Page 50 of Bird on a Blade

I shrug. “I guess.” I settle down on my side, too, facing her, still running my hand over her hip and waist. She doesn’t shy away from my touch, and I love that. “My people, people like me, I mean—We kill. That’s what we do. We hunt. Different people have different theories as to why.”

“What’s yours?”

She doesn’t sound scared. Just curious.

“It’s a compulsion,” I say after thinking on it for a moment. “Kind of like eating or—” Heat floods into my face, and I wonder if I should tell her. “Fucking.”

Fear flickers through her eyes. But she still doesn’t pull away. “Oh.”

“It’s not exactly like fucking,” I say, even though, honestly, it kind of is, at least in how good it feels. “I could go without fucking, you know? But I can’t go without eating. And killing’s the same way.”

“Have you tried?”

The question comes out small, almost like she’s afraid of asking it. And when I hear it, something hardens in my heart. I almost want to spit out,Have you tried not eating?but I already know the damn answer to that, don’t I?

“No,” I finally say. “But my mama told me her father did. My grandpa. He—” I hesitate, the story flickering through my head. Mama told it to me every damn chance she got. “He tried to stop himself from killing. Went cold turkey.” I pause, studying Edie’s face. She doesn’t look too scared. “But the longer he suppressed being a Hunter, the more he wanted to kill, and he wound up—he wound up killing his wife. My grandmother. Didn’t matter that he loved her.”

There’s the fear, pooling through her her widening eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I’d rather not do that, so when I start to feel the itch I take care of it.” I squeeze her thigh. “If I didn’t, I’d risk hurting someone I don’t want to hurt.”

Like you.

I don’t say it aloud, but from the way Edie drinks me in I know she knows anyway. Her lips curl up into a little hint of a smile. Just a little.

“I guess that makes sense,” she finally says. Then, quickly: “So why can’t you die?”

“That, I don’t know. Mama says that’s just how it is. My friend Jaxon thinks we’re blessed by these old pagan gods, but he’s crazy.”

Edie smiles at that. “Your friends,” she says. “Do they—they live here? I’m assuming they’re, um, like you.”

“Hunters? Yeah, of course.” I move my hand a little higher to rub her arm. Her skin’s soft as silk and I don’t ever want to stop touching it. “But they don’t live here. Jaxon’s in Louisiana. Ambrose is in Texas. Mama’s—I don’t know. She travels around. Last I heard she was in Tennessee.”

“How many of you are there?”

I give her a sharp grin. “Maybe we should playSilence of the Lambs. Feel like I’m getting the third degree here.”

“That’s because you already know everything important about me.” She’s serious when she says it. Dead serious, I think. “Almost all the terrible things that happened in my life, you were there.”

I feel myself blanch. I don’t know how to take that.

“Except for one,” she adds, very very softly. “The worst one. But you—you were there after.” She hesitates. “And I’m glad you were.”

She looks up at me like I’m her whole world, like I’m the fucking moon and stars, and for a moment I’ve had that thing I’ve wanted my whole damn life.

I kiss her. Soft and slow and sweet, curling my fingers up along the side of her neck.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she whispers against my lips.

“There’s not a goddamn thing wrong with you,” I whisperback, tightening my fingers against her pulse. It’s quickened, like a rabbit’s.

“I should be horrified by you.”

She’s not wrong, even if it hurts to hear her say it.

“I am what I am,” I finally say. “I ain’t human, like you. I’ve got different needs.” I brush my thumb over her lips and try not to think about how glossy they looked as she choked on my cock. “And maybe you just need what I can offer.”

She grabs my wrist and pulls my hand away and kisses me. And it ain’t soft and slow and sweet, neither.

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