Page 9 of Hunting His Vampire Mate

“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 conversationdidn’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 himthree 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 undoubtedlymeantby 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.

CHAPTER THREE || DANNY

“Who did you two say you were with?” The county sheriff, Liz Dennison, leaned forward in her seat and peered at us through a narrowed gaze. She was a middle-aged woman with dark skin and even darker eyes, and the suspicion on her face was impossible to mistake as we sat across from her the following afternoon. Her uniform was rumpled, there were spots of grease in places and a few stains that hadn’t quite washed out all the way. Like us, most of her meals were probably eaten hastily out of a fast-food bag.

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