The Hunter by Theresa Meyers

never really liked hellhounds. They stink.” Her elegant nose scrunched up.
    “But it was your own kind.” His tone echoed his suspicion.
    “Darkin—yes, but not like me.” She folded her hands together, as if unsure of what to do with them. “I don’t want to be a Darkin any longer. I’ve never wanted to be one, but I had no choice.”
    His brow bent. This was the first he’d ever heard of a supernatural who didn’t want to be one. Pa had never mentioned it was even possible. Perhaps it was a trick. “What do you mean? Don’t most demons become demons by choice?”
    “More like by bargains badly made. We all think there’s a way out, until you find out there isn’t.”
    “So what did you bargain for?”
    “I saved my little sister from becoming a whore to support us.”
    Colt launched into a coughing fit and pounded his chest with his fist. Hell’s bells. He certainly hadn’t seen that coming. “Can’t say as I’ve ever heard a lady be so blunt before.”
    She gave a shrug of her dainty shoulders, but her eyes still held shadows of the past. “I haven’t had the luxury of being a miss with delicate sensibilities. Not when I was mortal, and certainly not now.”
    If she weren’t a succubus she would’ve been damned near the perfect woman. Soft sensuality and feminine curves over a core of iron-hard determination and stamina—a woman who wouldn’t wilt every time a supernatural came near—a woman who could cope with the Hunter life.
    His mother had been such a woman. But her steadfast loyalty and unyielding resolve hadn’t stopped the demon’s bullet that killed her. He’d been so young all he’d remembered were her soft kisses brushed against his forehead at night and her warm hugs and the cinnamon-sugar cookies she’d bake for him, always letting him have one before his brothers. Pa said there wasn’t another woman like her on Earth, and he believed it. But then Miss Arliss wasn’t a woman, she was something more. Colt had to admire her grit even though he was determined not to let her powers sway his better judgment any further.
    “Let me look at that wound of yours.” Only now did Colt realize that his shoulder burned. He glanced down. The singed edges of his shirt were charred around the long, dark slice in his skin that was raw and blistered and bleeding sluggishly. He glanced up at her. “It’s fine.”
    She arched one brow. “I didn’t think Hunters were supposed to lie.”
    “Who says I’m lying?”
    The look she gave him said he ought to ’fess up. It did burn worse than he wanted to admit. “If it makes you feel better, you can look at it.”
    She stepped closer to him, that unique female scent of her drifting up and crowding out the unpleasant stench of burnt hellhound. Her long, tapered fingers pulled back the edges of his tattered, burned shirt with infinite tenderness. The tip of her pink tongue touched the center of her upper lip and Colt had the ridiculous notion that kissing her would make the pain go away completely.
    “I may have something to soothe that, but I’m afraid it’s going to leave a mark.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I think it is.”
    She opened her palm, and a small blue glass jar appeared in it.
    “What’s that?”
    “Healing salve. It’ll take away the burning, but I’m afraid this is going to take a while to heal.”
    “Sometimes injuries from supernaturals never heal.” Colt was thinking specifically of Winn and how the demon had crushed the will to hunt right out of him. It had left Winn with a scar on his thigh, but had messed him up worse on the inside. Colt had a sickening feeling that if he let himself get too attached to Lilly, it might happen to him too.
    “So how’d you become a Hunter?” She opened the metal latch on the glass jar and dipped her fingers into the glistening white salve.
    The question seemed so normal that he’d almost answered without thinking. He hesitated a moment. He had no business talking with her like this,