Page 9 of Make Me Hunt
I pay him, then get the hell out of the car, straight into my apartment.
I need a drink, and I take a few shots of tequila from a bottle I once came home with from some bar right after Elias’s death. Can’t really remember the rest of the details.
I don’t even fucking like tequila, but I chase it with painkillers. And it manages to bring me back on my feet, long enough so I can turn on the water.
I go to the bathroom and lift my shirt. At least I’m not dying, but there’s an ugly wound right beneath my breast. The bullet grazed me, but it must’ve been high caliber, because it still did real damage.
I can see the burn marks across my skin, but there’s still a coin-sized gash torn open that’s still bleeding heavily. If I don’t get it under control soon, I’ll be unconscious before I know it.
I open a drawer, fumbling through it for some bandages, when I hear the apartment door slam open.
Fuck, I mutter, but I don’t have time to react. Two of Ares’s men come bursting in, and I barely manage to yank my shirt down in time.
“Boss wants to see you,” one of them barks. And I doubt they’ll give me a bathroom break.
“Okay,” I murmur. Because yeah, this time I got Ares’s attention.
I won’t mention the wound; it’s not a good idea. The upside is that I probably won’t have to fix it since I’ll be dead—or promoted—after this meeting. You never know in this line of work.
I recognize where we’re going, even though my eyes can barely stay open.
This isn’t The Breach. It’s Ares’s house.What the hell?
“Can I get some water?” I ask one of the guys, who only turns back at me and snaps.
“This ain’t a fucking all-inclusive resort. But maybe you’ll get lucky and boss’ll make you sleep with the fishes. Then, you’ll have enough water,” he ends with the dark laugh, which makes everything seem much more foreboding.
At this point, I’m so tired I could drop dead. I don’t even care. I just want to lie down somewhere.
I lean against the car’s door, letting my body go slack just to get a moment of peace. My breath fogs the window, the blur of the streetlights bleeding into gold streaks. My eyelids are so heavy that I would give anything to keep them closed for a while. But the car jerks to a stop sooner than I expected, dragging me back to reality.
One of the men gets out of the car, hauls me out, and leads me through the front door, down a hallway, into the living room.
Ares is waiting for me in an armchair by the fireplace. There’s a dark gaze in his eyes, and his jaw twitches with restrained anger. His eyes lost their brownish color. They’re almost fully black now, and the more that I look at him, the more unearthly he looks.
The lighting is dim, and although it’s only the end of September, it’s been raining for the past few weeks, so the fire’s lit.
I instantly notice the curtains are pulled. They’re never pulled, I should know because I used to look inside, so this can’t be a good sign.
I think he wants to kill me.
five
-Ares-
Two hundred and nine days. I know, because I never stopped counting. That’s how long I’ve known her. That’s how long I’ve carried this growing dread in my chest. This fucking feeling that I’m suddenly incomplete, like someone carved me open and forgot to stitch me back together.
I’ve lived through centuries convinced that was how my existence was meant to be. That I was whole, maybe even close to perfection.
Then she made it all screech to a halt in a mere moment. Like she broke something inside me. Or maybe fixed something I never realized was broken.
I remember the moment I first saw her as if it were yesterday. Her long black hair was tucked under a cap bearing my club's logo—The Breach. Her dark, curved eyelashes framed the most hypnotic black eyes I’d ever seen—a perfect contrast to her pale skin.
Even without seeing her entire body that day, I knew I’d want every inch of this woman. The way her full lips lifted as she forced a polite smile to one of the customers made my chest feel too tight for my liking. And I suddenly found myself staring at the line of her throat. So fragile. So delicate that I couldn’t stop wondering how it would feel beneath my fingers, my grip growing stronger, my cock burying deeper inside her.
Every detail dragged me under—the swing of her hips as she passed a bartender, the rise of her breasts as she picked up a crate of vodka. But most of all, her burning gaze that kept straying to my table every time she thought I wasn’t watching.
This wasn’t just attraction. It was unrestrained hunger that had me imagining her pressed beneath me long before I knew her name.
