Page 85 of The Hunter
“Millie?”
Her name was a groan of supplication on his lips. He was breathing so fast, as if he’d run the span of the city.
“Yes? I mean, no! I mean—you said my name… so I answered. Not… yes to the…”
“You saidmyname,” he whispered, grinding against her with a long, sleepy movement of his hips. “I want you to say it again. I want you to answer the question.”
“Q-question?” An uncomfortable ache stirred to life betweenherlegs, feeding her fear and, at the same time, distracting her from it. What question? Oh, he’d asked if she wanted to fu—er, to make love to him.
Might they have earlier, if they were not interrupted? She’d been asking herself that very question all evening.
He dropped his mouth to her ear, his cheek pressing against hers, the beginnings of a beard abrading her skin. She’d been wrong about the moisture at his temples and hairline. It wasn’t sweat, but the fragrant dampness of a recent bath. He smelled clean, but his words were anything but. “I asked you if you came in here looking for another fuck? A better fuck. A longer fuck.”
She should say no. And yet, after she’d nearly seduced him this afternoon, how could there have been a question left in either of their minds?
“You were… dreaming,” she stated lamely.
“Iamdreaming,” he said against her hair, his lips rooting until they found the shell of her ear, the curve of her neck.
“I… I came to wake you.” Dear God, what was happening? She bloomed like a tea rose beneath him. Pink and vibrant. Her breasts felt swollen where they were crushed against his chest, and she had to rock her hips away from where his sex dug against hers because it was just too much. Too big. Too… enticing.
“If you wake me, I’ll kill you.” The threat poured from his lips like honey over jagged shards of ice. The knife made a heavythunkas he embedded it somewhere in the wall and she could breathe again. That was until he replaced it with his lips at the soft, sensitive hollow at her throat.
“You had a nightmare,” she explained, bringing her hands up to press ineffectually at his heavy chest.
“I’ve lived every possible nightmare.” His tongue was hot velvet against the hollow between her ear and her jaw. “But I know this is a dream.”
“How—” Her breath hitched as his teeth nipped at the place where her neck met her shoulder, sending warm chills that turned her bones to liquid. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve had this dream every night since I met you.” His lips trailed over her jaw, her chin, her clavicle. His anger had turned to hunger, and Millie could feel it building. “And sometimes it becomes its own nightmare.”
“What… h-happens?” Millie ventured, understanding that he truly believed himself still asleep. And he truly might kill her if she woke him.
“I have you beneath me.” His voice was dark, darker than the absolute night within this room. “Which would never happen while I was awake.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t matter. Not here.” His hands came alive, falling to the curve of her waist. “I tell you to stop me, to push me away. I tell you to run from me. I tell you I am nothing for you but death and blood.”
“And… what do I do?” What should she do? She should run, while she still could. If he would still let her. But somehow his weight had turned from crushing to delicious. And his mouth left little trails of pleasure in their wake.
“If it’s a nightmare you scream and you run in fear. You lock me in here alone for an eternity. If it’s a dream, you kiss me, and we fuck.”
Every time he said that word, her sex clenched on an aching emptiness that she didn’t understand. She wished he’d stop.
She wished he’d say it again.
He laved the lobe of her other ear and a warm, wet rush between her legs had her biting her lip to keep from groaning.
“You feel so real, because I’ve been inside you. Because I know the warmth of your skin, and the scent of you.” He pulled back, his body tightening into that signature stillness of his, coiled to strike. “Which is it to be tonight, Millie? A dream, or a nightmare?”
Not allowing herself another thought, Millie seized his shoulders and pulled him down to her lips. She couldn’t be the cause of a nightmare. Not for him, who had lived so many.
His groan was lost in her mouth, and Millie somehow wrapped herself around him like he was her anchor in the darkness. Her fingers barely met around the width of him, but her legs… oh, her legs could wrap around his lean hips and lock him against her, against that place that throbbed in such a way she thought she might go mad.
Despite his words, his dreamlike exploration didn’t last. She may have initiated this kiss, but she was a fool if she thought she’d control it. Not only that, but she hadn’t been prepared for it, for the pure blistering intensity of it. His lips were hard, yet full. His movements raw and unapologetically carnal. He kissed her with a wicked mouth, one that issued threats and vulgarities and brutal, albeit sometimes endearing, honesty. He kissed like a man unused to kissing. No artfully applied maneuvers or sensual variations. He kissed like a man about to—to fuck. Like he wanted to pour himself into her, or perhaps crawl inside of her.Thiswas a dominant kiss. A shameless kiss. The kiss of a man who knew his sins and granted himself absolution.
Thiswas the kiss of a killer.
