Page 41 of Huntress Unleashed

Trey smiled finally and said, “I’ll dance with you.”

“So will I,” Ryan said.

She laughed. “Good. I’ll hold each of you to it.”

“Hot damn,” Ryan said.

They agreed to meet them at the club at the appointed time and they gave her and Dane hugs, then left.

Dane said to her, “I’ll go with you and help you unload your car at your place and then return home, via the vampire way to get in some more practice.”

She agreed to the deal. “You know I only want to dance with your brothers at the hunters’ club to prove how nice they are to us when other hunters might not treat us well.”

“Yeah, and I want you to dance with them for that reason too.”

“But no other hunters, right?”

Dane laughed.

“I’ll grab Princess and then we’ll head over to my place.” She vanished and returned with Princess in her arms, then she handed her to Dane.

They climbed into her car and drove over to her place. “I won’t lie about it. After no one came to your aid, I feel the hunters don’t deserve you,” Dane said.

She smiled. “If it hadn’t been for your brothers being so helpful and to prove a point to the other hunters, I wouldn’t be dancing with anyone but you tonight.” Then she glanced at Princess curled up on his lap. “She’s going to miss having you to cuddle with her tonight.”

Dane smiled. “You might be right, but I believe it was only because both of us were there together.”

She scoffed. He laughed.

Then she drove into her garage, and he took Princess into the house while she rolled her bag inside. He carried the cat supplies inside while she put everything where it belonged. Princess was checking the place out as if she hadn’t been there in eons and something might have changed.

After they were finished, Jacqueline pulled Dane into her arms. “Thank you for saving me earlier today.”

“Thank you for not skewering me.”

She sighed. “I really was fighting Heskel’s commands. I think it made him even angrier that he didn’t seem to have the control over me that he thought he would have.”

“Adonis was the same way. He couldn’t kill Piaras, but the rogue vampire had told Adonis that he couldn’t fall in love with Rachael, that she was Piaras’s. Of course, Adonis was in love with Rachael from the moment he laid eyes on her and Piaras had no control over it.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, so I don’t think they can completely control hunters like they can humans. But it elevates them in the rogue vampire community to say they have a hunter at their beck in call. In Piaras’s case, two, Adonis and his sister, plus he was holding their parents and younger sister, Pasha, hostage. Non-rogue vampires, had they have known, would have wanted to have taken Piaras down themselves. They don’t want their reputations sullied by a rogue like that. But the rogues? They really looked up to him,” Dane said.

“I would have helped them if I had known.”

“Adonis couldn’t tell anyone. Not even Rachael’s family. They were all hunters, and they wouldn’t have been happy if they had learned a hunter turned vampire wanted her for his mate. Worse, that he was supposed to turn Rachael over to Piaras who promised to release the rest of his family.”

“But I suspect Piaras wouldn’t have,” Jacqueline said.

“No, you’re right. He would never have released them. He figured Adonis and his family didn’t have any hunter friends here, no one knew anything about them since they were from Florida, so no one would come to their aid. You know how it is. Hunters are territorial just like vampires are. So when they came here looking for a friend who had disappeared and they had gotten involved with Piaras, they hadn’t had the local hunters’ approval.”

“Ahh.”

“Anyway, I’m sure Adonis felt the same way about you when he heard what you were going through. Danai also.”

“She’s dark, and sultry and beautiful,” Jacqueline said.

“Yeah, she seems to have come out of her shell for Michael, though she’s still cautious about meeting people she doesn’t know.”