The Hunter by Theresa Meyers Read Free Book Online Page A

he’d cast. Inside the circle her allure was even more powerful. Colt’s head swam and his palms grew damp. It was as if someone or something had reached into his head and pulled out his most intimate fantasies, making them real.
    Miss Arliss waited for him, her oval face tipped up at him, her eyes shining with expectation. His skin tightened. Damn, was it stifling hot inside this circle? He suddenly remembered this same sensation the first time he’d approached one of the neighbor girls before the stranger had come and changed the course of his life. She’d been a sweet thing. An innocent, creamy-sweet girl who looked like she was spun out of sugar and dreams. But Miss Arliss was far more suited to his grown interests. She wasn’t innocent, but neither was she jaded and used up. She was the perfect blend of enticement and allure bathed in moonlight.
    He couldn’t resist the temptation to touch her and see for himself if her skin was as soft as it looked. He grazed his fingers across her cheek, his thumb brushing the edge of her jaw. Her skin was smoother than heated silk.
    He moved in closer, her mouth a breath away from his. The warm feminine scent of her hit him full force as he inhaled. The fragrance of her desire made his own need escalate. Colt’s reserve snapped. He crushed his mouth down on hers and found it soft, warm, and willing. His desire to feel her, skin to bare skin, to sink into the warmth she offered, raged inside him.
    The kiss was far more than he anticipated, drawing out not just a full range of hunger and desire, but drilling even deeper into his soul, pulling out of him the desire to tuck her against him, protect her. An image flashed in his mind of him kissing her on a wide front porch as she wrapped her arms around him, welcoming him home.
    But that was impossible. A total fantasy. As long as he was a Hunter he’d never have a proper home. He’d never have a wife or any kind of family of his own, because he wouldn’t risk them.
    He looked down into the shimmering depths of her eyes, fighting off the urge to lose himself there. Through the sensual haze filling his mind, his training pushed forward, bringing him back to sanity. Reminding him that part of a succubus’s power was the ability to make a man’s deepest fantasies seem so real he could hold them.
    She was a demon. A powerful one, and he couldn’t afford to forget it, no matter how desirable she seemed. He pulled back, breathing hard, a hostile mix of yearning and wariness swirling in his gut. “I’m warning you.” He was disgusted to hear how thick and lust-filled his voice sounded. “I don’t care how good you are. If you cross me, I’ll send you back to Hell in a heartbeat.”

Chapter 5
    The dark velvet of the night closed in around the shifting yellow circle of firelight. “Threatening your partner is hardly the way to start a productive relationship,” Lilly said.
    She stared deep into those determined blue eyes and tamped down the urge to rip him to shreds right then and there. While it might be satisfactory for a moment, in the long run it would ruin her chance to get the damn piece of the Book of Legend Rathe had demanded. She’d pictured meeting Colt Jackson so many times in her mind, and none of those images had matched what was happening between them now. The smell of him, virile male mixed with desert sun and leather, still swirled in the limited air supply of the circle he’d cast.
    “Just want to make sure you know whose side I’m on.”
    “Oh, I never doubted that, Hunter .” She forced her breathing to even out by sheer will. There wasn’t much she could do about her racing heartbeat or the stream of totally unwelcome sensual thoughts cascading through her brain. She was the damn succubus. He was supposed to desire her, definitely not the other way around.
    It made her angry that his kiss had elicited such shockingly strong feelings and unwanted emotions, making her breasts ache and skin crave his