Chapter 14 Theo
THEO
Chloe looks like some creature of the forest with all those leaves and twigs caught in her hair. Like the fairies my mother believed in enough that she would leave out saucers of cream and tell me not to step into mushroom circles.
But unlike those fairies, Chloe is real.
And she’s staring at me like she’s not that afraid of me. Even though I was right, and she did see what I am the second she met me.
Not that it’s gone how I expected. She knows the word Hunter. A human shouldn’t know that word, not as it applies to me.
“What do you want to talk about?”
She looks up at me with her big doe eyes, and I feel something trembling inside me. That urge that feels like the killing moon but isn’t. It’s warm, so warm that the heat of the woods is almost intolerable.
I want to kiss her again. Somehow, though, I manage to restrain myself.
Chloe lifts her hands, her brow furrowed. She shapes a single word— hurt—and then shakes her head. “Is it okay if I speak?” she signs instead.
I nod.
“Thank you.” There’s her voice again, soft and musical.
The blood thrums in my veins. “I’m sorry, this is very—it’s easier for me.
I’m still out of practice with ASL and—“ She hitches her shoulders. “This is a weird situation, you know?” Then she laughs nervously, shaking her head. “That’s an understatement, isn’t it? ”
“I agree.”
Chloe looks up at me. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can smell the blood beneath her skin. My cock stirs.
“That this is strange,” I add. “I’ve been very isolated.”
She breathes out. “Why don’t you want to hurt me?” she asks. “You said that last night. You didn’t want to hurt me—”
“And I told you,” I interrupt, my hands fluttering. “Because you’re beautiful.”
The blush in her cheeks deepened. “That doesn’t seem like a very good reason,” she mutters.
I wish I could explain it better. That it’s not so much that she’s beautiful but that she stirs all these feelings up inside me. That she’s like my killing moon, but instead of being cold and pale, she’s as bright as the sun. She’s the light that went missing the night I drowned in Hanging Lake.
“You are different,” I finally say instead, which isn’t much better, and it just makes her face knot up with more confusion. “I don’t like trespassers, but you’re not a trespasser. I don’t mind you being here.” No, that’s not right. I correct myself. “I like you being here. In my territory.”
Chloe sucks in her breath, presses herself against the trees. “Your territory,” she murmurs. “That’s why this place is dangerous, isn’t it? You.. Hurt people who…” Her voice trails off.
“I kill trespassers,” I say, and when the red drains out of Chloe’s face, turning it ashy and pale, I feel some guilt at enjoying it. Her fear is sweet to me, but not in the way fear usually is. “And I kill people who hurt me.”
That’s the easiest way to explain the killing moon, for now.
“I see,” Chloe says, and there’s a breathiness in her voice that’s like the tremble in her hands when she was signing last night. That same sweet fear.
“Would you like to see my cabin?” I ask. I don’t know why; the question just comes to me, and it feels right. Maybe because she’s a guest and not a trespasser. Or maybe I want her to leave a trace of her scent in my home.
Fear flickers through her eyes, but she plasters on a brave smile. I like that. “Do I have a choice?”
I frown at that. Then nod. Then sign, “Always.”
Her breath hitches, a sound like a tree branch cracking in the woods.
She didn’t actually say yes to seeing my cabin, but I pretend she did, stepping past her to lead her to my home.
My father would chide me, having a human at my back, but it feels the polite thing to do in this situation.
Besides, I doubt she has a gun. There was no sign of it in those tight jean shorts she’s wearing.
When we get to my cabin, Chloe steps up beside me and stares at it.
For a moment, I feel a shudder of embarrassment; compared to her house, it looks condemned.
The roof is sagging and missing shingles.
The windows are dirty. At least the porch is swept, and the inside is clean.
Too clean, I realize now. Clean enough that if she had called the cops, they would have known someone lived there, despite my efforts last night to hide the traces of my presence.
But she didn’t call the cops.
“I can make you something to drink,” I sign to her, and then I step up on the porch. I half expect her to turn and run, but she doesn’t. She follows me.
I can feel her emotions wafting up behind me: more of that sweet fear, but also confusion. Surprise, when she walks through the door.
“It’s nice in here,” she says, and I hear the surprise in her voice, too. Once again, I see my cabin through her eyes: plain, with little furniture. But tidy. Mom would have hated it if I had let the inside fall into disrepair, even if I don’t tend to the exterior as I should.
I nod at her, not sure how else to acknowledge the compliment. “I can make you coffee,” I sign. There’s still enough for both of us, even though I hid it away in the back of the old pantry. “Or there’s well water.”
“Water’s fine,” she says. “It’s, um, it’s too hot for coffee.”
I nod and slip into the kitchen. I did draw water from the well this morning when the cops didn’t show up last night, and I dig out two glasses from where I hid them and fill them with it.
When I carry them back into the living room, Chloe is perched on the edge of my old sofa, her hands in her lap.
It’s so strange, having her in my home, the way she seems to light up all the dusty, cobwebbed darkness. When she lifts her eyes to meet mine, I have to squeeze the glasses together to keep from dropping them. I’m not used to being seen this much.
“Thanks,” she signs. “I was thirsty from rowing over here. I really did bring back your boat, by the way.” She pauses. “I assume it was your boat.”
I hand her the glass and sit down on the sofa beside her. She’s so close—close enough that I feel her blood pumping in her veins and the breath exhaling through her lips—but she doesn’t pull away from me. I set my own water glass aside so I can sign.
“Was it under your pier?”
She nods before taking a sip of the water. There’s something about that first drink that sends fire scorching through my body. It’s so trusting. She knows what I am, knows at least some of the horror I’m capable of, and she still took a sip of that water.
“Then it was mine,” I finish.
We stare at each other.
Her scent is overpowering. I’m used to smelling her from afar, so that it’s washed out by the scent of the lake.
But now, she’s inches from me, and I can catch all the complexity of it.
Both the scent of her body and the scent of her blood, but also those emotions churning beneath it.
The fear’s mostly gone. There’s something else, though.
Something that reminds me of fear, and of excitement, and of—
For a second, I slam backward into time. Several years ago, before the lake houses were built. I was stalking some trespassers who had set up a campsite on the beach, a tent and a small fire that trailed smoke up to the starry night sky.
They were fucking.
They were fucking, and the scent of their arousal led me straight to them. I felt nothing from it; my blood was up for killing, not sex. But I do remember that scent. Rich and lush and earthy, like soil after a thunderstorm.
And I smell it now, wafting off Chloe.
I smelled it last night, too, when her mouth was against mine, but I had been so distracted by the whole situation that I hadn’t dwelt on it.
Chloe shifts on the couch, sips from the water again. Her eyes watch me over the edge of her glass. I don’t know how to read what I see in them—the only human emotion I ever really recognize is terror. But there’s something there. A small ember of a fire.
“How did you get back here?” She speaks the question, and the sound of her voice goes straight to my cock, which is already hard from being near her.
“Last night,” she adds.
It takes me a second to realize what she’s saying. “I swam,” I sign.
“Oh.”
The air feels thick. I move closer to her, the way I do unsuspecting prey. Is she unsuspecting? I don’t know.
She doesn’t pull away, just watches me, the glass pressed to her lips. She’s not drinking, though.
Something surges in me. Perhaps we don’t have real self-control, us Hunters. But I wrap my hand around hers and pull the glass away. Her eyes widen a little.
And then I kiss her again.
This time, there’s no pause. She returns the kiss, and her arousal blooms brighter than the rest of her scent, and it works on me like blood does.
My whole body erupts, and I push her roughly down onto the sofa.
Distantly, I hear the water glass fall to the wooden floorboard slats, but I don’t care.
I keep kissing her, plunging my tongue into her mouth, and she does the same
I press my weight into her, pinning her down. Now, there’s a trace of fear working through her arousal. Heightening it, though, not drowning it out.
All the movements come to me easily, the way they do when I’m killing. I haven’t fucked much. Certainly not since I’ve been back on my peninsula. Even before then, it was rare for me to even be interested. But with Chloe—
All I want to do is plunge inside her.
I break the kiss, and Chloe sucks down a deep gasp of air, her face flushed. “Don’t stop,” she whispers, and I sense something like shame. Maybe it should make me feel bad, but it doesn’t. I know what I am.
So I attack her. Well, I attack her clothes, flaying them off her body like strips of skin. Chloe moans, bucking her hips, and the sound reverberates through my chest.
I claw at her bra, shoving it up around her throat so I can get at her breasts, which tremble from the rough, gasping breaths she’s taking.
Her nipples are sharp even in the drowsy heat, and I drag one into my mouth, swirling it with my tongue so I can taste her skin.
This makes her groan and roll her hips, still half-covered in her pesky jean shorts and, presumably, another layer of underwear.
I kiss down her belly, dragging myself away from her so I can flay those off, too.
“Don’t stop,” Chloe whispers. “I like—like it like this.”
I don’t really understand what she means, but I take her at her word, that she doesn’t want me to stop.
I yank her shorts down over her knees, everything getting tangled up in her long, smooth legs.
By the time they’re free, I don’t want to bother doing the same with the underwear.
My treasure is laid out in front of me, almost completely unwrapped, and I have no fucking patience.
I growl softly, a sound I only ever make when I’m in the middle of a kill, when my body’s already drenched in blood. Then I grab Chloe’s flimsy panties with both hands and rip them in half.
She shrieks and jolts against the sofa, but her arousal explodes, too, like I just crushed a rose bloom in my hand. And then all I can look at is her cunt: the dark, downy triangle of hair falling over the faint impression of her slit.
“Theo,” she breathes, and the sound of my name in that beautiful, musical voice is the only thing that could drag my gaze away from her pussy.
It’s worth it, though, because I see her face. Flushed, lips parted in ecstasy, eyes shining with trepidation.
I want to split her open. I want to scoop her blood out with my hands and smear it on my face, want to crawl inside her body and curl up there, nestled among her organs. But I also don’t want to kill her.
She’s staring at me, and there’s something pleading in her expression, the way people will look at me right before I kill them. Please, they say. Please don’t.
Chloe’s mouth parts, showing me her pink tongue.
Then she reaches down between our bodies and grazes her fingers across the top of my jeans.
“Please,” she whispers. “Please.”
No don’t.
And so I do.