Page 24

CHAPTER 24

REDLEY

The gun kicks in my hand, just like it did the night with the Murphy boy, but the Wolf was right. I wasn’t determined enough then, but I am now. He drops to the ground before the bullet can strike him, and I aim just a hair too high. The bark shatters off a tree about a foot above his head rather than blowing his brains out.

“Are you fucking crazy?” he shouts.

The question picks at the last threads of my patience. Goddammit, I was just regretting my decision to kill him, but now he’s pissed me off. I raise the gun and aim again, but my arm shakes I’m so tired. There’s a lot of power behind this thing.

“Fuck, you are crazy.”

He scrambles backward across the ground, but I shoot again. The bullet grazes his shoulder this time. His shirt tears, and a fine spray of blood flies.

“Shit, goddammit,” he curses, gripping the wound, blood pooling between his fingers. It’s nowhere near fatal, and despite the blood, it doesn’t look deep. His arm’s moving too much.

My own arms shake like noodles, and I don’t know if I have another shot in me, but not one that’s worth firing anyway. My arm drops to my side in pure exhaustion. The second that weakness presents itself, he rushes me. I barely have a chance to turn. His hard shoulder hits my midsection, and my breath leaves with the force. He smashes me into the ground, nearly squeezing my lungs back out through my throat. Every joint and bone grind together as his mammoth form crushes mine.

“Shit,” I wheeze. “Get off me!”

“Does that hurt, Muffin? So does getting shot.”

“Flesh.” I cough, trying to bring air back into my lungs. “Wound.”

He pulls his weight off me enough that I can breathe. I don’t know what happened to the gun, but it’s no longer in my hand. I have no defense except my body, and I can’t find it in myself to even struggle. I'm in so much pain. He grabs my wrists and presses them into the dirt above my head. His hips pin mine. His yellow eyes stare fiercely like he’s trying to figure out something very important about me.

“I didn’t kill anyone but your granny. Well, not anyone else in your family.”

“Liar,” I wheeze, barely able to inhale even though he’s no longer crushing me. My ribs ache from being ground together. My lungs pulse instead of inflating.

“How old do you think I am?” he asks. “This is ridiculous .”

“You’re older than me,” I manage to say. I don’t need to know how old he is.

“Not by much,” he practically growls at me as he comes closer.

We’re nose to nose.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I was twelve years old when your mama and daddy died. I wasn’t alive to kill your granddaddy. I am two years older than you, but you’ve clearly gotten lost in the moonshine.”

“Fuck you!” I shout because even if the stories were affected by moonshine, I’m not sitting alone in my cabin drinking like Granny did after Pop died.

“We’re going to get there. Be patient, Muffin.”

“You’re not human!”

He laughs. “Then what am I?”

A little of my strength returns as he taunts me. I’m humiliated, beaten down to nothing, but still fighting my pointless battle. He killed a cop last night, and no one cares. Tears drip down my cheeks as I uselessly struggle.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you are!”

“Yes, you do. You’ve never been stupid.”

I shake beneath him, refusing to answer.

“Fine, I’ll tell you.” I shrink away from him like the truth will worsen everything, but he keeps going. “I’m a murderer, Redley. I killed your granny, but I’m not some damn immortal monster. I sure didn’t kill any of the other people you’re missing.”

“Then who the hell did?” I sob, tears pouring. If he didn’t kill them, then why have I been chasing him?

“Not me,” he insists.

“You killed the Murphy kid four days ago, Wolf. Am I supposed to believe you’re so innocent?” I scream through the tears.

“He was three years younger than you, climb down off your damn high horse!”

“You still killed him!”

“I’ve killed a lot of people, but I didn’t touch your family other than that mean bitch who beat you. I’d do it again too. I’ll kill anyone who hurts you.”

And before I have a chance to respond he kisses me.

“Why do you taste so fucking good? Like cake and wine,” he groans against my lips. “All you ever drink is moonshine.”

“I don’t drink that much!”

I hate that he knows that I do sometimes, late at night when no one’s paying me any mind and I can sleep it off. I know he’s watched me, but that closely?

I’ve never even tasted wine, but I’ve seen enough bodies to make me a believer. They told me about the Wolf, and then the Wolf came. I was kind to him, and my granny died. Suddenly, I’m desperate for monsters to be real because if they’re not, something far worse is happening on this mountain.

And the most important question is, Who killed my parents and brother?

“Who are you then?” I ask as his lips leave mine. “Who killed the rest of them?”

“Like I told you a long time ago, I’m no one, but you? You’re Redley Little, and I’m tired of waiting to devour you.”

His teeth sink into my neck, and I scream as the blunt force of it bruises and digs into my flesh. I’m shocked as hot arousal follows behind it, drawing goosebumps all over my body. I’ve been beaten plenty of times, but never bitten, and I don’t understand what the sensation is doing to me. He forces his hands into my pants, popping the button straight off before yanking on the zipper and quickly dragging them down over my hips and thighs.

“What are you doing?” I shout. As I struggle to get away from him, I turn my head, finding Porter still slumped on the ground with the arrow sticking out of his head. I scream again, as loud as I possibly can. With the way the sound travels, someone will hear, but will anyone come?

“Keep screaming just like that,” he says.

I use whatever strength I have left in my too weak arms to swing on him. My fist collides with his mouth. The impact screams in my joints, and though I have the satisfaction of his lip busting open under my hand, I think I hurt myself worse. He just seems excited as he licks the open wound.

“I love how scrappy you are,” he tells me. “Means I don’t have to worry about you too bad.”

I doubly regret my choice to hit him when he dips back to press his bloody lips to mine. I remember his fingers carefully picking the glass out of my face and wondering then if we had built some blood link between us. If we didn’t then, he seems determined to forge one now.

“You don’t love anything about me. You don’t know me . ”

“I know everything about you, but most importantly, I know that there isn’t a cop around except that corpse willing to listen to you.”

He’s not wrong.

“I know that no one’s coming to get him because he was a problem. The sheriff wanted him gone, and now he’s your problem.”

What he’s saying tracks, given I spoke to more than twenty officers in my search for someone to help me. They all turned me away, except for the ones who arrested me.

“You’re lying.” I really don’t think he is.

“I’m not, I promise you that. You have nowhere to turn that I’m not waiting.”

That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed. My humiliation grows by the second as the truth is sinking in starkly. He’s just a man—an evil one, but a man nonetheless.

His hips pin mine, and his erection is an obvious ridge between us. I don’t know why this sick bastard is turned on, but goddammit I am too. He reaches for his cock, pulling it out of his pants and letting it fall against my crotch. There’s nothing but the fabric of my panties between us, and heat pools there.

The sharp rocks cut into my ass and back, but I’m hot all over. The pain is part of the experience, along with my guilt and self-hatred. Maybe he didn’t kill all the people I thought he did, but he surely killed my granny. He's killed others. I shouldn’t be hot and ready beneath him. I can’t be a goddamn traitor. I’m the only one who’s been searching for answers. Badly , given I thought he was a supernatural creature, and he’s just flesh and bone.

I swing on him a few more times, but my arms are vibrating pathetically from firing the gun and fighting him with all my strength. There’s nothing left in me, and my fists are useless on his cheeks. I don’t draw any more blood. I have no effect.

“Calm down, Muffin. I need you so bad. I’ve needed you for a long time now.”

He leans back as he finishes pulling down my jeans. When he removes my boots, I try to kick him, but he’s back between my legs too fast. Before I know it, I’m half naked beneath him with his hard cock pressed to my warm, bare pussy.

I’m a virgin, and there’s no way in hell I’m giving him my virginity. He might have said last night that kiss belonged to him, but he’s wrong. Nothing of mine is his.

He’s stolen every kiss he’s gotten, and this surely isn’t his either. I don’t stop hitting him until he takes my hands and puts them back above my head in the dirt. His face falls to my neck, smelling me again, lips tracing, and then his nose runs along the column of my throat. My hips struggle to push him off, but it doesn’t do anything but rhythmically encourage him.

“Don’t do this. Please,” I beg.

“Why not, Muffin? You’re already soaking wet. You already left your juices on me. What’s the difference?”

“I’m a virgin.”