She was a bad little kitty.
One of Hell’s own.
And she prowled the nightclub in a way that had every males’ eyes glued to her shapely form.
Even his.
Heck, if he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t even looking at her as a hunter eyeing potential prey. He was staring at her with a gaze as hungry as the next man’s.
Owen leaned his left elbow on the black bar behind him, admiring the way she moved as she danced near the fringes of the Saturday night crowd, every sway of her hips entrancing him. She was beautiful. He had to give her that.
She raised her arms above her head, lifting her dark boned strapless corset and revealing a tantalising flash of toned stomach. Her hips shifted again, the colourful lights of the club reflecting off her tight leather trousers, accenting each dip and gyration she made. Several males nearby, not all of them fae or demon, gawped at her as they danced at a modest distance, every one of them looking as if they might drop dead if she dared to give them an ounce of her attention.
She didn’t seem interested in the men present though. She seemed content with dancing alone, lost in the heavy beat of the music, working up a sweat that caused an alluring sheen across her ample cleavage.
Owen didn’t feel the pain of the bruises and cuts beneath his black shirt as he watched her. She stole his awareness of the injuries he had sustained on his last job, more effective than any of the painkillers he had taken and the alcohol he had imbibed.
He had come out to Underworld tonight to spend a nice chunk of the fat pay he had received from a small group of rare weak fae after giving the demon who had been terrorising them what he had deserved.
His father and grandfather were probably turning in their graves because of the changes he had made to the family business.
A Nightingale taking money for services rendered? Shocking.
Owen didn’t care that he had turned into more of a mercenary than a were-hunter, ending the family tradition and probably tarnishing their name. The family money had run out shortly after his father’s death thanks to his string of marriages, and subsequent divorces.
Owen had had a choice. Go mercenary, or get a paying job. Since he had been raised from birth to be a hunter, the only skills he possessed were fighting and killing, and knowledge of fae and demons. They weren’t exactly the sort of qualifications the average office job was looking for, so he had gone mercenary.
Now, he hunted whatever people asked him to hunt, as long as it met his criteria. He refused to hunt fae, demons or shifters who had done nothing wrong. He only took jobs if the enemy involved was a threat to humans or other fae, and even demons sometimes. As far as he could see, he was doing exactly what he would have been doing as a Nightingale, only he was getting paid for it.
The female shifter ran her hands up her body, dragging his focus back to her, and Owen couldn’t stop his gaze from tracking them over every lush and tempting curve, especially when she ran them over her breasts and up her neck.
She tangled her fingers in her long dark hair, drawing the damp lengths away from her neck as she closed her eyes, a flicker of bliss crossing her pretty face. The air-conditioning in Underworld was cranked up tonight, but it wasn’t enough to combat the heat coming off everyone on the packed dance floor.
It wasn’t enough to cool Owen down as he stared at her.
Strong hands clamped down on Owen’s shoulders from behind, fingers tipped with short claws pressing through his black shirt, and he stiffened and winced as some of the bruises he had picked up on his last job burned beneath the pressure of the male’s grip.
“I’d reconsider if you were thinking of doing something stupid in my club.” The deep male voice growled over the thumping rock music, close to his ear, and Owen knew without looking who was behind him on the other side of the bar. Kyter. The big blond shifter owned Underworld and they had a sort of accord. Owen didn’t hunt on his turf and Kyter didn’t kill him. “I’m not in the mood to see a fellow cat get her tail pulled. I won’t be held responsible for how it will end for you.”
Kyter released his shoulders.
Owen slowly turned on his stool to face him, his wide eyes meeting the bright golden ones of the jaguar shifter. “I swear, I’m off duty.”
Kyter didn’t look as if he believed him, but Owen couldn’t hold that against him. Kyter and most of the staff at Underworld, and probably most of the non-human patrons, knew what he did for a living and they had every right to be wary around him.
Especially the patrons.
Owen guessed that if he took his tablet device out of the bag at the foot of his stool, he would find at least a fifth of them were in his database for some misdemeanour or another.
The sandy-haired male looked as if he might ask him to leave, but then his gaze slid to Owen’s right.
Owen looked there and found the female he had been studying bouncing up to the bar, a big smile on her face as she breathed hard. She turned that killer smile on Kyter and Owen felt an undeniable urge to add the shifter to his database. He shot the big jaguar a glare.
Kyter’s right eyebrow lifted.
A ripple of heat travelled through Owen and he became aware of the beautiful woman beside him.
Staring at him.
He slowly turned his head towards her as Kyter walked away. Blue eyes met his, turning the ripple of heat into an inferno that blasted through his veins, burning up his blood. A corona of brighter blue fire shone around her dilated pupils as she stared into his eyes, radiating confidence that shook his own.
She was more beautiful than he had thought.
Owen could only stare at her in silence as she looked at him, her long black lashes and dark make-up framing striking blue eyes.
A hellcat.
They were the rarest of the cat shifters and fetched high prices on the black market of Hell.
He had never seen one of her kind, not in all his years as a hunter or during all of the training that had come before them. He doubted that even the hunters who worked for Archangel, the world’s leading hunter organisation devoted to protecting the unwitting humans from the secret and often dangerous world of fae and demons, had seen a hellcat.
She turned her cheek to him and flagged a bartender. Owen didn’t pay any attention to who served her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she spoke, her painted red lips moving in a mesmerising symphony, filling him with a fierce need to kiss her.
It was only when she turned back to face him and slid a glass across the black bar top in his direction that he became aware of something else in the club. His pale gaze dropped to the drink she had evidently bought for him.
A shot of Hellfire.
Heck, she was trying to kill him.
Hellfire was a vicious drink brewed by the non-humans, designed to overcome their constitutions and get them drunk.
The female hellcat slid onto the stool beside him, picked up her own shot glass filled to the brim with the black liquid and raised it.
Her wicked smile made it clear that she was testing him. She knew he was mortal and she wanted to see what he would do and whether he could survive downing the potent shot of alcohol. He was up for that challenge. He took a deep breath to steel himself, grabbed his shot glass and lifted it, saluting her.
Owen raised it to his lips.
“Wait.” Her light melodic voice stopped him dead and he stared at her, the glass close to his lips, the fumes coming off the liquid singeing his nose.
She flagged the bartender again, her smile turning even more wicked.
When the only female and human bartender working for the club stopped on the other side of the bar, his little hellcat fluttered her eyelashes and dropped a huge hammer on his male pride.
“Can we get a glass of water for when he chokes?”
Owen glared at the bartender, Sherry, warning the blonde not to do as the woman had requested.
Sherry barely managed to hold back her smile and went ahead and kicked him in the balls while he was down by serving up a tall glass of ice-cold water, setting it right down in front of him, her eyes twinkling.
He narrowed his eyes on the water, shoved it away and pinned his gaze back on the female hellcat. She raised her glass, her smile mocking him now. A slow smile spread across his face as he lifted his shot of Hellfire and saluted her again. She didn’t know who she was dealing with if she thought this was going to play out the way she wanted it, ending with him coughing up a lung and downing the water.
Owen brought the shot up to his lips, holding her gaze the whole time, staring deep into her eyes. She paused with her glass near her lips, her smile fading as the air between them thickened and sparked with electricity, awareness that zinged through his body. He didn’t close his eyes. He kept them locked with hers as he tipped his head back and swallowed the entire contents of the glass.
The liquid burned like the fire it was named after as it slid down his throat and turned his stomach into a pit of churning lava. An inferno swept through him but he held it together, refusing to give the slightest indication of the discomfort he was suffering as his entire body burned and his head turned, his vision swimming slightly from the sudden rise in his blood alcohol level.
He slowly set the glass down, lowered his head, and licked his lips.
Her blue gaze narrowed and she knocked her shot back, slammed the glass down on the black bar top, and stared at him.
Tears lined her long lashes.
Her lips compressed and trembled.
Her right eye developed a vicious tic.
Owen calmly pressed two fingers against the side of the ice-cold glass of water and pushed it along the bar towards her, the condensation on it rolling down and leaving a trail behind it. She glared at the glass, straightened and managed a smile.
He wasn’t sure what the point of her entire competition had been, but he had the feeling that he had won and she didn’t like it.
She leaned back, brushed her long black hair from her face, and fixed him with her blue eyes and a smile that shook him to his core.
“I don’t often see your kind around,” she said over the pounding music and leaned closer to him.
Owen fought to stop himself from looking down at her cleavage, casually leaned his left elbow on the bar and smiled at her. “It’s not every day I get to see a genuine hellcat. One of the Devil’s own.”
Born of a land of brimstone and fire where only the strongest survived.
Her kin were the most powerful, and dangerous, shifter species out there. His father would have killed to have met one.
She leaned even closer and ran her right hand down his forearm where it rested on the bar, her light caress heating his skin even through his black shirtsleeve. Her smile turned sultry and a little bit wicked again, making his heart pound harder and his thoughts turn back to kissing her.
“Do you want to see the real me?” Her eyes held him, the fiery blue corona around her pupils burning brighter, making part of him believe she would change right here and show him her cat form if he admitted he wanted to see it, even when the rest of him knew she was teasing. “I can see you’re dying to see it.”
Definitely flirting with him.
He had enough life experience to know when a woman was flirting with him, but for some reason he hadn’t expected it from her. Non-human females were rarely interested in him, especially when they knew what he did for a living as she did. She could have any pick of the males in the club who had been staring at her all night, most of them shifters and fae, and some demons. Males who were still staring at her, and who were shooting him deadly looks. He could almost feel them butchering him in their heads as the female sat with him and he had a feeling he wouldn’t survive the night if she did more than just sit beside him and casually flirt.
Owen frowned as he thought back over the hour that had passed since he had first spotted her.
She hadn’t looked at any of the men who had tried to dance with her.
She had paid them zero attention.
She hadn’t moved into the throng to find a lucky partner more suited to her tastes either.
She had remained at the edge of the dance floor.
Directly in front of him.
Owen stared at her as it struck him hard.
She had been flirting with him the whole time, trying to get his attention and hold it locked on her.
“What if I said yes?” He leaned closer to her, studying her face for a reaction, a tiny flicker of hope or insecurity, something to confirm his suspicions that she had actually singled him out from the moment she had walked into the club.
He had seen her enter, a little out of breath as if she had been running and a little on edge. Her eyes had met his across the club and she had stared at him for a moment before disappearing from view, only to reappear a short time later on the dance floor.
Owen placed his right hand over hers where it rested on his left forearm and looked deep into her striking eyes. “Would you show me just how beautiful you are?”
A blush climbed her cheeks and she took her hand away. “You might not live to tell the tale.”
He reached towards her and caught her right hand, bringing it back to him, toying with her slender fingers. Black nails. A hint of what she would look like if she shifted. She was right and he was dying to see her other form. He only had rumours to go on, but if she transformed, she would without a doubt be the most incredible thing he had ever seen.
He raised his eyes back to hers.
Heck, she was already the most incredible thing he had ever seen.
“I can handle myself,” he husked and her cheeks darkened further. “I can handle you.”
He moved his fingers beneath hers, brushed his thumb over them, and lifted her hand to his lips. He stopped just short, so his mouth hovered bare millimetres from her skin, and she stared at him, her blue eyes wide and entrancing, her lips parted as she breathed harder. The intense sense of anticipation that filled her swirled through him too, cranking him tighter inside and making him itch to drop a kiss on her knuckles, fulfilling both of their desires.
He held her gaze instead and swept his thumb across the backs of her fingers as he spoke, his breath washing over her hand.
“So will you make my wildest dreams come true?”
