Page 7 of Huntsman

CHAPTER TWOEshe

God, he’s beautiful.

It’s unfair, really.

I drag the tip of my blade across the broad plane of his brow. Down the proud, arrogant bridge of his nose and across each narrow patrician nostril.

Slumber doesn’t soften the hard, wide curves of his mouth. As lush as those lips appear, my knife doesn’t even dent the dense flesh. The sharpness of his cheekbones rivals the blade’s edge I currently trace over that almost-savage bone structure.

The thick fringe of his lashes grazes his golden skin, but I don’t need to see his eyes to perfectly envision the color that resembles a sky heavy with clouds on the verge of a destructive thunderstorm.

How am I in the know?

Some might call it stalking.

I call it reconnaissance. Preparation.

Because from the moment I laid eyes on this man two years ago, he was mine. He just didn’t know it.

Fucking shame I have to kill him.

Scowling, I lift the knife from his face and start skinning the apple I grabbed for a snack right after chaining him to the bed. Pisses me off that he’s put us in this position.

His fault though.

He came here to kill me first, after all.

Several things I can’t let slide:

Dumbass mu’fuckas. Nothing will unalive you faster than a mu’fucka whose titty or dick size is bigger than their IQ.

Messy mu’fuckas. If someone is messy and mouthy as fuck with their shit, they have no problem being the same with mine.

And disloyal mu’fuckas. Loyalty is like blood in our world—we need it to breathe, to survive. Fear doesn’t last long. Not when there’s always someone else out there who’s bigger, harder, more ruthless. More willing to slit the throat of their own mother to gain power, to get richer, to rule. Money can buy power.

But it can’t purchase loyalty, faithfulness.

That’s why it’s more precious. Why it’s rarer.

Then there’s the final thing I can’t let slide:

Someone trying to kill me.

It would fall underdumbass mu’fuckas, but there’s nothing foolish about the Huntsman. He’s everything careful, exacting, and lethal. He’s the bogeyman whispered about in fearful, trembling undertones even as eyes slide from side to side, nervous, as if a shadow, darker than the others, will creep from among its brethren.

Yet here he is. Chained to my bed for committing the ultimate sin against me.

And I have to kill him.

He’s lucky he doesn’t have any parents, sisters or brothers, nieces or nephews for me to hunt after I’m done with him. Never leave family alive after you put a person down; I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. They’re like roaches—they never die and always come back, hiding in nooks and crannies, just under your feet, waiting to jump out when you least expect it.

But I don’t need to worry about that with him.

The Huntsman is a bastard, and not just in personality but by birth. No parents. He had one sister. Miriam. He lost her when she was four and he was just nine, in one of Boston’s not-so-finest foster homes. And at the age of ten, he murdered the man responsible for his little sister’s death… beat the back of his skull in with a baseball bat. His first kill.

Like I said, I know everything about him.

He’s my calling. My ministry.