Page 45 of Hunted

Gunn looked out the window and said, “Just drive, okay?”

Michelangela put the truck in gear, and drove.

Chapter 20

For the rest of the night, they took turns driving and sleeping. Neither one of them had slept much for days, and they needed to be sharp for this mission.

Towards daylight, Gunn woke Michelangela with a touch on the shoulder. They were parked on a city street.

“Where are we?”

“Buffalo. Home of Niagara Falls. Full of tourists, so we won’t stand out. It’s time to get a new ride.”

“Fuck me.” Michelangela stretched cautiously. She was stiff, although her bullet wound seemed to have healed. But her stomach felt like an empty shell; the beef jerky last night hadn’t even made a dent. “Can we get some coffee before we start committing felonies? And maybe about a dozen doughnuts?”

“There’s a coffee shop around the corner.”

“I love a partner who knows what I need.”

She said it lightly, but Gunn smiled at her, holding her eyes for a moment. The warmth in them gave her shivers in her belly. He handed her a water bottle and a handful of fast-food napkins. “You might want to straighten yourself up a little. I don’t mind the morning-after-the-night-before look, but you probably don’t want to take it out in public.”

“Thanks a lot for the not-compliment. Suave as ever, I see.”

He gave a soft laugh. “If you’re looking for romance, you’re barking up the wrong tree, wolf.”

He was wrong about that; last night had been plenty romantic before his men tried to take her away in chains. “You have your moments.”

Michelangela slicked her hair back with water from the bottle, and screwed it up in a knot. Then she wet a couple of the napkins and rubbed them over her face. “Okay?” she asked, turning to Gunn.

“Beautiful.” He leaned in and kissed her, his lips lingering on hers for a moment. “Not as sexy as the wild look, but still beautiful.”

Gods, she’d missed that look in his eyes. His touch. How had she survived this long without him?

“Come on,” he said. “The longer we stay in this vehicle, the closer we are to getting caught.”

They cleared everything they would need out of the truck and packed it in Gunn’s bag, including all their weapons and gear, leaving their oh-so-trackable phones behind. Then they headed for coffee, Gunn putting on a pair of shades and pulling up his hood.

“You sure you want to do that?” she asked. “You look like a gangster.”

He surveyed her, with her form-fitting stretchy rip-stop work pants, his shirt with the tails knotted at her waist and her combat boots. All black. “You look like Xena the Warrior Princess went through a time warp. How do you not get noticed in those clothes?”

“They’re my hunting-in-the-wilderness clothes. At least, the bottom half are. I don’t go to the grocery store in them, for fuck’s sake.”

He shook his head and found a loose jacket in his go bag, and she put it on without arguing. Larger cities were more anonymous, but they also had more surveillance cameras, which would make it possible for Thanatos to track them. The less recognizable they were, the better.

Of course they did get noticed in the coffee shop—but it wasn’t because of her. Gunn was tall and imposing and moved like a predator, and the hoodie and shades just made him more menacing.

Humans didn’t really understand alpha mojo, but they felt it subconsciously, and it made them nervous.

“Put your hood down,” Michelangela whispered, as the other people in line edged away from them. “And dial down the dominance, would you? You’re scaring the Muggles.”

Gunn gave her a feral grin and murmured, “I am scary.” But he shoved the hood down and hooked the sunglasses in the ‘v’ at the top of his hoodie.

It didn’t help much; he was still too large and too hot and too everything to blend in.

They got their coffee, but before Michelangela could order doughnuts, Gunn jumped in an ordered a whole stack of bacon and egg sandwiches.

“I want sugar,” Michelangela grumbled.