20. Hunter
TWENTY
HUNTER
M y phone chirps and it wakes me from my sleep. It’s the tone I set for Leo. It must be important if he’s messaging me at this time of night. I roll to face the nightstand and lower the light on my phone.
Update. Talk ASAP.
I suppress a hard exhale, not wanting to wake Winter. Pressing the side button to darken the screen, I put my phone back on Winter’s nightstand as quietly as I can and roll over to spoon her again.
“Wha’shappening?” she slurs in her sleep.
“Nothing, baby, go back to sleep,” I whisper in her ear. I run my hand up and down her arm.
“I love you call me baby,” she mutters, and for a second, my breath catches in my chest at “I love you.” She means, “I love it when you call me ‘baby,’” but for a moment…
What the fuck am I doing here?
I scrub a hand down the side of my face, feeling the prickle of my five o’clock shadow against my palm .
I know why I’m here in Winter’s apartment and why we had the most incredible day yesterday.
Winter and I simply go together. She’s my person. I think I’m her person too.
That leaves the most fucked-up question of all: what am I doing with Winter when I’m the most unavailable I’ve ever been?
Blair’s face pops up in my mind, standing beside my father.
I hold Winter closer and close my eyes with her scent in my nose.
When I open my eyes again, sunlight ricochets around Winter’s apartment. I roll on my back to look at the windows, and the fact that there are no curtains is appalling.
I groan and cover my eyes with my forearm. The sound or the movement causes Winter to stir.
She rolls onto her stomach, slinging her arm around my chest and snuggling into my body.
This presents problem number two. My cock is so hard it hurts.
I don’t want to draw attention to my plight, but if she were to look down, she’d get an eyeful. So I pull one of the pillows from beneath my head and put it over my lap.
“Good morning, H,” she says, tucking her face into my armpit.
“Good morning to you too. What are you doing?” I ask her, chuckling.
“I, um, morning breath,” she says finally, still talking into my armpit.
“Well, I’m sure my armpit doesn’t smell any better than your breath. And—” I pull her face up to look at me. “I don’t care.” I crunch down to kiss her forehead.
She lays her head on my chest, looking up at me. The way the sun frames her face makes her look like an angel .
She kisses my chest, bounces from her bed, and runs to the bathroom.
I sink back into the pillows, arm swung over my eyes again. I’m sending someone out to get her some goddamn blackout curtains today. And to make sure these windows are one-way.
The image of her pressed against the glass while I fuck her from behind pops into my brain. A bead of precum pearls at the tip of my dick.
“Do you mind if I hop in your shower?” I yell out to Winter. It’s not that weird, right? We did have an active day.
She doesn’t have to know that I’m a stiff breeze away from jizzing on my chest.
She pokes her head out of the bathroom, toothpaste foaming on her lips as she brushes her teeth. “Sure thing,” she says, her voice garbled.
I take some deep breaths, willing my dick to go down. I plan on blasting the shower on cold until the damn thing shrivels.
It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with Winter. It’s that I know she’s a runner. If she gets scared, she will run away from me, and I don’t know that our relationship is at the point where I could reel her back in.
Not that I should reel her back in. If she runs, I should let her go.
“Here are some towels. I put a new toothbrush on the counter. Do you want me to throw your clothes on a quick cycle so you have something clean to put on? I don’t mind.” Her smile is effervescent, and as she stands before me in her soft shirt and shorts, loose strands of hair curling out of her braids, a boulder shifts in my chest.
She trusts me. She’s comfortable with me. And I’m completely lost to her.
“Thanks, Sunbeam. That would be wonderful.” When she turns her back to grab my clothes off the floor, I take the towels off the bed and stand up, using them to cover the tent in my briefs.
She turns around just as I’m bundling the towels in front of my crotch and says, “Do you want me to throw those in too?” Her eyes flick down toward the area of my dick, and I see her flush as her eyes pop back up to mine. “I really don’t mind,” she says, her voice lower.
“You know, that’d be awesome. Let me take them off in the bathroom and toss them out if that’s okay?”
Goddamn it, I haven’t been this damn awkward around a woman since I was a pimply preteen.
“Yep! Sure!” Her voice is bright, and she turns around again.
Once inside the bathroom, I don’t waste time. I brush my teeth, scrubbing them so hard I might draw blood. Then I turn the shower on. Cold. I toss the boxers outside the door with a rushed, “Thanks, Sunbeam,” and step directly under the cold stream.
My breath seizes in my chest, and I resist the urge to yelp. After thirty seconds of my self-imposed Arctic plunge, I slowly turn the water temperature to something more tolerable.
At least my erection is gone.
I grab some of Winter’s soaps. She has four different kinds, all smelling like flowers. She also has skincare products and gadgets propped in a basket suctioned to the shower wall. Everything is lined up, pristine, the labels all facing at the exact same angle.
I pick up the soap that smells the least like a garden and lather my body when the door opens. I don’t dare look over my shoulder.
But when the shower door opens and closes, I drop my head to the tiles.
“Sunbeam, I don’t know if you want to be here with me right now. ”
I feel her body move closer to mine, and she puts her hand on my back.
“I’ve always wanted to shower with someone,” she says. “And I saw that you, erm, you were awake this morning, and I thought I could help you out.” Her voice shakes a little bit, and I turn to face her, one hand over my growing dick.
I try to ignore the fact that she’s completely naked. I put my other hand on her face, forcing her to look at me. “I told you. Let’s take it slow. We don’t have to do anything.” She blinks at me, water beading on her eyelashes, making them clump together.
She leans into me slightly but doesn’t touch me.
Then she steals my entire soul when she drops to the floor, settling on her knees.
“I want to taste you, H. Can I taste you like you tasted me?”
I still, my muscles tense. My dick doesn’t get the message that we’re not coming out to play today, and it lengthens under my hand.
“Sunbeam— Jesus !” My head drops back as she bats my hands away, grabs my dick, and leans forward to run her flat tongue up my length from the base to the tip.
“I want to. Please.” She looks up at me with so much emotion in her eyes. I can’t help but notice the quake in her chin.
“I know you haven’t dated, but have you ever done it before?”
A look flashes in her eyes before she says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. You’ll have to show me.” She takes the thick mushroom head of my cock into her wet, warm mouth.
“You’re doing an amazing job so far, baby.” I widen my stance and tilt the showerhead away from her body. My muscles twitch, but it’s not a hundred percent from being wet and cold .
“Tell me what to do, H,” she whispers, kissing tentatively along my shaft.
Okay, so we’re doing this.
My dick rejoices by twitching in her soft palm.
“Stroke it with one hand. Like this,” I take my hand and palm the base of my dick, rotating my wrist up so that it’s a tugging, twisting motion.
“Like this?” She mimics my motion, replacing my hand with her own. I bite my lip to not moan like a bitch.
“Y-yeah, that’s perfect. If you want to keep doing that alone, that’s great, baby. You don’t have to put me in your mouth.” My eyes feel like they’re crossing, so I tilt my head back and close my eyes.
“No.” She stops stroking. I look down at her, and she’s frowning. “I want to suck it.”
My dick jumps at her words. Goddamn, if her saying “I want to suck it” doesn’t solidify my place in hell, I don’t know what will. There’s no way being with her isn’t a sin.
“Keep stroking, and then put the tip of me into your mouth and suck and lick. Get me all wet. You can put as much of me in your mouth as you want,” I instruct.
She starts stroking my dick again, and the look of concentration on her face concerns me a little, but then the thought flies out of my head when she brings half of my dick into her mouth. And sucks.
My dick is a respectable eight inches, so it’s not like I have a third arm down there. But it’s thick, and her lips stretch around the girth. The sight is one I will recall on my deathbed.
I put my hands on my hips, not wanting to grab her head. Not wanting to thrust. I want her to take her time and do this at her own pace.
“God, baby, that’s such a good job. You’re doing such a good job,” I say. Thoughts are hard, and the tingling at the base o f my spine lets me know that I’m about two seconds away from coming.
The praise does something for her because she gets into sucking me off even more, working her mouth over me and keeping a steady pace as she strokes my cock.
“Pull back, baby,” I tell her. I put a hand on her shoulder when she doesn’t let up. I try to not grip her too hard. “Baby, I’m gonna come in your mouth in a second if you don’t pull back.”
Her eyes flick toward mine, and goddamn if she doesn’t suck harder. She moans and I nearly die on the spot when I see her spread her legs wide on her knees, one hand massaging her spectacular pussy. That’s all it takes for me to blow in her mouth. I groan this time, and it’s loud against the tiled shower stall.
“Fuck, Winter,” I grind out. My muscles tense at the force of my orgasm. My hand is still on her shoulder.
When I come to myself, I see that she’s swallowed the mouthful of cum. And she’s waiting on her knees, an unsure look in her eyes. She bites her lip.
“Was that okay?” she whispers.
Our gazes are stuck together, magnetized to the other. And just like last night, a wealth of emotions cross her face.
Something in my chest breaks. Because it’s at that moment that I know that it’s not just that she’s scared of this intimacy brewing between us. She’s scared of sex, period.
“Baby,” I say when I pull her to stand. I wrap her in my arms, and she puts her head on my chest. “You did perfectly.”
I feel her smile.
Once we lather up and rinse off, sharing goofy smiles in the mirror when we exit the stall, she pulls a robe on while I wrap a clean towel around my waist.
“There’s coffee there if you want it,” she says, pointing to the pot next to the stove. She’s wrapped her hair in what looks like a T-shirt, and she pads over to the washing machine hidden in an alcove behind a set of folding doors.
As the droplets of water dry on my skin, I allow myself to analyze this serene moment. Watching the curve of her back, her delicate neck, I feel a wave of panic wash over me at the thought of something happening to her.
Of her being harmed by this shit with Blair and Morris and my father.
She looks at me over her shoulder, jerking when our gazes meet.
“What?” she asks with a laugh.
This one is yours.
I’m never letting her go.
I watch her ass jiggle as she takes the tiny load and moves it over to the dryer.
She jumps when I’m right behind her. “H! You scared me,” she says, trying to turn.
“Did you ever sit on the dryer when you were younger to make your pussy feel good?” My body is pressed against hers, my front to her back. I ghost my nose up the side of her neck.
She blushes. “No, of course not!” She glances away from me.
“Well, today is a day of firsts, then.” And then I sit her on the dryer and eat my breakfast.
“Ah, brother. Doing the walk of shame, I see.” Ella leans against the doorjamb at the front of Amelia Manor. She smiles as I approach, and I toss my keys to one of the guys who will park my car in the garage at the back of the property.
“Not a drop of shame here, Ellie.”
She rolls her eyes as I push past her to enter the home. I drop m y flight bag over the back of one of the living room chairs and keep walking.
My first order of business is to find Leo. I called him on the drive over, and he started talking in code.
I find him already in my office.
“What’s the latest,” I say to him.
“There’s finally proof,” he whispers.
“Be specific. Proof of what?” He arches his eyebrow at my tone and pulls his phone from his pocket.
“Sit down. You’ll want to once you watch this.”
I take his phone to my side of the desk, a video pulled up already.
I sit and press play.
My father looks as regal as he should, given his status. He’s dressed in a three-piece dark gray suit, and I notice the backdrop of palm trees. He’s on Isla Cara.
The camera captures him right in the center, but it looks like the novice videographer hides behind some type of gauzy material. Things are hazy, but I can still see so much. At my father’s feet are a dozen naked bodies—chained together but silent.
He snaps his finger, and the form closest to him shifts. A woman. A girl.
A young—too young—girl.
Blonde hair like sun rays.
The girl bows at his feet. Her head is so low her torso almost touches the floor. I can feel the coldness of the tiles just as sharply as if I were there.
He pulls the girl up to her knees by her hair. He unzips his pants, fishing his dick out.
“Suck,” he says. I fight down bile as I see the next part. I look away.
A few minutes later, he finishes, and I glance back to the phone. She’s buttoning him up, and he pats her head.
Like she’s a dog .
And then the camera goes black.
Leo and I sit in silence for several minutes. Finally, I clear my throat and look at him.
“What do we do with this, Leo?” My throat is dry, and the high I rode when I left Winter’s house this morning is gone.
My father is a pedophile. A rapist. A human trafficker. And he gets away with all of it because he has money.
Blood money.
For not the first time, I want to give everything away—anything that isn’t earned from BwP.
And even that…
“FBI?” Leo asks and I flinch.
“You know how that will work out,” I reply. He closes his eyes against my words in a long blink.
“Why do people connect themselves with him? It’s because they know he’s powerful and can protect them if something were to go south. So this video isn’t gonna do shit to sway people to turn against him. We have to control them by instilling fear,” I say. Even if we manage to off my father, people will run scared, searching for someone to cover their sins.
“We can’t make a move right now. I wonder if he knew this was being filmed,” Leo says.
“There’s a strict no electronic device rule on Isla Cara. When people arrive from the boat, all of them are confiscated and kept in a safe off-property.” I sink further into my chair, spinning the now-locked phone between my fingers.
“So the question begs, how did they get a camera in there, for what reason, and?—”
“Why did they send it to you?” I add.
“That’s the biggest question. I have no idea who sent it or from where. Max is working on tracing everything, but even he was confused.”
I raise my eyebrows. I don’t know who could if Max can’t track it down .
“This all smells. It feels like a trap, Leo.”
“You’re probably right,” he says. “But still, what do we do with this information?”
I drop my head against the headrest. I’m now in possession of child abuse material. It’s supposed to be used as evidence against my father—something to leverage.
“Trace it and lock it down. It’s time to get in touch with Misha Hroshko again.”
Leo leans back in his chair.
“This is bigger than us at this point. And honestly, if we’re going to bring him down, it needs to be now.”
Leo sighs as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
“Fuck! Why couldn’t your dad just be a guy who fucks his secretaries?” He runs a hand down his face, and I chuckle.
“Oh, to be so lucky,” I say.