Moira Rogers - Wilder’s Mate

It sounded useful. Satira stepped forward and planted herself firmly between the two men, intent on capturing Archer’s undivided attention. “Have you heard anything about a Guild inventor who’s been taken captive?”

The man’s humor faded, and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “I’ve heard rumors. Been waiting for confirmation.”

Too many nights in Wilder’s bed had dulled her sense of self-preservation. She’d already taken a step forward before she remembered that the man sprawled so casually in front of her wasn’t a man at all. The urge to curl her fingers in a bloodhound’s vest and shake him until answers tumbled out was damn close to suicidal.

Her hands shook with the effort control cost her. “What rumors?” He watched her sharply. “That one of the younger bloodsuckers is planning a coup, but he needed a weapon. He needed a Guild inventor.”

“Which one?”

Archer huffed out a laugh, and Wilder spoke. “We plan to head out, Arch, so you may as well tell us.” He shook his head. “You’re heading for a fight with a lady in tow? You’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

“The lady can take care of herself.”

That warmed her a little. Enough to let her take a step back. Toward Wilder. “Please tell us.” Archer didn’t relax, though his expression cleared. “His name is Thaddeus Lowe. Ever heard of him?” Wilder tensed again. “Some.”

“Some?” Satira demanded, panic rising. Wilder’s reaction was enough to scare half of the life out of her. “Is it worse than you expected?”

It was Archer who answered. “Lowe is a shrewd son of a bitch. Mean. It won’t be easy getting close, but I might be able to get it done.”

“I’ll do anything,” she whispered. “Anything.”

“Satira.” Wilder rose and stepped in front of her. “I’d be much obliged, Arch. We have to get Nate out of there.”

The other bloodhound nodded and dropped his hat back on his head as he stood. “I’ll be in touch. This time tomorrow at the latest.”

Archer left, leaving Satira staring at Wilder’s rigid back as the door clicked shut again. “Wilder?” He turned slowly, releasing a shaky breath. “Didn’t like having him so close, that’s all.” It took her a moment to understand, and even when she did, she didn’t quite believe it. “So close to me?”

He didn’t meet her gaze. “Sorry. I’m usually much more reasonable.” Perhaps it wasn’t proper to feel a kindling warmth in her belly. She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. “I have never had a man be unreasonable about me before.” Wilder laughed a little. “You sound pleased.”

“It’s…” Thrilling. Exciting. Soothing, to think someone had strong enough emotions regarding her to behave irrationally. Soothing to matter to someone. “It’s pleasing. In moderation.” His hands framed her hips, pulled her close. “I’ll bear that in mind.” Satira turned her head and rested her cheek against his shoulder with a soft sigh. “Then tomorrow, we’ll know how to find Nate.”

He sobered. “Tomorrow. You should get some rest tonight.”

It wasn’t the loss of his promised wickedness that hurt, but the warmth and comfort of having his strong body curled around hers. “Alone?”

“You can sleep with me,” he told her, “but I do mean sleep.” She tried to hide her smile against his shoulder. “As long as you keep my feet warm.”

“That’s the only thing hounds are good for, sweetheart.”

It sounded like a warning. Perhaps he didn’t care for the way she held him, the way she’d snuggled up against him. Too intimate, too expectant. Satira stepped back and reminded herself that having a man’s lust could be a long way from having his regard. Her words must be lighthearted. Teasing. “You’re skilled at keeping all of me warm.”

His eyes were dark, and he closed his hands around her arms. “Don’t figure you’d agree to stay here tomorrow.”

If he’d bedded her for the last few nights in hopes of making her more agreeable to being left behind, he’d be sorely disappointed. “Don’t figure I would.”

He sighed. “Thought so.”

She had one point on which she had every intention of digging her heels in. “And I’ll be wearing something reasonable. So if you’d like to spend a moment admiring my tits, you’d best do it now.” Finally, he unbent enough to smile. “Tonight, perhaps, before we sleep.” So there’d be one more night of furtive touches and desperate pleasure. “Take me to bed, Wilder Harding. I yearn for your admiration.”

He kissed her, a glancing brush of his lips on hers. “Now?”

“I’m only hungry for one thing.”

Wilder lifted her suddenly and set her on the nearest table, his hands hard on her hips, his breath hot on her ear. “Here?”

Her heart skipped. The hunger in his voice, in his grip… It was everything she’d craved without knowing it. Not a bloodhound interested in a conquest. A man who wanted her.

Oh, she was a fool. A terrible fool, because she couldn’t summon the will to build a wall around her heart. Instead she slid her fingers up his arms and curled them around his neck, drawing him down for another kiss.

The sun was low, too low, and Wilder cursed under his breath. According to Archer’s message, this was the right rendezvous point, only he was nowhere to be found.

And darkness was fast approaching.

“Wilder?” Satira sat her horse more easily today, with the reins firm in her gloved hands. She seemed more relaxed in trousers and a rough jacket, though tension threaded her voice now.

Hiding his emotions and thoughts from her was growing harder with each passing day. “Archer’s late.”

“I take it that’s not like him?”

“No.” Not like any bloodhound to leave a comrade stranded in the desert borderlands with dusk fast approaching.

Wilder’s stomach twisted with a sick sense of foreboding.

Satira stripped off her gloves and tucked them behind her belt, then reached for the gun at her hip.

“Do you think something happened to him?”

“Could be.” If he’d tried to set things up for them, he could have gotten—

Really, Harding? You didn’t see it in his eyes? Ignore it when he tried to call you off?

He tightened one hand around his rifle and turned his horse. “Ride, Satira. Back toward town, now.” For one endless moment she stared at him, eyes conflicted. Then she gripped her reins. “You’d best be behind me, Wilder, or I will turn around.”

He started to speak, but the crack of a gunshot stilled his tongue. Wilder dragged Satira closer, heedless of the way her mount whinnied in protest.

Her heart hammered so loud he could hear it clearly, but her fingers found her gun. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

There was nothing to do until their foe showed himself. It happened a second later, when a pale, sick-looking man stepped out from behind a bit of scrub.

Satira shivered, her voice low. “Vampire?”

Worse. So much worse. “Ghoul, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“Enthralled to vampires, probably against their will.” She rattled it off so fast it sounded like she was repeating something she’d been told a hundred times. “Levi said to kill them quick.”

Which he would do, if not for one thing. “One ghoul would never come up against a hound. There’s more.”

“Regular bullets or modified?”

The vampire’s blood made them fast, but their bodies… “They’re human enough. Regular bullets work just fine.” He scanned the deepening gloom and spotted two more. “You aim for that one up ahead, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Satira reached across her body to draw her second revolver, the unmodified one. “I can do it.” No time for assurances, but he gave her one anyway. “You can.” And then he spun and fired off two shots, quick as he could, dropping one of the ghouls. The other ran, so fast he was almost a blur. “Shit.” Gunfire sounded behind him. Satira bit off a curse even more vicious than his, and fired again. Wilder wheeled around in time to see the pale ghoul fall behind the stand of scrub. “Ride, Satira!” She obeyed, one hand tangled in the reins, the other clutching her weapon. The wind whipped her hat off her head before she bent low, barely keeping her seat.

The remaining ghoul shot out of the shadows and reached for her, his hissing face a caricature of what it once must have been. Wilder swung his rifle around and slammed the butt of it into the side of the ghoul’s head with a crunch. The creature fell, seizing, to the dirt.

“Wilder!” Satira lifted her revolver. Four more figures appeared ahead of them, their movements jerky, as if they were fighting the compulsion. Fighting to flee.

Not a battle to be fought on horseback, not for him. He jumped down from his horse and raised his voice to Satira. “Get out of range, and for God’s sake, keep riding if you have to. You can get back to Juliet.”

“No.” She pulled back so hard her horse’s hooves skidded on the dirt, then leveled her pistol and fired with cold deliberation, slamming a bullet into one of the ghoul’s shoulders. “There are too many for you.”

“No there aren’t.” He could take them all, but not with her firing at them—and him. “Stay if you have to, but guard yourself. I can handle this.”

He didn’t wait for her answer. He slung his rifle over his saddlebag and headed toward the ghouls.

Walking first, feeling the magic well up inside him. The new moon was too close, but he had something to replace that animal power.

Satira.

Vanquish. Kill. Protect. The words echoed instincts the danger had awakened. Satira looked at the ghouls and saw him vastly outnumbered, but this was what he was made for.

This was what a hound did.

Wilder broke into a run, roaring as he released the rage, let it flow through him. He hit the first ghoul, knocking him back into two others as a fourth reached for him. Bare hands and fists, but the rage guided him.

Fueled him.

Another wave of attackers crested the small rise, and Wilder let the rage take over.

It was a credit to Levi’s training that Satira kept her revolver from slipping out of her suddenly nerveless fingers.

She’d seen bloodhounds fight. She’d seen Levi, sparring with his young visitors, beating them around the dusty practice yard behind the manor. Once she’d even seen him fight in earnest, when a band of outlaws had set upon the madam of the whorehouse where Satira’s mother had worked. Levi had run the survivors out of town with regret in their eyes and terror in their hearts.

Wilder didn’t seem liable to leave any survivors at all. There was a wild beauty in his precise, deadly movements, in the way he became the fight. No thought, no hesitation.

This was a bloodhound, stripped down to his essence. Violence and death.

Anyone with the slightest lick of sense would be terrified. She’d thought four ghouls were too many for him, but three times that lay scattered at his feet, a sea of still limbs and broken bodies. All quick kills.

No sadism, no pleasure in it.

And it had happened so fast she’d barely gotten off her horse before he laid hands on the last one.

“Wilder, stop!”

At first, she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he hesitated, one large hand around the ghoul’s throat.

“Kill ’em quick, right?” he rasped.

Wilder’s horse had vanished into the sunset at a reckless gallop. She couldn’t afford to let their only mount escape, so she wrapped the reins around her hand and approached him slowly, unsure if that might startle him into violence. “He might have information. He’ll at least know where he was sent from. Where his master lives.”

Wilder grinned suddenly—feral, chilling. “What do you got in that bag of yours, Satira?” There was the terror, a sick little fear tying her stomach in knots. Wilder wasn’t her gruff companion or her wild lover now—he was a bloodhound.

He was a killer.

Maybe she was something worse, because she had no excuse for answering him except her desperate need to save Nathaniel. “The chemical mixture in my modified rounds would probably burn the skin of anyone who’s under a vampire’s thrall.”

Wilder studied the ghoul. “Do we have to resort to that?”

The ghoul was a man, pale and drawn, with dark hair and bloodshot eyes. At one time there might have been intelligence in his gaze, but now he seemed savage. Mindless. His fingernails scraped at the dirt and he snarled.

“Hand me one of the rounds,” Wilder muttered. “If nothing else, maybe the chemical will break the thrall.”