Page 26 of Hunt for You

When I saw the post I gotbutterflies.She’d surprised me.

No one ever surprised me.

It shook me so bad, I shut the computer down and didn’t let myself log back in. An hour later, I was expecting a visitor, and I wasn’t properly prepared because I’d been distracted all day. Even after she arrived, I was never quite centered.

I wasobsessingabout Bridget.

I’d never accepted a mark that consumed me so completely before and it was dangerous.

Driving, working, fuckingsleeping,I couldn’t stop thinking about her and it wasn’t fair to anyone, least of all the woman I was currently in session with.

And she noticed. We’d met before, so she could tell I was distracted.

It was rarely a discipline for me, but this evening I had had toworkto turn my emotions off, to concentrate on the needs of my companion. But then, just when I was settling in, forcing myself to focus, just when my companion went deep, my phone buzzed which meant Bridget had started moving again and I hadto swallow a curse. The woman I was with was halfway through a catharsis and was going to need significant aftercare.

Shit.Shit.

I did my best, but for the rest of the hour we remained together, more than half of my brain was screaming at me that Bridget was out there and she’d prepared and it wastime,even though in over a dozen preys, I’d never started a hunt the same day a mark got equipped.

Not once.

When I was finally alone again, I took one look at the map to see where she’d ended up and growled a curse. Then I tore through the house to get changed and…fuck!

First she visits a fuckingpriest,now she’s hanging out—alone—in one of the seediest bars in the city. One that was frequented by men who would kill her—or worse—as soon as look at her?

Or… what if she wasn’t alone?

I couldn’t decide which would be worse.

Time to find out.

Time to hunt.

I grabbed my keys and my bag and got out there like the building was on fire.

But it wasn’t the building at all. It wasmeburning up.

Shit.

~ BRIDGET ~

Kash was standing in the half-dark behind the sticky bar, rinsing out glasses. He looked up to see me approaching andstarted shaking his head before I even got close enough to hear him over the music.

“Nope. Not tonight, Bridget. Get out.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not even drinking. Give me a ginger beer. See?”

He wasn’t amused. He shook his head and turned around to lean down to one of the glass-fronted fridges lining the floor behind him.

For a second I saw him like a stranger would—a tall, wiry-strong, pretty handsome guy, with a beard that needed trimming because it was hiding his neck tattoos, a dark presence, and a wicked grin.

Kash and I dated three years ago and stayed friends after.

Well, I stayed friends with him. He tolerated my presence because, in his words, I wasa good fuck.

We hadn’t done that for over a year, though. I’d sworn off sex after the guy who said he liked to role-play as a serial killer but who attempted to examine my large intestine, up-close and personal.

Heart conditions and massive blood loss are not easy bedmates.

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