Chapter 6 Hunter
Hunter
Rayne makes it way too easy to follow him around campus.
If someone had put a dart in my neck, I would change up my routines.
Take different pathways each day.
I’d go to new places, not leading them along my usual trail.
Rayne doesn’t seem to change anything from day to day in the following week.
It’s been seven days since the night of the incident, and no other attacks have happened. Classes began this week, and I’ve been able to map out Rayne’s schedule pretty easily: he has two classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and three classes on Tuesday and Thursday.
He goes to the gym daily, and goes for a run around campus most days.
He doesn’t usually go to the big campus dining hall, the Colossus. He prefers the Kettle, usually opting to go there for lunch.
He’s also constantly with my brother.
Fucking constantly.
Some things don’t change, I guess.
And when I watch the way Weston and Rayne parade themselves around this campus like it really is their kingdom, it makes my skin crawl.
Today is the first day that Rayne finally heads to the gym alone.
Thank the fucking gods above.
Finally, my brother isn’t with him.
I see him duck in through a pair of double doors on the side of the big campus gym, and I follow after him.
As usual, the gym building is crowded. Rayne is holding his phone against his ear, and I catch snippets of his conversation.
“It’s going good, Mom,” he says, and a flare of bitter jealousy creeps through me.
Every time Rayne’s mom dropped him off at school or at our house, growing up, I was jealous.
His mom was perfect, as far as mothers go.
Loving, kind, and supportive of her son. Her hair was chestnut brown just like his, and she always wore it in a messy ponytail as she went off to work shifts at the diner. They didn’t have money, but Rayne could never understand the depths of how lucky he was to have a deeply caring parent.
My mother was gone since before I could start forming memories. My father said she broke his heart, but I’m convinced he was the one who cheated on her, driving our mother away.
She sent us Christmas cards every year from her house in Sweden.
That’s all Wes and I have ever really heard from our mother.
“Semester’s been a banger so far,” Rayne is saying to his mom now as he walks down the long hall in the gym building. “We’ve been having a lot of fun. Classes are kind of hard, but that’s always true. Yeah. I love you, too.”
Interesting.
He isn’t telling her about the attacks at all?
Maybe he doesn’t want his dear old Ma to worry.
Rayne disappears for a moment past a giant group of cross-country runners, freshly changed into their uniforms and walking down the gym hall like a flock of tall, wild birds.
I manage to catch a glance of his hair as he heads into a separate room, and I duck in a moment later.
It’s a tiled room full of more rows of lockers and private showers in the back.
Inside the room, it’s not as crowded, and I only see one small group of guys hauling duffel bags out the door as I head in.
For a minute I think I’ve lost him.
I go to the back of the locker room and hear a shower running, but when I look inside the stall, no one is in it.
I catch a whiff of Rayne’s sunscreen, a smell I’ve gotten used to after sharing a room with him this week.
I whip my head around.
In a flash, he’s on me.
“Fucking following me?” he says in a low voice.
Suddenly his palms are pressed flat against my chest as he shoves me hard into the row of lockers behind me.
My back slams into the metal front of a locker, clattering through the room.
It’s empty in here now other than us.
He’d already taken off his shirt, probably getting ready to shower before he caught sight of me. I glance down at the fresh black lines of the tattoos on the front of his collarbone.
“Only because I like how you smell,” I tell him. “You wear that for the SPF or because it makes you smell like the beach?”
“Why are you following me? Looking for another opportunity to put a fucking spike in my neck?”
“You know I didn’t do it. I was in the same room with you, Rayne. The angle alone would be impossible to pull off.”
“I know I don’t trust you.”
“That’s not what you mumbled in your sleep that night.”
He looks at me like he really might be about to choke me. “If you’re a member of Onyx, you are required to be honest with me. What the fuck are you doing tailing my ass?”
I breathe deep, my chest compressed by his hands planted firmly on the front of my body. “God, you really do hate being alone with me, don’t you?”
“Because I have to listen to you talk.”
I bite down on my lower lip, then let it go. “I think it’s because you’re afraid.”
His eyes smolder. “You know I’m not scared of you, Hunter.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re afraid I’ll hurt you. You’re afraid I’ll make you hard. Again.”
He slams me against the lockers again and even though it hurts, I’m honestly starting to like it.
“Why did you leave London, Knox?” he prods.
That’s not something you’ll ever get an answer for.
“Don’t worry. I won’t ruin your perfect little fantasy life you have with my brother. Are you still pissed off that he didn’t tell you sooner that I was coming here? Worried your best friend is keeping secrets from you, Rayne?”
Rayne puts an arm up against my neck now, forming a bar on my windpipe.
“Don’t talk about Weston or I really will hurt you.”
“Try putting a little more pressure on my throat, Rayne,” I tell him. “Find out what happens if you do.”
“You’re sick in the head.”
“You worried I’ll pull a knife on you? If you choke me I’ll probably like it.”
He pulls his arm away in an instant and releases me, and my body goes slack against the lockers.
“Just leave us alone.”
I can’t help but smile. “Damn. Did my brother train you to be his guard dog, or do you give him that privilege willingly?”
“It’s called friendship. Guess that’s a foreign concept to you.”
“Relax. Weston didn’t know I was transferring to Crimson College until five minutes before you did. He’s not keeping things from you, I just didn’t tell him.”
I see relief in his eyes, even though he’s trying to hide it from me.
“You’re trying to fuck with both of us,” he finally says.
I shake my head slowly, looking at his lips, then his eyes again.
“No. Just you.”
“Why?”
“Because you kissed me. How do you say I don’t fuck men, but I’ll fuck you as a punishment in Latin?”
He puffs out a breath, shaking his head at me.
His body looks so much stronger than it ever has before. Sculpted muscles, adorned with those tattoos.
Rayne Colson turned out good.
I can see why people on this campus consider him a prize.
He gets in close to my face again, and I can see amber flecks in his brown eyes.
“You’re not going to get to me. Butter me up all you want. Follow me, track me, try to manipulate me. It won’t work.”
“If someone’s trying to hurt you, then I have a perfect excuse to hurt them. Make sense?”
He takes a step closer to me.
There’s something smoldering in his gaze, now, in the same way I saw at the party.
Suddenly he closes the gap between us, reaching out. His warm palm hits the waistband of my pants and I pull in a sharp breath as his hand plunges lower.
He’s shoving his hand down the front of my pants.
And he’s gripping my hard cock in his fist, squeezing it tight.
His thumb trails over the head of my cock, slipping along the precum that’s been collecting there, and the sensation is so tantalizing that something snaps in my brain.
“I know how to play games, too,” he says.
He tugs his hand out of my pants and raises his thumb to my lower lip, slicking it with my own precum.
My pulse ticks up.
His thumb on my lip is affecting me far more than it should.
I feel vitally alive, my world snapped into full color all at once in the same way that happens when I’m in a physical fight.
Everything comes into clear focus: his dark rows of eyelashes surrounding those big eyes, the gentle curve of his Adam’s apple, and the clear strength of his pecs.
“I could kill you quickly,” I say gently, responding to his challenge.
He lifts one eyebrow, just a little. “Yet you’re not doing it.”
Infuriating.
I close the space between us and I kiss him.
My lips feel like they burn against his as I kiss him again, and again, white-hot anger rising inside me each time my lips touch his.
Suddenly the room feels cloyingly hot and I want to toss off my shirt like I do in the best kinds of fights.
But this isn’t a fight.
Yet he is still filling me with uncontainable rage.
His hands push against my chest like he wants to shove me away but then he reaches lower, gripping around the small of my back, and his palms are warm on my skin as he reaches up under the hem of my shirt.
If I could kill him, why do I want to take him, instead?
Take all of him as my possession, like I’m trying to prove something?
He pulls away for a breath. My lips are swollen from our kisses and I can’t stand the lack of touch.
I lean in and put my teeth to his lower lip, biting it and giving it a pull. The alternative would be knocking him out, and this is easier, right now.
“Tell me you’re afraid of me,” I say under my breath, pausing to press a slow kiss to his lips, then giving his lower lip a suck. “Tell me the truth.”
“Not afraid.”
I let out a sound that’s something between a groan and a desperate growl, and my hand slides to the back of his neck, squeezing him there.
Self-control isn’t my strong suit.
But if I stay here, I know I’m going to do something terrible.
Shove him into the shower stall, rip his clothes off until he’s naked, and work my cock inside his ass until I learn exactly what he sounds like when he begs.
I squeeze my eyes shut and my world flashes red and black.
This isn’t a fight you want, something inside me says, but it’s a distant suggestion.
You need to be alone.
It’s like an icy slap to my soul.
I pull away from Rayne, stumbling as I walk backward. I feel like an animal that’s just heard his master’s whistle, and I know I need to retreat.
“Don’t touch me again,” I murmur at him.
There’s still a heat in his eyes that threatens to draw me back in.
He doesn’t believe what I just said, and I can tell because his eyes glance down to the outline of my obvious erection through my pants.
He pulls his lower lip into his mouth, and it takes every ounce of restraint in me not to go take it between my teeth again.
Rayne nods. “Whatever you say, Hunter.”
He turns away from me. Wordlessly, he faces the shower and strips off the rest of his clothes. I watch his bare ass walk off, muscled and firm, as he steps into the steaming spray of the shower.
He yanks the curtain shut.
And my hand twitches as a storm of urges runs through my body.
Go in.
Shove his skull against that tile wall.
Fight him for real, this time.
Put him in his fucking place, because no one treats me like this. Challenges me like this.
But the red-hot feeling simmers in my veins as I leave the locker room.
I breathe deep as I lean against the wall just around the corner from the locker room door.
My cock is so fucking hard it’s becoming a problem.
I stay there for another ten minutes until he’s done showering.
I watch him leave the building.
And I ensure he doesn’t see me tailing him as I follow him home, making sure he gets back safe. A job he should be thanking me for.
But by the time he leaves for the dining hall with his buddies an hour later, I’m all tapped out on restraint.
I need to come.
And for some reason, my cock needs Rayne to make that happen right now.
I’m bored of stalking.
This time, when I follow him inside, I’m ready to play a new game.
You are going to beg, Rayne Colson.
And tonight I want to use you to get off, too.