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CHAPTER TWENTY

CHARLOTTE

W hen I wake up, it’s the middle of the night, and I’m as disoriented as I was my first night here. Except this time, I’m clean, and I’m in my nightgown, and there’s no chain around my ankle.

Someone’s also watching me from the corner.

“Jaxon?” I sit up and sweep my gaze around the dark room. The shadows shift and blur. The mannequin in the corner regards me, unmoving.

But Jaxon’s not here.

No one’s here.

I pull my knees up to my chest and take deep, careful breaths. I’m certain I felt the prickle of someone watching me, and I’ve had Jaxon staring at me enough over the last few days that I know what the weight of his gaze feels like. And that creeping sensation felt the same.

More or less.

Because it was your imagination . A fact I prove to myself by crawling out of bed and switching on the overhead light.

No one’s in the room but me and the creepy-ass mannequin.

I sigh and try to push the door open. I’m not totally surprised that it’s locked. I also can’t say I blame him for locking the door. Because I would have one hundred percent tried to escape again.

Well. Maybe ninety-five percent. But just because he knows where Edie is and definitely not because of how well he fucked me in the swamp. That was—temporary madness. The adrenaline making me crazy. It worked out in my favor, too. I got a shower, clean clothes, no chain.

I’m not using that chamberpot again, though.

I bang on the door and shout Jaxon’s name as loud as I can, then lean my ear against the cool slick wood, listening. The house seems to breathe.

“Jaxon!” I bellow. “Open up! I need to use the bathroom!”

I stalk over to the bed and slam the chain around a few times. I just hope he’s in the house, and not—outside. With those bodies. Or in that shed. The thought of that place makes my head throb.

I bang the chains around a few more times for good measure. This time, though, I hear heavy footsteps echoing from somewhere in the house.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Jaxon’s vaguely irritated voice spills up from the stairs. “I heard you the first time.”

I drop the chain and stand up as he pushes the door open, filling the frame with his thick body and broad shoulders. His hair’s loose, spilling around his face, and he peers at me in a way that makes my skin prickle.

Just like it was doing earlier.

I shove the thought aside. He wasn’t in here. No one was in here.

“Can I use the bathroom?” I ask.

He looks at me for a moment, not saying anything, face unreadable. It’s long enough that I start to get—not nervous, exactly. Not scared. Just unsettled .

He has that air about him. Especially in his eyes. They really do remind me of the deepest parts of the ocean. But I suppose it makes sense, given—what he is.

“Yeah, you can use the bathroom.” He steps back, barely making enough room for me to squeeze past him. “Then I need to talk to you.”

That brings me up short. “About what?”

“You’ll see.”

I roll my eyes and move past him, my body brushing up against his as I do. His heat radiates around me. This house traps the night’s chill, and I try not to think about how nice it would be to snuggle up to him and use his body heat for warmth.

“I’ll be outside the door,” he says, following me down the hall.

I glance over my shoulder at him. “Still don’t trust me not to run?”

“Of course not.”

Which is fair. Because I probably would. And I will, the second I have the opportunity.

Most likely, anyway.

I use the bathroom quickly, shivering in my nightgown. When I come out, Jaxon’s leaning up against the wall, his strong arms crossed over his chest, watching me.

“Can I change?” I ask him.

“Why?”

I gesture down at my thin nightgown. “Because it’s freezing in here.”

“Oh. Oh .” He blinks like it hadn’t even occurred to him. “Yeah, come on. I’ll let you get something out of your suitcase.”

Earlier, he hadn’t let me in his room, just brought me the nightgown and clean underwear while I was in the shower. But right now, he leads me in there, hesitating a little at the doorway. I don’t tell him I’ve already seen it. He has to know I dug through his shit, right, when I was trying to escape?

Still, being in Jaxon’s bedroom with Jaxon feels different than being in here alone, especially after—everything that’s happened. I certainly look at his bed, with its rumpled sheets, a little differently.

Don’t. Focus. He is a murderer.

A murderer who did, in fact, make me come so hard that I stopped caring.

A murderer who also isn’t human, really.

He drags the suitcase over and watches me while I pull out a change of clothes. When I straighten up and look over at him, he keeps staring at me.

“Some privacy?” I ask.

Jaxon’s brow furrows. “Oh. Right.”

Is that a strain of disappointment I detect in his voice? Perv.

I ignore the heat it sends to my clit.

Or maybe I don’t. Maybe that’s why, when he turns around, I don’t make much of an effort to try to get out of his line of sight, just peel my nightgown up over my head, my eyes fixed on his glossy black hair. As I dress, the fabric rustling, he tilts his head a little toward me.

“Are you trying to sneak a peek?”

He jerks his gaze away. “No.”

“Yes, you were.” I grin and zip up my pants. I’m still topless. Tits out.

“I was not.” He shifts uncomfortably. He’s so strange, and not just for the obvious reasons, either. It’s like he’s shy about the thought of me changing even though earlier he completely wrecked me.

God, I have to stop thinking about earlier.

I slide on my bra and pull on my sweater and say, “You can look now,” and he does, turning around and then drinking me in.

Now it’s my turn to shift uncomfortably. Though I wouldn’t say I’m that uncomfortable.

“Warmer?” he asks.

“I will be. What do you want to talk to me about?”

Jaxon goes still, his eyes dark and intense. He’s looking at me like it doesn’t actually matter that I’m dressed—like he sees right through my clothes, through my skin, into the most secret parts of me.

“I have to do something,” he says. “And you’re going to come with me.”

Fear suddenly twists through my body, violent and jarring. Real fear. Like what I felt when those two men pointed their guns in my face. Like what I felt when I saw what Jaxon was capable of.

“Y-you’re going to have to tell me more than that.” I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. “What do you have to do?”

He takes his time answering, although when he does, his response is both shocking and completely expected. “I have to kill someone.”

“So why do you need me ?” I spit out, taking one reflexive step away from him. I swear he flinches a little.

“Can’t leave you here,” he answers, a beat too late.

“So let me go.”

The look he gives me could have withered roses.

“I won’t tell anyone what you’re going to do.” I’m pleading and I know it, but I don’t care. “Look, I just want to find Edie. Even if you won’t tell me where she is, let me go and I’ll just try to find her and let you do—” I wave my hands around. “Whatever it is you need to do.”

“No.”

I slump, fear worming through me. “Won’t I just fuck up whatever you need to do? Won’t this just make me a liability?” I try to keep my voice steady. “Is that the idea? Once I see you kill someone, then you’ll be allowed to kill me? That’s wha?—”

“No!” He says it even more forcefully this time. “I’m not going to kill you. But you have to come with me.”

“And if I refuse?” I cross my arms. Raise an eyebrow. Challenge him.

Jaxon just shrugs. “Refuse all you want. I got you from your car on the highway to that bed.” He tilts his head toward the hallway. “You think I can’t drag you along on a kill?”

The way he says it sends chills shooting through every nerve in my body. He’s so calm. Like it’s all so ordinary.

“Won’t it just—make things more complicated for you?”

Jaxon’s eyes glitter. “Of course it fucking will,” he says. “But I’m afraid I don’t have much of a choice.”

That really chills me. Because in this moment, I see Jaxon as what he is—as something not fully human. Some quality in him seems to shift in front of me. A shadow moving across his face. A predatory flatness spreading through his eyes.

My skin prickles the way it did in my bedroom earlier.

“I don’t understand anything about you,” I say coldly.

And Jaxon only replies, “I know.”