Page 42 of The Fire Went Wild

“Don’t touch me!” I jerk away from him and choke back a surge of nausea, then try to rub the blood from my skin.

“Don’t do that,” he says softly, smoothing more of my hair away from my face. “It looks good on you.”

I slap his hand away and glare up at him, trying to mask the terror surging through my system. He matches my glare with an intensity of his own. Hot. Burning. Not angry, though.

In fact, it reminds me of the expression he gave me right before he died, and my pussy reacts in a way it absolutely, positively shouldn’t.

“What did you do?” I whisper, flattening my back against the tree like I might sink through it and disappear out the other side.

Jaxon tilts his head a little, his eyes never leaving mine. He smooths my hair again, then keeps running his blood-sticky hand down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, along my bare arm. His touch sends electricity jolting through my body, but I still jerk away.

“Why is there so much blood?” I add.

Jaxon grins. Leans a little closer to me. “I killed two men with my bare hands.”

My stomach twists, and the scene from earlier flashes through my memories. “That’s not possible,” I spit out, even though I saw the evidence. “You—that—” I swallow, and Jaxon just keeps watching me. Keeps grinning. “There was—Youthrew a corpse at me.”

Saying it out loud is even more absurd.

“I know. Sorry about that, by the way. I wasn’t aimingatyou.”

I shake my head wildly. Jaxon’s so close to me, his body hemming me up against the tree, and I’m reacting to it in a way I shouldn’t, the same way I reacted when I woke up coming with his head between my legs.

The way I reacted when I killed him.

You clearly didn’t kill him.

“You did not decapitate that man with your bare hands.” My voice shudders. Even though he’s clearly strong enough to fling a grown man’s corpse through the air.

Jaxon cups one blood-sticky hand around my neck, sliding his thumb softly over the tender flesh of my throat. I stiffen, drop my eyes to his neck.

Are those bruises ringing where the chain had been? No, it’s blood. It’s too dark to see anything else.

“You’re not asking the question I expected,” he says softly.

I immediately jerk my eyes up to meet his. They’re black. Soulless. He keeps thumbing my neck, the touch gentle enough that it feels like a lover’s caress, not a murder threat.

Even if he is smearing more cooling blood across my skin.

“Let me go,” I whisper.

Jaxon stares at me. “I can’t,” he says. “Especially not now.”

He presses into me, still pinning me up against the tree by my throat. His thigh slides between my legs. His breath is warm on my skin. Warm. Hot.Alive.

“Please,” I whisper, even as I sink down on his knee, sighing a little when his rough, blood-soaked jeans make contact with my clit.

You do not like this. You do not likehim.

But to my horror, Jaxon notices, because he makes a surprised little noise in the back of his throat. And then he smiles again and presses his mouth to my ear.

“You killed me so sweet, Charlotte Careta,” he says softly. “And now I want to return the favor.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JAXON

The adrenaline from killing two men so soon after my revival is still surging through my system. I feel stronger than I have in years. More powerful. Hell, I ripped that one guy’s head from his shoulders, unabashedly moaning as his blood soaked over me. The other’s head I bashed to a pulp against the side of my shed.

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