26. Kennedy
Kennedy
I skidded to a stop so abruptly I nearly lost my footing as a sharp, panicked gasp tore out of me.
“Malachi!”
The name burst from my lips like a curse, raw and shaking. I was sure he’d heard me say it, and a rustle of leaves behind me confirmed it.
I whirled around, breath catching in my lungs as he stepped slowly into the small clearing, his black clothes nearly blending into the night. The only thing that caught the moonlight filtering through the trees was the bone-white mask still clinging to his face. That awful, grinning skull.
He took a few more steps toward me. Then he stopped, and a slow, deliberate hand reached up to remove the mask. As the hard curve of his jaw was revealed, my stomach dropped.
I was right. It was him. Malachi.
I’d already put the pieces together in my mind, but somehow, actually seeing his face made my knees weaken from shock and dismay all over again.
He looked exactly like he always had, and yet nothing at all like the man I’d come to trust. His handsome face was set like stone, his jaw tight, his eyes nearly black in the shadows. He was breathing hard, just like me, but I knew it wasn’t from exertion. It was from excitement. From bloodlust.
His gaze locked on mine, and whatever I’d hoped to see flashing in his eyes—guilt, regret, maybe even remorse—wasn’t present. All I saw was brutal, singular focus.
He didn’t speak. Just started walking toward me again.
With each step he took, I staggered backward, until my spine collided with the rough bark of a tree. I was trapped, like prey caught in a snare.
“Why?” I choked out, looking up at Malachi through wide, terrified eyes. “Why did you do it?”
“You already know why,” he said, voice low and sharp. “Don’t pretend you don’t.”
His gaze dipped to my lips, then lower to my chest, the look of dark hunger on his face growing more intense by the second. I genuinely couldn’t tell if he wanted to kiss me or kill me.
I should’ve screamed then. Should’ve fought. But if the only options available to me were killing or kissing… then obviously, I’d always choose the latter.
I tilted my head upward just as his mouth crashed down on mine, hot and bruising.
Suddenly we were fire and lightning and teeth.
His hand slid into my hair and yanked my head back with just enough force to make me gasp, and he used that moment to thrust his tongue between my lips. Devouring me. Consuming me.
My back scraped the bark as he pressed into me, his thigh sliding between mine, grinding against the heat pulsing there.
At the same time, his hand slid downward, gripping my waist hard enough to bruise.
I gasped from the sudden frisson of pain that shot through me, my hands flying up to push him away, but he caught my wrists easily and pinned them above my head.
“Tell me to stop, Kennedy,” he growled, his breath hot against my lips.
I couldn’t. I knew exactly what I had to do if I wanted to live, and that didn’t involve stopping. And to be honest, I didn’t want to stop anyway, because something was swooping low in my belly now; that familiar old mix of fear and arousal that blurred the lines between pleasure and peril.
Oh my god. I was actually turned on by this.
What the hell was wrong with me? How could I feel this way when I was staring down a cold-blooded killer who’d just hunted me down in the woods with a gun? It was insane. Totally fucking insane.
I shouldn’t want him. Couldn’t want him. I had to snap the hell out of this, right now.
I finally summoned up the willpower to break the kiss, squirming against Malachi’s iron grip. “Please,” I said in a ragged whisper.
“Please what , sweetheart?” he asked, tilting his head.
“Let me go,” I replied, dropping my gaze so he wouldn’t see the treacherous desire flickering in them. “I won’t tell anyone it’s you. I promise.”
He let out a gravelly laugh. “Such a little liar.”
“I’m not lying. I swear,” I whispered. “Please… just let me go. Don’t hurt me.”
“But you like it when I hurt you,” he muttered, eyes burning with predatory intensity. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”
I swallowed hard, keeping my mouth firmly shut. I hated that he was right, and I hated even more that he knew it from experience, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of confirming it out loud.
With a swift motion, he grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “Answer the question,” he growled.
I took a deep breath and shook my head as a tear rolled down my cheek. I half-expected him to shoot me then, or plunge a hunting knife into my gut, but instead, he smiled thinly.
“All right, Kennedy,” he said in a low, amused voice. “I’ll give you what you want. I’ll let you go.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’ll let you go,” he repeated. As he spoke, he pulled away from me and took two steps backward, eyes glimmering with dark delight. “But only so I can chase you down and fuck all that defiance right out of you.”
Of course. I should’ve known there’d be no mercy from a man like him.
I wanted to spit curses at him, to scream ‘ fuck you!’ with every ounce of rebelliousness I had left, but I couldn’t.
The image he’d just planted in my mind—of him chasing me again, tackling me to the forest floor, and fucking the resistance right out of me—was sending a dangerous rush straight between my legs.
And once again, I didn’t want it to stop.
No, no, no!
I clenched my jaw, trying to will myself back into control, to snap out of this twisted trance. The logical part of my brain was still screaming at me to run, to fight, to do anything but this … and yet, Malachi’s maddening smirk, paired with the dark promise in his words, was holding me captive.
Not with force. Just wicked, all-consuming desire.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” he said, smirk widening. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
I gulped, shaking my head. “No.”
“Oh, yes. You want to be hunted down and fucked by a killer. Stripped of all choice by a psychopath.” He took two steps forward, caging me in again. “I’ve seen it, Kennedy. I’ve felt it. We both know it’s true.”
I shook my head again, even though his words were undeniably correct.
“So what’s it gonna be, baby? Are you running again, or are you staying right here?” he asked, rubbing his jaw. “Either way, we both know it’ll end with you coming all over my cock. So I guess it just depends on how much you want to struggle before that happens.”
His voice had dropped even lower, and something about it flipped a switch inside me.
Oh, fuck .
My shoulders sagged as all the fight went out of me, and I looked up, meeting his burning gaze. “Just do it, Malachi,” I whispered. “Whatever you want to do to me right now… do it.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before his lips crashed into mine again, his hands bracketing my hips as my back slammed harder into the tree. I gasped, but the sound was swallowed by his mouth; by the fevered desperation in the way he kissed me like he owned me.
I tried to tell myself that my decision to let him have me now was purely about self-preservation. That as long as his lips were on mine and his hands were on my body, he wasn’t torturing or killing me like he’d done with all the others.
But that was a lie.
I didn’t just want him to spare my life. I wanted him, even after all the heinous things he’d said and done, and the only thing that was truly threatening to destroy me right now was the all-consuming need to feel him everywhere. My mouth, my hands, my pussy, my ass. Every last piece of me.
My hands fisted in his jacket, dragging him even closer, because there was no use pretending anymore. Not with his body against mine, not with the sharp bite of his teeth on my bottom lip, not with the ardent heat still burning in my core.
His mouth moved to my neck, teeth slowly scraping my skin. A breath left him in a violent exhale, and then we were moving again; his hands everywhere, pulling, tearing.
My loose T-shirt went first, lifted over my head and tossed into the undergrowth, followed by the flimsy lace bralette I’d worn beneath it.
Then Malachi dropped to his knees like a man possessed, ripping my satin pajama pants off as he went.
His fingers found my soaked panties, tearing them aside like they were nothing. No teasing. No waiting.
His tongue hit my clit like a shot of adrenaline, and I moaned, loud and unfiltered, hips bucking against his face as he licked me like he was starving and I was the last meal on Earth.
“Oh, god, Malachi…” I whimpered.
My legs were shaking like mad now, and my hands dug into his shoulders as he sucked harder, tongue curling in ways that sent electric pulses through my system.
I was already close to the edge when he pulled away abruptly and stood, licking his lips. “You’re going to take every inch of me,” he said, voice rough and low. “And you’re going to thank me for it.”
With that, he spun me and bent me forward, palms against the bark of the tree.
“Don’t move.”
I felt the sharp sting of cold air on my bare ass, followed by the radiating heat of his body behind me. His belt clinked. His pants dropped. And then he was there, cock sliding against my slit, thick and hard.
“So wet for me already,” he said, voice full of twisted triumph as he reached around to rub slow circles over my clit with one hand.
I moaned and widened my legs, granting him even easier access.
“You want me to fuck you, don’t you?” he went on. “Right here against this tree, like the dirty little whore you are.”
I wanted it so fucking badly I could barely breathe.
“Yes,” I whispered. “God, yes .”
His tip slid slightly upward, teasing me for another second that felt like an eternity. Then he finally thrust inside, and I cried out, a sound caught somewhere between agony and ecstasy. The stretch of his long, thick cock burned, but I welcomed the pain. Needed it.
“Oh, fuck…” Malachi ground out, breathing heavily as he pushed deeper. “You feel so fucking good, baby. Take me so fucking good .”