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She creeps forward, and I close the space between us to one row, needing to see her. Through the gaps in the stalks, the pale gleam of her skin in the darkness is mesmerizing. She tips her head up and listens.

I reach out and drag one finger along the corn ear to my left, just enough to make it whisper.

She goes completely still, then turns slowly toward the sound. “I know you’re there,” she whispers into the night.

“The faster you move, the closer I get. The further you go, the more I want you. I am not the dark, but I live in it. What am I?”

She whips her head in the direction of my voice, which is to the right of where I touched the corn, not that she heard me move. Valli can’t see me as I continue to shift quietly around her, waiting for her to run. She twists sharply to the left, and my hand shoots out and closes around her arm.

Using the momentum, I push her down, and she lands face-first on the ground, my body coming down on top of hers. Twisting my other hand in her hair, I bring her head up and align my lips next to her ear so she can hear my gravelly voice. “Yours,” I whisper, and she shivers, breathing hard.

She bucks beneath me, but my cock wants her, he wants her now. So I reach beneath us and pull myself from my pants, then rub along her ass crack.

“Fuck me,” she whimpers.

I don’t need to be asked twice. Twisting her hair tighter in my grip, I angle her body how I need it to be. The thought of her already filled with Cipher’s cum excites me further as I press my erection into her core. She is so wet and warm, and as I thrust forward, my eyes roll back into my head. It’s been a very long time since I fucked a woman; they are so fragile, and I break fragile things.

“Come on, Scarecrow,” she taunts. “Show me what you’ve got.”

She thinks she can handle what I’ve got? I don’t ease into it; instead, I thrust forward hard enough that she gasps, and her fingers curl into the dirt beneath her. The sound she makes goes straight through me. I do it again and again, setting a pace that is far from gentle, but it was never going to be.

She is so warm and tight, and it’s been so long that the sensation almost undoes me. Yet I don’t slow down; rather, I twist her hair tighter in my grip and pull her head back. Valli arches into it, her spine curving up toward me, and I growl against the side of her neck. This beauty doesn’t lie there and take it; she meets my every movement with passion and fire.

Dragging my mouth down the curve of her neck, I bite into her flesh. The feel of her clenching around me and the sound she makes has me biting her harder as her hips slam back against me.

“Don’t stop,” she grits out.

I pin her hips flat to the ground and drive into her, and she screams, loud enough that the entire island will hear her. I shift my mouth to her shoulder and suck hard on the skin there, needing to mark her and show the world she is mine. Everything in me needs people to know she is mine. I don’t enjoy killing people, but I will to keep them away from her.

She writhes beneath me, moaning my name—not Scarecrow, but Cave—and I love how it sounds. As I drive into her and rotate my hips, her eyes close and her mouth falls open in ecstasy. She is extraordinary, and she is mine.

Her body tightens around me, and I drop my hand from her hair to wrap it around her throat. I feel her pulse against my palm and the sounds that she makes as she comes apart beneath me. Her whole body bows as she cries out, and I feel it everywhere. I drive into her twice more before I follow her, and when I do, I press my mouth to the bite on her neck and growl, “Mine.”

Neither of us move for a moment, both breathing hard, but once I can, I push off her tiny body and pull her up and cradle her in my arms. She is unsteady on her feet and chuckles as she looks down to where she is covered in dirt, with just the moon glowing down on her.

I wish we could stay like this forever; I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

When I pick her up, she doesn’t protest. She pushes her face against the side of my neck, and I carry her back through the rows to the middle of the field.

When we emerge, Noa is sitting, still shirtless, with his hair a catastrophe, and a huge grin on his face. Cipher is on his feet, and I stop in front of him to let him look at her.

Valli reaches out and lays her hand against his jaw. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says back, blushing slightly.

Plenty of women have requested Cipher for the chases, and every single time Nixie has had Ares talk to me about it, I shut him down. Cipher is mine, and I have never wanted to share him with anyone until now. The same goes for Noa. He was requested a year ago, after a woman came across him in the cemetery. I heard the things she said about him, and when the woman arrived at night and her wristband flashed green, I ripped it from her wrist.

Then she ran into the cornfield, after she had been warned not to come in. So I picked her up and carried her across the park—she screamed the entire way—and threw her over the bridge. Unfortunately, she knew how to swim, and Khodi jumped in and helped her to shore. Since that night, Nixie removed Noa from the rotation too.

I carry Valli over to Noa and place her into his arms. He wraps them around her and cradles her while Cipher removes his jacket and drapes it over her body.

“She good?” Noa asks me, and I nod.

Then I turn back to Cipher and grab him, scooping him up into my arms. He doesn’t fight me like he normally does; instead, he presses his face into my neck and smells me. I’m not the monster everyone thinks I am—I know tonight meant something to him. Sex can be a primal thing, and that doesn’t interest him much at all, so I take what I need from him, and that is how he likes it. Yet with her it was different. I saw the way he looked at her, like something unlocked in his brain. As if all the spare pieces of himself he saved just in case he needed them one day locked into place.

Noa follows behind me, talking Valli’s ear off about how amazing she is. His spiritual awakening makes another appearance, and she listens patiently. Most people lose interest once he gets excited about something, as it becomes all he talks about, but I find it soothing—his voice is like white noise.

When we reach the shed, Noa follows me around the back of the building, and we walk into the shower Cipher built us outside because I barely fit in the one inside and sometimes he likes us to shower together. It’s big enough that we can all fit inside, but I carry Cipher in first.