Page 73 of Bird on a Blade

She nods, eyes glimmering

“We’ll go into town,” I continue. “Get what we need. Then you can get everything set up here, and I’ll get everything set up there.” I tilt my head toward the woods.

“Okay.” Her voice is shaky, and I can’t help myself; I cup her face, kind of pin her in place. The scent of her fear is strong, and that just excites me further. It’s going to be so hard to keep my hands off her between now and the kill.

“We’ll get everything ready together.” Anticipation thrums through me, and when I speak, I can hear the lust in my voice. “And then we’ll wait.”

Hunters don’t sleep much,but in the last week, I’ve found I like sitting in bed while Edie’s curled up next to me, her breaths slow and measured. I usually read, flipping through the stack of old paperbacks I bought the last time I was in town. I brought one with me tonight, one of those trippy science fiction novels that Jaxon’s always going on about, but I can’t concentrate on the words. My brain keeps going to the kill.

I haven’t been this excited for a kill—well, for fifteen years. Since I decided once and for all I was going to wipe out Edie’s tormentors. And now I get to do it again. Only this time, it’ll be better. Because she’ll be by my side.

So I don’t bother to read. I just lay back and go over my plan in my head, figuring out everything I need to do to make it perfect.

But then Edie’s voice rises up, small and trembling. “Sawyer?”

I look over at her, tucked on her side, her hair spilling in dark rivers across her pillow. “I thought you were asleep.”

She stirs, pushing up on her arm. “I can’t.”

I don’t smell her fear, particularly—not any more than I did earlier when she was talking to her ex. He scares her, that much is clear. But I can sense a knot of anxiety in her, in the smalltrembling way she shoves herself up to sitting, pressing her back against the headboard. She worries the bedsheet in one fist.

And I sense an unfamiliar surge of panic.

Thisis why Mama said our kind shouldn’t get romantic with humans. This vulnerability, this weakness. I think of a kill and my cock gets hard and the back of my jaw aches.

Edie thinks of a kill and she strangles the bedsheet, her eyes dark.

I’m not sure what to say so I kiss her instead, soft and gentle. She returns it, smiling a little against my lips, and nuzzles my neck. I take that as an invitation to pull her into me. I can do that much, at least.

“You’re not scared,” I finally say. She’s so quiet, and I’ve got to say something.

“No,” she whispers. “Not really.” She shifts against me, her breath warm on my skin. “You—I feel safe with you. I know you won’t let anything happen to me.”

That fucking floors me, hearing her say that. And that’s how I know Mama’s wrong about us and humans. Because it makes me feel all warm and proud and satisfied, like how I feel after I finish up one of my projects at the church or clean up a particularly messy murder scene. And I wouldn’t get that feeling with another Hunter. Another Hunter wouldn’t want me toprotectthem.

“I will,” I say, after fumbling around for my voice. I bury my face into her hair, breathing her in. “So why can’t you sleep?”

“I don’t think you’ll understand.”

All that pride I felt a moment ago drains away. “Why not?”

Edie tilts her head up to me. My night vision’s good, and it makes her skin seem to glow a little in the darkness, like she’s suffused with moonlight. “Because you—you’re a killer.”

She says it like it’s something to be ashamed of, but I’m not ashamed. I brush her hair behind her ear.

“And you think you’re about to become one, too?” I’m takingmy best guess, but from the way her face flickers with darkness, I know I’ve landed on it.

“I just keep thinking there’s something wrong with me,” she says. “That I’m okay with all this. That I love?—”

She freezes. I freeze, too, going as still as I do when I’m stalking my prey.

“That I love you.” She barely says the words. If I weren’t a Hunter, with a Hunter’s hearing, I don’t think I’d have heard them.

I ought to be celebrating. Ain’t no one ever told me they loved me before except for Mama, and she usually only did it to make a point about why I should listen to her. But it’s all spoiled because I know this love Edie feels for me, it makes her upset.

“And you wish you didn’t,” I finally say.

It takes her a while to answer, but I’m patient. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” she says. “I wish—I wish I could be like you. And not have any of this bother me.”

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