"Ah, yes," Amelie interjected. "That's the one and only Bessie Smith."
Not that Hunter or Corinne needed the confirmation. It was the same song that had played in the jazz club that first night they'd arrived in New Orleans. Just looking at Hunter now made that moment come back to vivid life in Corinne's mind. She felt his hard body against hers as she'd danced with him, remembered so well the tender instant when he'd kissed her that first time.
"You like Bessie too?" Amelie asked, humming softly to the lyrics.
"She's my favorite," Hunter said, his voice low, mouth quirked into a sensual curve that made Corinne's pulse thump hard in her veins. He moved closer, coming around the front of her and caging her between his arms. He bent his head toward her ear and whispered for her alone,
"And this song has nothing to do with coffee grinders."
Corinne's face flamed, but it was a heat coiling lower on her anatomy that made her shudder against him as he let his mouth travel from beneath her earlobe to the sensitive hollow of her collarbone. She was vaguely aware of Amelie rising from her chair at the table. Hunter drew back only then, and Corinne took the chance to wrangle back her breath.
Chapter Twenty-seven
"Amelie, where are you going?"
"I'm old, child, and life here is simple. After dinner, I like to watch my game shows and take a nap." Her cloudy eyes wandered very close to where Corinne and Hunter stood. "Besides, you two don't need me hanging around eavesdropping when you'd rather be alone. I may be blind, but I ain't blind. "
Before Corinne could protest, Amelie gave them a little wave and shuffled out of the kitchen toward the hallway. "Don't pay me any mind at all," she called, her singsong voice full of amusement. "I'll be watching my programs with the volume up so loud, I wouldn't hear a hurricane."
Corinne's smile broke into a soft laugh. "Good night, Amelie."
From down the hall, the sound of a door closing echoed up into the kitchen. Hunter took Corinne's hands into his, drying one then the other with the dish towel. He set it down on the counter, then wrapped his fingers around hers and led her to the center of the little kitchen. While Bessie Smith crooned about bad love and good sex, they held each other close and swayed together slowly. The moment felt utterly pure, unrushed, and peaceful ... perfect. So much so, it put an ache in Corinne's heart.
And although neither of them had to say it, she saw her own thoughts reflected in Hunter's hooded, haunted golden eyes.
How long could a perfect moment - a happiness as innocent as this simple slice of time they'd found together, right here and now - truly be expected to last?
Hunter stood with his back to the wall of the bedroom he shared with Corinne in Amelie's house, watching the moonlight play over her na**d body from the open window. The sounds of swamp animals echoed in the distance, deadly night predators like him, called by the darkness and primed to search out fresh prey. They would hunt, and, if successful, they would kill. Tomorrow evening, the cycle would begin again.
It was simply what they did, what they'd been born to do: destroy without mercy or regret, without questioning if there was something more for them in another place. No basis from which to crave anything but what they already knew.
Hunter knew that world.
He'd navigated it without flaw for as long as he could remember.
And he damn well knew better than to permit himself to imagine pointless scenarios, especially those where he was tempted to paint himself a hero. A white knight of some improbable legend, pledged to ride to the salvation of the beautiful damsel in need, like the ones he'd read about ages ago ... before his Minion handler had removed all the books from his meager quarters at the Vermont farmhouse and forced him to watch them burn. He was no one's hero, no matter how much this time alone with Corinne was making him wish he could be.
Part of that longing was his blood bond to her. She was inside him now, her cells nourishing his, weaving a visceral connection that would likely amplify all of his feelings toward her. At least, that's what his reason insisted it was.
Better a physiological explanation than the more disturbing one that had been battering around in his head - and in the center of his chest - since the few private moments he'd spent holding Corinne in his arms, dancing with her on the worn yellow linoleum of Amelie Dupree's tiny kitchen.
If he could have stretched that moment out forever, he would have. Without hesitation, he would have been content simply to hold Corinne in his arms for as long as she'd have let him. He yearned to, even now, after they'd finished straightening the kitchen together then gone to bed and made love slowly.
The banging in his chest only intensified at the thought, all the worse when he could smell her on his skin and taste her on his tongue. He wanted to wake her and show her more pleasure. He wanted to hear her gasp his name as she wept with sexual release and clung to him as though he were the only male she ever wanted in her bed.
Madly, yet with a ferocity he could hardly reconcile, he wanted to hear her promise him he was the only male she might ever love.
Which was why he'd denied himself the comfort of lying next to her on the bed while she slept. He had already taken more than he had a right to where she was concerned. He needed to remind himself of who he was. More to the point, who he could never be. Their safe house hostess had been right about one thing. Corinne deserved to be happy. Now that her blood memories had shown him the horrors of her ordeal, he could only marvel that she survived, let alone managed to come out of that prison with her humanity intact. Her heart was still pure, still open and vulnerable, in spite of her heinous treatment. The way he saw it, she had endured far worse than he. Dragos had deliberately stripped Corinne of her spirit and soul, where Hunter was simply denied his from the beginning. When he'd first met her, Hunter had felt a curiosity about the petite female who had come out of Dragos's laboratory cells with a fire still burning in her eyes. That curiosity had evolved into a strange kinship for him - an unexpected sympathy - as he'd watched her struggle to get her bearings in a world whose foundation had shifted beneath her the first time she tried to step back onto it. Unsure where she belonged, uncertain whom she could trust, even a battle-tested warrior might have had his moments of doubt.