The Renegade Hunter (22 page)

"Jo, it's all right. It's perfectly normal. I'm fine," Nicholas repeated.

"Normal?" she echoed with disbelief. "It's not normal to faint, Nicholas.

It's-"

"It is for life mates when they make love," he said patiently, and Jo stilled.

She stared at him blankly for a minute, then

glanced to the table where she'd woken up and realized that she'd rather blacked out after...

"Oh," she said weakly, but glanced back to him with uncertainty. "Why?"

Nicholas hesitated, and then said, "I'll explain while we eat."

Jo opened her mouth to insist he explain now, but the rumbling of her stomach changed her mind. Nodding, she moved to the microwave and checked the pizza inside. Enough time had passed that the slices she'd heated were room temperature again. Clucking her tongue, she put them on for another minute and then picked up the wineglasses and glanced to the table. Just looking at the damned thing brought back memories of what they'd done there, and she felt her body responding to those memories.

"Maybe we'll eat in the living room," she muttered.

"This time," Nicholas murmured, eyes flashing silver as he took the wineglasses from her.

Jo flushed at the naughty glint in his eye, her body tingling with remembered pleasure, and when he bent to press a kiss to her lips, she opened for him at once and started to raise her arms to slide them around his neck.

"Food first," he growled, withdrawing quickly from her reach. "Food, and then talk."

Jo watched him walk out of the kitchen, a little sigh slipping from her lips.

At that moment she didn't care if she ever ate

again. She just wanted to feel Nicholas's body against and in hers again. She wanted...

The microwave beeped, announcing that it was done, and Jo gave her head a shake and turned to it thinking that Nicholas was like a drug. She couldn't seem to get enough of him. Sighing, she retrieved the pizza slices from the microwave, divided them between the two plates, and carried them out to the living room.

Nicholas had set the wineglasses on the coffee table and settled on the couch before it. Jo dropped to sit beside him, and then handed him one of the plates and settled in to eat. While she would have been happy to bypass eating moments ago in the kitchen, now that the smell of pizza was wafting under her nose, she was more eager to feed herself... first. It had been quite a while since she'd had that breakfast with Bricker and Anders, and she was really quite hungry.

Jo might have been hungry, but Nicholas was absolutely ravenous. He seemed to almost inhale the slice of pizza and had

finished it before she had finished even half of hers. With a little direction, he managed to warm up the next two pieces and brought them out to the living room just as she finished her first piece.

Jo had three slices before stopping. Nicholas

was on his sixth piece when she set her plate down and turned to him expectantly.

"So? Explain how fainting is normal," she prompted as soon as he chewed and swallowed his last bite.

Nicholas peered at his now-empty plate, glanced toward the kitchen as if considering fetching another, but then set the plate down and explained, "The combined pleasure is too much for the mind to take at first and in response, the brain sort of overloads and winks out as the orgasm overwhelms it. It's perfectly normal for the first year or so that life mates are together."

"What's this combined pleasure business?" she asked at once.

"I feel your pleasure and you feel mine," he said simply.

"So when you were..." Jo paused and bit her lip, trying to think of a way to describe what he'd been doing without having to use a crude term that would demean the beauty of it.

"Every time I kiss, caress, or touch you, I experience your pleasure as if it was my own," Nicholas said solemnly, solving the problem for her. "I experienced your pleasure, and it mingled with mine and then bounced back to you, mingling with yours again and bouncing back even stronger, and so on until neither of us could take it anymore."

That explained the overwhelming pleasure she'd experienced, Jo supposed, and then asked, "So this combined pleasure business only happens between life mates?"

Nicholas nodded solemnly, and then asked, "Why are you smiling?"

"Because you're over five hundred years old and have probably bedded a load of women and I'm glad as gonads that you didn't experience this with them."

"Glad as gonads?" Nicholas asked, wincing at the term. Shaking his head, he smiled reluctantly, but then admitted quietly, "I have experienced it once before, Jo."

"Your wife," Jo remembered.

He nodded solemnly.

Jo considered his almost guilty expression and then shrugged mildly. "I guess I can deal with that. I'm still the only one

alive you can enjoy it with, so..." She climbed onto his lap and slid her arms around his neck, commenting, "I imagine that makes infidelity less likely."

"We are a monogamous people for a reason," Nicholas murmured, clasping his own arms around her. "Once you find a life mate, no other woman can compare. It's like trying to kill pain with aspirin after years of morphine."

"That seems an apt description," Jo assured him quietly. "Because I find you're like a drug I can't get enough of. I want you again already."

She raised her eyes to his to find that the blue was fading, replaced with silver again.

"So," Jo whispered, moving her face forward so that their lips were almost touching. "If I were to kiss and caress and touch you, I'd get to experience your pleasure too, right?"

Nicholas gave a very slight nod.

"That's a pretty cool deal," she murmured, reaching down to clasp him through the cloth of his jeans. He was hard and grew harder at her touch, and she shuddered at the excitement it sent shooting through her.

Damn, Jo thought faintly, he was right. She had been so consumed by the rush of passions that had overwhelmed her earlier as he'd ministered to her, Jo hadn't understood what was happening, but now... She squeezed him gently and closed her eyes as another rush of pleasure slid through her. In the next moment, she'd slid off his lap and between his legs to rest on the floor as she reached for the button of his jeans.

"Jo, wait, we have to talk," Nicholas said, trying to stop her.

"Later," she said quietly. "It's my turn now."

Nicholas met her gaze briefly, a conflict taking place on his face, and then he stood up, pulling on her hand to urge her up with him.

"What-?" Jo began uncertainly.

"The bedroom," Nicholas growled, tugging her around the table and toward the hall. "I fancy waking up in a bed this time rather than sprawled on the couch or the living room carpet."

Jo grinned and teased, "Where's your sense of adventure?"

Nicholas paused abruptly in the hall and whirled to take her in his arms. His mouth was demanding, his hands stripping

away her robe before her chest even came to rest against his, and then he pinned her to the wall, grinding himself against her and thrusting his tongue into her mouth as he kicked off his shoes.

Moaning at the pleasure coursing through her, Jo clasped his bottom. She squeezed briefly, and then managed to work her hands between their bodies to undo the button and zipper of his jeans.

They both groaned with pleasure when she

slid her hand inside and found him, and then Nicholas broke their kiss to step back and remove his clothes. His T-shirt was dragged up and off in one step, and then his jeans followed and he was back, clasping her by the upper thighs and pulling her legs around his hips so that his erection rubbed against, but didn't enter her.

Jo grabbed for his shoulders, kissing him frantically as he pressed her back against the wall and drove them both wild, and then she tore her mouth away with a cry as he suddenly thrust into her.

Nicholas paused then. Breathing heavily, he briefly rested his forehead against her neck, and then raised his head enough to lick her throat, kiss it, and then nibble a trail up to her ear.

Jo moaned as he withdrew and slid into her again, pressing her back into the wall.

"Is this enough adventure for you?" he growled, and then chuckled breathlessly when she nodded. "Good," Nicholas murmured, then caught her lips in a gentle kiss before thrusting almost violently into her again. Breaking their kiss again then, he added, "The real adventure is seeing whether we can make it to a soft surface before passing out."

Jo blinked her eyes open and peered at him. "How-?"

Her question died on a gasp as he suddenly stepped back from the wall, taking her with him, and turned toward the end of the hall. Jo's legs tightened instinctively around him, but she needn't have bothered, his hands were clasping her bottom, holding her in place as he started up the hall.

"Let's see how many steps it takes to blow our minds," Nicholas said through gritted teeth as he walked, their bodies rubbing together with each step.

"Oh God," Jo breathed, burying her face in his neck and closing her eyes as wave after wave of mounting pleasure rushed

through her. She suspected they wouldn't make it to the bed and just hoped the padding under Sam's carpet was a soft one.

"That's a serious expression."

Nicholas glanced down at Jo. She lay half on his chest, her face questioning and raised to his. They were in the bed, finally. On the first attempt they'd made it only halfway up the hall before their passion had overwhelmed them both.

He'd done his best to protect Jo as he'd lost consciousness, and supposed it had worked. She'd seemed fine when he woke up. Not that he'd gotten the chance to ask her. She'd awakened before him and immediately decided to finish what she'd tried to start in the living room. Nicholas had woken to find himself fully erect, her mouth working over him, and both of them halfway to exploding all over again.

Jo had woken up before him the next time as well, but they'd made it to the bedroom door that time. It had taken two more tries to get to the bed. The last time, they'd woken up at almost the same time and had made it to the bed before their mutual need had overwhelmed them. This time, Nicholas was the first to wake, which was a shame because it had given him a chance to think.

"What's the matter?" she asked, worry clouding her face.

Nicholas hesitated, but then said, "Nothing. I was just thinking."

Jo was silent for a minute, and then asked, "Nicholas?"

"Hmm?"

"Tell me about your wife," she said quietly.

Nicholas stilled briefly, his mind suddenly blank. He had no idea what he should say.

"You said you were married and she was a life mate too?" Jo prompted.

Nicholas let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and nodded.

"Yes."

"How long ago was it that you and she-?"

"We met, married, and she died all in 1959. It was the best and worst year of my life... until now," Nicholas added solemnly, and knew it was absolutely true. He had been fortunate enough to find another life mate, a very rare occurrence, and he was going to have to give her up. Definitely best and worst.

"Did you not turn her?" Jo asked, frowning.

Nicholas shook his head. "She was born immortal."

"But..." Confusion reigned on her face for a moment and then she shook her head. "But then how did she die? If she was immortal, she should have-"

"Immortal isn't truly the proper word for us,"

Nicholas said on a sigh. "We can die, it's just harder to kill us than a mortal.

Illness won't do it, and being shot will only

incapacitate us until the bullets are forced out, but decapitation or having our heart removed can kill us."

"And Annie had one of those things happen to her?" Jo asked with a frown.

"Annie was decapitated in a car accident," Nicholas said quietly. "She and the child she carried, our child, died."

"Oh," Jo murmured. "I'm sorry."

Nicholas remained silent, but bent and kissed the top of her head.

"Was it her you were thinking of when I woke up?" she asked quietly.

"No," he assured her, and then sighed and admitted, "I was just wondering how they found us at the hotel."

Jo closed her eyes briefly and sighed. She then shifted off him and moved to pull the sheets and blankets over them both before sitting up to lean against the pillows at the top of the bed. "That's my fault. Apparently they were able to track my bank activities and found out I'd made a withdrawal from the hotel store's ATM."

"You withdrew money from-" Nicholas began with horror, sitting up beside her, but she interrupted.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea they could track things like that," she said apologetically. "I mean, jeez, who would have thought that Mortimer and those guys could do something like that?"

He would have, Nicholas thought, but didn't say as much. She hadn't known and he hadn't told her so he could hardly blame her for the mistake. The good news was it meant they hadn't put some sort of tracker on her or anything and weren't going to burst in on them here.

"I am sorry, Nicholas. I won't use my debit card again. I just never thought-I mean, it never occurred to me they would or even could do something like that. Checking bank activity is like a cop trick or something."

Nicholas was silent for a minute, but then decided it was time they got the big talk out of the way. "Jo... Mortimer and

those guys are cops. They're enforcers, rogue hunters, the equivalent of vampire cops. They have access to any technology the cops do, any technology out there if they want it. They hunt rogue immortals."

Jo was silent for a minute and then said, "Bricker said you were rogue."

"Yes," he said solemnly.

She remained still for a moment, not looking at him as she digested that and then asked carefully, "What is a rogue immortal, exactly?"

Jo hadn't moved, but Nicholas could feel her withdrawing from him, putting some emotional distance between them. He could feel the emotional tearing as she began to draw a protective wall around herself, and his heart ached. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he waited for the pain of it to pass and then said,