Seducing the Hunter

“The Chest of Sorrows.”

And there it was. She’d known it deep down, the moment she’d heard that the little goblin Loir had gone topside for a key. Loir had confirmed it herself when she snuck into Daeva’s chambers as she healed from her torture session to warn her. Sorcerers used goblins for some of their work. She assumed it was one of the cabals that had stolen the key from the great Quinn Strom. She was surprised he was still alive.

“What do you want to know that you don’t already?” she asked.

He paced nervously in front of the pentagram. Usually he paced when he wasn’t quite confident in what he was doing or the decisions he was making. “Where is it?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? Do you really think I’m going to tell you that?”

“Yes, I do.” He gave her a hard stare.

She’d always loved his gray-green eyes. They were so intense. Always searching for something. At one time, he’d look at her with those eyes and she’d see the desire in them and succumb to it. She’d surrender to him without a second thought.

Now, he looked at her as if she was the worst thing he’d ever seen. She supposed betrayal did that to a person.

“What are you going to do, Quinn, if I don’t tell you?” She arched an eyebrow and ran a finger along her lips. “Torture it out of me?”

“I might.”

“You’re a bastard, true. But I don’t think you have it in you to do that to me.”

“Maybe I’ve changed in the last three years.”

She met his gaze, looking for something of the old Quinn. The man she’d loved, who had loved her. After a few seconds, she wasn’t sure he was still in there. “Oh, I suspect you have. But you still have those interesting morals. Those you will never let go of, I am sure. I fell victim to them, as I recall, once upon a time.”

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his haggard face. It was obvious he hadn’t slept in a while. He looked harder, sadder. As though he held the world on his shoulders. She supposed he did, in a way, considering that he’d been the key keeper and now no doubt felt responsible for finding the chest and keeping it safe.

Quinn had always been a crusader. It was one of the things she’d loved about him. And that had also been the thing that had killed their relationship in the end. His single-minded sense of justice.

He could never see the shades of gray in between those morals of his.

Gray had always been her favorite color.

“I called you, Daeva, thinking there was some sort of good person inside you. A person who would do the right thing.”

She laughed again. “The right thing? Huh. And what exactly is that, Quinn?”

He stared at her and she stared back. It was the showdown they’d never had when she’d possessed the body of the woman he’d fallen in love with. The woman she’d been, mind, body and soul for ten years. Seven years before she’d even met Quinn and fallen for him.

At first when she’d confessed her secret about being a demon, he hadn’t truly believed her. He’d thought she was pulling a really bad prank on him. He’d asked her a lot of questions to prove it. Daeva had told him things only a demon would know, and she’d also told him about burying the Chest of Sorrows over a hundred years ago. It was then that he had truly believed. And it was as if a switch had been flicked on. He’d gone into demon hunter mode.

He’d bound her to a chair, drawn a pentagram around her, sprayed her with holy water and sent her screaming back to hell. How he’d dealt with Rachel’s comatose body, she could only imagine. Maybe the real woman had woken up.

Daeva had never gotten a chance to say goodbye to anything that had mattered to her. The friends she’d made, family members who had loved her like their own, coworkers she’d grown accustomed to. She hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to the life she’d made. She hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Quinn the way she wanted to.

When he had her tied in that chair, he’d acted as if they hadn’t spent three wonderful years together. That they hadn’t just spent the entire day before in bed, making love and talking about their future. He’d pretended that he hadn’t just told her that he loved her more than anything in the world. She remembered the tears, though, and the way he’d looked at her through them.

He dropped his gaze. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

She tapped a finger against her lips. “Hmm, since you asked so nicely, I think not.”

“I guess I was kidding myself, thinking a demon would even consider doing the right thing.”

“Yeah, maybe you were. You seem to do that a lot.”

He glared at her, then went to the wall, grabbed a folding chair and dragged it out to the middle of the room, in front of the pentagram. He unfolded it and sat. “I can sit here all night.”

She smirked at him, then settled onto the hard cement floor, crossing her legs. “So can I.”

For the next hour, they sat and stared at each other. Daeva broke her gaze once in a while to examine her nails. It seemed to piss Quinn off and that’s why she did it. She really didn’t think that her nails were more important than the situation. She just liked to revel in the way the vein at his right temple would throb.

“What happened to your arm?” she asked.

“What do you care?”

“I don’t. I’m just being polite.”

He held his forearm up and looked at it. “Courtesy of your little goblin friend.”

“Loir did that to you?”

He nodded.

“Well, then, you must’ve deserved it. I’m surprised that she didn’t kill you. She’s usually very bloodthirsty.” Daeva spoke with her tongue in cheek, because Loir was anything but. She was one of the kindest creatures Daeva knew. Unless, of course, she was forced to do something. Then she could be lethal.

“I’m surprised she didn’t, as well. She said you would hate it if she killed me.”

Daeva examined her nails again. “Hmm, she must have been mistaken. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have alluded to such a thing.”

She had though. In her note. She’d simply written, “Don’t kill him.”

Another half hour went by. He was as stubborn as she remembered him to be. Maybe more so. She didn’t remember the stern wrinkles in his brow, the way it was now. That was new. But she had a feeling it had something to do with her. She’d put those lines of pain there.

She sighed. “Are we seriously going to sit here all night?”

“Until you help me, yes.”

“I never said I wouldn’t help you, Quinn, I just can’t tell you where the chest is.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She shrugged. “Whatever makes you feel better.”

“Well, that’s the only help I need. The location. So if you won’t give it to me, then there’s nothing to talk about.”

She stood and brushed the dirt off her black pants. “Fine. Send me back, then. I have laundry to do.”

He looked at her, and she could see the hesitation on his face. He obviously hadn’t expected her to call his bluff. He should’ve known she would. She possessed all the same personality traits she had when she’d been wearing a human birthday suit. She was basically the same, except for a few physical changes.