Page 110 of The Fire Went Wild

“I remember everything you tell me.”

Charlotte sinks her head back down on my shoulder, and I can feel her own quickened heartbeat. Her own nervousness. I pull her a little closer.

“I think,” she whispers. “I think I might love you, too.”

I freeze. “You don’t have to say that. I’m not really going to chain you to the bed or?—”

“I mean it.” She sits up and gazes down at me, her hair clinging to her cheek. “Therewassomething inside me that needed to be broken, and you did that for me.” She shakes her head and looks away, lost in thought. “You showed me how to find the happiness I’ve been searching for since the day my parents kicked me out of my house. Since before then, even.”

Something brims inside me. Happiness or hope or one of those sunlight-bright emotions I don’t experience all that often. Although I’ve been experiencing them more lately.

Ever since Charlotte waltzed into that diner.

I grab her hand and braid our fingers together, admiring the way it looks, having our bodies linked like that.

“Tyloch,” she says suddenly. “He said Raffia was a sacrifice.”

I groan. “Do we have to talk about him?”

She giggles and shushes me. “No, I just—it was your gods, wasn’t it? They asked for the sacrifice? And that’s why they sent you to kill him?”

I ghost my hand over her hair. “Yeah,” I say. “Whatever Tyloch wanted from them, Raffia was the payment. But they sentusto collect because they wanted me to wake you up.”

She smiles, her eyes glittering, and then kisses me. “I’m glad they did,” she whispers against my mouth. “So glad. But they aren’t—they aren’t going to be upset about?—”

She gestures toward the carnage.

“No,” I tell her, which is the truth. “All they care about is their payment, and they got it.”

“What about the ULS?” she asks, worry knitting her brow. “You said they’ll keep coming?—”

“I saidifthey keep coming, we can handle it. That’s just a Hunter’s life. ” Which is also the truth. But I’m not worried about humans or their weak magic. Especially not with Charlotte at my side.

I pull her into me so I can kiss her all over and lick the blood away from her skin and make her moan and squirm against me. She reacts exactly as I hoped, settling back on the bed, spreading her legs for me. I kiss down to her breasts and then bite gently on her right nipple, making her gasp.

“Jaxon,” she moans, threading her fingers through my blood-sticky hair. “I want?—”

Her question evaporates into another gasp as I catch her left nipple in my teeth. She arches her body into me, and I keep kissing down her belly, heading toward her cunt. Eating her out will get me hard again in no time.

“You want to fuck me?” I ask against her skin. “Don’t worry, cher. I’m working on it.”

“No. I mean, yes, but—“ She tugs on my hair, lifting my face to meet hers. “You remember what you said earlier, about how my first death needs to be special?”

All the air rushes out of me, and the only thing I can do is stare at her wide, pretty eyes, black against the blood smeared across her face.

“I want you to do it,” she whispers. “I want you to initiate me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHARLOTTE

The next day, after we’ve cleaned up the mess in the bedroom, Jaxon and I discuss the details of my death.

I feel oddly calm about the entire proposition, secure in the knowledge that it’s not permanent. It’s a certainty I feel in the deepest part of my bones—the same as the certainty, growing stronger and stronger each day, that death is the final piece of the puzzle. The final proof to myself that I’m not the human woman I thought I was.

We talk through everything at the dining room table. Jaxon has one of those bright yellow legal notepads, and he takes notes through the entire conversation, which is both weirdly administrative and weirdly sweet.

“Fast or slow?” he asks.

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