“Thanks,” she signs. “I was thirsty from rowing over here. I really did bring back your boat, by the way.” She pauses. “I assume it was your boat.”
I hand her the glass and sit down on the sofa beside her. She’s so close—close enough that I feel her blood pumping in her veins and the breath exhaling through her lips—but she doesn’t pull away from me. I set my own water glass aside so I can sign.
“Was it under your pier?”
She nods before taking a sip of the water. There’s something about that first drink that sends fire scorching through my body.It’s sotrusting. She knows what I am, knows at least some of the horror I’m capable of, and she still took a sip of that water.
“Then it was mine,” I finish.
We stare at each other.
Her scent is overpowering. I’m used to smelling her from afar, so that it’s washed out by the scent of the lake. But now, she’s inches from me, and I can catch all the complexity of it. Both the scent of her body and the scent of her blood, but also those emotions churning beneath it. The fear’s mostly gone. There’s something else, though. Something that reminds me of fear, and of excitement, and of?—
For a second, I slam backward into time. Several years ago, before the lake houses were built. I was stalking some trespassers who had set up a campsite on the beach, a tent and a small fire that trailed smoke up to the starry night sky.
They were fucking.
They were fucking, and the scent of their arousal led me straight to them. I felt nothing from it; my blood was up for killing, not sex. But I do remember that scent. Rich and lush and earthy, like soil after a thunderstorm.
And I smell it now, wafting off Chloe.
I smelled it last night, too, when her mouth was against mine, but I had been so distracted by the whole situation that I hadn’t dwelt on it.
Chloe shifts on the couch, sips from the water again. Her eyes watch me over the edge of her glass. I don’t know how to read what I see in them—the only human emotion I everreallyrecognize is terror. But there’s something there. A small ember of a fire.
“How did you get back here?” She speaks the question, and the sound of her voice goes straight to my cock, which is already hard from being near her.
“Last night,” she adds.
It takes me a second to realize what she’s saying. “I swam,” I sign.
“Oh.”
The air feels thick. I move closer to her, the way I do unsuspecting prey. Is she unsuspecting? I don’t know.
She doesn’t pull away, just watches me, the glass pressed to her lips. She’s not drinking, though.
Something surges in me. Perhaps we don’t have real self-control, us Hunters. But I wrap my hand around hers and pull the glass away. Her eyes widen a little.
And then I kiss her again.
This time, there’s no pause. She returns the kiss, and her arousal blooms brighter than the rest of her scent, and it works on me like blood does. My whole body erupts, and I push her roughly down onto the sofa. Distantly, I hear the water glass fall to the wooden floorboard slats, but I don’t care. I keep kissing her, plunging my tongue into her mouth, and she does the same
I press my weight into her, pinning her down. Now, there’s a trace of fear working through her arousal. Heightening it, though, not drowning it out.
All the movements come to me easily, the way they do when I’m killing. I haven’t fucked much. Certainly not since I’ve been back on my peninsula. Even before then, it was rare for me to even be interested. But with Chloe?—
All I want to do is plunge inside her.
I break the kiss, and Chloe sucks down a deep gasp of air, her face flushed. “Don’t stop,” she whispers, and I sense something like shame. Maybe it should make me feel bad, but it doesn’t. I know what I am.
So I attack her. Well, I attack her clothes, flaying them off her body like strips of skin. Chloe moans, bucking her hips, and the sound reverberates through my chest.
I claw at her bra, shoving it up around her throat so I can get at her breasts, which tremble from the rough, gasping breaths she’s taking. Her nipples are sharp even in the drowsy heat, and I drag one into my mouth, swirling it with my tongue so I can taste her skin. This makes her groan and roll her hips, still half-covered in her pesky jean shorts and, presumably, another layer of underwear. I kiss down her belly, dragging myself away from her so I can flay those off, too.
“Don’t stop,” Chloe whispers. “I like—like it like this.”
I don’t really understand what she means, but I take her at her word, that she doesn’t want me to stop. I yank her shorts down over her knees, everything getting tangled up in her long, smooth legs. By the time they’re free, I don’t want to bother doing the same with the underwear. My treasure is laid out in front of me, almost completely unwrapped, and I have no fucking patience.
