Page 28 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

EDIE

I burst into the church, tears streaming down my cheeks. I’m not sure if I want Sawyer to follow me or not. But it was too much, being out there with Greer’s corpse, the scent of blood drowning out the autumn scent of the forest. I was afraid that scent would follow me if I ran into the woods.

I stumble down the aisle, my thoughts cottony and numb. Tears drip off my chin. I’m hardly even aware that I’m crying. I just feel this crush of guilt and fear and confusion. How many times have I thought I should call the police but didn’t? They were all building to this moment of understanding.

Before I know it, I’m at the front of the church. The altar. Sawyer has his knives lined up, as always, and I stare down at them and sob.

Why did it have to happen like this? Why is it that the man who makes me feel safe and beautiful and loved has to be unhinged?

Emotion surges up in me, sudden and terrifying. I screech out my frustrations and swipe my arm across the altar, knocking the blades to the floor with a clatter. One of them cuts me, a thin sting that blooms red. My blood’s the same color as Logan Greer’s.

I slump down against the altar, choking back my tears. My whole body shakes, and I curl into myself as best I can, my breaths shuddery and thin.

There’s a creak and a scrape as the church doors open, the sound filling the space.

I look up, still weeping, and Sawyer steps into the doorway, silhouetted by the autumn sun.

He’s still wearing his mask. Still carrying his knife. He almost looks as if he means to kill me, especially as he walks down the church aisle, his steps slow and deliberate, his clothes dark with blood. I watch him, trembling, as he comes closer and closer.

He steps beside the front pew.

“You’re bleeding.” His voice is dark and raspy. A killer’s voice. “Did he do that to you?”

I tear my gaze away from him to look down at my arm. The blood vines around my wrist like a bracelet.

“N-no,” I say softly. “I—” I look up at him again. He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t put down his knife, either. “I cut myself on your knives.”

His head moves a little, looking toward the altar. “You’re afraid.” He steps closer. “Of me?”

He’s still speaking in his killer’s voice, but with that one question, I hear an undercurrent of?—

Sadness. Disappointment.

It twists my heart into ribbons.

“I’ve never—” The words barely come out a whisper, but I think Sawyer can still hear me, the way he tilts his head a little, the way he comes another step closer. “I’ve never actually seen you?—”

I can’t say it. I can’t say kill . Instead, I choke on my own words.

“I will never kill you,” Sawyer says.

He says it harshly, and I jerk my head up at him in surprise.

“I was afraid I would,” he goes on. “At first. That I would—I’d be overcome. But not anymore.”

And then, as if to prove it, he marches up to where I’m sitting on the aisle and lowers himself down beside me. I can smell the blood on him. I can see the flash of his eyes behind the mask.

“But I won’t stop killing for you.”

My breath catches, and my tears bloom again. But it’s not for the reason he’s thinking. It’s because it never even occurred to me to ask him to.

And what does that say about me?

“If you want to leave,” he continues. “You can go. I won’t follow. Won’t send anyone to kill you or hurt you or even fucking scare you, do you understand?” He rises back up to standing and points at the church door with his still-bloody knife. “You can go right now.”

The sobs wrack through me, and I stare up at him through the veil of my tears.

“Go,” he says, and there’s something pleading in his voice. Something desperate. “Please. I can’t fucking stand to see you cry. Not over this.”

“I don’t want to!”

The words erupt. Sawyer looks back at me, but it’s not Sawyer. It’s that mask. It’s a killer .

Except they’re the same, aren’t they?

“I don’t want to,” I say again, more calmly, and I push myself up, bracing myself against the altar. “And that’s the problem.” My voice cracks. “Because I should. Because I shouldn’t—” I look at the church doors. He didn’t shut them all the way, and sunlight sneaks in. And the truth of things is right there beneath the surface of my tongue, and I know if I say it out loud, if he hears it, there’ll be no going back.

“Because what, Edie?” He steps closer to me. Bloody. Masked. Violent. He still says my name like it’s a prayer .

“Because I shouldn’t like watching what you did.”

He freezes, staring at me through the mask. I choke out another sob, the shame flooding through me. That sick feeling that I’m broken for wanting this. For wanting him .

And then Sawyer moves.

He attacks, although not to kill. Instead, he pins me up against the altar, one blood-sticky hand curled gently around my neck, holding me in place. He slams the knife down into the altar, the sound making me jump against him.

Against his erection.

“You liked watching that?” I can hear the excitement in his voice. The lust.

“He was going to kill me,” I say in a tiny, tiny voice, as if that in any way justifies it.

Sawyer slides his hand up to cup my cheek, leaving streaks of blood on my skin. “I liked doing it.” The mask leers at me. “And I liked having you watch me while I did it.”

Then he pushes me back onto the altar.

I relent under his touch, spreading my legs wide as he wedges between me. When my thigh brushes against the knife, it doesn’t cut me, but the cold of its steel makes me gasp.

Sawyer unzips my jeans and then slides his hand into my panties, pressing one finger into my pussy. He groans at what he finds there, and I know he feels it, the thing I’m afraid to admit to myself.

I’m turned on, my cunt swollen and soaking. Not just by what he did but by him , by the way he looms over me with the blood and the mask and the knife.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

I moan softly—at his words, at the friction as he pulls his hand away from me.

Then he grips his knife and pulls it free of the altar. Fear shivers through me, but only for a second. I trust him.

I trust him .

He rubs Lamar Greer’s blood off the blade, polishing it with his shirt until it’s a shining silver mirror. I stare up at him, breath shuddery, growing wetter by the minute. I keep imagining him sliding the knife into my skin, as gentle as a kiss.

He doesn’t cut me, though. Instead, he slices my jeans away, shredding them to ribbons. I ought to protest—it’s not like I have a ton of clothes out here—but at this moment, I don’t care. I just drop my head back and moan, my hands curling and uncurling into fists. I don’t feel the blade until he presses the flat side against my thigh. It’s breathtakingly cold, and sensation prickles along my skin.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says, although he sounds like a killer when he says it.

Then he swings the knife up and out, cutting my panties away. He grabs the fabric, balls it up, throws it aside.

“My perfect prey,” he growls, yanking down his fly, pulling out his cock. It looks almost painfully hard, the head swollen and leaking precum. He fists it at the base, squeezing it with a grunt, and then slams it up between my legs.

There’s no gentleness, no preparation. Not that I need it, not right now. He just shoves his full, rigid length into my cunt, and I scream at the sudden fullness, arching my back into him. He leans over me, the cool rubber of his mask brushing against my face as he thrusts into me. I match his rhythm, hooking my legs around his thin hips to pull into me. The blood covering him is tacky, half dried, and it sticks to me, sealing us together into one monstrous figure.

“I think your cunt was made for me,” he rasps, each word punctuated by a sharp, shuddery breath. “The way it wraps around my cock.”

“Of course it was,” I pant out, digging my nails into his back. “I’m your perfect prey.”

Sawyer groans when I say that, slamming inside me so hard and so deep that my pleasure sparks, briefly, into pain. And I want more of it. More pain. More desperation.

“Cut me,” I gasp, and it’s like I’m not the one saying the words. But I am. I feel them sharp on my tongue. And I mean them. “Cut me open. I’m your prey. Your prey.”

Sawyer makes a shocked, strangled noise inside his mask and fucks me harder.

“You are perfect.” He sounds faintly awed. I’m aware of his arm moving beside me, and then he pulls back, jerking me closer to the edge of the altar. He’s holding the knife. He’s been holding the knife this entire time.

“Cut me!” I scream. “I want to bleed for you!”

He slices my shirt away and then my bra, cutting it clean down the middle so the cups fall on either side of my torso. Then he presses the flat side of the knife just at the swell of my left breast, where my heart pounds furiously. Although his thrusts never slow, I can sense a hesitation in him, like he’s worried he’ll go too far.

I know he won’t. He’s a killer. But he won’t kill me.

“Sawyer,” I whisper, cupping his mask. It doesn’t feel separate from him anymore, all that blood-splattered rubber. “Please. I want to bleed for you, just like I want to come for you.”

He groans at that, bottoming out in me again. I grunt at the burst of pain as he bumps against my cervix. Squeeze him in tight. I won’t let him move. Not until he cuts me.

“Do it,” I whisper, never taking my eyes off him. “Do it. Please.” My whole body’s thrumming with pleasure, but it needs the pain from his knife to offset it. To release it. “Please, Sawyer, I’m your perfect fucking prey and I want you to?—”

He flips the knife and runs the blade over my chest. The pain isn’t that sharp or intense, but everything is amplified by the heat of his cock thrusting gently inside my pussy, and the angle of his body pressing against my inflamed clit. I scream as my hot blood spills over my skin, warm and wet and perfect.

“Again,” I gasp, and he does, silently, the way he was silent when he brutalized Logan Greer. He cuts across the top of my other breast, then moves lower, trailing the tip of the knife over my belly. Then he tosses the knife aside with a clatter and smears the blood over my skin with his rough palms, sliding his bloodied hands over my tits to mark them, too. I roll my hips, desperately chasing my release. I’m right on the verge of it. I’m so close?—

And then Sawyer roars, and grunts, his hips shuddering against me.

“Fuck!” he shouts, yanking his cock out of me. “Fuck, it was too much, seeing you like that?—”

He runs his fingers through my blood again, and his cum oozes down my thigh, hot and thick as that blood.

“It’s okay,” I gasp at him, delirious with pleasure. “You can finish me off with your hands. It’s fine.” I roll my hips, trying to rut against his leg. “Or your mouth. I don’t care. Just do something .”

He looks down at me, his eyes black behind his mask. I squirm, desperate to feel him inside of me again. Fingers, tongue, anything.

But then he reaches over and grabs his knife, the blade still marked with my blood.