passion matched her own, and even though he rocked her world in bed, he hunted his own kind.

She did the same thing, in a way, but she only hunted rogue wolves, killing them to preserve the safety of her pack. But Jace... She couldn’t help wondering whether he would kill her if he knew her true identity.

They reached the door with the crooked number six, and Jace stopped midstride. The door was cracked, but no light came from inside. He unclipped his gun and prepped his aim. Carefully, he nudged the door open farther and glanced inside. He slipped in, and she followed close at his heels. A loud creak echoed from the bedroom, someone stepping on a floorboard. As Jace crept forward, she inched toward the makeshift kitchen. There was no way in hell she was fighting anyone unarmed, not while she was in human form. Any old knife was better than nothing.

The sound of a large boot hitting the hardwood sent a chill down her spine as the invader stepped out of the bedroom. She hit the light switch, unsure of whether Jace’s night vision was as keen as hers.

A man as large and intimidating as Jace stood in the bedroom’s door frame. He had a wild look in his eye and a gun at his side, and Frankie’s heart paused at the sight of him.

“Who is she?” The trespasser’s gruff, rumbling voice shook her to her core as he