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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JAXON

T he adrenaline from killing two men so soon after my revival is still surging through my system. I feel stronger than I have in years. More powerful. Hell, I ripped that one guy’s head from his shoulders, unabashedly moaning as his blood soaked over me. The other’s head I bashed to a pulp against the side of my shed.

But neither of them compares to having Charlotte pinned up against the tree, her hot, wet cunt pressing down on my leg.

Claim her , whispers the Unnamed. It wants me to fuck her. I want to fuck her, desperately. I just don’t think she wants to fuck me.

Especially since my dumb ass implied I want to kill her.

“Y-you said you can’t.” Charlotte stares up at me with glassy, terrified eyes and tries to jerk away, the scent of her fear an absolutely devastating aphrodisiac. I grip her thick right hip with my free hand, pinning her down in three places at once: throat, hip, cunt.

“Yeah, that came out wrong.” I cringe, hearing myself say it, but something flickers across Charlotte’s face. I massage her throat, rubbing my thumb over her frantic, fluttering pulse. She stiffens again, the sweet honeysuckle scent of her fear nearly overwhelming me.

I want to kiss her so badly. I know what her pussy tastes like, and now I want to taste her mouth. But I also want her to kiss me back, to lick the blood off my neck and run her tongue over the faint, sensitive scar where she killed me, the chain digging deep into my flesh.

“I’m not going to literally kill you.” I brush my lips against her cheeks as I talk, breathing in more of her scent. “Although even if I did—you’d be fine.”

“What?” She pulls away from me again, more forcefully this time. I let her neck go. Not the rest of her. I can’t help but notice that the movement has her grinding her pussy down on my leg, and I return that favor with delight, pressing my thigh up against her until she gasps and bites her bottom lip.

“It’s complicated.” I knead the flesh at her hip the way I did when I was eating her out earlier, and the memory makes my cock strain against my pants. I didn’t think I could get any harder after dispatching those two interlopers, whoever the fuck they were. I’ll worry about them later. Charlotte, my Hunter who is not a Hunter, feels much more important right now.

Much more warm.

Much more alive.

Charlotte searches my face, her pupils blown out. Is it to see me in the dark? Is it because I’m still grinding my knee up against her pussy, and she’s rolling her hips in return, ever so slightly? I think it might be both.

“You were dead.”

She says it suddenly and very, very softly, like she didn’t intend for me to hear it. I do, though. All my senses are on high alert.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s why I said you killed me.”

And then, before she can react and before I can talk myself out of it, I kiss her.

For a moment, neither of us move. I don’t try to deepen the kiss, but she doesn’t pull away, either.

And then she tilts her head and parts her lips and kisses me back, the tip of her tongue pressing into my mouth. I’m so stunned I almost forget to react. But then my body takes over, and I slide my tongue over hers, licking her and tasting her. Devouring her in a brand new way. I force myself to go slow so I don’t seem too eager, and it seems like the right move because Charlottes makes a soft whimpering noise and draws her hand around my neck, holding my head as she deepens the kiss and ruts against my leg.

Then she breaks it, gasping. All her living blood and heat rise to the surface of her skin, and she stares up at me, eyes wide with shock. Confusion.

“I killed you,” she says breathlessly.

“And you did it so fucking beautifully.”

I capture her in another kiss. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to explain what it means to be a Hunter or try to figure out how she got to be twenty-nine years old without knowing what she is. I don’t want to deal with the headless corpses in my yard.

I want to fuck a living woman for the first time in my life.

“How—?” She pulls away from me just long enough to start to ask the question, and I kiss her again to keep her from finishing it. The question melts into a low, satisfied moan as she rides my thigh, her hands clenching at my blood-soaked shirt.

But Charlotte’s persistent. After a few seconds, she stops the kiss and jerks away from me, her hand on my chest to hold me in place. She doesn’t have a Hunter’s strength; I could overpower her easily, just as I could have when she was killing me. But the gods never lie, and I saw the shimmer in those moments before my death. I felt the connection of seeing another one of my kind.

It doesn't make any sense, but I recognized her as I died. It was the last thought I had as I slipped into oblivion, before my gods woke me back up.

“Stop it,” she says. “Stop distracting me. I can’t —Not with you ? — ”

“Why not?” Because she’s still humping my leg, smearing her arousal with my latest victims’ blood and the muddy water from the creek.

“You kidnapped me. You—” Her eyes flash. “You assaulted me.”

Embarrassed heat flushes into my cheeks. “I didn’t want to disappoint you,” I mutter.

She goes still, something softening in her expression. I push her hair back again, not sure what that softening means.

“I’m so confused,” she whispers. “You—” She pulls her hands away from me and looks down at them, dark with blood. “Why do I like this?”

I hesitate. I know why. She’s a Hunter. But I really, really don’t want to explain it right now. I need to put my cock in her pussy. I need to feel the inside of her.

“That’s complicated, too,” I finally say, pushing up the skirt of her dress so I can access her panties for the third time tonight. She gasps a little and settles back against the tree.

She also doesn’t stop me as I slide my fingers into her panties and then between her folds.

“Tell me to stop,” I order, my cock throbbing at how wet she is. How slippery. How warm.

She’s going to feel so fucking good.

Her lips part. I almost think she’s going to say it. But instead, she just stares at me defiantly.

I pull out my soaked finger and rub it over her clit. That , at least, I know how to find after years of exploring with the dead. Even if they never react the way she does right now, keening and bucking against my hand.

“Take your panties off,” I tell her, still working her clit.

“W-why?” Her question is jagged. Sharp. She rolls her hips in time with my touch.

“Because I just killed two men without a weapon and I’m covered in blood and I need to fuck you right now.”

The words come out before I can stop them. I fully expect Charlotte to pull away.

Instead, her clit pulses hot against my fingers. I’m uncovering all the strange delights of living women this evening, aren’t I?

“If you want them off,” she says darkly, still fucking my hand, “then you can take them off.”

That’s the only invitation I need. I grab the silky fabric with both hands and pull. My revival has me strong enough to rip a man apart; Charlotte’s panties shred like tissue.

“Fuck,” she groans, slumping back against the tree.

I toss the tattered fabric away and palm my cock over my jeans, adjusting it before I drag down the zipper. Charlotte watches me with hooded eyes, her hips rolling a little against the air, her skin and dress both streaked with dark smears of blood. I know that once I’m inside her, I’m not going to last long.

“Touch yourself,” I tell her as I pull out my cock.

She gives me another one of those defiant looks and I nearly come in my hand. But then her gaze drops down to where I’m gripping myself, fingers tight around my erection.

She licks her lips. Slides her hand between her legs. Looks back up to meet my eyes.

“I shouldn’t do this,” she says even as she runs her fingers in fast, frantic circles over her clit, widening her legs and bracing her back up against the tree.

“Why not?” I step closer to her, willing myself not to stroke my cock. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll come.

Charlotte just stares at me, her chest rising and falling as she works her clit. “You know why not.”

I grin at that. And then I throw out what little restraint I’ve been clinging to because none of it matters. The only important thing is fucking her hot, living cunt.

I move like I’m Hunting prey: clearing the space between us in a blink, grabbing both her wrists and pinning them over her head with one hand. She stares up at me, lust burning through her gaze. Then I hook her knee with my free arm and jerk her wide. Charlotte groans, arching up toward me.

“Keep your hands right there,” I growl into her ear.

She smiles. “Or what?”

I squeeze her wrists more tightly, making her moan. “I won’t let you come.”

Her eyes flash, and I let her go, keeping our gazes locked as I reach down to grip the base of my cock. Charlotte curls her hands into fists, but she doesn’t drop them.

“I see you want to come,” I say, praying to my gods that I’ll be able to make her do it again.

She doesn’t say anything, just tilts her hips a little toward me.

An invitation.

I press my swollen, sensitive cockhead against her pussy. She’s drenched, and I slide in too easy—so easy I have to brace my thigh muscles to stop myself from plunging my full length inside her. I want to tease her. Torture her. Even if it means torturing myself.

“Good girl,” I mutter, dropping my hand away from my cock so I can run it over her hip, the side of her waist, then over her tits, feeling her nipples through the fabric of her dress.

“I thought you were going to fuck me,” she gasps.

“Is that what you want?” I keep massaging her tits. Looking her straight in the eyes. I want to hear her say it.

Charlotte glares at me. I give her another inch, and I can’t believe I’m pulling off this self-control, because her fiery, soaking-wet cunt is like nothing I’ve ever felt. It’s almost as good as killing.

“I’ll end this right now,” I tell her, releasing her tits so I can reach up to wrap my hand around her throat again. Charlotte moans softly, fear flickering across her features.

And somehow, her pussy gets even wetter.

“Tell me,” I rasp into her ear, hooking her leg around my hip. “I want to hear you say it.”

“Say… what?” she gasps.

I tighten my grip on her throat. I’ve got no intention of choking her anywhere as tight as she choked me. But I like reminding her that I could.

And given the frantic, fluttering pulses in her pussy, she does too.

“You know what.” I speak softly into her ear. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.”

She whimpers. I nibble at her earlobe, then kiss along her jawline, licking away the blood I smeared there earlier. “Say it,” I whisper into her skin. “Say it, and I’ll make you come so hard you won’t give a shit that I’m a murderer.”

I think it was the Unnamed that compelled me to say that, because it’s like I stumbled across the magic words. Charlotte jerks her hips, lifts her chin in defiance, and says what I’ve been waiting to hear.

“I want—“ She spits the words out like she’s fighting them. “I want you to fuck me.”

And then I do.