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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHARLOTTE

J axon has the biggest cock I’ve ever seen in real life, and it’s currently buried so deep in my pussy it hurts.

It hurts, but in a way that feels good, too. Like being whipped by a flogger or spanked hard on my ass. The pain heightens the pleasure somehow.

The blood smearing between us heightens the pleasure, too. So does the knowledge of what Jaxon did to those two men.

And I don’t care.

I don’t fucking care.

Jaxon pulls his cock halfway out and then slams into me again, eyes rolling back in his head, his groan deep and throaty. I shriek at the starburst of pain and then, because there’s clearly something deeply wrong with me, I gasp out, “Again.”

He chuckles and looks at me, his gaze unfocused with pleasure. He still has his fingers curled around my throat, and I’m still holding my hands overhead. Doing as he asked. Part of me is afraid if I drop them, he won’t just stop me from coming—he’ll kill me.

Another part of me, hungry and gasping, wants to try it and see.

“You like that?” he mutters as he pulls his length almost entirely out of my cunt. I nod and brace myself.

He bottoms out again, and I scream in pain and pleasure, my voice echoing up into the trees.

“So do I,” he whispers into my ear.

And then he starts to fuck me for real, his thrusts firm and fast, one hand around my throat and the other spreading my leg wide so there’s room for him between my thighs.

And I love it. I love every second of it. I fuck him back as best I can, rolling my hips in time with each of his sharp thrusts. I can’t think about what any of this means, that I’m letting this murderer and kidnapper fuck me. That he’s about to make me come again—and this time, I can’t even claim that I didn’t want it.

“You’re so wet for me,” he rasps, and there’s a kind of wonderment in his voice, his breath warm on my ear.

I don’t respond, just arch my back like I can pull him deeper into my body. My arms ache from holding them overhead. His hand around my throat is almost uncomfortably firm. His cock is splitting me in two.

And I don’t want any of it to end.

“Say something,” he orders, plowing into me. “Tell me why you’re so wet.”

I groan, legs trembling. He tightens his fingers and I lift my gaze to him, daring him to keep going.

“Is this why?” he whispers, squeezing my throat a little tighter. Tight enough that it’s hard to breathe. Tight enough that the pleasure consuming me from the inside out burns that much hotter.

“No,” I spit out, which isn’t exactly true.

He grunts and thrusts into me harder, slamming my spine up against the tree. The smooth, damp bark rubs against my bare ass. The quickly-drying blood seems to glue our bodies together. And I slide closer and closer to coming.

“Well?” Jaxon pants, each word punctuated by the searing heat of his cock. “Why are you so wet for me?”

I hook my leg around him and drag him up against my belly. He groans and kisses me, his tongue plunging into my mouth, his teeth snagging on my bottom lip. His other hand joins the first, his long artist’s fingers wrapping around my neck and squeezing until my vision goes black at the edges and stars dance across the night.

“Thought you—“ I choke out, trembling and shaking and rolling my hips so my clit rubs against the base of his big cock. “Thought you—can’t kill me?—”

“I’m not going to kill you.” His eyes flash. “I’m going to make you come.”

I whimper, although the noise strangles in my constricted throat.

He is going to make me come. I can feel it, the pressure building around my neck and in my clit, and I jerk my hips against him, as desperate for release as I am for air. All I can see is Jaxon’s blood-spattered face; his wild, fiery eyes; his twisted, grinning mouth.

“Come for me,” he snarls, tightening his hands around my throat. “Come on, cher. I want to feel this pussy co?—”

It hits me all at once, an onslaught of deliciously painful pleasure. My entire body convulses, and Jaxon loosens his grip around my throat. As soon as the air fills my lungs I proclaim my ecstasy with a scream that would be indistinguishable if he were killing me.

I’m barely aware of what’s happening. There’s only pleasure and breath and Jaxon’s thick cock still slamming up into my pussy. Then, suddenly, there’s not even that, because Jaxon’s wrenched himself out of me. I start to protest—my pussy’s still contracting wildly from my orgasm—but Jaxon puts his hand on the top of my head and shoves me down so I’m kneeling on the soft, wet ground.

I’m eye-level with his cock, swollen and wet and gleaming.

“Open,” he orders, jerking my head back by my hair, and I’m so drunk and delirious from that monster of an orgasm that I do exactly as he says. He groans as his cum erupts out in thick spurts, coating my tongue and lips with a thick, pungent saltiness. Then, as roughly as he pushed me down, he drags me back up, using my hair as a handle, and kisses me, swirling his tongue over mine. Tasting himself. Tasting me.

It’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever done.

Then, abruptly, he pulls away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. For all his searing eye contact while he was inside me, now he seems—almost embarrassed. He ducks his head, his hair falling across his face, and he looks out at the dark, shivery swamp. He’s a shadow in the darkness.

I swallow what’s left of his cum and wipe my lips, still feeling breathless and lightheaded. But I also feel cautious. On guard.

Jaxon mutters something.

“What’s that?” The question comes out smaller than I intended.

He looks over at me like a startled deer. “Nothing.”

I fuss with my dress, rearranging the skirt around my sticky, blood-streaked thighs. Jaxon’s watching me, something I feel more than I actually see. “You said something,” I tell him. “It wasn’t nothing.”

A pause. The weight of the swamp bears down on us. Then he says, “It was a prayer.”

This is the last thing I expect. I blink out my surprise. Jaxon shifts, rustling the plants. “We should go back.”

“You pray ?”

Jaxon’s stare is heavy in the dark. “Not to the god you’re thinking of, no. But yes. I pray.”

“Then what god?—”

“Don’t worry about it.” His voice is sharp-edged. A warning. “We need to go back to the house.”

Suddenly, I’m plunged back into reality. I can’t go back there. I’m free .

“No.”

Jaxon moves so fast that it’s like he doesn’t move at all. One minute he’s in the shadows. The next he has me pinned up against the tree by the wrists, my hands pressed flat against the trunk. He glares at me, his expression twisted and terrifying.

“We need,” he says in a slow, even voice, “to go back to the house.”

I try to twist away from him, but it’s no use. He presses his forehead against mine, squeezes my wrists a little tighter.

“I’ll drag you back there if I have to,” he mutters.

I lash out with my leg and knee him in the balls. He grunts, grins, twists me around so my belly presses against the trunk instead of my back.

“Stop fighting me,” he says, low and terrifying. A reminder that he’s a killer. No amount of orgasms is going to change that. “I’m not letting you go.”

“Why not?” I try to look at him over my shoulder, my cheek pressed against the tree. He looks like the monster he is—hair wild, eyes burning, blood smeared across his skin.

I try not to think about the blood smeared across my skin, too.

“I can’t,” he says darkly. “Now, you can come willingly and behave yourself, and I won’t chain you to the bed again.”

I consider spitting in his face, but I suspect he’d enjoy it.

“And if I don’t come willingly?”

He rolls his eyes. “No matter where you go in this swamp, I’ll find you. I know it better than you can possibly imagine.” His lips curl back, and he shows me his white, shiny teeth, like he’s a predator. He is a predator. “And then we’ll be right back to where we are now. So you might as well make it easy on yourself.”

I want to fight back. I really, really do. But I’ve already seen what he’s capable of. Stalking me in the pitch-black wilderness. Tearing men’s heads from their bodies.

Coming back from the fucking dead.

“If I go with you,” I say. “Will you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

His fingers loosen around my wrists, and he steps back. I hate myself for it, but I miss the dangerous press of his body against mine. “I’ll explain why I’m not dead,” he says.

Which is fair enough, but there’s more that I want to know, too.

“Tell me where Edie is.” I turn around to face him. His shoulders hitch, and he looks out at the swamp again. Brushes his hair out of his eyes.

“I can’t do that just yet,” he says, after a beat. “I’ll tell you what I can. She really is safe, by the way.”

“More or less?” It’s mocking, the way it comes out.

“She’s safe,” he says, more firmly. “The person she’s with—he won’t let anything bad happen to her. Okay? Happy?”

“Who’s she with?” I’m getting more and more irritated by his constant games.

But Jaxon just gives an exasperated sigh and shoves his hands through his hair. There’s none of that flirtatious coyness from dinner earlier. “I can’t tell you that,” he says. “Really. I can’t. Frankly, I’ve told you more than I should. Now come on, before I throw you over my shoulders and carry you back.”

I just scoff at that, gesture down at my plus-size body. Jaxon, though, flashes me an annoyingly handsome grin and says, “Don’t make me try it.”

“I’m absolutely going to make you try it.” I cross my arms over my chest and challenge him. He’s certainly strong enough to lift me for a few minutes, but there’s no way he can carry me through the woods. “You can’t think I’d just go willingly ?—”

And then my feet are off the ground. For one stupid second, I think I’m flying. Then I think he’s hit me. Then I realize he’s tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

“If you fight me,” he says, stomping into the swamp. “I’ll drag you behind me. And that won’t be much fun for either of us.”

“Put me down!” I shriek, kicking at his chest as the tree where he fucked me disappears into the shadows. He has one arm around my waist, which he tightens against my wriggling. The other he presses brazenly against my ass.

“Stop squirming.” He ducks a little as he marches into the overgrowth, and I realize when I feel a tree branch graze across the top of my ass that he did that for my benefit. In fact, he takes a strange, meandering path, like he’s trying to avoid all the branches that scraped and clawed at me when I ran into the swamp in the first place.

“How are you lifting me?” I gasp out.

“You’re not that heavy.”

“I’m heavier than you think.”

He chuckles, a sound that I feel in my belly when his shoulders shake. “Charlotte. I’m carrying you. I know exactly how heavy you are.”

I slump against his back. I feel defeated. Not just because I’m getting carried back to my prison. But because?—

Honestly?

I really don’t mind that much.