12. HUNTER
12
HUNTER
JACK
J ack barely registered Clarissa’s outraged shriek as he ran out of the hall and through the doors to the outside. Squinting in the dark, he spotted Penny at the bonfire, her body outlined in a fiery silhouette.
He was in his boxer briefs and nothing else. But the cold ceased to matter. His body was a furnace cranked on high heat.
“Penny!” he thundered, not giving a fuck if anyone in the castle or on the grounds could hear him. She looked up but when she saw him, her eyes widened.
And to his disbelief, she turned and kept running.
The breath left his body like he’d been kicked in the solar plexus.
She’d looked at him like she didn’t know him. Like he was a rampaging beast to her, the same as he was to everybody in that room.
He’d crawled his way back from the brink of death because this woman had demanded it. With her voice, her soul had reached out to his and claimed him, and it meant fuck all to her. He was just someone to toy with, to tease to the edge of madness. And when all was said and done, she was going to pack up her things and fucking take off and leave him right where he was. Alone. Enslaved by his unrequited need for her .
Something in him snapped. Broke.
Shut down.
Suddenly enraged, he took off after her, but she was fucking fast. She lifted her dress, and her legs flashed in the torchlight. He still managed to catch up to her right before she reached the entrance to the maze. Jack caught her around the waist and captured her in his arms, immobilizing her. Struggling in his hold, her eyes were defiant with that soft sweetheart chin upraised.
“Did you really think you were going to lie down and make me watch another man fuck you? Some stranger was allowed to touch you, but I can’t?” he demanded, his voice fast and harsh.
“It was Brendan. My Brendan. Let go.” Twisting her arms away, she was thwarted by his grasp of her shoulders. But she’d gone soft against him, her body bending into his.
“That wasn’t Brendan. It was just a man. And Brendan isn’t your man now. I am.” He shook her, and she laughed. Right in his face.
Penny used his moment of shock to wrest herself out of his hold and skip away, her dress billowing in the sharp breeze.
“I’m not one of those people in there worshipping you. If you thought all it would take for you to own me was a pretty dress and a string of pearls, you overestimated yourself. If you want me, come and take me.” Her eyes blazing and a mocking smile on her lips, she pivoted.
And like a flash of summer lightning, she was gone, disappearing into the maze. Jack snarled and ran in after her but immediately slowed down. There were three paths, each empty. He forced himself to slow down further, to try to concentrate and use his senses to figure out which way she’d gone. He sniffed the air for that luscious hint of peach among the hedges. Creeping along, he thought he might have found it, just barely. With his eyes on the manicured bushes and the ground, he swept every leaf and blade of grass for visual clues.
There, on the neat path to the right, lay one of those tiny pink flowers that had been attached to her shoes. He scooped it up and went further in, deeper and deeper into the tall hedges, finding more of those tiny pink giveaways to the whereabouts of his doe.
A laugh echoed up ahead to the right. It taunted, it teased, making his head spin before he refocused. Questioning the direction, on a sudden instinctive hunch, he went the opposite way, and sure enough, there she was at the center of the maze. It was a big, rectangular clearing with a dry fountain.
Penny stood in the center near the sculpted fountain, gazing up at the nearly full moon. It was fat and luscious, beaming pearly white, bathing her cleavage in its glow. Her sparkling hair gems and the necklace caught the light and flashed. When he stepped on dried twigs, they crunched under his bare foot, and her head whipped up and around. She darted around the sculpture, trying to make for the exit, but he caught up to her before she could.
No more running. Her chest heaved from the chase, but also with a powerful emotion, probably the same one choking his throat.
Without another word, Jack reached for the beautiful, delicate panel covering her breasts, hooked his fingers in, and ripped it off with one mighty, harsh tug.
“My dress!”
Her shocked outrage at the destruction of her gown was swiftly followed by a moan when he pulled down her strapless bra and freed her beautiful tits from their confinement to take one turgid nipple in his mouth.
“No. My dress.” His voice against her flesh was guttural, thick. Midnight dark. “Only I get to take it off.”
Jack gripped her and pulled her down to the ground, covering her with his body, with his own heat, wishing he could burn her the fuck down so she would be wrecked the way he was now.
Penny wrenched his hair and twisted it. His scalp stung, but he didn’t care. She used it to jerk his head to her other nipple, which he commenced sucking the minute his lips touched it. It pebbled in his mouth, and he licked circles around it, drawing a moan from her. He bit it, and she yelped, then moaned again when he sucked greedily. Jack delighted in that moan, determined to hear it again and again.
“Tell me to stop,” he ordered her hoarsely. His heart was beating harder, faster than any drum. “Say it now, Penny. If you don’t want me…if you don’t want this, tell me to stop.”
She wouldn’t say it, too proud, too stubborn, he didn’t know which. His vision sharpened to the point where he could see the pulse pounding in her throat even in the darkness and could see her soft pink tongue wet that luscious bottom lip. Saw the desire she was fighting so hard finally win and take over.
His little doe. His angel.
The expression on her face was one he hadn’t seen before. There was nothing teasing or tender in the way she was looking at him, her eyes slit with lust and anger. She really was an angel, after all. An angel of destruction, tearing him down brick by brick.
Penny ran her hands up and down his body while he bent and kissed her. No, not kissing. This was a ravishing. This was a deep, open-mouthed battle with tongues clashing, a hard chest crushing soft breasts. Jack reared up, kneeling between her legs to rip her panties off. The silky fabric tore, and he tossed them, not knowing or caring where they landed. He pushed his own boxer briefs off and lay between her legs. Her beautiful face was almost pained. With need? With emotion?
It didn’t fucking matter anymore. He was done trying to understand her. He was going to just take and take and take…
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. I can’t wait anymore,” he said, his voice ragged.
Then he gripped his dick in his fist and thrust all the way home with one hard, fantastic shove. The stroke went deep, and his cock was instantly soaked in a glorious flaming-hot river. When she wailed and spread her legs wider to take all of him inside, he almost lost it.
“Penny. Fucking wet for me… so wet…I had no idea…” He was cut off by his own groan of pleasure and wanted to laugh with disbelief. Never in any of his wildest fantasies had his imagination come close to what it was like plunging inside her, being enveloped so completely by her sweet, perfect pussy.
“Please… please …” She was nearly incoherent, but she didn’t need to say anything more.
A surprise slap across his face shocked him, but when he tried pulling out, thinking maybe she had changed her mind after all, she wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him in deeper, refusing to let him go.
He knew why she’d hit him. She loved what he was doing to her, but she also hated him, hated giving up control to him.
Jack didn’t hate her, never could hate her, but if she needed to despise him, he’d give her that. He wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed. She bucked her hips up when he did that, sobbing. He took, and he took, and he gave, dragging his cock out of her pussy, then driving in deeper again, soaking up her cries, pounding, pounding, pounding , eliciting even sweeter, higher-pitched moans.
Penny clawed at his chest with abandon; most likely, there’d be marks on his skin the next morning. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but their joining, this moment apart from the real world, a new place beyond the veil created only for the two of them.
This new world had its own midnight sky and its own light emanating from her. The necklace he’d given her was the gleaming phases of the moon. The gems in the soft, thick darkness of Penny’s hair spread out on the ground were a thousand stars shining all for him. He tangled his fingers in that dark mass and pulled, hard, until gasps of shaken delight escaped her lips in response.
The throbbing in his cock got heavier, faster, like his heartbeat against hers. The coiling tension in his balls was growing ever tighter. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer, the intensity of her bombardment of all his senses too great to bear. Jack slid his hand between their bodies and rubbed her clit…there, right there…and his gorgeous fairytale princess, his doe, his angel, bit down on the tight muscle of his shoulder. Then she drew in a breath and released it with a scream that was his own name. A scream so loud it echoed in the forest beyond. A sound that only confirmed what he already knew.
Penny was his now and forever would be.
Words poured from his lips as her pussy melted him down, her walls gripped and squeezed, until his cock spurted adoration for her, devotion to her, in a scalding stream.
“I love you, I love you, I love you…” he moaned into her neck. He didn’t know if he was even speaking an actual fucking human language at that point. If she understood what he said, she didn’t respond, still too absorbed in her own release, drifting down from the peaks of ecstasy.
Jack wanted to say it again, now that they were calmer when it would mean something to her. But he didn’t. Later. When she could really hear him and understand that it wasn’t something said in a mindless moment of passion.
Her head rolled back and forth on the grass. Jack was still covering her with his body, loathe to pull out, hoping to avoid separating for as long as he could put it off. Their essences spilled out of her when he tried. He pushed his way back in one more time to keep his cum inside her.
Stake yet another claim on her.
It was finally growing too cold even for him, with their body temperatures dropping. He stood up slowly, wincing at the pain in his knees from whatever sticks or rocks or rough old grass had ground into them. Penny was still too dazed and weakened to stand on her own, so he pulled her up by the hands and then lifted her into his arms.
“Too heavy. I can walk,” she tried to say but he shushed her, cradling her so her face was against his chest.
“Mind your business, angel.”
Rather than face the crowd in the Great Hall, and especially wanting to keep this sacred moment to themselves, Jack circled the property and found his way to the door that led them past the dining hall. He skirted the Great Hall and made way for the stairs. Barefoot, he managed to climb quietly without arousing any other guests or servants, except for a couple that apparently wanted their own privacy and were entering a room up ahead.
In their room, Jack pushed the door behind him. He deposited Penny on the divan and doubled back to bolt it firmly. He examined her, sitting and swaying with her hair in complete disarray. Jack fucking loved that bold, beautiful hair, loved that it did exactly what it wanted. Just like her. But it had leaves in it; her torn dress was all but ruined with a dangling panel in front and dirt and grass stains on the back. He felt remorse for the dress but would never be sorry about how it got that way.
“You’re a lovely mess. I think you could use a bath.”
“Mm-hm, bath, great, yay.” Penny gave him a sleepy thumbs up and a breathtaking smile.
“Sit right there. Don’t fall asleep,” he ordered her.
Jack got a bath going. There were two sets of fresh towels, quality soap, and a bottle of bath oil. He sniffed it. Roses. Fitting, considering the bath was for Penelope Rose. While the water was running, Jack rummaged in her toiletry kit, an item that opened up into several sections. He found a brush and comb and other mysterious potions. Her night clothes were hung on the back of the bathroom door. Or what he thought were night clothes? She had clearly not been planning on bringing the steam with this basic tank top and sweatpants set.
Jack shook his head with a wry chuckle. It was cute how, after everything that had happened up to that point, Penny had every intention of denying herself what she obviously had wanted since that night at her house.
The water level was high enough, and the temperature was hot enough but not too hot to burn her.
“Alright, bath time.” He got her to walk to the bathroom, stripped her of the dress and the bra… “Fuck. I forgot your panties.” Somewhere out there, the torn strip of silk would be discovered by some poor groundskeeper in the morning. Or some lucky groundskeeper, depending on how one looked at it.
Carefully he removed her diamond hairpin, the pearl necklace, and her little deer horns. Looking at himself in the mirror, he swore. Horned, paint-smeared, and covered with earth, he looked like a fucking lunatic. Jack pulled off the stag antlers and tossed them in the corner of the bedroom. When he returned, Penny had just flushed the toilet and was getting into the tub on her own. She hissed as the steamy, scented water lapped her flesh and enveloped her.
A small stool was conveniently placed nearby. Jack pulled it over and sat down. He methodically plucked out every piece of grass and every twig from her thick coils. Wondered if he should try to wash it and decided it would be fine if he just soaked it and let it be without combing it.
Then he soaped up his hands and ran them from her throat to her shoulders, then down her arms, her breasts, and her belly. Seeing and touching her totally nude was a treat. He loved her body, down to every dip and curve, loved all its softness. He paused to soap his hands again and massage between her legs.
Penny opened her eyes and grinned at him. “That’s nice,” she breathed, widening her thighs. “Why don’t you get in and wash that paint off, Braveheart?”
“He was Scottish, not Irish. But good idea. I hope this tub is as big as it looks.”
Jack got in the tub behind her, not giving a fuck when the water sloshed over the curved rim. He pulled her back to lay against his chest, his cock swelling again when it came into contact with her succulent ass.
And then he played gently, pouring more oil on her nipples and teasing them back to peak hardness. He went back and forth between them, tweaking and rolling them between his fingers and following the path down her body to her pussy with the other. Penny turned her head to offer him her lush mouth. They shared lazy, languid kisses while he rolled her wet nipple and rubbed featherlight circles on her clit. Her hips rolled, too, rocking her ass against his cock and her pussy into his hand until she moaned shakily. This release seemed gentler, sweeter than the first, but still every bit as satisfying to watch.
“Good girl. All clean.”
He dried her off and then enjoyed himself putting clothes on her in the bedroom and fixing up her hair as best as he was able. Penny could barely keep her eyes open as she said, “You’re the best. Can I keep you?”
Jack didn’t know how his heart could take so much sweetness. “You’ve got me, angel.” The urge to say more rose sharply again, but this time, he was able to keep it locked in. There would be another chance. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Settling her in bed, Jack got under the covers beside her. She curled up against his chest and fell into dreamland almost immediately, all warm and soft and smelling like a field of flowers. Jack marveled at her, at this gift, which he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve.
It was, up to that point, the most important night of his life.