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Chapter Four
I welcomed the dull monotony of my job when compared to the craziness I’d gone through the last few days. I sat in the office, making phone calls, tracking leads. Life insurance might have been the most boring occupation in the world, but that was exactly what had drawn me to it.
No one who sold insurance did anything important. They lived long, uneventful lives and died safely in their beds at an old age and with lots of money going to their beneficiaries.
That sounded like a good plan to me.
Life was far too eventful without tempting fate by having a job that welcomed trouble, too.
Despite my best attempts to keep my attention on the task, I couldn’t help but venture off. I recalled that void I’d found at the end of the tether, the mist Gran had pulled from me and her haunting final words before I’d decided the entire day was too strange and I needed to get back to the boring normality of work.
“You have a new client to see you,” my receptionist said, peeking into my office.
“I don’t have anything on my schedule.”
“He just came in.” She leaned in farther and dropped her voice. “Trust me. Youwantto take this one.”
Her conspiratorial tone told me everything I needed to know. He was good-looking, and she was forever hoping to get me laid. Good help was hard to find, and help that kept an eye out for my love life was even harder.
Still, being set up right now wassonot the time. I had vampires watching over me, a missing spirit and something from the void staring back at me. I didn’t see how dating could fit into that equation anywhere.
Still, a client was a client, and I could always use more of those. “Okay,” I said before running my hands over my dark hair to straighten it. It was doing what it did—which was being wavier than I’d like it to but not wavy enough to look purposeful.
When the door opened again and the client walked in, I tried not to stare—I really did. Who could blame me, though?
This man had grunge-hot down to a science. He had long hair that went past his shoulders—medium brown with red undertones. Scruffy,haven’t shaved today and might not tomorrowstubble rested over his chin and cheeks, and he had a T-shirt just tight enough to show off his muscular arms. He also had tattoos that wound up his bare arms, over his throat, as if they’d grown there naturally. How much of him was covered in the black flames?
I was all for discovering it, for tracing each mark.
For science, of course.
His clearing throat made me realize I’d been gawking. Not just slyly looking but mouth-hanging-open ogling.
So much for being professional.
He stuck his hand out over the desk and offered a devastating smile. “I’m Hunter.”
Of course his name is Hunter.Somehow it fit, as if it were as unique and dangerous as the man before me. I clasped his hand, but instead of shaking it like I expected, he tugged me in and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
His lips were hot, and his breath seared me as he kept his eyes locked on mine. It was only his lips to my knuckles, yet I could almost picture that same smirk, those same whiskey-colored eyes staring up at me from between my legs.
Down, girl.As soon as the thought came, my cheeks heated, and I yanked my hand away.
Hunter only smiled wider, as though he’d caught the stray idea and didn’t mind it a bit.
Which was probably just him amused by the fact that he turned on every woman in a nine-mile-radius. Who could blame me, really? It had been far too long since I’d had sex, and he was essentially walking sex.
“Please, sit,” I said as if that could wipe away the entire interaction thus far and paint me as a professional.
Thankfully, he did. It meant I had to look at less of him.
“So, you’re here for life insurance?”
He nodded, tossing his arm across the back of the chair. It was an awkward angle, and yet it only made him look more like some fantasy rebel. “Sure. I’m curious, though. You don’t really seem like the insurance type.”
“What does an ‘insurance type’ look like?”
“Frumpy. Boring. A balding man in his sixties sleeping with his secretary because his wife won’t talk to him anymore. That type.”
