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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

JAXON

S he’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

I pin her down with my cock, grinding her into the man she killed, and hook my hands under her knees so I can hoist up her legs and slide even deeper inside her. She screams again, a sound that may as well be music but one that could be dangerous at this moment, even in this mostly abandoned neighborhood. I press my hand against her mouth.

“Shh,” I sigh, rolling my hips in slow, lazy thrusts. Her wet cunt clamps down around me, the heat of it lighting a fire deep in my chest. Above my blood-smeared glove, her eyes roll back, showing me her whites.

“Shhh,” I say again. “You don’t want to get caught, do you?”

She jerks her head against my hand, a quick sharp no, and I pull it away and focus on making her come. From the moment I saw her sink her blade into our victim’s shoulder, I’ve been imagining what her pussy would feel like when all that pleasure she built up finally explodes out of her.

“This got you wet, didn’t it?” Seeing her through the mask, I can sense the Hunter in her. It’s still hidden, though, buried deep in some hidden crevice in her heart. But it’s there. Pulsing. On the verge of bursting.

Just like she is.

She whimpers her response and squeezes her eyes shut and grabs at her tits, pressing them together. They look so beautiful coated in blood. She looks beautiful, like one of my sculptures except living and breathing and hot with fire.

I yank my cock out of her pussy, making her squawk in protest, and then I crawl up so I’m straddling her waist. I shove my cock, still dripping with her arousal, between the bloody mounds of her tits and groan. Even this feels better with a living woman. Her tits are hot and sticky and I can feel her heart pounding against my cock.

“You said—” The words come out jagged. “You said—You’d fuck me?—”

“I am fucking you.” I look down at her scowling, blood-smeared face. My cock keeps stabbing at her throat, right next to her fluttering pulse.

“This isn’t what I asked for!”

I laugh. She’s right, though, and as good as her big, bouncing tits feel around my cock, her pussy feels even better. I crawl back and hunch over her as I line my cock up with her cunt, nuzzling her face with my mask. “Sorry,” I purr. “But your tits looked too good not to fuck.”

Then I shove myself inside her again, making her squeal instead of talking back. Even though I like it when she talks back. I like the reminder that she’s alive and that she’s willing to fight a little before she gives in.

Just like she’s giving in now, settling back on the corpse while I thrust in and out of her. My gods are here, too, roiling around inside me. My Guardian loves the blood, loved it when I baptized Charlotte in its name. And the Unnamed wants to fuck Charlotte into oblivion. Although I’m not sure how much of that is the Unnamed and how much of it is me.

I’m also not sure if it’s the Unnamed or my Guardian or me who wants to kiss her as I slam into her cunt, her lips crimson from the blood. She groans, lips parting to give me a glimpse of the pink tongue that licked my cock clean, and I pull up my mask just enough that I can smash my mouth against hers. She makes a muffled mmph sound and wraps her thick legs around my hips, cunt fluttering as I plunge my tongue into her mouth. When I break the kiss, she gasps and falls back on the corpse. We never break our rhythm.

“Are you going to come for me?” I pull my mask back down and rise up to kneeling so I rub my thumb over clit.

“Depends.” Her breath is all fast and panty, and I know the answer is yes. I can feel it in the way her pussy contracts around me, the way her skin is flushed beneath the mask of blood. “Think you can make me?”

If I wasn’t buried hilt-deep in her right now, that might have given me pause. But I’m wearing the mask of my gods, and I’m fucking a gorgeous, ferocious living girl on the corpse of her first real kill, and nothing’s going to give me pause. Especially not when I wrench my glove off so I can feel her clit throbbing against my skin.

“I’ve done it before, haven’t I?” I fuck her with my cock and rub her clit with my thumb and watch her dissolve in front of me. I know the second she comes, I will too, and so I try to drag it out as long as I can, slowing my pace until she jerks and keens in protest. The corpse flops beneath her, matching the rhythm of my thrusts.

“You’re an asshole,” she gasps. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

The Unnamed flares inside me, a starburst of power. Because right now, I do have power over her. I snapped the binding that held her back, and now she’s spread beneath me, legs spread, her clit under my control.

“Beg for it,” I tell her, dragging the full length of my cock out of her just so I can slam it back in. “Convince me, and I’ll let you come.”

Charlotte screeches in frustration and hits me in the shoulder, which just makes me drop her clit and fuck her harder.

“Do you want to come, little Hunter?” Fuck, I hope she doesn’t try to hold out. I need to feel her convulsions as much as she does.

Her expression tells me everything, though. Her eyes are glassy with desperation. Her face is twisted with need. She grinds up against me as I bury myself inside her, chasing her pleasure. But it’s not enough. The angle isn’t right, and I won’t adjust myself until I hear her beg.

“Please,” she spits out, and I groan with pleasure.

“You can do better than that.”

“Please let me come.” She falls back over the corpse, her blood-splattered tits rising up, each one tipped with a sharp nub of a nipple. I push up my mask and lean over her to suck one into my mouth, tasting the dried blood. Charlotte groans.

“Please!” she shouts, her legs quaking around me. “Let me come, Jaxon! Or I’ll fucking kill you again!”

That nearly undoes me. I’m pretty sure the only thing that holds me back is the Unnamed, still surging inside me. I jerk up and quicken my thrusts. Charlotte stares at me.

“Please.” Her voice is small. Plaintive. “Please, Jaxon. I’m so close. All you need to do is?—”

I know what I need to do, and I do it, pressing my thumb hard on her clit. I stroke over it twice and that’s all it takes before my pretty, blood-soaked Hunter is moaning and gasping and shrieking and coming . Her pussy clamps down on my dick and I let myself go, roaring as my cum pumps into her, pulse after pulse matching Charlotte’s own desperate rhythm. Even after I’m spent I keep rocking against her, because she’s still shaking and shuddering and I want her to feel every ounce of pleasure that she can.

Eventually, she slumps back, draping gracefully over the body, her chest rising and falling as she breathes. I slide out of her and crawl backward off the bed so I can admire the scene in front of me. It feels like one of my sculptures:

Two bodies twisted together. Charlotte’s raging fire. Our victim’s cooling corpse.

I wish I had a camera.

Charlotte’s breath slows, and she tilts her head toward me. A darkness passes over her features, and my heart twists in my chest. Because there’s doubt in her eyes.

Whatever thing is binding her, keeping her from her nature—it’s gone. I felt it snap. But thirty years is a long time to think you’re human when you’re not, and it occurs to me that she’ll need time to adjust. To accept the truth of things.

Charlotte sits up suddenly, hands moving to cover her chest. She looks down at herself, her hair falling into her face. “Now what?” she mutters, sliding forward. Not looking at me. Not looking at her victim, either.

“We go back to Louisiana,” I say, sliding off my mask. “And I can train you.”

Charlotte jerks her head up at that. She seems to be considering what she wants to say next. Eventually, she spits out, “Train me?”

“You’re a Hunter.” I feel uneasy, saying it now that it’s real and not me goading her on during sex. “Something—something was stopping you from knowing that. But when you?—”

“I’m not a Hunter,” she snarls, scrambling off the bed. “I’m not?—”

She’s looking for her clothes, I think, but she catches sight of her victim instead and slaps her hand over her mouth and makes a low keening sound. “What’s wrong with me?” she whispers. “Why?—”

“Nothing,” I say quickly, setting my mask to the floor so I can go over to her. When I wrap my arms around her waist, she doesn’t pull away, which is something, I suppose. “You just—there was a charm on you, stopping you from knowing that you’re a Hunter. We don’t have to talk about it now. Ambrose wants to?—”

“Who the fuck is Ambrose?” she shouts.

“Another Hunter.” I spot her sweater and pants lying on the floor, although the scarf is nowhere to be seen. We need to get out of here. But Charlotte’s in a panic because the Unnamed’s plan didn’t work the way I expected, and I can’t have her running down the street covered in blood. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She whirls around to face me, eyes bright in contrast to the blood. “How?” she whispers. “What—We can’t?—”

“We can do whatever we want.” I step up to her, the clothes draped over my arm. “I can sense humans. No one’s nearby right now. If someone comes close, I’ll know with plenty of time to spare.”

Charlotte stares at me, trembling. I take her hand, squeezing it a little. She drops her gaze down to it. But she doesn’t pull away.

“Come on,” I tug her forward. “Just a quick shower.”

“They’re going to know it was us,” she whispers even as she comes with me, away from the bed and the corpse and over to the door leading into the attached bathroom. “They’re going to—we left evidence?—”

“We aren’t human. I told you that.” I switch on the bathroom light and stop short. The room is huge, with a big glassed-in shower. Fanciest bathroom I’ve ever been in. “They’ll find our DNA, but everything’ll be inconclusive.” I look over at her, standing in the doorway, her eyes taking in the bathroom. “Trust me.”

She gives me a look I can’t read. But when I step forward and turn the water on, she follows me.

The shower is one of those rainfall showers, with the shower head fixed to the ceiling so that the water falls in curtains. I get it warm for her, then strip out of my shirt. “Go on,” I tell her. “Wash off.”

Charlotte steps up beside me, staring at the shower. The blood streaking her body looks lurid in the bright bathroom lights.

She’s so fucking hot like this. I wish she could just walk around covered in blood forever.

But, of course, she steps into the shower. I finish stripping out of my clothes and jump in after her. She doesn’t say anything, just stands under the water as it rehydrates the dried blood and then sluices it away in crimson-pink ribbons.

I can’t stop staring at her. Which means I don’t miss the despair creeping into her expression.

“You look so beautiful,” I say, acting on some instinct. It’s definitely not my gods, anyway. Neither of them are interested in any of this. They just want the blood and the violence.

Charlotte jerks her gaze to me, eyes glimmering.

“You do.” I join her under the water, keeping my movements slow. She doesn’t pull away, not even when I put my hands on the top of her lush hips. Not even when I lean in and brush my mouth against her.

“I liked it,” she breathes against me, and I hear the shame poisoning her words.

And it hurts me, that shame. I don’t know what it’s like because I grew up in a family of Hunters. I was bred for this life. Raised for it. To hear her shame in what she is, knowing that it hurts her?—

That cracks me in two.

So I draw her into me underneath the warm water, and I kiss her for real, sliding my tongue between her lips. I still can’t get over how much I love kissing a living woman, all the heat and yielding reciprocity. Because Charlotte does return the kiss. She even winds her arms around my shoulders and presses her lush body against mine, the warm water sealing us together.

“I liked it, too,” I whisper into her ear.

She stiffens, just a little, against me. “You’re a monster, though.”

I tsk softly and nuzzle against her neck. “Are you trying to hurt my feelings, little Hun?—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Hunter.” I speak it into her skin and relish when she shivers against me. “And maybe I am a monster.” I pull back so I can gaze down at her through the curtain of glittering water, with her wide dark eyes and soaked hair. All the blood has washed away from her face. Pity. Fortunately, plenty is still clinging to her tits, and I massage them a little, helping it along. “But I’ve accepted what I am, Charlotte. And you will, too.”

She wants to be horrified, I think. But she isn’t. I can smell it on her, the first curls of her arousal. The flash of lust in her eyes. She tries to smother both.

“Let’s get you clean,” I whisper. “And then let’s take you home.”

And when I say home , Charlotte doesn’t protest.