Page 37 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

EDIE

I t’s shocking how easy it is to watch Sawyer torture Scott, especially with my mouth still sour from his assault. When Sawyer offered me Scott’s severed dick, I almost took it. I almost picked it up as delicately as I had picked up the bird skull he brought me. The only reason I didn’t, I think, was the blood. I didn’t want to feel any more of Scott’s fluids on my skin.

But now, on the porch, the blood doesn’t bother me. It’s dark and glossy in the porch light, and it steams in the cold, reminding me of the mountain’s pale curling mist.

It’s pretty, almost.

Scott’s nearly unrecognizable, especially with the cut across his face. He keeps babbling at me, begging me to tell Sawyer to stop. But it’s the first time in our entire relationship that I’ve ever felt like I had any kind of power. Because when Sawyer glances over at me, eyes gleaming behind his mask, I know he’ll do whatever I ask of him. I could tell him to throw down his knife and walk away, and he would. I could tell him to kill Scott quickly, and he would.

And I know it’s fucked up. I know it’s wrong. But I decide to embrace that power instead .

“Make him suffer,” I say, three words that feel enormous. Sawyer gives me one firm nod, then turns back to Scott and, without warning, slides the knife between Scott’s ribs. Scott’s pleas become screams, the sound dampened by the snow and the howling winds. I wrap my arms around my chest, but I’m really not that cold.

There’s a quiver of excited heat working from between my legs.

Sawyer wrenches the knife sideways and steps back, admiring his handiwork. I’ll be honest; all I see is blood, shiny and bright as red leather. Scott trembles, his knife-pinned hand shaking. The snow has melted into his hair, and it hangs wet into his eyes.

“Edie,” he whispers hoarsely. “Please.”

I step closer, my shoes smearing the blood pooling across the porch. Sawyer cuts Scott again, slicing the knife across his stomach so that something pink and shiny sticks out. Scott thrashes against the knife holding him in place, which just seems to open the cut more, to push more of his insides out. I watch it with a strange, delirious detachment. I wouldn’t say I like it.

But what I do like is the knowledge that Sawyer is doing this for me. I felt his rage when he burst in earlier, interrupting Scott’s assault. It was a heat that flooded through the room. The same heat that keeps me warm now,

The same heat that throbs between my legs.

“Edie,” Scott gurgles, but it’s weak. I know he’s dying. And yet his taste is still in my mouth. I feel like I could scrape my tongue with Sawyer’s knife and I would still taste him, sour and sordid. When Scott dies, I want every trace of him gone.

Sawyer’s still cutting at Scott, making small, precise movements. And like that, I know exactly how I want to drown out Scott’s taste.

“Sawyer.”

He stops immediately and looks over at me. But I’m still looking at Scott’s desperate, pleading face. There’s one last thing I want him to see before he dies.

“Come here,” I say.

Sawyer stands and walks over to me, his knife dripping blood across the porch. His free hand hooks around my fingers, a gesture of intimacy, of sweetness, that nearly undoes me. Maybe it does. My knees buckle, and I let them fall so that I kneel in front of him. My boogeyman. My masked killer. My Hunter.

When I touch the button on Sawyer’s blood-soaked jeans, his body jumps in surprise.

“What… are you..?” Scott’s voice drifts through the cold. I yank down Sawyer’s zipper, careful not to catch his enormous erection. He grunts a little. In surprise. Encouragement.

I peel away his underwear to pull out his cock. It’s as hard as I’ve ever seen it: heavy in my hand, bulging with veins. The back of my throat aches to flood my mouth with his taste.

“Edie!” Scott’s voice is shrill. Panicked. “What are you?—”

I look over at him. I’m scorching with a black fire I never knew existed in me until this moment.

“How about a blowjob?” My voice is calm. Assured. “For old time’s sake.”

Scott’s eyes widen, and I turn away from him to take Sawyer’s cock into my mouth.

Sawyer softly growls out his pleasure, his free hand coming up to cup the back of my head. I moan as I pull his thickness over my tongue, my eyes fluttering closed. I can sense, vaguely, that he’s surprised, but I know he’s pleased as well, especially when I start bobbing my head up and down his length. He holds back, though; this isn’t like before, when he shoved his cock so far down my throat that I couldn’t breathe.

No, he’s letting me have full control tonight.

I brace myself against Sawyer’s blood-soaked thighs, swallowing him as deeply as I can. He brings his other hand up to my head and presses the flat blade of the knife against my scalp. The metal is cool but sticky, and I’m not worried about him cutting me.

“Edie?” Scott whimpers, and the confusion and fear in his voice just make me wetter.

Sawyer’s grunts grow louder. More urgent. I know that what he’s been doing has turned him on, and he’s going to come fast. I quicken my pace, desperate to flood my mouth with his cum. I suck hard, tracing the veins of his arousal with my tongue. When he presses against my head, stilling me, I know he’s close, and I let him, just for that moment, take over. He thrusts down my throat four times and then stills, his leg muscles tightening against my hands as he unleashes in my mouth. His cum is exactly what I needed, hot and salty as it spills over my tongue, washing away every trace of what Scott did to me.

I swallow it eagerly, moaning around Sawyer’s cock as I clean it. After all, the last thing we want is DNA evidence at a crime scene.

I fall back on my heels, gasping, my lips wet. I can hear Scott, but I don’t give a shit about him. I only care about Sawyer. His mask wears the same expression it always does. But I feel his desire.

He grabs me by the hair and hauls me to my feet, a violent and painful gesture that only makes me groan with lust. He yanks me close to him, his masked forehead pressed against mine, and twines his arm around my back, the knife pressed against my spine.

“I love you,” he whispers, so soft I almost think it’s the wind.

Then he roughly unzips my jeans and shoves his hand inside them, fingers finding my inflamed clit immediately. I rock my hips against him, riding his hand, one leg hoisted up around his hips, my arms hooked around his neck. Scott’s sobbing and choking, but all I care about is Sawyer’s eyes behind his mask as he fingerfucks me to oblivion. It’s oblivion I see in his eyes: the oblivion of death, of murder. Of ecstasy .

My moans match the moans of the snowstorm, and I thrash against him as my orgasm builds, a towering column of heat surging up through the center of my body. I’m aware, distantly, of his hand moving behind my back, but I’m also on the precipice of coming.

“That’s it, baby,” Sawyer rasps into my ear. “That’s it. You’re close. Come on.”

His words urge me on. I let my head drop back, my eyes close, and I thrust against his fingers with abandon as he swirls my clit in furious circles.

“Look,” he growls.

I don’t know what he means at first, but pushes my head to the side, away from his piercing gaze.

To Scott, dying.

I gasp out my pleasure. I’m on the verge, my legs trembling, my pussy clenching and fluttering. Sawyer keeps his thumb on my clit as he slides his fingers in and out of my cunt. He knows the exact right places to touch.

I scream into my orgasm?—

And Sawyer flings the knife. There’s a flash of silver and then it embeds itself in Scott’s heart. Scott makes a surprised gasping sound, and as I roll through pulse after pulse of pleasure, the light in his eyes goes out.

I choke out a sound that might be a sob. My face feels wet, but I’m not sure if it’s tears or snow. Or both. Sawyer pulls me into him, his palm still gently massaging my pussy. He doesn’t take his hand away until the last of my aftershocks have faded.

“You’re a fucking goddess,” he whispers into my hair.

I cling to him, gasping, breathing in the scent of his skin beneath the steely tang of blood. For a moment, I feel as I did that night we met fifteen years ago. No longer scared. Safe in the arms of a killer.

I know now that this darkness has always been inside me, that it was inside me then, a black diamond tucked inside my heart .

And he saw it, my serial killer. My Hunter.

Sawyer reaches up and pulls his mask away, shoves it in his back pocket. Seeing his face is startling; it’s strange, how he wears two faces, and how I love them both.

He cups my cheek, leaving a sticky imprint of Scott’s blood. I nuzzle into it.

“We’re not done yet,” Sawyer says gently.

“I know.” My breath condenses in the air. I’m shivering again, and Sawyer pulls me closer, wrapping me in his warmth.

“Are you ready?”

I lay my cheek against his chest, listening to his quickened heartbeat, and look over at Scott. His head has slumped sideways in death. His eyes stare sightlessly ahead.

I feel a freedom I haven’t known in a long, long time. Maybe not ever.

“I’m ready,” I say, and then, begrudgingly, I step backward, out of Sawyer’s arms. He smiles down at me, his mouth gentle but his eyes dancing with a killer’s fire. He runs his finger up and down my arm. I take a deep breath. Only one. I don’t need four anymore.

Then I look at him and speak.

“I’m ready for you to kill me.”