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CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHARLOTTE

I feel something. A faint tingle in my fingers, like the blood is flowing back into the tiny, delicate veins there. There’s a kind of electric buzz at the bottom of my feet. I’m not nothing.

It fades.

The next time I feel something it’s like when you’re in a club and the music is so loud you can feel the rhythm deep in your chest, so heavy it drowns out your heartbeat. For a long time, I’m nothing but that bass line, slow and droning.

And then the tingling starts again.

I’m a lightning storm.

Then that fades, too.

The third time, I itch.

My throat itches, and I remember the moments before I died, Jaxon’s fingers crushing my trachea as pleasure bloomed hot and roiling through my body.

There’s no pleasure this time.

But I think I can remember what it’s like to breathe.

And I itch.

I itch and I itch.

The fourth time, I finally start to solidify. My body seems to take up space in the darkness. Something deep inside my throat tingles, a kind of faint healing sensation. I drift through the void, considering the outlines of my form, and I wonder how long I’ve been dead.

It lasts longer this time, this awareness. Hours or days. Years? No, I don’t think it’s been that long. But I can feel movement inside my body. A churning that tells me I’m not really dead. And sometimes I can feel the world around me. Softness against my back. Delicate prickling across my skin. Coolness. Warmth. A rough palm.

I float like this, caught between life and death. I don’t know how long it lasts until I drift away again.

The fifth time, I wake up to sensation. I wake up to pleasure .

I feel everything. The blankets I’m stretched out on, the rapid hammering of my heart, my short, panting breaths. And a column of fire between my legs, swelling up through my body in an endless way of heat.

My first word is a scream and the first thing I see is webbed light falling across Jaxon’s face, his long dark lashes fluttering as he opens his eyes and then meets my gaze.

He grins.

“Welcome back, cher.”

His words sound strange, muffled and distorted, and I can only moan in response. Actually speaking feels impossible, so I just arch into him, trying to remember what it’s like to have a body. It’s not like this. Not most of the time. I’m pulsing with ecstasy.

“What was it like,” he whispers into my ear, and I barely comprehend what he’s saying. “Coming while you revived?”

I whimper and wind my arms around him, and this all feels familiar, in a way. Me waking up to Jaxon flooding me with pleasure. But the last time I was asleep, not dead.

I roll my hips and lift my legs to wrap them around his back. My body almost seems to act of its own accord, like it remembers what to do more than me. Jaxon grunts and kisses my neck, and I give myself over to the pleasure, focusing my gaze on the crisscross of branches and bones and sunlight overhead. The tomb , I think idly, barely remembering. The tomb Jaxon crafted for me out of gifts from the swamp. It looks different. Leafier. The sunlight has a greenish quality.

And it’s warm now. It was cold before.

“How long has it been?” I gasp out, twisting my fingers in Jaxon’s hair. It hurts to talk, my vocal cords grinding together.

He pumps into me with his cock, and I remember, through a haze, how he asked if he could fuck me while I was dead, shy and nervous, not quite meeting my eye. How the question flushed me with heat and I said of course and then thought about it later, when he fucked me in his bed, and the idea made me come.

That agonizing pressure builds in my core again, Jaxon’s big cock a flint against my steel. I scrape my nails into his back and he groans, his breath hot against my skin.

“You’re gonna come for me again,” he growls.

“Yes,” I whisper. “How long has it?—”

“Year and a half.” He kisses me hard, our tongues grappling together. “And I’ve missed you so fucking much, little Hunter.”

I thrust up into him, so close to my orgasm that my body shudders with the need for release. Jaxon braces his arms on either side of my head, his own thrusts turning erratic, and I know he’s not going to last much longer. I squeeze down on him, milking him, and when he comes so do I, our intermingled moans drifting out of my tomb.

Jaxon slumps down on my chest, breathing hard, and I trail my fingers up his spine, trying to remember how to move for real. How to sit up. How to walk. Dragging myself out of this tomb feels like it’s going to be impossible.

“How do you feel?” Jaxon’s voice startles me.

I swallow. “Strange.” Talking still hurts.

“I was trying to time it so you’d wake up while I was—” Jaxon peels himself off me and grins, a little embarrassed. “You were starting to show signs of revival. It looks like I guessed right.”

I take him in. He’s cut his hair, and it skims across the tops of his shoulders. His skin is darker than I remember, like he’s spent time in the sun, and his bare chest is gleaming with sweat

A year and a half, he’d said. It’s summer.

“I know that probably made things even stranger.” He brushes my cheek with a tenderness that makes me want to fuck him again. “But I also thought it’d be kinda fun.”

“It was more than kinda,” I tell him, catching his hand and kissing his palm. “But I—can’t move. Talking hurts.”

“That’ll all fade.” He crawls backward over me, the dappled light making him look like some kind of predator of the swamp. A rattlesnake or an alligator—sleek and dark and dangerous. “I’ll help you out, okay? I’ve got basil lemonade ready for you. My grandma always said it helps.” He smiles again, his eyes brimming with affection. “She had it for me after my first death.”

He slides his arms under mine and helps me up to sitting, my head grazing the top of the tomb. Then he drags me out, slow and gentle. I help him along as much as I can, scooting my butt over tangled blankets and crushed flowers. They’re everywhere. Whole blooms braided into my hair. Dried petals sticking to my chest and arms. I’m still in the white dress, although it’s become dingy from being outside for a year and a half.

We emerge into the sunny yard, and I immediately have to squeeze my eyes shut, it’s so bright. Jaxon wraps me up, pressing my face into his chest. “I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ll walk you up to the house, okay?”

I nod into him because I don’t want to talk, and he helps me up to standing. My legs shake like they’re barely able to hold my weight, but it’s okay because Jaxon is there propping me up. We move together, taking slow, stumbling steps. When I start to fall, he catches me and murmurs soft words of reassurance in my ear. I squeeze my eyes shut against the sun most of the time, but every now and then I blink out at the world, seeing it in flashes because of the brightness. His yard is thick and wild and very, very green.

“You’re doing so good,” he says. “I’d carry you, but the earlier you start moving your legs, the faster things’ll come back.”

I nod again and focus on the sensation of the tall, soft grasses against my feet and ankles. “We’re at the porch,” Jaxon says. “Careful with the steps.”

With his help, I make my way up to the screened-in porch, where I open my eyes experimentally. The screen blocks enough of the sunlight that it doesn’t hurt as much, and I take in my surroundings. It’s like seeing them for the first time. The porch. The yard. The swamp.

Home , I think distantly. Which isn’t right. Home is supposed to be California. My little apartment on Camellia Street. I never told anyone where I was going when I left to find Edie, and I wonder if I’ve become a cold case on CrimeSolvers, if Internet sleuths have argued over my disappearance.

“My clothes,” I say roughly. “My paintings?—”

“Ambrose cleared your place out for me right after you died,” Jaxon says. “I’ve got everything up in the spare bedrooms.”

“Ambrose?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to leave your body alone.”

Of course. That was part of our agreement. So was Jaxon finding a way to get my stuff. It comes back to me in fits and starts.

“We should tell Edie I’m okay,” I say. That was another agreement. We tell her everything.

“Of course. I’ll call them and let them know as soon as you’re settled.” He smiles, and he’s so handsome I feel a burst of dizziness.

Jaxon doesn’t let me fall, though.

“But first, let’s get you that lemonade.” Jaxon guides me into the house and sets me down on the sofa in the living room. The mummies are gone. The living room looks cleaner, actually. Like he dusted and tidied up.

I sink into the sofa cushions, my muscles already aching from exertion, while Jaxon gets the lemonade. He comes back with a tray, two big glasses, and an antique pitcher.

“It’s got basil and some mint,” he says as he pours my glass. “A touch of feverfew. It does help. Promise.”

I drink it down in frantic, thirsty gulps. It doesn’t taste like any lemonade I’ve had before—the herbs add an earthy freshness to it that seems to brighten me up from the inside.

“It’s delicious,” I tell him.

Jaxon grins. “Meemaw’s secret recipe.”

I wonder if I’ll ever meet her, Jaxon’s grandmother. If I’ll meet any of his family. Surely I will.

I can’t die. We have all the time in the world.

Jaxon scoots closer to me, taking my hand in his. His palm is warm and rough and dry, and I remember how I felt it as I floated through the darkness.

“How many times did you fuck me?” I ask him.

His cheeks immediately darken. “I don’t want to answer that.”

“A lot, then.”

“I missed you.” He sounds sheepish and embarrassed and that just makes me swell with love for him. Because it didn’t feel like a year and a half to me. A few days. Maybe a week. But he waited for me all this time. He covered me in flowers and kept me safe from all the ravages of the Louisiana swamp. He protected me.

“I’m not mad about it.” Now it’s my turn to blush. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Jaxon smiles happily at that, his big blue eyes searching my face. “Do you feel like a Hunter?” he asks softly, and I blink in surprise. Because I hadn’t actually thought about it until now.

But I realize that something is missing. That emptiness in my chest that lingered even after I killed Oliver Raffia and Damian Tyloch’s man. The faint curls of guilt I had largely managed to ignore. A sense of myself as human.

It’s gone.

It’s all gone, and I’m free.

Jaxon stares at me, waiting for my answer.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I feel like a Hunter.”

And then I kiss him because together, we might have broken the binding that kept me from knowing what I am?—

But I am never going to break the binding that ties me to him.