Page 17 of Art of the Hunt
“Breathe, buttercup,” Rich shouted.
“Push, Gina,” Artemis yelled.
“You can do it,” Hunter blurted.
Yeah, he was a real winner on the encouragement front, wasn’t he?
Gina screamed and groaned and made various other noises that implied she was in a lot of pain, and then she gasped and a moment later, the sound of a baby crying burst into the otherwise relative quiet, and Hunter watched as Artemis scrubbed blood and gunk off a ruddy, wrinkled, tiny human before expertly swaddling it like a little burrito and handing it off to the new mom.
Hunter sniffed and swiped wetness out of his eye.
Artemis draped a towel over Gina’s groin then stood and stretched. Hunter watched the action with rapt attention. He’d thought—okay, maybe hoped—this whole birthing a kid in the middle of the woods business would tamp down this odd attraction he felt for the even odder woman, but nope.
In fact, he wanted to push her up against one of the more sturdy trees in the area and practice making a baby of their own.
He didn’t actually want to succeed; he just wanted to practice. Lots and lots of practice.
And only with Artemis.
What the hell happened to his earlier frustration with the woman? He didn’t have a decent explanation for the supplies she’d known were lying next to the path, and she still insisted she was an immortal being. How in the world was he possibly attracted to her?
It was definitely time to get back to the city and send her on her way so he could forget about what were most definitely the two strangest days of his entire life.
While the new parents sat in the middle of the trail and admired what they’d created, Artemis brushed her palms together and stepped up to Hunter, who was keeping a respectable distance from the emotional upheaval.
“You okay?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Why are you asking me that?”
She lifted one shoulder, let it drop. “You seem…out of sorts.”
“Well, you did just help birth a baby in the middle of the woods. And I saw more of that woman’s body than I’ve seen of any woman’s body in—” He snapped his mouth shut too late. Her eyes widened.
“In how long?” she asked, canting her head and appearing to patiently wait for an answer to a question that was highly embarrassing.
He’d finally collected his wits enough to make the call, and he could hear a siren in the distance.
“I’m not telling you that.” He brushed past her and stalked down the path toward the parking lot. “I’m going to go wait for the ambulance.”
Chapter Six
Hunter led the EMT crew to where they’d left the new family to bond, out on the trail in the woods. When he returned, he informed Artemis that he needed to get back to work, so they hopped onto her bike and drove away.
And since it wasn’t easy to have a conversation while cruising along on a Harley, Artemis didn’t get to press the issue until they were back at the police building, where he insisted he needed to do paperwork.
“Doing paperwork” sounded boring as hell, so she decided not to join him, but she did feel the need to give him advice before they parted ways.
“You need to have sex,” she informed him as he slid his leg off the bike.
He tripped and stumbled away, grabbing onto a nearby light pole, presumably to keep himself upright. “What did you just say?”
“You need to have sex,” she repeated, adding a nod for emphasis.
He stared at her. “That’s it? That’s your proclamation?”
“Yes. It isn’t healthy to avoid intimacy.”
“I’m not avoiding intimacy. Besides, what’s one got to do with the other?”
