Chapter Nine. Eshe #4
“I can’t even put the blame on you; it’s really mine.
Somewhere, I must’ve played my hand, slipped and forgotten how closely I was being watched.
There are times I forget how much of a cunning and dangerous cunt Abena really is, and that got me caught up.
” I frown. “Of course, I’d heard rumors about you like everyone else, but two years ago on February twenty-second, you came to Elysian.
No one else seemed to notice you, but I did.
It was how you moved—so a part of the darkness that even I questioned if you existed.
But you did, and that night, I followed you when you left.
And I saw you track a man, watched you kill him. Watched your face as you did it.”
I squeeze my thighs together as my clit thumps and liquid arousal spills from my pussy onto the sweatpants he loaned me.
“What did you see?” he asks, his gaze flicking down.
I don’t need to bow my head to glimpse my nipples that are undoubtedly pushing against my sweatshirt.
“Euphoria. Satisfaction. You like what you do. Nah.” I shake my head. “You love what you do.”
“I might nut when I snap your neck, olori,” he whispers.
I shiver. Full-body shiver.
I anticipate glimpsing disgust in his gaze, but like I told him—accused him of—earlier, we’re both sick fucks.
“Like I said, I’m to blame for you being used.
If you have enough resources, money, and motivation, any information is available.
And Abena has plenty of all that. I don’t know exactly how or when she found out—maybe she had me followed, or I was just careless and didn’t cover my tracks.
None of it matters now. I should’ve caught it when there were one too many slick comments with your name dropped in when she’d never mentioned you before. Yeah, she knew.”
I smirk, but the anger that always accompanies thoughts of Abena kindles in my chest, and I run my thumb over the skin replacing my amputated pinkie. When his scrutiny skims down, I drop my arms, forcing my hands to relax at my sides.
“When I found you in the woods, I was surprised, but then again, I wasn’t.
I hadn’t expected Abena to make a move on me so soon.
But I underestimated her; she sent you of all people after me.
She knew what she was doing; she couldn’t have found a more brilliant method of punishment.
Either I die knowing it’s at the hands of the man I developed a …
preoccupation over. Or I kill that same man and have to live with the pain, grief, and guilt of knowing I took his life. Whichever outcome, she wins.”
“Liar.”
The word isn’t a roar, isn’t a crash of sound. It’s more of a low, rumbled hiss, and yet it still echoes in the kitchen like a clap of thunder. I blink, taken aback for a second by the power, the intensity of it.
When that big body moves with the quickness of a man half his size and weight, I’m not prepared for it. He lunges for me in a burst of speed and strength that’s fueled by the rage glowing in his bright eyes, that curls the corner of his mouth into a fierce snarl.
Does he feel like a feral beast? Has that pure fury stripped away some of his humanity? I hope so. Civility is so overrated.
Adrenaline rushes through me, and I bring my knee up and kick him hard in the thigh.
The impact sings up my own leg. He stumbles a little but keeps coming for me, his open palm flying for my chest. At the last second, I dodge it, but the heel catches me in the shoulder, sending me spinning in a half circle.
Pain radiates bright and hot from my hip as it knocks into the stove.
Snatching up the pan, I hurl the hot stir-fry at him. He ducks the food and hot oil but isn’t fast enough to miss the back of the pot when I slam it into his temple. Blood trickles from his hairline, and he staggers for only a second before he’s hot on my heels again.
Excitement is a lethal melody in my veins, and I dart around the island, grabbing the expandable baton he has taped underneath. Snapping it open, I break it into two pieces and grip the handles, edging back toward the living room.
Malachi stalks me like the beast I compared him to, his nose flaring, his eyes hooded and tracking my every move.
He grips the bottom of his hoodie and jerks it over his head, tossing it to the side, and my pussy spasms so hard, the shit feels like a contraction.
The light-gray T-shirt clings to his wide shoulders and chest, and never have I wanted to beat the ass of a shirt before.
But gotdamn, there’s a first time for everything.
For several long moments, we study each other, waiting to see who’s going to make the first move. The ferocity that marked the beginning of the fight has passed.
That was rage.
This is foreplay.
Malachi charges me, but at the last second, he feints left, blocks my swing with one arm, and wraps the other around my waist. But using a hook kick, I sweep his feet out from under him, and he hits the ground, taking me with him.
We both roll, but in opposite directions, facing each other in low crouches.
I still clutch the batons in my fists, and without removing my gaze from him, I toss both of them across the room.
Electricity arcs through me, from the soles of my feet, up my spine, over my scalp, and right back down. My breath whistles in and out of my lungs, and it’s a deafening rush of air in my head.
Malachi waits, as still as a statue. And stares at me.
But disgust doesn’t brighten his eyes like diamonds. Anger doesn’t burn there.
Fascination does. And fucking glee. The same glee I glimpsed on his face the first night I saw him. The night I saw him take a man’s life.
I called him twisted. And he is. Just like me.
And that makes him irresistible.
I slowly crawl toward him, and those lovely eyes flare before the dense fringe of lashes lowers, partially hiding his gaze from me. He sits back on his knees, but I keep coming to him. Keep crawling until I’m directly in front of him. Only then do I rise to my knees, too.
“You want to kill me,” I murmur, gently grabbing his hand and placing it around my neck. “Hurt me. Try it.”
His fingers immediately grip me.
And squeeze.
I softly gasp, arch into his hand, press deeper into that delicious hold. I don’t know what he glimpses on my face, but I feel absolutely fucking euphoric. The air I breathe is in his hands because I allow it, and that knowledge has me so wet, my thighs are damn near sliding against each other.
“You’re not even trying, Malachi,” I taunt, lifting my hand and covering his. “Come on and make me believe that you want my blood staining that black, beautiful soul.”
His grip tightens, and for a second, I can almost read his want—no, his need—to silence me. And crushing my throat under his fingers would accomplish that. Why? Or rather what? What did I say? Which of my words are goading him to that precipice?
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He snatches his hand away from my neck as if my skin singes his palm and fingers.
That snarl ricochets against my skull, joining the replay of all the words I’ve said.
I can’t parse it. Not when one thing stands out too clear, drowning everything else out: the disgust threading his voice.
But something whispers that it isn’t directed toward me. No. That’s all projected toward him.
I tilt my head, and though a latent sense of self-preservation urges me to back away from him, telling me that he has the power to hurt me like no other being on this rock, I remain where I am. Crowding him. Forcing him to look at me. Making him be near me. See me.
And staring into those bottomless blue eyes? It’s like peering into the abyss and having my soul reflected back at me. I want to cringe and cower from it. But another part of me—the part of me that craves to own all his secrets, his desires, to be his obsession—can’t look away.
Is it possible to hate as passionately as I want? Because I do.
He makes me weak by being my weakness.
And that part of me almost hates him.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about?” I repeat. “You called me a liar, and although we’ve established that is definitely one of my vices, I still take exception to that. So which part? About Abena using you as a pawn to get to me? I agree she’s not very imaginative, but—”
“I don’t give a fuck about her.”
“Then what, Malachi?” I murmur.
“Last time I’m going to tell you: Stop calling me that name,” he warns me through clenched teeth.
“It’s your name though,” I point out, still softly.
Tension is a tangible, nearly visible entity in this room.
It fairly streams off his big body in waves.
My nature—at least with him—is to poke. But instinct coaches me to hold off.
To wait. To give him time. To hold out my hand to him as if he were a wary, wounded, yet still very dangerous predator, then allow him to come to me.
“It’s not my name,” he finally says, and the words sound as if they traveled through miles of gravel to reach me. “Not anymore. Malachi died years ago.”
Died with his foster father on that dirty linoleum floor. He doesn’t include that, but I hear it as loud and clear as if he did.
“Fine.” I pause. “Huntsman.”
But because he committed the equivalent of licking my hand and I’m that give an inch, they’ll take the city block mu’fucka, I edge closer. And closer still until my nose bumps his, until my breath mingles with his.
“Why don’t I know what I’m talking about?
” I press, unwilling to let it go. I can’t.
At this point, it’s almost physically impossible.
“You set me straight on it not being about Abena. So it’s not about her sending you to track me down.
Definitely not about me tracking you. So, what is it?
What is it?” I hum, eyes narrowed, studying his beautiful impassive face.
Then a thought flashes in my head an instant before disbelief and anger catch fire behind my rib cage. My hand shoots out, gripping his jaw in a firm hold that gives him no choice but to look at me.
“The fuck? Is this about my calling you beautiful?” My fingers press deeper into his skin, molding to bone. I won’t be surprised if I leave bruises behind shaped like the ridges and whorls of my prints.
I snatch my hand away, but before I can scoot back and place much-needed space between us, his hand shoots out and cuffs my wrist.
“This is about you following me and thinking you know me.” He jerks me closer until his breath brushes my lips in an almost kiss.
“You got some obscure-ass facts from a fucking family tree that don’t mean shit.
It just makes you a stalker with a research fetish.
What the fuck do you, of all people, know about beauty?
About a soul? You’re up here trying to pry into my brain when you can’t even be truthful about your own shit. ”
For the first time ever with him, a sliver of fear wiggles its way into my heart, and I want to pull away, afraid of what is about to come out of his mouth.
As if he anticipates my move, he raises a hand and cups the nape of my neck, holding me in place.
I could fight him, slam the heel of my palm into his sternum, and use that action to roll and grab the batons.
But I’m trapped not just by his grip on my neck but by his words, the cold yet wild look in his eyes, the cruel yet vulnerable slant to his mouth.
In this instant, he’s a boxer coming out of his corner, swinging wildly so he doesn’t go down for the count.
“You’re questioning me, but you still haven’t answered why you’re here. Why aren’t you at the hospital with the people you’re supposed to love and protect? The people who need you. Instead, you’re here, hiding.”
“Shut up,” I whisper, now my turn to order him to stop talking.
For the first time, well … ever, he smiles.
And it’s cruel.
It’s beautiful.
“Oh yeah, you’re hiding, olori. And running scared. Someone coming for you? You don’t give a fuck about that. But coming after your—”
I surge forward, crushing my mouth to his.