Page 33 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SAWYER

W e don’t have much time to get everything ready, but I’m glad Edie’s ex is coming out sooner rather than later. I can smell the nor’easter on the horizon, the metallic scent of frost and snow. Every time I go outside, my skin prickles with it. An early snowstorm is just what we need. It’ll blanket everything in silence, cover our tracks for at least a week. By then we’ll be long gone.

She collapses into my arms after the phone call with her ex, and I hold her and stroke her hair and kiss her neck, but really my thoughts are on the upcoming kill. Taking care of the PI the other day quieted the bloodlust, a bit like an appetizer before a big meal. It means when Edie’s ex shows up, I won’t get so overwhelmed with need that I end it too quickly.

I’m gonna take my time with him.

I’m gonna cut him open and remove his organs one by one and leave them stacked like a box of jewels.

And I’m gonna make sure he knows it’s Edie who sent me.

Watching her talk to him, I saw all the ways he hurt her. She thinks she hid it from me, playing it cool, but I felt the way her pulse changed whenever he spoke. I saw the way that pretty light in her eyes dimmed every time he opened his mouth. He took a girl who already felt worthless and told her it was true, all so he could control her, shape her into something else.

The thought floods me with rage, even as I’m holding Edie now, running my hand over her thick curls, squeezing her soft, strong body in tight. It reminds me of how I felt fifteen years ago, seeing how those counselors treated her. This ex is the same way. Just richer. More powerful.

But he’ll fall under my blade just like they did.

“Is this really happening?” Edie pulls away from me and rubs her arms like she’s cold. “Is this really going to work?”

“Of course it is,” I tell her. “But we’ve got to get everything ready. We need to be able to run after it’s finished.”

I see flashes of it . Blood and viscera. A man’s screaming face. The gleam of my knife blade. My cock stiffens.

Edie nods. Part of me wants to bend her over the counter and slide between her thighs, just to quiet the lust. But I don’t want either of us getting distracted.

“Right,” she says, a nervous chatter in her voice. “I need to close my bank account. That way we’ll have money. We’ll need supplies, right? Food? Clothes? We won't want to have to stop after we—after you…”

Her voice kind of trails off, and she gets this worried line between her brows. For the first time, I feel a tickle of doubt.

What if she doesn’t let me go through with it?

What if my perfect prey ruins my gift for her?

“You’re right,” I say. “We’ll go into town. Together, just in case there are any more surprises from your ex.”

The lines in Edie’s brow deepen. “Is that a good idea? For us to be seen?—”

“Baby, nobody knows who I am.” I grab her chin and tilt it up so she can look me in the eye and know I’m telling the truth. “I’ve got a fake ID. They think Sawyer Caldwell’s dead. It’s fine, okay?”

She nods, eyes glimmerin g

“We’ll go into town,” I continue. “Get what we need. Then you can get everything set up here, and I’ll get everything set up there.” I tilt my head toward the woods.

“Okay.” Her voice is shaky, and I can’t help myself; I cup her face, kind of pin her in place. The scent of her fear is strong, and that just excites me further. It’s going to be so hard to keep my hands off her between now and the kill.

“We’ll get everything ready together.” Anticipation thrums through me, and when I speak, I can hear the lust in my voice. “And then we’ll wait.”

Hunters don’t sleep much, but in the last week, I’ve found I like sitting in bed while Edie’s curled up next to me, her breaths slow and measured. I usually read, flipping through the stack of old paperbacks I bought the last time I was in town. I brought one with me tonight, one of those trippy science fiction novels that Jaxon’s always going on about, but I can’t concentrate on the words. My brain keeps going to the kill.

I haven’t been this excited for a kill—well, for fifteen years. Since I decided once and for all I was going to wipe out Edie’s tormentors. And now I get to do it again. Only this time, it’ll be better. Because she’ll be by my side.

So I don’t bother to read. I just lay back and go over my plan in my head, figuring out everything I need to do to make it perfect.

But then Edie’s voice rises up, small and trembling. “Sawyer?”

I look over at her, tucked on her side, her hair spilling in dark rivers across her pillow. “I thought you were asleep.”

She stirs, pushing up on her arm. “I can’t.”

I don’t smell her fear, particularly—not any more than I did earlier when she was talking to her ex. He scares her, that much is clear. But I can sense a knot of anxiety in her, in the small trembling way she shoves herself up to sitting, pressing her back against the headboard. She worries the bedsheet in one fist.

And I sense an unfamiliar surge of panic.

This is why Mama said our kind shouldn’t get romantic with humans. This vulnerability, this weakness. I think of a kill and my cock gets hard and the back of my jaw aches.

Edie thinks of a kill and she strangles the bedsheet, her eyes dark.

I’m not sure what to say so I kiss her instead, soft and gentle. She returns it, smiling a little against my lips, and nuzzles my neck. I take that as an invitation to pull her into me. I can do that much, at least.

“You’re not scared,” I finally say. She’s so quiet, and I’ve got to say something.

“No,” she whispers. “Not really.” She shifts against me, her breath warm on my skin. “You—I feel safe with you. I know you won’t let anything happen to me.”

That fucking floors me, hearing her say that. And that’s how I know Mama’s wrong about us and humans. Because it makes me feel all warm and proud and satisfied, like how I feel after I finish up one of my projects at the church or clean up a particularly messy murder scene. And I wouldn’t get that feeling with another Hunter. Another Hunter wouldn’t want me to protect them.

“I will,” I say, after fumbling around for my voice. I bury my face into her hair, breathing her in. “So why can’t you sleep?”

“I don’t think you’ll understand.”

All that pride I felt a moment ago drains away. “Why not?”

Edie tilts her head up to me. My night vision’s good, and it makes her skin seem to glow a little in the darkness, like she’s suffused with moonlight. “Because you—you’re a killer.”

She says it like it’s something to be ashamed of, but I’m not ashamed. I brush her hair behind her ear.

“And you think you’re about to become one, too?” I’m taking my best guess, but from the way her face flickers with darkness, I know I’ve landed on it.

“I just keep thinking there’s something wrong with me,” she says. “That I’m okay with all this. That I love?—”

She freezes. I freeze, too, going as still as I do when I’m stalking my prey.

“That I love you.” She barely says the words. If I weren’t a Hunter, with a Hunter’s hearing, I don’t think I’d have heard them.

I ought to be celebrating. Ain’t no one ever told me they loved me before except for Mama, and she usually only did it to make a point about why I should listen to her. But it’s all spoiled because I know this love Edie feels for me, it makes her upset.

“And you wish you didn’t,” I finally say.

It takes her a while to answer, but I’m patient. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” she says. “I wish—I wish I could be like you. And not have any of this bother me.”

I shift my body around so I’m facing her. So I can look her straight on. I’m still figuring out how to respond when she says, “Why did you choose me?”

“What?”

“Fifteen years ago,” she says. “When I was at camp. Why me?” Her eyes glitter in the darkness. “Why am I your perfect prey?”

The easy answer is that I thought she was beautiful, but I know that’s not the answer she’s looking for. It’s also not the full truth of things, is it?

“You’re my perfect prey because I want to hunt you over and over.” I hope I’m explaining this right, that I don’t scare her away. “I saw you and I wanted to hunt you but I didn’t want to kill you, not really.”

Her eyes bore into mine, almost challenging me. It makes me feel stripped bare. Vulnerable.

It makes me feel almost like I’m prey myself.

“There’s something in you,” I say. “Some strength that tells me you’re the one I chase but let go. I felt it the first time I saw you. And I feel it every time I look at you.”

It feels good saying that out loud. Feels good to see the effect it has on her, the subtle shift in temperature as her cheeks warm, as her heart rate picks up. I can’t stop myself from pressing my hand against her frantic pulse.

“I love you,” I say simply. “But I love you the way a hunter loves prey. And there’s nothing I can change about that, Edie.” I let my hand slide up to her face. I don’t want her looking away from me while I talk. “But I will protect you. That man, your ex, he caused you so much pain. And I’m going to take it away. Do you understand that? I’m going to take it away and do my best to keep you happy. But I am what I am, and nothing is going to cha?—”

She lunges at me so fast I almost think she’s attacking me. But then her lips press to mine and her tongue slides into my mouth, and then I’m attacking her, devouring her, nipping and biting at her sweet, pulsing flesh.

“Why do I want this?” she gasps between kisses, and I press her down onto her back and crawl on top of her. Not so much to fuck her but because I want to feel her body beneath me, pinned in place.

“Does it matter?”

She gazes up at me, lips swollen from my kisses. Her nightgown’s neckline is pushed down, and I can see the dark crescent of her areolas peeking out from behind the lace.

“I think I’m a bad person,” she says.

“You think you’re a killer.”

Something flickers across her face. That’s it. That’s what’s bothering her.

“You’re not going to kill anyone,” I tell her, pressing her legs open with my knee. “I’m going to do it. Because I like it. And because that’s what it’ll take to give you the life you deserve.”

Edie shivers a little. But she never turns away from me. Her eyes blaze with something as hot and bright as the sun. It’s not lust.

“Say it again,” I order, rubbing my thigh up against her pussy.

“Say what?”

“That you love me.”

Her lips curl into a faint, delicate smile. “You say it first.”

I press my head down so our foreheads touch. Grab at her wrists so I can pin her arms above her head, holding her in my Hunter’s trap.

“I love you, my perfect prey.”

Her eyes gleam. She hooks a leg around my hip, pulling me into her. I hope she knows my cock is hard from the thought of killing her ex. I hope she knows I think of death every time I fuck her. Because that’s who loves her. And I love her because she isn’t those things. I love her because she’s the moonlight in the shadows, the porch light flickering in the dark woods.

She’s the Milky Way, a band of celestial light that marks a place as safe.

“Now say it back,” I order.

And she does.

But I still don’t know if she understands.