Eternal Hunter (Night Watch 1)

Jude liked to think he was a smart guy. Not genius, nah, but smart enough. But he wasn’t gonna be avoiding that wolf. He was going after him, and he would take the bastard down.

The dog had better get ready to do some running of his own.

The hunt was on.

“Hey, Jude!” Dee’s yell caught him the minute he stepped inside the Night Watch office. “I was wondering when you’d be dragging your sorry butt in here.” She flashed him a grin, then bent low over her desk as she dove into a pile of paperwork. “I’ve been digging up your girl’s past, and man, she had quite a reputation.”

Jude cleared his throat.

Dee’s head popped up, a furrow between her golden brows. “What? You got—”

He stepped to the side.

He saw Erin flash one hell of a sharp, toothy grin at the other woman.

“—something caught in your throat?” Dee finished. “Ah.” Now it was her turn to make a weird-ass gurgle in her throat.

“Um, I’m guessing you’re the new ADA, huh?” Dee didn’t flush. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her cheeks redden. But her eyes did narrow as she fired an assessing glance over Erin.

“Guess you’re right,” Erin murmured, her fingers tightening around her purse strap. “The woman with the reputation.”

Dee blinked and pasted what Jude knew to be a false smile on her face as she pointed to the left. “There’s a waiting room for clients down that way. You can just go take a seat while I brief Jude on—”

“My life?” Erin shook her head and took a step forward. “Thanks, but I think I’d rather hear this.”

Dee glanced at him. Jude shrugged. He didn’t know what to expect from Dee’s reports. She’d been on the computer, with her hacker buddy Jasper, for the last twenty-four hours. If there’d been secrets to uncover, she would have found them all.

So what kind of reputation did his little hybrid have?

He stepped toward Dee’s desk. There was no sign of Zane, for now, and he figured that was probably a good thing. His associates sure seemed to be making friends right and left with Erin.

“Asshole,” Dee whispered when he got close to her. Her skin looked even paler today. The lady must be getting too much night hunting. If she didn’t watch it, she’d start to look like the vamps she tracked. “You knew I didn’t realize she was there. Hell, I’m not you, I can’t smell a person from thirty feet away.”

“So you were digging in my past.” Erin’s smooth voice cut across Dee’s furious snap. She paused next to the smaller woman. Dee’s skin seemed too white next to Erin’s burnished gold. “What did you find?”

Dee’s eyes narrowed on him. A look that promised she’d get her payback. Then she grabbed the leaning pile of paperwork. “I found out that you can be a pretty tough bitch.”

Erin’s expression didn’t alter.

“So can I,” Dee said, flashing a real smile. “So I tend to respect that.”

The mask cracked on Erin’s face for a moment as confusion flashed through.

“There were some stories about you getting a bit rough with some guys back in high school and college.”

Her golden gaze shot to Jude’s.

“Nothing too bad. One guy had a sprained wrist, the other mild lacerations.”

Erin winced at that. “I can explain those.”

Dee waved her hand in the air. “You’re Other. You like to play rough.” Her hand stopped the wave and her index finger pointed at Erin’s chest. “You stopped playing with the humans, though, when you realized you could hurt them.”

“Did I?” Erin asked quietly.

No, she hadn’t. Jude knew she’d just learned to play better. Holding the beast back. Not a lot of fun in that for their kind.

Especially not during sex.

Shifters were wild for a reason.

Dee’s head cocked to the right. “I don’t know. Maybe you just learned how to play better. But either way, there weren’t any more stories about the down and dirty Erin after you hit twenty-one.”

The down and dirty Erin? Jude tensed.

“You graduated from Tulane—both for your undergrad work and your JD—with honors. I figure you must have hooked up with some of the paranormals while you were in New Orleans. Always happens in the bigger cities. Guessing they didn’t care about you being a bit out of control in the bedroom, or they showed you how to control yourself.”

Erin gave a nod at that and Jude had to wonder—which option was she agreeing to? And why the hell did the idea of Erin with other men make his jaw clench, his heart race and—

“Dude, get your claws out of my desk.” Dee’s pissed voice. “This desk is new! I don’t want you marking it the way you idiots always mark everything you want.”

He jerked his claws from the wood. “Sorry.” Hell, he’d have to repair her desk. He hadn’t meant—

“Shifters do have a habit of marking things that don’t belong to them.” Erin seemed way too calm when she said that. “A flaw in genetics, I think.”

“I’m not like him, sweetheart.” The words rasped out before he could stop them. Not that he would have stopped them.

She’d put an icy wall between them since last night. He was tired of the distance and more than ready to knock that wall apart.

He wasn’t like that ass**le. Erin should know that by now.

Her eyes held his. So beautiful. “No, you’re not.”

Was that a thaw? Was she going to open back up to him? Last night had been heavy for her, he knew it, but he sure didn’t want her turning from him now.

No, now, she was supposed to turn to him.

“Uh, yeah, great. Whatever this is”—Dee’s hands fluttered between them—“keep it in the bedroom, okay? I haven’t been laid in two months and all this weird-ass tension in the air is making me jealous.”

Now Erin did smile, a slow stretch of her lips.

Jude’s heart kicked into his ribs.

“Ease up, Romeo.” Dee’s elbow rammed into his chest. “Back to business.”

Right.

“After law school, you did some work in different parishes. A few years later, you settled in Lillian. Started working for the DA’s office and got the reputation for being the bitch who went after the monsters.” A fast glance at Jude. “Not your kind.

Rapists, domestic abusers. Those pigs that make me want to deliver a bit of my own abuse.”