Hunter s Moon - By Lori Handeland Page 0,29

eyes closed in bliss. I took a single step of retreat, meaning to sneak away before I disturbed him.

"Don't go," he whispered.

I hesitated. I shouldn't be alone with Damien in the dark. I wanted things from him I had no business wanting. But in the end I stayed. Because I couldn't make myself go.

"I didn't know you smoked."

I inched closer, sniffed the air, savored the aroma. Once I'd partaken of nearly every vice - alcohol, tobacco, drugs. Anything to take my mind off that night, anything to bring me closer to my loved ones, closer to death. Then Edward had showed me a way to make life worth living, and I'd had to give up all the things that made me less than aware.

But I missed some of them - cigarettes in particular. I understood why people couldn't quit. The habit both calmed and exhilarated, the rhythm soothing, the nicotine stimulating.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me," Damien said.

"Wanna share some?"

He lifted his hand to his mouth. I caught a hint of his tongue flicking at the filter, before he closed his lips around the tip. A trickle of awareness passed over me, and I rubbed at the rising goose bumps on my forearms.

Damien drew on the cigarette. I breathed along with him - in, out - the effect just wasn't the same.

"No," he said.

It took me a moment to remember what in hell I'd asked. Oh, sharing his secrets. As if I'd expected him to say yes.

I was drawn to both him and the scent of the smoke. He wore black again. I was beginning to wonder if he owned anything else.

Smooth pale skin flashed between the open buttons of his shirt as he shifted in my direction and offered me a drag. I wanted to put my mouth where his had been with a desperation that frightened me. I took another step forward before I caught myself, shook my head. "Those things will kill you."

"I can only hope."

His words jerked my gaze from the cigarette to his face, which remained as unreadable as ever. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugged and took another long pull, letting the smoke trail out his nose as he spoke. "In my line of work I'm more likely to get killed in a bar fight than by cancer."

"And you'd prefer cancer?"

"Ever been stabbed? I wouldn't recommend it."

His honesty left me speechless. Despite my violent profession, I was an upper-middle-class Kansas white girl at heart. Getting stabbed in a bar fight was beyond my realm of experience. Getting bitten by a werewolf was another story.

"You could try a different line of work," I suggested.

His lips curved, but he didn't bother to answer. I had the feeling he thought me naive, and I probably was. If he could get another job, he would. So what kept an attractive, reasonably intelligent man in a dead-end occupation?

If I didn't know better, I'd think he was a werewolf. Many of them were drifters who worked at odd jobs for cash. It was easier that way. No record of where you'd been when a bunch of people turned up dead.

There was also the added problem of living long past the time that they should. Something wasn't kosher when someone who looked twenty years old possessed the same Social Security number as a person born in 1925.

Whenever I hunted a new city, I checked out the occupations where being paid in cash was a common occurrence - bartending, waitressing, construction.

Of course there were those who found a way around this problem, faking their own deaths, manufacturing data, buying false identities, or hacking into government files. When you lived forever, you had a lot of time to practice useful skills.

Damien lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first and continued to smoke with barely a hitch in the process.

"Are you on break or something?" I asked.

"Something."

Well, that was enlightening.

"Do you - uh - work every night?"

"Pretty much."

"There's no other bartender?"

"There was, but she took off."

"When?"

"The night you showed up. That was why I was getting dressed so late for work. Sue didn't come in. No one's seen her since."

Uh-oh. I had a feeling I knew what had happened to Sue. Namely me. No one had reported her missing and probably ever would.

"She worked nights, too?"

A pertinent question. Werewolves had to hunt. It was their nature. They couldn't go indefinitely without a kill. Like the Weendigo, they craved human flesh.

In opposition to popular myth, werewolves didn't