Page 25 of The Fire Went Wild (Hunter’s Heart #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHARLOTTE

I can’t believe how hot this man’s blood is, or how it coats my hands like thick, silky gloves. I drive the knife into his chest, relishing the gentle resistance of his skin and the dancing twitch of his muscles. He makes a sound like he’s had the air punched out of him and swings his arm around and grabs at the knife, his hands slippery. When he touches me, it jars me out of this strange, dreamy state I’m in and plunges back into reality:

There’s a man I’ve never seen before splayed out on the bed in front of me, one cut on his shoulder and the other on his chest. I made them.

“You fucking bitch!” he howls. “Who sent you?”

Somehow, I jerk the knife away, cutting his hand in the process. He shrieks but keeps reaching for me. I swing the knife, cutting his forearm. More blood. More curses.

A dark blur at my side. Jaxon.

Jaxon, who made me do this.

He leaps across the bed, moving unfathomably fast, and pins the man down to the mattress by his arms. I stumble backward, sliding off the bed, still clutching the knife.

My migraine pain flares, blinding me.

“Do you want to finish it?” Jaxon’s question centers me. His mask centers me, those black empty eyes, the strange twisting metal that mirrors the musculature of a face. The antlers, sharp as daggers.

Yes, yes, I do want to finish it. I know I shouldn’t, but there’s a hot, driving lust inside my chest, not all that different from what compelled me to beg Jaxon to fuck me in the woods. My clit is on fire. Dampness seeps through my panties. Even if the more I think about killing this man, actually ending his life, the more my migraine tears through my brain.

This is wrong. This is so, so wrong.

But also I feel strong and vibrant, like when I’m working on a new painting—but more . More than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

“Charlotte.” My name is sharp on Jaxon’s tongue. The man, my victim, squirms and howls and kicks, but Jaxon is too strong for him, just like he was too strong for me when he put this knife in my hand and dragged me into this room. “I’ll finish it if you want me to. Even though it really should be you.”

I don’t know what he means by that, even though I agree. I need to push through the fiery pain in my temple and keep going, even if I want it to feel like someone else is making me move, like someone is forcing me to do this.

“Charlotte?” Jaxon keeps staring at me. “Do you want me to finish it?”

Numbly, I shake my head.

“What’d he do to you, honey?” the man’s gaze meets mine, and his eyes are wide and bright with fear. I like it, that fear. It makes me feel powerful.

What’s wrong with me ?

“Don’t speak to her.” Jaxon hits the man’s temple with his fist, and the man sputters and jerks.

I want to feel his blood again.

I leap on him, my heart soaring, and drive the knife into his chest again, lower down this time. He makes a wet wheezing noise, and frothy pink blood gurgles up between his lips. I do it again. Again. He flops and convulses whenever I slide my blade into him, and his blood erupts whenever I pull it out. It’s everywhere. On him. On me. I reach up in irritation and pull my scarf away so the next time I stab him, I’ll feel the hot wetness on my face and lips.

I keep going.

Into his stomach. His side. Over and over. I think he’s still alive because he keeps jerking beneath me and making wet gurgling noises. It’s not until a strong, firm hand catches my wrist before I can bring the knife back into him that I’m grounded again.

“He’s dead,” Jaxon rasps into my ear, his voice ragged with lust.

And then I see it. The bright fear in the man’s eyes has vanished, and he wears the same vacant expression Jaxon did after I wrapped the chain around his neck. Everything is red. Everything is blood.

My migraine has vanished.

“Oh my god.” The knife slips out of my hand, and I sag backward, dizzy with confusion and disgust and desire all at once. “Oh my god. What did I—Why did I?—”

Jaxon catches me, his arm twining around my waist again, his mask sliding into the space between my shoulder and my neck. “You’re a Hunter.”

His words sear through me. I don’t believe him. I can’t believe him. But my body’s pumping with a strange black hunger that I desperately need to feed.

I reach behind me, twisting my arm into the gap between our bodies until my fingers graze across Jaxon’s cock.

“Is that what you want, little Hunter?”

“Don’t call me that.” I whirl around to face him, kneeling on the blood-soaked mattress. He stands beside the bed, gazing imperiously down at me from behind the mask. He looks like the god I am meant to worship.

I fumble with the button on his pants, my fingers too slippery with blood to do anything. But Jaxon takes over, undoing his fly with a slow laziness like he’s mocking my urgency. He eases his cock out, and through the red haze of my lust, I see he’s just as urgent as I am. I felt how big he was before, but seeing it is another thing, his thick length swollen and taut, beads of precum already shimmering on his cockhead.

I wrap my bloody fingers around him and stroke.

“That’s it,” he rasps. “Mark me with his blood.”

His words shoot electricity through me, and I grab him with the other hand, stacking them on top of each other. He thrusts into my grip three times before he braces his hand on the top of my hand and barks, “Now lick me clean.”

I jerk my gaze up to him, past his bloody cock, not sure if he’s joking. Not sure if I even want him to be joking.

But all I see is the mask.

“Now,” he orders, tightening his grip on my head. “Taste him for me, little Hunter.”

“Don’t call me th?—”

He pushes my head forward and my lips part on instinct, and I draw him into my mouth. My victim’s blood is coppery and salty and not unpleasant at all, a realization I simply can’t let myself dwell on. Instead, I give myself over to it, my blood-sticky hand slipping down to rub my clit over my clothes as I swirl my tongue around Jaxon’s hot, solid erection, lapping up the blood until I taste Jaxon underneath.

He grunts softly and thrusts his cock into my mouth, his hand holding me into place.

“All of it,” he orders.

My clit aches, but I can’t be bothered with the zipper or the bottom, with any of it. So I just keep teasing myself, touching my clit through two layers of fabric as I lick all the way down Jaxon’s length, sucking off the last streaks of blood. He groans, hips rocking, his cock sliding sideways between my lips. And I’m making noises of my own. Hungry, greedy little slurps. I want more. More blood. More Jaxon.

“You like that.” He pulls away from me, so suddenly that I whimper at the loss of him. His mask tilts down and he catches me with my hand between my thighs. “Look at you. Getting your clothes dirty.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

He laughs, the sound echoing and deep. “Yours. You were a messy girl.”

Heat floods into my face, and I don’t have a snappy response. Because I was messy. I’m sitting in that mess now.

“I want you to undress.” He pushes his own pants down as he talks, his cock even more impressive when it’s not bound by fabric. “But don’t get up from that bed.”

I don’t move. Some tiny part of me wants to cling to my morality. To my humanity . Because I’m not a Hunter. I can’t be. Even if I did enjoy stabbing that man?—

“Undress,” Jaxon snarls, and then he jumps onto the bed, the mattress springing. The man, my victim, jostles up against me. It doesn’t disgust me.

In fact, I—I like it.

“Make me,” I say, because if Jaxon makes me it’s not my fault. I’m not a monster.

Jaxon laughs darkly again. Then he grabs my ankle and yanks off my shoe. My sock. I suck in my breath, holding myself up because if I fall back the way I want to, I’ll be draped across my victim’s chest.

Jaxon pulls off my other shoe, then crawls slowly between my legs, shoving my thighs open. I can feel his eyes on me even if I can’t see them. Even if all I see is emptiness.

“Why don’t you want to obey?” he murmurs, unhooking the button on my pants. “Don’t you want me to fuck you?”

I glare at him, trying to summon up the horror and terror I know I should be feeling. “You made me do this.” It sounds stupid, even to me.

“Doesn’t answer my question.” He yanks my pants and panties down over my hips at the same time. I gasp when I feel the hot, sticky blood against my bare ass, then groan when Jaxon splits my pussy open with two gloved fingers. “This does, though.”

He pulls his fingers out and slides them into my lips. The wetness coating the leather is undeniable. I can’t stop myself from sucking on his fingers, either, or bucking my hips up against him.

“There’s my girl,” he says softly, pulling his hand away so he can peel my jeans off completely. “There’s my eager little Hunter.”

“I’m not a Hunter,” I gasp out. “I’m not like you.”

Jaxon’s only response is to push my sweater up over my chest. He grabs me by the waist and sits me up, grinding my drenched pussy into the blood-soaked mattress.

“Evidence!” I shriek out, logic somehow worming its way through my lust-fevered brain. “We’re leaving evidence!”

“You’re not human,” he says. “They don’t know how to look for us.”

And for the first time since he claimed I’m a Hunter, I hope he’s right. Because I really, really don’t want to stop.

Jaxon rips my sweater over my head, tosses it aside, fumbles with my bra. That he lets fall to the side, and his mask dips as he takes in my bare breasts.

Then he pushes me back, throwing me into the mangled stomach of my victim.

And I groan with pleasure.

Pleasure . Not fear. Not disgust. It’s pleasure, because pleasure is currently pooling hotly between my legs, and I lift my blood-smeared hips up toward Jaxon and press my upper back into my victim, sinking deeper into his corpse.

“Say it,” Jaxon whispers, his mask brushing my cheek. He rubs my clit, the cool leather of his glove a strange, delicious sensation.

“Say—what?—”

Jaxon responds by smacking my pussy just hard enough for it to sting. I cry out, jolt against the corpse. The body still feels warm, but the blood is already cooling and sticky.

“Say it,” Jaxon commands, and I gaze up at him and I really do feel like he’s a monster, a god, and I’m trapped in his thrall?—

Exactly where I want to be.

He rubs my clit a little faster, rolling my pulsing nub tween his fingers. I thrust my hips upward, not sure if the wetness between my legs is from blood or desire.

“Don’t act it out.” Jaxon’s voice is calm and low. Patient. “Say it. Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

I don’t want to say it because saying it is admitting that I want it. That I want all of it. That I wanted the kill, and I wanted the blood, and I want Jaxon to shove his swollen cock into my greedy little cunt on top of the evidence of my crime.

“Tell me!” he roars.

“Fuck me!” I scream, my voice overlapping his. “I want you to fuck me!”

He pauses and pulls his hand away from my clit, that empty, terrible mask staring down at me. All I can do is take deep, sucking breaths, my back propped up against a dead man, my blood-smeared legs spread wide and waiting.

“There’s my good girl,” he purrs.

I moan softly, because it’s a lie. I’m not good at all. Look at me. Where I am. What I’m doing.

Jaxon crawls forward over the bed, making the corpse bounce up against me. I brace myself for the painful, delirious stretch when he shoves himself inside of me, but he stops, his cock just nudging against my entrance.

“What are you waiting for?” I gasp out, desperate to be filled.

In response, he reaches past me, dipping his hands in the cooling blood of my first—my second?—victim. I know what’s coming, instinctually, and I hold my breath as he smears the blood up along the side of my waist, rubbing it into my soft, jiggling belly. I arch into his touch, moaning, fists beating against the filthy mattress. “More,” I choke out, and it’s like I’m outside of myself.

Jaxon groans with dark, animalistic lust and does as I ask, painting the blood across my tits, squeezing and tweaking my nipples as he does. I drift on the tortuous haze of my desire, his warm, sticky hands sending new beats of pleasure surging through my body.

“This is a baptism,” he says softly. “ Your baptism, little Hunter.”

I try to touch myself, but Jaxon slaps my hand away and pins it back against my victim, his other hand massaging my breasts with a slow, careful rhythm. All I can see is his mask. The twisted, dark metal. The antlers. The faintest flash of his eyes in the darkness.

“Stay,” he orders, and then he releases my hand and scoops up more blood, the crimson liquid dripping through his fingers. He dribbles it across my exposed neck and then over my lips and my cheeks. Then he combs his fingers through my hair, marking that with the blood, too.

I let out a loud, choking sob. It’s not fear or horror. It’s need .

“Please,” I gasp, darting out my tongue to taste the salt of my victim’s blood again. “Please, fuck me, Jaxon. Please .”

“You beg so well.” He trails his fingers down the side of my neck.

I buck my hips upward like I can catch his cock with my pussy. He laughs and pins them down. Pins me down.

“Ask one more time.” His cockhead nudges against my clit, making me gasp and squirm.

“I need you inside me.” I stare at his mask. I sink into the gore beneath my back. “I’ll die if you don’t fuck me, Jaxon.”

There’s no denying the shudder that wracks through him. No denying the groan that escapes from behind the unfathomable mask. His fingers dig into my hips.

“We can’t have that,” he says.

And then he plunges inside me, one hard and painful thrust, and I scream with relief.