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“Why didn’t you bring a blanket?”
“I did. I brought the Austin special,” he said, running his hand teasingly down his chest.
A snort escaped. “Very funny.” I was too afraid to ask what any of this meant—if anything—so I just let go of all the questions and lived in the moment. “Did you kill a lot of men?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Bounty hunters track down outlaws and it’s dead or alive. Outlaws in the Breed world are the worst kinds of criminals, so we do whatever it takes to bring them in. Hunting is a legal, respectable position that pays well. I needed to build up my finances before starting my own pack. Our parents didn’t leave us with much money because they’d never established a pack of their own, which is how you get that kind of security. Most of the men were turned in alive, if that makes it any easier for you to think about.”
“That business card you gave me, was that your old job?”
“I still have a few of those left,” he said. “It was my calling card. The bow and arrow is the symbol of a bounty hunter. You’ll see that a lot among Breed in certain professions; we use symbols instead of titles. That’s the life I’m leaving behind.”
The room lit up with strobe lights and we quietly waited for the crash of thunder. Instead, it was a heavy roll, like a bowling ball traveling down a wooden lane. I felt like I was supposed to say something profound, or funny—something to kill the silence. But there was a sweetness in the quiet moments we shared that I enjoyed too much.
The rain. The rumbling thunder. The flashes of light and catching glimpses of his pale eyes watching me. His fingers threading through my hair. And when I began to drift off to sleep, his soft lips kissed my eyelids.
I wanted to ask what I meant to him. I wanted to hear it from his lips, even if they were words of denial. But all I felt was his warm body against mine as I fell asleep, wrapped up in his embrace.
