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CHAPTER EIGHT

CHARLOTTE

I gape up at Jaxon, still not sure I heard him correctly. When I don’t move, he releases my waist to curl his hand around mine, prying my fingers open one by one to get at the clean panties inside.

His strength is—startling. I try to resist, out of principle more than anything. Honestly, I would love to have clean underwear. And a bath. But I’d love not being a psychopath’s prisoner a hell of a lot more, which is why I went along with his demands. Putting on the dress. Playing nice. I figure if I can get downstairs, I’ll have a better chance of escaping.

It was just a lot easier to do when he wasn’t here, smoldering at me. Because as soon as I see him, I want to defy him. I want to piss him off?—

So he’ll do exactly what he’s doing right now .

No. I will absolutely not be thinking like that.

Jaxon’s eyes burn into me as he snatches the panties out of my hand and tosses them over his shoulder. I wish I could squeeze my legs shut, but he’s currently situated between them. I glare up at him, my face hot. With rage, I tell myself.

I know it’s not just rage.

Don’t be a fucking dumbass, Charlotte .

As if to prove to myself that I do not, in fact, enjoy having this monster bear down on me, I try to squirm away, hiking my dress up in the process. Jaxon keeps his gaze fixed on me as he grips my hips, pinning me to the bed.

“I won’t look,” he says.

“Fuck you.”

Something like hunger flashes across his face, and I suddenly hear what I said. What it implies when he has me pinned beneath him.

Jaxon spreads one hand across my belly, pressing just enough weight to hold me down. I try to wriggle out anyway, kicking my legs up, but he grips my thigh with his other hand, his palm warm against my skin. I bite back the urge to gasp.

“Hold still,” he growls. Then he reaches up under my dress, and I do, because I know if I keep moving he’s going to touch something I’m not sure I want him to touch.

He hooks his fingers over the waistband of my panties, right at the joint of my hip, and pulls it down. I suck in my breath. Because this is happening. Edie’s fucking murderer is undressing me.

He does, however, keep his gaze fixed on mine, his blue eyes burning. I’ll give him that much.

“Is this so hard?” he murmurs, peeling the panties over my hips. He releases my belly, cautiously, and then slides his other hand up under my dress to pull the panties lower over my thighs.

I stare at him, my breath caught in my chest. A strand of his hair has worked out of his ponytail and hangs down to tickle my cheek. I resist the urge to bat it away.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and I really, really do not like how those two words send heat flooding between my legs. I just hope he doesn’t notice.

He drags the panties over my knees. Only once they’re free of my skirt does he glance down to pull them off completely. I hardly dare to breathe. To move. I just watch him, half-terrified by what he’s going to do next?—

And half-aroused by what he just did.

Jaxon balls the dirty panties into a ball and shoves them in his pocket.

“What the hell?” I snap.

He gives me an expression that would almost look guilty if I didn’t know better. “I’ll wash them,” he says. “With your other dress.”

Then he grabs the clean panties from his shoulder and kneels in front of me. For a moment, I lay there like this is something I want. Then reality sinks in, how close he is to my foot, and my survival instinct activates with a sudden, pounding rush. I swing my foot up in a big, firm arc—or try to. Jaxon grabs my ankle without even looking.

“And you were behaving so well.” His eyes lock with mine. “I told you, I won’t look.”

“You shouldn’t be doing this at all,” I snap. “I’m not a child. I can dress myself.”

“And yet, when I gave you the opportunity, you didn’t take it.” He smiles darkly, and I hate that I like that smile, that I like the way his hand feels wrapped around my ankle, my leg propped up so the cool air of the room brushes against my bare pussy.

I hate it so much that I try to kick him with my other leg even though I know what’s going to happen, and it does: he grabs that ankle too, then jumps to his feet so he can press himself between my legs again. He leans over me, the loose hair brushing my lips.

“You can’t fight me,” he says softly. “A human woman’s no match for a monster like me.”

Human . My thoughts snag on that word again, the way he wants to delineate between the two of us like we’re different species. Something about that feels more dangerous than anything else.

Including the fact that he called himself a monster.

“Now let me finish this so we can have our dinner.” He steps back and lifts my foot up. This time, I let him, because what choice do I have? He’s a madman. He very likely killed my best friend, even if he claims he didn’t. And I’m far more exposed and vulnerable than I’ve been since I first laid eyes on him in that greasy diner.

Jaxon slips my feet through the clean panties, pushes them up to my thighs. I stare at him the whole time, hardly breathing, trying to ignore the feathery touch of his fingers against my skin. When he reaches my hemline, he raises his eyes to mine and keeps pushing.

“Lift up your ass,” he tells me, the panties bunched around my upper thighs. His eyes are daggers. When I don’t make any attempt to do as he says, he digs his hands into my hips, his fingers long and sharp, and hoists me up with more of that surprising, hidden strength. He shoves the panties into place. Drops me.

His hands are still on my hips, still under my skirt, and he’s kneeling in front of me almost like he’s the one in supplication.

“L-let me go.” I hate that there’s a shiver in my voice. “The stupid things are on.”

For a moment, I’m afraid he’s not going to release me. But then he slides his hands out from under my skirt and stands up, looking at me expectantly. I don’t move.

Jaxon sighs, crouches down, and grabs that cruel-looking knife he brandished against me. I want that knife. It almost feels like a hunger inside me, the desire to have a weapon and use it against my captor.

Pain sparks in my head, like a warning not to do anything stupid.

“You will come down and have dinner with me,” he says calmly. “If you’re good, you’ll get a bath.”

He steps closer, and I brace myself against the bed, my eyes on the knife, watching as he lifts it so that it catches the overhead light. When he lays it against the side of my throat, I whimper a little, even though it’s just the flat side, and he doesn’t actually cut me.

“We can also talk about what happened to your friend Edie.” He gives a slow, curling smile. “Assuming you ask the right questions.”

I stare at him, breath shuddery, the knife warming against my skin. He said just the right thing to snag my attention. To remind what I originally set out to do.

Behave.

Play along.

Find a way to escape.

I swallow against the knife and then nod, one short tiny motion. Jaxon doesn’t move right away, though. Just stares at me, his eyes stormy. I hold my breath, curling my fingers against the blanket. The skin of my hips still tingles from where he touched me.

Then he steps back, taking the knife with him. “Come on,” he barks, and I stand, my legs shaking. He comes around behind me, eyes never leaving mine, and loops his arm around my chest so the knife grazes my neck again. “Walk.” He’s close enough that his breath whispers across my ear, and my bitch of a pussy clenches with heat.

I do what he says.

He’s surprisingly graceful, guiding me out of the room and into a dim hallway with his arm around me and the knife to my throat. I sweep my gaze around, taking stock of my surroundings. Everything out here looks old and dusty, too. Faded wallpaper. Strange paintings on the walls—some of them portraits, of people that sort of look like Jaxon, and some of them odd abstract art that makes me feel vaguely queasy.

The stairs are on the other end of the hallway from my room. Distressingly far. Jaxon nudges me downward, and I take slow, careful steps, pressing my fingers against the wall, running them over the photographs hanging there. All black and white. Old. Unfamiliar faces posed beneath sprawling oak trees.

“That your family?” I ask. I can’t help myself.

“Some of them.” He’s dropped the knife a little so that it rests against my collarbone, but he still has his arm around me. I can feel his strength, even in that loose embrace, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t frighten me.

I’d also be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on.

Don’t be fucking stupid, Charlotte . I repeat that mantra to myself as we go down the stairs and step into a foyer illuminated by yellowish globe lights affixed to the walls.

The front door is only a few feet away. There are windows above it and beside it, dark from the night outside. My breath catches. My heart quickens.

And Jaxon notices, because he presses the knife a little more firmly against my neck.

“This way.” He whispers the words into my ear like a lover, and his arm tightens across my chest as he veers me away from the door. I hate how firm he feels against my back. Hate the way he did that thing with my underwear by hand, too, his eyes never leaving my face. Hate that it makes me wonder what other things those hands could do if these weren’t the circumstances we’d met in.

The thought evaporates when he guides me into a cramped, dusty living room, though.

Because there are two corpses in there, propped up on the tattered, threadbare furniture.

I shriek and then think better of it, my voice lodging in my throat. The corpses stare at me. They’re preserved somehow, the skin leathery and discolored. A woman and a man. Hair combed and styled, their bodies dressed in old-fashioned clothes. They stare at me with strange, shining eyes. Glass, I realize after a moment. Glass reflecting the yellow lamps.

Did he taxidermy them?

“Don’t mind them,” Jaxon says gruffly, pushing me past the corpses, which stare at me. “They’re for the Unnamed.”

“The what ?”

Jaxon doesn’t answer, just guides me through another doorway. A dining room. There’s an enormous walnut table with two formal place settings. Some covered silver platters. A chandelier turned low. More taxidermy on the walls, although animals this time. Alligators. A bear. Half a dozen deer heads. They all look ancient, cobwebbed and moth-eaten.

“Are those for the Unnamed, too?” I ask, immediately regretting it.

“Those are my grandfather’s.” Jaxon directs me to a chair and pushes me down to sitting, then slowly draws the knife away. I immediately look down at the place setting, but there’s no knife to be found. Not even a butter knife.

I sit very still, my hands curled in my lap. Jaxon moves around the table, opening up the platters. White rice. Biscuits. A thick, rich stew with a salty briney scent that reminds me of the ocean. A salad, oddly bright compared to all the other dim colors in the room.

“I’ll serve you,” he says stiffly. “Keep your hands in your lap.”

“If I don’t?” I peer up at him, my hair falling into my eyes. It’s already starting to turn greasy. If you’re good, I’ll let you have a bath .

Jaxon looks at me. His face is unreadable. A killer’s mask. He doesn’t answer.

And that frightens me more than anything.