Hunter's Need by Shiloh Walker

shirt, freeing one then another, then another until the simple white cloth parted, revealing a slim strip of pale flesh.
    “I’m not going to sleep with a man who can’t stand me,” she said.
    “We’ve already covered this, baby. If I couldn’t stand you, I wouldn’t get hard just hearing your voice.” Leaving the shirt hanging on her, unbuttoned down the front, he rested his hands on her shoulders and listened to her breath catch in her throat. “I get hard when I hear your voice, when I think about you, when I see you, when I walk through a room and smell you. Hell, even watching you trying not to laugh about me and planes is enough to make me hard.”
    He slid his hands around her and reached up, cupping her small, silk-covered breasts in his hands. “And I don’t plan on doing much sleeping just yet.” No, the only thing he planned on doing in the next couple of hours was fucking her. He had to.
    Whatever Ana sensed wrong around here, it wasn’t so choking, so pressing that it had his skin crawling. He couldn’t really feel much of anything, beyond her.
    So that meant it could wait.
    She couldn’t.
    Just then, he wasn’t aware of anything but his need to have her. Finally have her, finally give in to the urge he’d been fighting for too damn long. This obsession he had with her, it wasn’t going to get better until he dealt with it and dealing with it meant having her. Taking what she’d promised him years earlier.
    “You didn’t come here for this,” she whispered.
    Actually, Duke suspected he had. No, not entirely. He had a job to do, and he’d do it. But if that was all that mattered, he wouldn’t have felt so drawn to make his way to her house and sit outside while he waited for her to arrive. He could have left, at any time, and just prowled around until something in his gut woke and called him to action.
    But he’d come here. To her.
    And for this.
    “I did come for this,” he said gruffly, plumping her breasts together and staring down, fascinated by the sight of his hands on her body.
    Duke’s skin was gold, naturally so. By contrast, Ana’s breasts looked snowy white against his hands, creamy and warm, the scent of lavender rising stronger on the air. “I came for this and if I had half a brain, I would have done this years ago. You’re inside my skin, Ana, and that’s not going to change until I have what it is you promised me five years ago. What you promised us .”
    A sigh shuddered out of her. “Duke, this isn’t a good idea.”
    “Yes. It is.” He let go of her, rested his hands on the counter beside her. He wanted her, and he had every intention of having her—but he wouldn’t force it on her. Gripping the counter, he dipped his head and whispered, “You wanted me five years ago, didn’t you?”
    He had to know, had to hear the answer from her, even though his body already knew.
    Her answer, when it came, was soft and hesitant. “Yes.”
    Duke flexed his hands and just barely managed to swallow a pleased growl. “You wanted me, the same as I wanted you. You want me now . . . the same as I want you now. It’s not going away, Ana, and you know it. We might as well deal with it. But if you can’t handle that, then you tell me now. Tell me, and I’ll give you some room, give you a little more time.”
    Handle it?
    Hell, no, she couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle him . She’d never been able to handle him, not even when she’d spied him across the crowded bar five years earlier and known what she had to do.
    She’d chosen him—on purpose, because she’d recognized what he was. If one of his kind went missing, it would be noticed. Somebody would come looking for him, and maybe, just maybe, it would be somebody who could handle Cat.
    It had been a calculated, cold decision—one she’d made for a couple of reasons. She couldn’t keep doing what Cat wanted of her and stay sane. She couldn’t become the monster that Cat was. And she had to get her