Chapter 13 Jagger
JAGGER
We moved quickly through the tunnels, circling back to where we’d left Cassie chained to the wall. We’d heard her shout after the sprinklers turned off, and if we’d heard her, one of the other teams might have heard her too.
It shouldn’t matter — she’d been marked, claimed — but it was easy to get caught up in the Hunt, to forget the rules, to think you could get away with breaking them.
Shit, we’d tried to fuck with Maeve Haver after the Butchers had claimed her. Bram had almost crashed Vigo’s windpipe.
What could I say? We could get caught up in the Hunt too.
“Think Bram’s going to come for us?” There was a gleeful undertone to Vigo’s question. The crazy fucker probably wanted Bram to come for us, just to see what would happen.
And the thing was: I got it. We did shit all the time just to see what would happen.
But fucking with Bram was an experiment I hadn’t planned to run, especially not in the Hunt, which was supposed to be no-consequences fun.
“Let him come,” Hawk said.
It was easy to say here in the tunnels, the Butchers nowhere in sight.
But I kind of liked having the use of my dick.
I didn’t relish having it yanked off my body and stuffed into my mouth by Bram Montgomery, and while anything usually went in the Hunt, I had a feeling the rules would be different when it came to Bram’s little sister.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to risk it.
I definitely was, especially after seeing her stripped bare, her skin as pale as porcelain, her tits as ripe as peaches in July. Seeing the chain clipped to her pale pink nipples, snaking between her thighs, had made my dick hard, and I was more than ready to get back to her and play.
We’d already committed the cardinal sin of fucking with Cassie Montgomery. Might as well enjoy ourselves.
We were almost back to the spot where we’d left Cassie on the wall when heavy footsteps sounded from the darkness in front of us. A minute later the new team — the Bulls, still wet from the sprinklers — stepped into the purple glow of one of the overhead bulbs.
The one on the right stared us down. “Your girl is freezing back there.”
His tone was clearly disapproving.
“Not your girl, not your problem,” Hawk said.
“Just seems impolite,” he said.
“You hunt your way, we’ll hunt ours.” I meant it, but I still felt like an asshole imagining Cassie wet and shivering on the wall.
My dick got hard again thinking about warming her up, feeling her tits smashed against my chest, tugging on the chain between her thighs before I knelt at her feet, before I buried my face in her—
“I hope you kept your hands to yourself.” The excitement in Vigo’s voice made it clear he wouldn’t actually mind if the Bulls had touched our girl because then we could fuck with the Bulls, and Vigo thought fighting was as fun as fucking.
“Didn’t touch her,” the guy in the middle said.
They sauntered past us like they had nowhere to be. It was the opposite of the way we worked the tunnels, as evidenced by the fact that Vigo was skipping ahead, obviously as eager to get back to Cassie as I was.
And for all his hard-assery, Hawk must have felt the same because he broke into a run, letting out one of his war cries as he raced ahead to keep up with Vigo.
I broke into a run behind them and we traveled through the purple light, in and out of the shadows between bulbs.
And then, up ahead, I saw Cassie, as pale as a ghost, her skin wet and almost translucent, the silver chain Hawk had looped around her neck catching the shards of light from the bulb that glowed above her.
And the Bull was right, she was freezing, her body shivering in the chains around her wrists, bare feet standing in a shallow puddle that had pooled on the tunnel floor.
Her eyes widened when she saw us coming, and I wondered if she was shivering from the cold or because she was scared.
Either way, I was surprised to find that I didn’t like it. Hunt girls signed up to be toys. Any discomfort they felt was their part of the bargain, a small price to pay for the risks we would take if the girls won.
Risks to our lives, and even more dangerous, to our freedom.
The other teams took the same risks, the possibility of doing time a small price to pay for the freedom of the Hunt.
But Hawk, Vigo, and I? We’d rather be dead than locked up.
So yeah, usually I didn’t feel sorry for the girls. We were all adults. The girls knew what they were signing up for — the consent form made that clear — and so did we.
But I don’t know, man, seeing Cassie shivering and cold like a half-drowned kitten made me suddenly ashamed. I wanted to pull her off the wall, take her home, give her a bath and tuck her into bed, let her sleep while I chose some toys from the playroom to use on her milky body.
“You’re… you’re real assholes,” she said, her teeth chattering. “You know that?”
“The whole tunnel knows now,” Vigo said, approaching her with something like curiosity. He tore off his mask, leaned in, and kissed her hard on the lips. “Hmmm, yummy.”
She tried to pull her head back, but there was nowhere to go with the tunnel behind her.
I stepped closer, taking a spot on her other side, pressing my body to hers. Her skin was cold as ice, but I’d been moving — running — and deep down I hoped to transfer some of my body heat to her.
I tucked a piece of her wet hair behind her ear and laid one of my hands on her cheek to tip her head in my direction. “Don’t worry, mouse. You’ll be warm in no time.”