Chapter 20 Chloe
CHLOE
Ican’t believe I’m doing this, racing through the dark, crowded wilderness. I can barely see more than a few inches in front of me, and I swing my arms out, trying to claw the branches away.
But fuck, the way Theo looked at me in the firelight sent heat shooting straight into my pussy. This is exactly the kind of darkness I’ve always fantasized about. How could I say no?
So I run, my steps loud and crashing as the branches lash out at my bare legs.
I’m choosing to trust him about Oliver. Maybe that’s stupid of me.
But I do know how well Hunters can sense humans, like he said.
I saw it with Callie, how she knew from four blocks away that me and Penelope were about to be attacked.
That’s also how I know Theo will find me, no matter where I wind up on his peninsula. The idea gives me a strange, delirious thrill.
I burst out of the woods and stumble to a stop, blinking out at the dark, glimmering waves of Hanging Lake.
The moon is half-formed, and it, along with the brilliant scatter of stars, provides barely enough light to see by.
I honestly have no idea where I am. There are no houses here to serve as a compass.
Something cracks out in the woods. I whip around, my breath tight.
I want to chase you, he said, and I know I’ve barely given him chase. I’ve barely given myself chase. When he catches me, I want to be scared, and tired, and desperate.
So I take off running again, this time staying parallel to the lake. I pump my arms and legs, pushing my breath out in sharp, short bursts. Frantic thoughts flicker through my head—you are a camper here and he kills campers he’s going to kill you—and my fear erupts, sudden and unexpected.
As unexpected as the exposed root branch that catches my foot.
For a moment, I feel snagged. Then I fly forward and land hard on my hands and knees, knocking all the air out of me.
Footsteps off to my left.
I twist around until I’m sitting on my ass and scan the darkness. I can’t see anything but the faint suggestion of movement from the wind.
“Fuck,” I whisper as I scramble up to standing. I can feel him nearby, the prickle of his eyes on my skin. But I can’t see him.
It’s terrifying, and it makes heat surge toward my clit.
I jog forward, my shoes pounding against the packed dirt along the shoreline, trying to catch my breath. Trying to see anything in the darkness.
Tree branches. Undead killers. Anything.
More slow, heavy footsteps. I whirl around, my fear blooming again. It’s real, my fear, but that just enhances my also-very-real desire. I know there’s a chance I can’t trust Theo. I know he might very well want to kill me like he does every other intruder on his property.
And as fucked up as it is, that thought just makes me even more excited.
More footsteps. They sound like they’re coming from the water, and I whip around and finally catch a glimpse of him: a big, hulking shadow against the glimmer of the starry lake.
Does he have a fucking knife in his hand? No, he doesn’t. Which is good, because the knife I brought with me is still in my backpack, which I tossed into the other tent when I arrived. Shows how worried I really am.
I take off running, back into the woods. The tree branches lash out at me, and I duck my head down and throw my hands out to protect myself. Something in the air shifts, and I know Theo’s followed me again. I can feel the heaviness of his presence.
And I keep going. Because I fucking love it, the way my fear amplifies everything.
The way every branch feels like it might be his long, rough fingers reaching out to grab at my hair or scrape across my skin.
Every time I feel something scratch me, I screech and throw my hands around, sure I’m going to slam into his sturdy chest.
I don’t. It’s all trees and vines and feathery ferns. I keep pushing through, ducking low, trying to run as best I can when the forest keeps trying to ensnare me, like it wants to intervene on his behalf.
Then I hear rustling. Not behind me. Off to my left.
I freeze, breathing hard. The rustling continues, soft and whispery. Now it sounds like it’s coming from my right.
“Theo?” I whimper, spinning around in place. I can’t see a damn thing: not here in the dense woods, away from what little light the lake provides.
A snap of a broken branch. I jerk around, my breath tight and panicky.
He’s here.
He stands just a few feet away, nothing more than a shadow against the darkness.
My chest constricts; how did he get there so fast?
I don’t remember Callie moving like that.
But then, that night was years ago, and I had been tipsy from the $5 Mai Tais.
Not like tonight, when I’m stone cold sober and know exactly what I’m looking at.
Theo steps toward me, and when he tilts his head, his eyes turn red for a moment, like some predatory animal. I jerk back instinctively, heart hammering, and slam into the broad trunk of a tree.
“Do you want me to keep running?” I ask raggedly. All I want is for him to say yes.
He nods.
I peel away from the tree and duck back into the underbrush.
This time, though, he follows after me, his steps heavy and calculated compared to my frantic, panicked running.
Branches snap out at me, stinging my cheeks with whips of pain.
Roots claw at my ankles, and I stumble but manage to upright myself before I fall.
He’s getting closer, and I wonder if this is how all his victims felt, if they ran through the woods in the darkness like this, blind and terrified. I wonder if I’m about to become one of them.
Then I erupt out of the trees. I’m not expecting it; I thought I was running deeper into the woods, toward Theo’s cabin. But no. Hanging Lake rolls out in front of me, its black water filled with diamonds. I have a brief flickering thought about how beautiful it is, like the sky fell to the earth.
Then I slip on a loose patch of stones and fall face-first into the water.
It’s shockingly cold, especially compared to the damp heat of the night, the damp heat of my skin. I wrench my head back, gasping as the steely taste floods my mouth—
And then a big, rough hand curls around my throat.
I freeze. We both do, just for a second. Then Theo yanks me up to standing and winds his other arm around my waist, pinning me up against him. I can feel his cock pressing into the small of my back. He breathes softly, warming my skin.
“You caught me,” I say weakly, staring out at the water.
He pulls me around to face him. I can’t make out much in the darkness, aside from his pale hair, which shines platinum in the moonlight. And his left eye, which shines red again as he drinks me in.
I hold my breath, waiting, my hands curled into fists. There’s a part of me that thinks this might be it. I’m going to die. The idea doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
Theo presses his hand to the top of my head and forces me down to my knees. I slam into the mud, the lake water lapping around my legs, as he holds me in place with one hand.
The other hand unbuckles his belt. Zips down his fly. Pulls out his cock.
Heat explodes in me. Relief, too. When he bats his big cockhead against my lips, I open them to pull him into my mouth, eager and hungry. Maybe I’m rewarding him for not killing me. I don’t know.
I swallow him as best I can, gagging a little around his size.
He makes that same rough grunting noise he did when he fucked me in his cabin, and his fingers tighten against my hair, holding me in place as I suck greedily on his cock.
Running like that—being chased, thinking I might die—has left me hornier than I’ve ever felt in my fucking life.
Even the salt of him, of his sweat and his precum, almost tastes sweet to me.
It sends heat soaring between my legs, and I wrap my hands around his hips to give me leverage to try and draw him deeper into my mouth.
I am thanking him. But not for keeping me alive. For giving me the terror that’s always been missing from my previous pitiful sexual encounters.
I fuck him with my mouth, my jaw slack so spit pools around my lips and slides out to slick his thick, hot shaft. He grunts, tightening his fingers in my hair, adding a touch of pain that makes me moan.
When it becomes too difficult for me to breathe around his cock, I release him and lick his balls, taut against his body. I draw one into my mouth and then the other, stroking his spit-drenched dick the entire time. My body buzzes with need.
Theo’s grunts grow louder. He rocks his hips so his cock slaps wetly against my cheek, and I can’t stand it anymore. I slide my free hand down and stroke my pussy over my shorts. It’s infuriating, all that fabric. It’s not my hand that I want between my legs.
“Fuck me,” I whisper against his cock, licking it between each word. “Please, Theo. I need you to fuck me—”
He yanks me by the hair and throws me onto my back.
I land with a splash in the soft, lapping waters of Hanging Lake, mud squelching between my thighs.
Theo drops down between my legs and yanks my shorts off like he did before, although this time, thankfully, he doesn’t shred my panties, just pulls them off in one smooth motion.
I hike my hips up, trying to keep my cunt clear of the mud.
Not that I need to. Theo hooks his arms into my legs and bends me in half, right before he latches his mouth to my pussy.
I cry out, the sound plaintive and small compared to the enormous rushing of the night wind. Theo’s thick, hot tongue swipes the full length of my slit, making my whole body shudder. When his teeth scrape softly against my clit, I scream.
I scream like I really am being murdered out here.
He growls against me, the vibrations not that different from my favorite toy, the little rabbit vibrator that I keep in my bedside drawer.
But fuck me, this is so much better. He eats me like he’s eating me, like he wants to devour me from the pussy up.
When I look down, past my bent-in-half torso, all I can see are my pale, mud-streaked legs and his blond hair.
“I’m gonna come,” I whisper, dropping my head back into the mud.
The lake laps over us, and the cold of the water is a sharp contrast to Theo’s hot, killer’s tongue.
I jolt, but he doesn’t even seem to notice, just thrusts his tongue into my cunt and suckles down on my clit.
I shriek again, arching into him, and my orgasm is a tight, painful knot in my belly.
“I’m gonna come!” I shout again, slamming my fists into the mud, and Theo groans, and then I do, the pleasure is hot and pulsing as it pours through my body.
Immediately, Theo flips me over, forcing me onto my hands and knees. The waves splash around us, the mud sucking at my fingers.
A second later, my killer is inside me.
He pushes his cock into me the way he did in the cabin: suddenly, violently, painfully.
I scream again, curling my fingers up like I’m dying.
And Theo fucks me like he’s killing me. His strokes are fast and hard and brutal, and my whole body shakes with each impact.
I slump forward, laying my cheek on the shore, gasping as Hanging Lake splashes over my mouth and my nose, flooding my sinuses with cold, steely lake water.
Theo’s stabbing me. He’s drowning me. My cunt clenches down on him, begging for more.
Another wave splashes over us. I choke and sputter, sucking down too much dirty lake water. For a moment, I can’t breathe, and the world is dark and murky like I’m at the bottom of the lake.
He’s killing me, I think numbly.
I come.
The orgasm that tears through me at that moment is overwhelming, in large part because I didn’t expect it. But everything is so perfect: Theo’s big, stretching cock, the water splashing into my mouth, the dizzying lack of air.
The idea that I might die like this.
I scream again, sucking in more lake water, enough that my chest burns and the world starts to go dark and light like old film, and I feel a kind of hot, terrible desperation at the edge of my pleasure.
And then there’s a pain in my scalp, and this time when I suck in my breath, it’s air that fills my lungs, not water. My orgasm is still ripping me apart, my cunt contracting and squeezing around Theo’s painful, driving cock.
But his hand is tangled up in my hair, holding my head above the mud and lapping waves.
He didn’t kill me at all. In fact, he saved my life.
I scream again, lake water dripping down my chin. Theo jerks me backward until I’m sitting on his cock, his arms squeezing tight around my chest as I bounce up and down on him, impaling myself on his erection as he bites at my neck—small, warning little nips that sting my skin.
He growls into me, his breath hot and shuddery.
I squeeze down on his cock, wanting him to come inside me again, wanting to feel his hot seed leak down my thigh.
Wanting him, this killer who wouldn’t let me die even though I was chasing it, finally freeing all those dark, tumultuous desires I’ve always locked away.
Until him.
He growls and squeezes me so tightly I can’t move. Then he roars, bucking his hips into me as he pumps his cum up into my pussy. He doesn’t sound human.
He isn’t human.
I slump back against his chest, trying to catch my breath.
The wind picks up, and the mud and lake water on my skin suddenly feels too cold, too clammy.
I shiver, and Theo nuzzles softly against my neck, right before he pulls us both up to our feet, his cock sliding out of me in the process.
The waves splash harmlessly around our ankles.
Then he turns me around, and I look up at him in the darkness, my legs wobbling. He signs something, and I have to squint it to make it out.
“You were drowning yourself.”
My heart thumps.
“You didn’t let me,” I counter.
Theo smooths my wet hair back from my cheek. His eyes are human again, hidden by the darkness. No predatory eye shine. I miss it.
Theo lifts his hands close to my face, like he wants to make sure I can see.
“Why would I want you to die?” he asks.
And then he pulls me in for a long, melting kiss.