Dane immediately flew to help Matt to take Heskel down, knowing he had to be their prime target.

  Ryan killed the blood bond he was fighting, and the rest of the blood bonds rushed off through the front door and left. Trey and Stacey had managed to eliminate Vandenburg, the other three vampires who had been there quickly vanishing. Then Dane cut Heskel’s arm, and he immediately disappeared. “Damn it.” Dane looked around for Jacqueline, but she had vanished too.

  Hell. “Jacqueline!” Dane tried to contact her telepathically then. “Jacqueline!”

  The house had been vacated except for the dead body of the blood bond and the remains of Vandenburg and Romanoff. Matt was immediately on the phone with the police to verify the two rogue vampire kills.

  “I’m at the house,” Jacqueline said to Dane. “Heskel was trying to make me turn on you. I had to get as far away from you as possible.”

  “I’m coming. We didn’t kill him.” Dane said to Matt, “Jacqueline’s at my house. I’m going to join her in the vampire way.”

  “I’ll drive your vehicle home when we’re done with the police here,” Matt said.

  “I’ll go with you, Dane. Trey can drive my car there. What’s your address?” Stacey asked.

  He told her the name of the residential area and gave her the address. She looked at her phone and found the directions for it. “Okay, I’m going with you.”

  Then they both vanished and when they reached his place, he saw the whole house was dark. He didn’t like the looks of this.

  He went inside and called out, “Jacqueline?” Then he tried telepathically communicating with her. “Jacqueline? Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “Your home?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “Sorry, I…forget it. Stacey and I are on our way.” He told Stacey, “Jacqueline’s at her house, not mine.” Then he gave Stacey Jacqueline’s address, and they headed over there. He knocked on her door, at the same time saying, “It’s just me, and Stacey is with me.”

  Jacqueline hurried to open the door for them and pulled them inside. “I’m sorry I left all of you behind, but Heskel tried to force me to turn on you, Dane. I think that when Matt was cutting at him, Heskel couldn’t concentrate on forcing me to do any harm to you, but I didn’t want to worry that I might injure or kill you if he managed to hurt your brother and attempt to gain control of me again.”

  “Did he get control of you?” Dane asked.

  “He tried. I was fighting it the whole time. Until he was too distracted and then that’s when he left. So he’s still alive?”

  “Yeah,” Dane said with regret. “We tried to take him down, but then he vanished. We did manage to take down the other two rogue vampires on Matt’s list though. Why did you come here and not go to my home? I was afraid he had gotten ahold of you.”

  “It was just natural for me to go here. Plus, I was afraid he might follow me to your house. I don’t want him to know where you live.”

  Dane hugged her. “You know, you nearly give me a heart attack every time you vanish like you do and suddenly appear where the vampire is that you’re trying to take down.”

  Jacqueline smiled. “You need to learn to do that so that it comes naturally in a fight. It gives us a real advantage over rogues when they don’t expect us to have that ability.”

  “Yeah,” Stacey said. “I think Trey was surprised too when I left him behind to fight Vandenburg.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Dane said. “He wanted to be right there with you helping to take him down, not putting yourself in danger. Do you want to go to my house, Jacqueline?”

  “Yeah. Now that you’re going to be there too.”

  Then the three of them headed over there using their vampiric ability. It saved on driving a vehicle places!

  When they went inside the house, Princess purred and rubbed up against Dane first, then Jacqueline. “You know you can be replaced,” Jacqueline said to her cat.

  Dane chuckled.

  “I take it that she’s your cat, Jacqueline,” Stacey said while Dane got them all glasses of water to drink.

  “Yeah, but she has fallen totally in love with Dane.” Jacqueline sat down on the couch and Princess jumped onto her lap because Dane was putting the glasses of water on the coffee table.

  Then Dane got a call. He put it on speakerphone.

  “Hey, we’re almost done with talking with the police here. We’re letting Stacey have Vandenburg’s bounty. You and Jacqueline can split Romanoff’s bounty,” Matt said.

  “No. We agreed we would split the bounties between us. We never know who we’re going to be taking down and we’re all at risk,” Dane said.

  Stacey and Jacqueline agreed.

  “All right. We’ll split the money when we get there. You can tell us what happened when we arrive,” Matt said.

  “See you soon,” Dane said.

  “Do you usually team up with a hunter to fight vampires?” Jacqueline asked Stacey.

  “Uhm, I’m more of a lover than a fighter,” Stacey said.

  “Of vampires?” Dane couldn’t help frowning. Not that some hunters hadn’t fallen in love with a vampire and even been turned to be with them forever, but they hadn’t been rogues and he could see how it could happen in some cases, like with Rachael falling in love with Adonis. Then again Adonis had been a hunter also.

  “Uh, no, I mean with hunters. I don’t usually go on hunts all that often.”

  Which explained how Stacey had been turned by a rogue vampire while making love with him, and not when she was engaging with one in combat.

  “But you looked like you really had a handle on fighting,” Jacqueline said. “We wouldn’t have put you in the position of having to fight anyone if we had known you don’t like to hunt rogues down.”

  “Oh, I’m fully qualified as a fighter. I love practicing fighting with a fellow hunter. My brother usually. And the thing of it is that once I was turned and had these special abilities, I felt changed about that too. Like I wanted to help the hunters’ cause, and I wanted to help the police take down the villains, and I wanted to help protect humans. It made me realize how ruthless rogue vampires are and how manipulative they can be,” Stacey said. “I think before that, I was kind of living in my own little bubble. Playing at being a hunter, until the vampire turned me.”

  Then they heard two vehicles drive up and recognized they were Stacey’s car and Dane’s truck. Matt parked Dane’s truck in the garage and Trey parked Stacey’s car in the driveway, then Dane’s brothers all joined them in the house, everyone giving each other a hug for a job well done. Dane gave them glasses of water and then strawberry margaritas after that for all of them to celebrate.

  “At least we took two down on my list,” Matt said, “though more than anything, I wished we could have taken down Jacqueline’s vampire.”

  Everyone agreed.

  Then Dane got a call from Zachary Bremerton, and he wondered if he’d heard Dane had been turned. Zach had and had been so distraught when he had been turned that he had wanted to die. But that had all changed for him when he met the huntress of his dreams. “Hey, I’m putting this on speakerphone. My brothers are all here and so are two of my friends who are huntresses who have likewise been turned, if that’s what you’re calling about.”

  “Yeah. Adonis, Rachael, Pasha, Michael, Danai and I are back in Dallas, and we learned what had happened to you. How are you and the huntresses doing?” Zachary asked.

  “Well, we kind of have a problem. Jacqueline’s maker is still alive.” That’s all Dane needed to say. Adonis had mated Zachary’s cousin, Rachael, and had been a hunter before he was turned. He couldn’t kill his maker either, who had been trying to force him to hand Rachael over to him, but with Zachary and other members of the family’s help, they had finally eliminated Adonis’s and his sister’s maker and rescued his parents and younger sister. But his older sister, Danai, was dating Zachary’s older brother, Michael. So Adonis and his older sister had known just how hard it was to be hunters who were turned and then forced to do their maker’s bidding.

  “We’ll help you with this,” Zach said.

  “Thanks,” Jacqueline said. “I’m Jacqueline and met Dane and Stacey at a group therapy meeting to deal with being hunters turned.”

  “We heard about that too. We’ll be at the next meeting to share our experiences, though I think for the most part, we’re dealing with it the best way we can. But if we can speak about what happened to us, maybe it will help others to realize what we have become doesn’t have to be a curse,” Zachary said.

  “We were talking about going to a hunters’ club and getting drinks and dancing,” Jacqueline said.

  “We will be there to back them up,” Matt said.

  Zachary laughed. “Well, we haven’t tried that since all this happened. We’ve been in Florida taking down rogue vampires for the family, so, yeah, sign us up. I’m sure Adonis and the rest of us would all be for it. What’s the worst that could happen? A bunch of narrow-minded hunters kick us out? Maybe someday we’ll have a club of our own. But until then, we’re still hunters, right?”

  “That’s exactly what we were saying,” Dane said.

  “Well, my family will be there backing us too and they have a lot of sway in Dallas,” Zachary said.

  “Okay, we’ll make it a date. Though Jacqueline wants to wait until we take down her maker,” Dane said.

  “We’ll help you with that too. What’s his name?” Zachary asked.

  Dane said, “Heskel.”

  “Hell, he was Piaras’s friend. When Rachael killed Piaras, she had ended the rogue vampire’s reign of terror. Piaras was the one who had turned Adonis and his older sister, Danai, and had wanted to turn Rachael to be his own mate. Heskel wasn’t at Piaras’s house when the hunters went there to eliminate him. It appears, Heskel didn’t have designs on Jacqueline, like Piaras had on Rachael, since the time that she was a youngster.”

  “Yeah, she had killed Heskel’s twin brother, and he caught her at it. Instead of killing her, he turned her. We’ve tried twice to take him down, but he just vanishes before we can do it,” Dane said.

  “We’ll add him to our list.”

  “Okay, thanks. We can use all the help we can get on this,” Dane said.

  “You’re welcome. We’ll talk soon.” Then Zachary and Dane ended the call.

  “That’s great news about the other hunters helping us,” Jacqueline said. “I’ve never met Zachary or his family, but his family are well-known in Dallas.”

  “Yeah, when some of them were turned, it really rocked the city. Some hunters still were their friends, and others dropped them,” Dane said.

  “Like what had happened to us,” Jacqueline said.

  “Oh, yeah, the same with me,” Stacey said, then finished her margarita. “Thanks for helping me take down my rogue.”

  “Thanks to you for helping to take down one of our rogues,” Matt said.

  “If you need any help with anyone else, Stacey, just give me a call,” Jacqueline said.

  “Thanks. I will.” But Stacey glanced at Dane as if she fully intended to call on him, not Jacqueline. “Oh, and if you get an idea where Heskel might be, call me and I’ll go with you. We have to free Jacqueline of the curse.”

  “Do you need one of us to follow you home so you get their safely?” Trey asked.

  “No, I’m good, thanks so much!” Then Stacey gave everyone a hug, Jacqueline last, of course, and then she left.

  10

  It was late when the brothers and Jacqueline finally retired to their bedrooms to sleep.

  Princess had made friends with all the brothers and instead of going to bed with Dane and Jacqueline this evening, she had gone to stay with Trey in his bed. Jacqueline suspected the brothers had colluded with each other to make sure Dane and Jacqueline didn’t have any interruptions, and she thought they were so cute to do that for them.

  She sat down to pull off her boots and Dane came over to remove them for her.

  “You know, we don’t have an impediment to sleeping close tonight together,” he said, nuzzling her face, then kissing her knee.

  “Yeah, which I suspect was planned and I’m all for it.” Her gaze locked with his and he smiled that arrogant kind of sexy smile that she loved.

  Then he yanked off his T-shirt and worked on his boots while she pulled off her shirt.

  “I had no intention of dating anyone anytime soon,” she said.

  “I had gotten that impression from the first time I had laid eyes on you.”

  She smiled. “And you ignored that. Which was the big draw to me. Except for Stacey’s interest in you. I thought the interest in her was mutual for you.”

  “Not in her.” Dane unbuckled her belt while she unbuckled his.

  “Yeah, that was soon apparent, which was your saving grace.”

  He chuckled. Then he cupped her breasts still confined in her smooth, silky bra. “I’m damn lucky I went to that meeting. After fighting the vampire, I almost didn’t.”

  “Then”—she ran her hands over his bare chest—“you had to show off your beautiful chest.”

  “Which you were not impressed with.”

  She licked his nipples, and he sucked in his breath. “Ha! You knew I was,” she said, “and you wanted me to say so.”

  “I loved teasing you.”

  “I loved that you did.” She really was amused that he would. Then she removed his pants.

  He yanked off his socks and then slid hers off her feet. Then he pulled off her pants. She hurried to ease his boxer briefs down his hips, though his arousal was so full, she was having more of a time getting the briefs over it. Which she loved.

  He smiled down at her. She looked at him and shook her head. “Next time, the boxer briefs come off first.”

  He laughed. And then he was unfastening her bra, tossing it, and slowly removing her panties, tantalizing her. He skimmed his hands over her naked breasts. The pressure of his hands on her flesh made her heartbeat quicken and she sighed with pleasure. Her sensitive nipples were aroused, and she treasured his hands rubbing against them. Never would she have thought she would be doing this with a new man in her life after she and Van had become history—like a week ago!

  But Dane was tantalizingly sexy, and she loved the way he touched her, like he was enjoying the intimacy before they went all the way, and she was glad for that. She heard his heart beating harder and she felt her canines extend, just like when they had danced at the human club. It was amazing, especially now that they were here, alone, and no one else could see them. She immediately kissed him, pressing him to open his mouth to her. She wanted to see if his own canines had extended. As if he knew what she was checking out, he smiled and showed her his devilishly sexy smile and his beautiful, elongated canines.

  He cupped her face, and they began stroking each other’s canines with their tongues. There was just something intimate with caressing each other’s canines, sharing the knowledge that they had been changed, but that they were navigating through all this with curiosity and intrigue.

  She nibbled his bottom lip, and he slid his hands to her buttocks and caressed. He lifted her and put her on the bed and then he was beside her, kissing her breasts, licking her nipple, kissing it, and starting on the other. Her body responded to his gentle and passionate kisses, his mouth moving over her breastbone, his extended canines teasing her throat with a gentle touch, not cutting.

  She started to use her teeth on his neck, the experience so new to both of them, but they were enjoying the exploration. Neither wanted to cut each other or drink each other’s blood. Maybe later when they were more used to all this vampiric stuff. But for now, they were just embracing their new abilities.

  She swore she felt more alive than she’d ever felt before. She ran her hands over his biceps, loving the feel of his strength, his muscles well-honed from all the sword fighting he did. She was so wet for him, so eager to have him penetrate her between her legs, aching for him.

  He slid his hand over her belly, lower, yes! She was so eager to have him embedded deep inside her. But he was beginning to stroke her between her legs. She was shooting to the heavens. Then she remembered his brothers were staying at the house, and she swallowed the cry of delight that nearly escaped her lips.

  Then he was pressing his full erection into her and thrusting. She arched and he filled her. She moaned. Their hearts hammered at the same pace, and she felt the unfathomable connection to him. Both were now something more than just hunters and she wondered if that was what made them feel so right for each other.

  He groaned with climax, staying inside her for a bit longer, and just pressed his body against hers. Loving the closeness, she ran her hands over his muscular back. “Amazing.”

  “Good?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Good.”

  “Great?”

  She chuckled. “Quit fishing.”

  He rolled off her, pulled her into his arms, snuggled with her, and kissed the top of her head. “Great.”

  After all they’d been through, for the first time since being turned and Van ditching her, she felt truly at peace and with a hunter who might even turn out to be the one for her. Only time would tell.

  Early the next morning, Trey surprised Jacqueline when he came into the master bedroom to wake Dane and her before they were ready to wake. “Hey, I got information of where Heskel might be. Remember Zachary telling us that Rachael had killed Piaras at his estate? Several other rogues were also eliminated. The house was sold, and the proceeds went to the hunters who risked their lives to bring the rogues to justice. The house was sold to a human, but when I was doing some research, I discovered that she wasn’t truly the owner. She was given the money to purchase the property. Heskel was behind it all. We’re all gathering to go to the estate now to see if he’s there.”