Chapter Nine. Eshe #3
The spacious loft is as different from that tiny, run-down studio apartment in Dorchester as Glenlivet 18 is from Wild Irish Rose.
While cockroaches would’ve called into that bitch, this place is …
lovely. Big, lush plants with colorful flowers so vibrant they could be fake fill the space that isn’t occupied by furniture.
Like his other place, tall bookshelves cover one wall, overstuffed with books.
A case of swords, daggers, and axes is mounted on another wall.
Blinds cover the floor-to-ceiling windows, but the view of moonlight glistening on the dark waters of Boston Harbor is breathtaking.
This place is just one of the several he owns around the city—hell, the state. And I’m aware of almost all of them. Like I’ve repeatedly told him. It’s been two years of … being absorbed with him. So there isn’t much I’m not aware of when it comes to the Huntsman.
“You mean you don’t know?” he asks.
“Frozen pizzas, stir-fry, some vegetables, and a couple of Salisbury steak dinners. Not much in the fridge, though, besides some water and eggs. That orange juice is beyond its expiration date.” I shrug.
Why ask questions he already knows the answer to?
Ignoring his silence that somehow manages to scream, Bitch!
I pull open the lower cabinet next to the stove and remove a large pan.
I set it on top of an eye, then move to the freezer and remove the bag of stir-fry.
Something simple that’s fast and requires little thought to prepare.
I can handle that. In seconds, I have a little bit of olive oil sizzling on low, the bag torn open and the contents poured into the pan.
Without looking over my shoulder at him, I wave toward the pantry. “I know you have some minute rice in—”
Long, hard fingers wrap around my upper arm in an unyielding grip that sears my skin through layers of cotton. Malachi turns me around and, with hands curled around the edge of the counter on either side of my hips, traps me between the gray marble and his big body.
That heat seething inside me flares hot and bright, leaping into flames that a purely primal, wild part of me jumps and dances around to in a primitive beat.
Gotdamn, I want to climb and claw at him, leave his golden skin in bloody ribbons even as I sip and lick at that life-giving fluid.
Suck at the wounds I inflicted, tend to the wounds that he’ll wear like badges of honor. As marks of my ownership.
My breath damn near evaporates in my lungs, my heart stuttering, but the pulse in my pussy takes up the charge, thudding so fast, I choke back a whimper of pleasure-pain.
“You’re a sick li’l bitch, aren’t you?” he snaps.
Eyes I didn’t even realize had closed jerk open, and I meet his glittering gaze.
I chuckle. “Sick bitch? Okay, I’ll be that.
But what does that make you, then?” I slowly slide a hand between us, granting him an opportunity to stop me.
He doesn’t though, and I dip my hand lower and lower still until I cup his dick through his joggers.
And I moan at all that flesh in my hand.
Again. Instantly, my mouth waters, and my jaws ache with the memory of all this cock stretching me.
I need this distraction. No, that would be relegating him to something insignificant, ephemeral.
I need him. “This”—I squeeze him hard enough to make my fingers ache and his eyes flare brighter …
brighter—“must make you a sick fuck, too.”
Giving him a good, long stroke, I tip my head back and smile, feeling mean. Feeling savage with the need to draw blood and make him just as vulnerable as I am.
Shame swirls inside me; I’m not a good person. I never claimed to be.
And if tonight has proven anything, it’s that the people I care about most are more than likely to end up collateral damage.
They’re okay. Penn and Sienna are going to be okay. They’re not like Ma. They’re coming back to me and will be as good as new.
A smile curves my mouth, and the sharp edge of it tastes cruel.
“Everyone’s so terrified of you, they speak your name in whispers.
The bogeyman’s bogeyman. The Huntsman.” I keep pumping his dick, even while I try to lacerate him with my words, dent that impenetrable shield so he’s as raw as I am.
I’m attacking him on two fronts—sexual and emotional—and so far, neither is working.
His body remains as rigid as a statue, his face as cold as a Boston winter.
“It’s not just your size or the fact you move like a ghost. Or the way you can stand so still, it’s almost unnatural.
More than all that, it’s your eyes. That startling, clear blue where a person can see their soul reflected back at them—if they have one.
A person peers into that empty, crystalline stare and glimpses a thousand screaming souls.
Even now I’m wondering if you hear them,” I whisper. “Can you keep a secret?”
Of course, he doesn’t answer. Well, that’s not true. His eyes, blazing with heat, clearly tell me to go fuck myself.
I switch hands, still gripping his dick, and lift the other to cup his chin.
I fully expect him to jerk his head away from me or order me not to touch him as he’s done in the past. Tendrils of shock undulate through me when he doesn’t evade me.
When my thumb grazes the lush curve of his bottom lip, he slightly stiffens but doesn’t move.
And in that second, this … punishment and self-flagellation for him takes a sudden turn.
Like when I had him chained to my bed in the cottage, this isn’t about pain but something else.
Something so multilayered, murky, and complicated, I don’t have the words for it, but this is no longer my version of self-harm.
It’s a plea for him to … Jesus. Help me. Free me.
Give me something to make me scream, release this hurt.
Release me.
“A secret,” I repeat. “Can you keep it?”
He still doesn’t reply, but it’s answer enough.
“Other people might be haunted by the lives they take, but I’m not one of those people.
When I sleep, the only face that haunts me is my mother’s.
The faces of the other dead? They don’t torment my dreams. And when I look into your eyes, I see the same thing.
That’s why I think they’re so beautiful. A beautiful nightmare.”
Silence falls between us, but it seems like my words ricochet off the walls of the kitchen, growing louder and faster with each pass.
His jaw clenches, unclenches. Clenches. Unclenches.
He repeatedly swallows as if he’s battling back words or perhaps something stronger.
That impassive expression remains unreadable, and to anyone else, that’s what he would be—unreadable.
But I’m a scholar in everything Huntsman. And a Ph.D. in Malachi Bowden.
He’s fighting me. Waging war against my words, against whatever they’re stirring inside of him. From the hard, pulsing dick in my hand to the ticcing of his jaw under my palm, he can’t hide from me.
“You’re a pawn, a toy.”
That garners an outward physical reaction he’s unable to control.
His chin jerks back toward his neck, and I curse myself for not tempering the bald statement. Yes, I’m usually blunt, but this time, I could’ve softened the blow. No one likes to hear they were played.
He steps back from me, lowering a hand and firmly knocking my hand away from his dick. One step. Two. Three. Until he’s leaning against the huge island.
“I’m no one’s plaything, olori.”
Olori.
Last time he called me that, he growled it between my legs.
I can’t help it; my gaze drops below his waist to where his cock shoves against his pants in an angry salute.
My palm burns as if the mammoth curved length is branded into the skin.
With effort, I raise my scrutiny, and while his dick might be bricked up, his face and eyes appear unaffected, frigid.
This isn’t Malachi I’m talking to. Not the man who dove face-first into my pussy, then turned it out like a sprinkler system.
This is the calculated, in-control Huntsman.
“No, you’re not. At least not knowingly,” I agree, crossing my arms over my chest. “I keep telling you there isn’t much I don’t know about you, and you still don’t seem to get why.
I have knowledge of details about your past, your favorite foods, your favorite movies and books, that no one else does.
I keep popping up in your safe houses. Even when we fought, didn’t you wonder how I anticipated some of your moves?
Yeah, I’m damn good, but I still had an edge. How do you think I know all that?”
He studies me, those gray-blue eyes moving over my face as if searching for answers that he hasn’t allowed himself to analyze too deeply until this moment, when I won’t let him avoid it any longer. And I catch the exact second that the truth strikes him.
His mouth twists, while his eyebrows arrow down in a fierce scowl.
“You fucking stalking me, Eshe?”
I smile and shrug. “I call it ‘research’ or even ‘reconnaissance,’ but okay, since you didn’t know I was following you or put cameras in your shit, I suppose technically it could be labeled ‘stalking.’”
It’s fanciful thinking to believe a blast of fire emanates from him, but hand to the Man, billows of heat roll off him and damn near singe my clothes from my body. Anyone else would be terrified at the fury and pain—mine—blazing in his eyes. But not me.
Oh noooo, not me.
I push off the counter and shift forward, eager to be burned by those flames, by that rage. Shiiid, I want to be consumed by it until nothing’s left but ashes. And then, if that muthafucka don’t pick up those ashes and rub me all over his naked body, I’ma know somethin’.