Page 23 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SAWYER

I am a monster. A killer. And when Edie stills beneath me, her body going slack and heavy, I come. I come fucking hard , harder even than when I fucked her in the shower. I roar like the goddamn animal that I am, but I also, somehow, yank my cock out of her mouth. My cum splatters across her face. Her parted lips. Her closed eyes. Her slack jaw.

You killed her.

The thought hits me with startling, painful clarity, and I fall to my knees, choking out, “No, no, no,” as I grope around her pale, soft neck.

I find her pulse.

It’s strong and sure, fluttering wildly against my fingers, and I sigh and slump down on the bed. I never should have done that. Abusing her cunt is one thing. She can clearly handle it. But abusing her mouth?

Too dangerous. Far too fucking dangerous.

I murmur her name and brush her hair away from her face. She stirs a little, eyes rippling beneath her lids. I hate to admit it, but my cum looks gorgeous on her skin, pale and pearly. A pretty picture that I snapshot for when I’m alone and need release .

She moans a little, her body stirring. I push myself up and grab one of my clean T-shirts out of the little closet. Then I sit down next to her on the bed, lift her head into my lap, and wipe my cum away.

Her eyelids flutter open and her eyes settle on me, her gaze soft and unfocused.

“I’m sorry about that, baby,” I say softly, wiping off the cum that had spilled down the side of her neck. “I worried—I get carried away. I ain’t—” I swallow, don’t look her in the eye. “I ain’t normal. But I guess you knew that.”

“Sawyer.” Her hand reaches up and trails along my jaw. Her touch is weak, but it’s enough to get me to look at her. Fuck, she’s beautiful right now. Her skin flushed, her lips swollen. A tear trail streaking down the side of her right temple.

Wrecked. Destroyed. Murdered.

“I liked it.” The words barely came out a whisper. “I—I don’t think I’ve ever—you choking me and me touching myself. It was?—”

Her words dissolve into a sigh as she settles down in my lap, and I stroke her hair like I’m trying to smooth it down.

“I’m glad,” I say, honestly. “But don’t give me a scare like that. I don’t want you dying on me.”

She laughs, and it’s kind of delirious, the way people will laugh right before I kill them. “This whole situation is so fucked.”

I don’t want her talking like that. I scoop her up so we’re both sitting properly, then I pull her into my chest. She falls into me, sighing almost happily, and I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a girl who doesn’t care what you are. That just loves you.

She doesn’t love you .

It’s Mama’s voice. I hold Edie tighter like that’ll drive it away.

She burrows into me, pressing her nose into my throat. When she speaks, I can feel the warmth of her breath, and it’s reassuring, knowing that I didn’t just kill her.

“Sawyer? What— are you exactly? ”

I feel myself go still. Edie shifts around and pulls back to look up at me, blinking her big brown eyes.

“I told you,” I finally say.

She frowns. “You told me you can’t die,” she says. “And clearly—” She gestures at me. “But why? And why do you—” She stops and swallows, her pretty throat bobbing. “What are you?”

The question kind of hangs in the air, as heavy as the lingering humidity from the storm. I sigh and pull her into me again, then draw both of us down to stretch out on the bed. It’s so perfect right now, everything dark and cool and the sweat drying on our skin and my body all loose from coming twice, that I don’t want to ruin it. But I can feel her worrying the question beside me. She’s not going to give it up.

“My mama called us Hunters.” I say it to the ceiling, not to her, the tiles stained with old water. “I have this friend, Ambrose, he calls us boogeymen. Even though we’re not all men.”

I force myself to glance over at Edie. She just looks confused.

“Your mother?” she says.

I laugh. “Yeah, I’ve got a mother. She’s like me. A Hunter, or whatever.” I stroke my hand over the soft cloud of Edie’s hair. “You won’t be meeting her.”

I mean it as a joke, and I’m relieved when Edie laughs. “You will not be meeting my mother either.” She pauses for a second. “I guarantee she’s worse than yours.”

I chuckle at that, and Edie rolls over on her side, peering up at me. I can’t stop myself from running my hand down the dip of her waist, her flesh soft and grabbable.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Oh, no.” She shakes her head. “No, no. This isn’t Silence of the Lambs. We’re not going back and forth on questions until you finish explaining what you are. Hunter doesn’t cut it.”

I roll my eyes.

“Boogeyman, though…” She frowns thoughtfully. “So you’re… supernatural? ”

I shrug. “I guess.” I settle down on my side, too, facing her, still running my hand over her hip and waist. She doesn’t shy away from my touch, and I love that. “My people, people like me, I mean—We kill. That’s what we do. We hunt. Different people have different theories as to why.”

“What’s yours?”

She doesn’t sound scared. Just curious.

“It’s a compulsion,” I say after thinking on it for a moment. “Kind of like eating or—” Heat floods into my face, and I wonder if I should tell her. “Fucking.”

Fear flickers through her eyes. But she still doesn’t pull away. “Oh.”

“It’s not exactly like fucking,” I say, even though, honestly, it kind of is, at least in how good it feels. “I could go without fucking, you know? But I can’t go without eating. And killing’s the same way.”

“Have you tried?”

The question comes out small, almost like she’s afraid of asking it. And when I hear it, something hardens in my heart. I almost want to spit out, Have you tried not eating? but I already know the damn answer to that, don’t I?

“No,” I finally say. “But my mama told me her father did. My grandpa. He—” I hesitate, the story flickering through my head. Mama told it to me every damn chance she got. “He tried to stop himself from killing. Went cold turkey.” I pause, studying Edie’s face. She doesn’t look too scared. “But the longer he suppressed being a Hunter, the more he wanted to kill, and he wound up—he wound up killing his wife. My grandmother. Didn’t matter that he loved her.”

There’s the fear, pooling through her her widening eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I’d rather not do that, so when I start to feel the itch I take care of it.” I squeeze her thigh. “If I didn’t, I’d risk hurting someone I don’t want to hurt.”

Like you .

I don’t say it aloud, but from the way Edie drinks me in I know she knows anyway. Her lips curl up into a little hint of a smile. Just a little.

“I guess that makes sense,” she finally says. Then, quickly: “So why can’t you die?”

“That, I don’t know. Mama says that’s just how it is. My friend Jaxon thinks we’re blessed by these old pagan gods, but he’s crazy.”

Edie smiles at that. “Your friends,” she says. “Do they—they live here? I’m assuming they’re, um, like you.”

“Hunters? Yeah, of course.” I move my hand a little higher to rub her arm. Her skin’s soft as silk and I don’t ever want to stop touching it. “But they don’t live here. Jaxon’s in Louisiana. Ambrose is in Texas. Mama’s—I don’t know. She travels around. Last I heard she was in Tennessee.”

“How many of you are there?”

I give her a sharp grin. “Maybe we should play Silence of the Lambs . Feel like I’m getting the third degree here.”

“That’s because you already know everything important about me.” She’s serious when she says it. Dead serious, I think. “Almost all the terrible things that happened in my life, you were there.”

I feel myself blanch. I don’t know how to take that.

“Except for one,” she adds, very very softly. “The worst one. But you—you were there after.” She hesitates. “And I’m glad you were.”

She looks up at me like I’m her whole world, like I’m the fucking moon and stars, and for a moment I’ve had that thing I’ve wanted my whole damn life.

I kiss her. Soft and slow and sweet, curling my fingers up along the side of her neck.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she whispers against my lips.

“There’s not a goddamn thing wrong with you,” I whisper back, tightening my fingers against her pulse. It’s quickened, like a rabbit’s.

“I should be horrified by you.”

She’s not wrong, even if it hurts to hear her say it.

“I am what I am,” I finally say. “I ain’t human, like you. I’ve got different needs.” I brush my thumb over her lips and try not to think about how glossy they looked as she choked on my cock. “And maybe you just need what I can offer.”

She grabs my wrist and pulls my hand away and kisses me. And it ain’t soft and slow and sweet, neither.

I roll on top of her, not breaking the kiss, and she parts her legs for me. I don’t slide in just yet, though. Instead, I keep kissing her, on her mouth and her neck and her tits, and telling her all these things that are true. Like how I’m going to protect her. And how I won’t let her ex-husband hurt her. And how fucking beautiful she is. And how she’s my perfect prey.

And it’s not long at all before I can feel the moisture between her thighs.

I settle myself between her, rubbing my cockhead against her clit until she’s squirming and gasping, her eyes glassy with pleasure. I want it to be nice this time, not rough and violent, so I go slow, easing myself into her tight, sweet cunt. But I’m only about an inch in when she puts her hand on my arm and says, “Do you think I’m a good person?”

I go still, blinking down at her. She looks kind of sheepish but also kind of hopeful.

Then I push all the way in, making her whimper with pleasure.

“Edie,” I say, “You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Her lips part, but she doesn’t say anything. I don’t need her to. And honestly, I don’t need to say anything else, either. I want to show her what it means to me, her being here even though she’s a human woman who worries about shit like that, being a good person, and I’m the monster that girls like her are supposed to fear.

I roll my hips against her, pulling my cock out real slow and then guiding it back in, relishing the way her pussy walls flutter against my hardness. Edie sinks back on the pillow, giving herself over to the pleasure the way she does. Her hips move with mine, and I push up so I’m on my knees, her ankles propped on my shoulder. I want to see her while I fuck her. I want to watch her body move and her skin flush. And I want to reach down and play with her clit.

“Sawyer,” she whispers, pushing herself down on my cock, her hands coming up to squeeze her tits. It drives me wild.

“Say my name again,” I tell her, maybe a little more harshly than I intend.

Her eyes flutter open, and she looks right at me. “Sawyer,” she says, louder, and I fuck her a little faster, rubbing my thumb over her clit. “Sawyer,” she gasps. “Fuck, Sawyer, right there…”

She arches into me, her words dissolving into a low, throaty groan. I can tell from the way she’s shaking that she’s close, but she’s not there yet. I close my own eyes and just keep rolling into her, letting my thoughts go blank. I don’t think about killing—not her, not anybody. All that matters is how good she feels on my cock. All that matters are those desperate noises she makes as she comes closer and closer to finishing.

When she comes, she groans, her rolling hips going still even as her pussy clamps down hard on me. I fuck her through it, the way I discovered I like to, drawing everything out for her. Then I fold myself down so I can kiss over her tits and neck and mouth. She wraps her arms around me, pulling me into her, clinging to me the way she did that night I killed all her tormenters.

And just as long as we’re like this, me buried to the hilt in her perfect body, her squeezing me in close, I can pretend she loves me.