Argeneau Family - The Renegade Hunter Part 14

"Jo, wait, we have to talk," Nicholas said, trying to stop her.

"Later," she said quietly. "It's my turn now."

Nicholas met her gaze briefly, a conflict taking place on his face, and then he stood up, pulling on her hand to urge her up with him.

"What-?" Jo began uncertainly.

"The bedroom," Nicholas growled, tugging her around the table and toward the hall. "I fancy waking up in a bed this time rather than sprawled on the couch or the living room carpet."

Jo grinned and teased, "Where's your sense of adventure?"

Nicholas paused abruptly in the hall and whirled to take her in his arms. His mouth was demanding, his hands stripping away her robe before her chest even came to rest against his, and then he pinned her to the wall, grinding himself against her and thrusting his tongue into her mouth as he kicked off his shoes.

Moaning at the pleasure coursing through her, Jo clasped his bottom. She squeezed briefly, and then managed to work her hands between their bodies to undo the b.u.t.ton and zipper of his jeans. They both groaned with pleasure when she slid her hand inside and found him, and then Nicholas broke their kiss to step back and remove his clothes. His T-s.h.i.+rt was dragged up and off in one step, and then his jeans followed and he was back, clasping her by the upper thighs and pulling her legs around his hips so that his erection rubbed against, but didn't enter her.

Jo grabbed for his shoulders, kissing him frantically as he pressed her back against the wall and drove them both wild, and then she tore her mouth away with a cry as he suddenly thrust into her.

Nicholas paused then. Breathing heavily, he briefly rested his forehead against her neck, and then raised his head enough to lick her throat, kiss it, and then nibble a trail up to her ear.

Jo moaned as he withdrew and slid into her again, pressing her back into the wall.

"Is this enough adventure for you?" he growled, and then chuckled breathlessly when she nodded. "Good," Nicholas murmured, then caught her lips in a gentle kiss before thrusting almost violently into her again. Breaking their kiss again then, he added, "The real adventure is seeing whether we can make it to a soft surface before pa.s.sing out." Jo blinked her eyes open and peered at him. "How-?"

Her question died on a gasp as he suddenly stepped back from the wall, taking her with him, and turned toward the end of the hall. Jo's legs tightened instinctively around him, but she needn' t have bothered, his hands were clasping her bottom, holding her in place as he started up the hall.

"Let's see how many steps it takes to blow our minds," Nicholas said through gritted teeth as he walked, their bodies rubbing together with each step.

"Oh G.o.d," Jo breathed, burying her face in his neck and closing her eyes as wave after wave of mounting pleasure rushed through her. She suspected they wouldn't make it to the bed and just hoped the padding under Sam's carpet was a soft one.

Chapter Thirteen.

"That's a serious expression."

Nicholas glanced down at Jo. She lay half on his chest, her face questioning and raised to his.

They were in the bed, finally. On the first attempt they'd made it only halfway up the hall before their pa.s.sion had overwhelmed them both. He'd done his best to protect Jo as he'd lost consciousness, and supposed it had worked. She'd seemed fine when he woke up. Not that he'd gotten the chance to ask her. She'd awakened before him and immediately decided to finish what she'd tried to start in the living room. Nicholas had woken to find himself fully erect, her mouth working over him, and both of them halfway to exploding all over again.

Jo had woken up before him the next time as well, but they'd made it to the bedroom door that time. It had taken two more tries to get to the bed. The last time, they'd woken up at almost the same time and had made it to the bed before their mutual need had overwhelmed them. This time, Nicholas was the first to wake, which was a shame because it had given him a chance to think.

"What's the matter?" she asked, worry clouding her face.

Nicholas hesitated, but then said, "Nothing. I was just thinking."

Jo was silent for a minute, and then asked, "Nicholas?"

"Hmm?"

"Tell me about your wife," she said quietly.

Nicholas stilled briefly, his mind suddenly blank. He had no idea what he should say. "You said you were married and she was a life mate too?" Jo prompted.

Nicholas let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding and nodded. "Yes."

"How long ago was it that you and she-?"

"We met, married, and she died all in 1959. It was the best and worst year of my life... until now," Nicholas added solemnly, and knew it was absolutely true. He had been fortunate enough to find another life mate, a very rare occurrence, and he was going to have to give her up. Definitely best and worst.

"Did you not turn her?" Jo asked, frowning.

Nicholas shook his head. "She was born immortal."

"But..." Confusion reigned on her face for a moment and then she shook her head. "But then how did she die? If she was immortal, she should have-"

"Immortal isn't truly the proper word for us,"

Nicholas said on a sigh. "We can die, it's just harder to kill us than a mortal. Illness won't do it, and being shot will only incapacitate us until the bullets are forced out, but decapitation or having our heart removed can kill us."

"And Annie had one of those things happen to her?" Jo asked with a frown.

"Annie was decapitated in a car accident," Nicholas said quietly. "She and the child she carried, our child, died."

"Oh," Jo murmured. "I'm sorry."

Nicholas remained silent, but bent and kissed the top of her head.

"Was it her you were thinking of when I woke up?" she asked quietly.

"No," he a.s.sured her, and then sighed and admitted, "I was just wondering how they found us at the hotel."

Jo closed her eyes briefly and sighed. She then s.h.i.+fted off him and moved to pull the sheets and blankets over them both before sitting up to lean against the pillows at the top of the bed.

"That's my fault. Apparently they were able to track my bank activities and found out I'd made a withdrawal from the hotel store's ATM."

"You withdrew money from-" Nicholas began with horror, sitting up beside her, but she interrupted.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea they could track things like that," she said apologetically. "I mean, jeez, who would have thought that Mortimer and those guys could do something like that?" He would have, Nicholas thought, but didn't say as much. She hadn' t known and he hadn't told her so he could hardly blame her for the mistake. The good news was it meant they hadn't put some sort of tracker on her or anything and weren't going to burst in on them here.

"I am sorry, Nicholas. I won't use my debit card again. I just never thought-I mean, it never occurred to me they would or even could do something like that. Checking bank activity is like a cop trick or something."

Nicholas was silent for a minute, but then decided it was time they got the big talk out of the way. "Jo... Mortimer and those guys are cops. They're enforcers, rogue hunters, the equivalent of vampire cops. They have access to any technology the cops do, any technology out there if they want it. They hunt rogue immortals."

Jo was silent for a minute and then said, "Bricker said you were rogue."

"Yes," he said solemnly.

She remained still for a moment, not looking at him as she digested that and then asked carefully, "What is a rogue immortal, exactly?"

Jo hadn' t moved, but Nicholas could feel her withdrawing from him, putting some emotional distance between them. He could feel the emotional tearing as she began to draw a protective wall around herself, and his heart ached. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he waited for the pain of it to pa.s.s and then said, "A rogue is an immortal who has broken our laws."

"You have laws?" she asked with surprise.

Nicholas smiled faintly. "Of course. No society exists without laws."

"Of course," Jo murmured, and then sighed and asked. "Tell me your laws."

Nicholas hesitated and then said, "We can turn only one in a life time."

She nodded.

"Couples are allowed to have only one child every hundred years."

"One?" Jo asked with surprise. "How do you manage that? I mean what do you do if one of your females finds herself pregnant sooner than a hundred years?"

Nicholas shrugged. "It's easily managed. Actually, getting pregnant and carrying to term have usually been the problem in the past."

"The nanos?" she asked.

Nicholas nodded and reminded her, "They are to keep the host healthy and at their peak.

They see a baby as a parasite, using up the blood and nutrients the host needs. For one of our women to get pregnant, she has to double up on blood to keep the nanos busy and continue to double up on it until the baby is born. Otherwise the host's nanos will abort the fetus." "I see," she murmured, frowning. "Is that what happened to Lucian's wife?"

"Lucian?" Nicholas asked with surprise.

"I heard Mortimer say that Lucian and Leigh had been traveling a lot since she lost her baby,"

Jo explained, and then added, "I a.s.sume they're both immortals too?"

"Yes," Nicholas said quietly. He hadn't realized that his uncle's life mate was with child. The man must have been over the moon about it, and had probably fallen just as far when she'd lost the child.

"So did she lose the baby because she didn't feed enough?" Jo asked.

Nicholas shook his head with certainty. "No. I'm sure that's not what happened. Lucian would have made sure she'd fed enough."

"Then how could she have lost the baby?" Jo asked with confusion. "The nanos should have-"

"The nanos repair illness and injuries, but they don' t fix genetic problems, so I'd imagine there was a genetic flaw and she had a natural miscarriage," he said, and then thought that probably explained why the triple wedding with Lucian, Leigh, and two other couples had been delayed yet again. On the run and rogue though he might be, Nicholas had still managed to keep up with things in his family's life. While he'd had to avoid other immortals, there were mortals who worked for his cousin's company, Argeneau Enterprises, and he'd occasionally looked one or another up and read their minds and then blanked their memories of his presence.

It was in this way Nicholas had found out about the triple wedding. It had started out as a single wedding for his cousin Bastien and his life mate, Terri. But then Lucian had found Leigh and the two couples had decided to have a double ceremony. And then his uncle Victor and Elvi had been added to the roster and it was to be a triple wedding. However, the original date had been changed and the wedding delayed when his aunt Marguerite had gone missing, and then he'd recently learned it was to be delayed again, but the secretary he'd read hadn't known why. Nicholas suspected Leigh's losing the baby had been the cause of the last delay and wondered if the triple wedding would ever take place at this rate.

"So," Jo said, drawing him from his thoughts. "You can turn only one, can have only one child every hundred years..." She raised her eyebrows. "What else?"

"We aren' t allowed to bite or kill mortals," Nicholas said.

"And?" she asked.

Nicholas shrugged. "That's about it, other than we just aren't supposed to do anything that would make our presence known to mortals."

Jo nodded, was silent for a moment, and then asked, "So did you bite or kill a mortal? Or did you do something that would make the presence of immortals known to mortals?" Nicholas looked away, but reluctantly forced himself to say, "I guess I bit and killed a mortal."

There was a long silence this time, and Nicholas wanted to look at her and see her expression, but didn't have the courage to do so. When Jo spoke, he wasn' t surprised to hear anger in her voice.

"You guess you did?" she asked, finally. "What do you mean you guess? Did you or didn't you?"

"Apparently I did," he admitted on a sigh and finally turned to look at her to see her blinking and shaking her head.

"Nicholas, this is one of those yes or no questions again. You seem to have a problem with those. Did you or did you not kill a mortal?"

Nicholas frowned and shook his head with irritation. "Yes, I guess I killed a mortal."

Jo blew her breath out with exasperation and flopped back against the bed frame. "No, you didn' t."

"Yes, I apparently did," he said at once.

"Oh?" She snorted. "You can' t even say it without a qualifier. I guess I did, apparently I did..." Jo shook her head. "You couldn't have done it. You can' t even say it."

Nicholas scowled with irritation. He'd been loathing making this confession, afraid to see the fear and hatred cross Jo's face as she realized what he'd done. However, he'd never once imagined her reaction would be disbelief. Mouth compressing, he said firmly, "Jo, I killed a woman, a pregnant woman. I ripped her throat out and fed on her."

"Right," Jo said with disbelief, and then suggested, "So tell me about it."

"What?" he asked with amazement.

"Tell me what happened," she insisted.

"I'm not going to-"

"Because you didn' t kill anyone," Jo interrupted with a certainty that was almost defiant.

Nicholas stared at her with amazement. Truly, she was something else; beautiful, funny, sweet, s.e.xy, surprising... and frustrating as h.e.l.l. Sighing, he said, "Jo, I wish it weren't true too, but-"

"It's simple, Nicholas. If you did it, tell me about it," she insisted. "Who was the woman?"

"I don't know," he admitted uncomfortably. Nicholas had fled the Toronto area, and Canada itself, that fateful day fifty years ago and not returned... At least, not until the start of this summer when he'd trailed a particularly nasty nest of rogues from the northern states and all the way up into Canada and Ontario's cottage country. That being the case, Nicholas had never had the chance to find out who the woman was. He suspected that was a good thing.

Her face already haunted his nightmares. Knowing her name would only make it worse.

"You don't know?" Jo asked dryly. "Well, okay, so how did you meet this woman you didn't know but for some reason killed?"

Nicholas grimaced at her sarcasm, and then leaned his head back against the bed's headboard and closed his eyes. "It was after Annie died. I was... I didn' t take it well. I shut out family and friends and basically wallowed in my grief," he admitted with self-disgust.

"I think that's probably natural," Jo said softly. . "Yes, well..." He licked his lips and opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling overhead as the events played out in his mind. "That day I found a birthday gift Annie had got for a friend of hers at work. She'd bought and wrapped it ahead of time and it had been sitting on her craft table."