Chapter 8 The Hunter’s Game #3
I don’t need to be told twice. I close my lips around her nipple, sucking and biting until she cries out, then shift to the other, repeating until she’s shuddering, her hips grinding against my chest.
I want to fuck her right here, in the dirt and blood. I want to mark her with it, so every time she looks down, she remembers what we are.
I tear at the twine holding her pants, yanking them down just enough to expose her before I stand, unbuttoning my pants.
She reaches for me, impatient. Our hands get tangled, both of us too desperate to bother with finesse. I shove my pants down just enough, then lift her with a grunt, bracing her against the tree.
She wraps her legs around me, her ankles locking at my lower back. For a second, I just hold her, forehead to forehead, the two of us shaking.
“I need you,” she whispers.
I line myself up and push in, slow at first, savoring the way she opens for me. Her heat is like a fist of ecstasy around my cock.
Her head tips back with a groan that makes the birds go silent. The bark bites her skin, my arms caging her in. The whole world narrows to the slick heat where our bodies meet.
She’s so fucking wet I can barely keep from blowing the second I’m inside, so I grit my teeth and move slow at first, just to draw it out, just to punish myself for all the craving.
But she won’t have it. She digs her nails into my shoulders—ten sharp little warning shots—and then rakes them down, hard, through the thin cotton of my shirt and into my skin. I feel the sting, the wetness, the hot lick of blood.
It drives me into a frenzy.
I piston my hips, rough and deep, until she’s gasping, clawing, her jaw slack and eyes wild.
“Harder,” she chokes. There’s no fear in her voice. None. Just need.
I give it to her. I fuck her so hard the tree shakes, so hard my teeth rattle in my skull. I want her to feel this all the way to her marrow. I want every living thing in the forest to know who she belongs to.
She bites my lip when I kiss her. The sharpness of her teeth knocks loose a groan from somewhere deep.
I grab her thigh, spreading her wider, fucking her harder. She takes it, every inch, meeting every thrust with her own.
My hands tangle in her hair, pulling her head back so I can lick the sweat from her neck, taste the salt and heat and blood. My cock is steel, my blood a riot. All I can see—all I want—is her coming apart for me.
She’s close. I feel it in the way her cunt flutters around me, the way her breath goes ragged. I reach down, my thumb rough on her clit, and she bucks, nearly breaking my hold.
She screams, a sound so raw and satisfied that it cuts through the trees.
It pushes me over.
I slam into her, my hips grinding, filling her until I’m empty, until the only thing left is the two of us shaking against the tree, breathing like beasts.
She collapses against my chest, her head on my shoulder, her hair in my mouth. Her hands are shaking, but she doesn’t let go.
I don’t, either.
Eventually, I feel like I can breathe again, but I can’t look at her. I fucked a princess like an animal, and a big part of me doesn’t even regret it.
Shame claws through me, as sharp as a blade.
I help her dress again, not meeting her gaze, afraid of seeing condemnation or revulsion there. My hands shake again as I tie up the torn edges of Bran’s shirt.
“We have to go,” I say once she’s covered. “They’ll send more.”
She wipes her palms on her pants. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
She points up the ridge. “The buck is still out there. I won’t leave it to rot. That’s not what you taught me.”
I want to argue. I want to shout at her for risking her life over an animal that’s already dead. I want to rip the trees from the ground until I’m too exhausted to feel the guilt eating me alive.
But I don’t.
I see the fire in her eyes, and I recognize it as the same fire I felt the first time I ever killed a man. It’s the one that says I decide who I am. Not the world. Not the monsters in it. Me.
I follow her.
We find the buck where we left it, its legs twisted under its body.
Raisa kneels beside it. She touches the wound, bows her head, and whispers a prayer. I don’t know the words, but I feel them anyway.
I stand back, letting her claim the moment. She’s earned it.
When she’s done, she looks up at me, her face streaked with sweat and mud and blood. “Teach me how to do the rest,” she says.
So I do.
I show her how to gut and skin the animal, how to save the best cuts and leave the rest for the forest. She doesn’t shy from the blood, doesn’t gag at the smell. She just learns, her eyes never leaving mine.
When we finish, we haul the meat onto my shoulders and start back toward the camp.
We don’t speak as we walk. The silence is a bandage over everything that’s happened. Over the bodies cooling in the dirt, the blood still sticky on my hands, the guilt coursing through my veins, the buck’s entrails a vivid, red memory in the bag slung across my back.
We cut north, away from the old trails.
After half an hour, the woods open around a trickle of water, a cold, fast stream, perfect for rinsing off the stench of death and fear.
Raisa is the first to kneel at the bank. She plunges her arms in up to the elbow, working the blood off in harsh, angry scrubs. Her skin goes blotchy and red, but she doesn’t stop. Not until the water runs clear.
I watch, struck dumb by how beautiful she is in this moment.
No court dress, no careful braids or mask.
Just wild hair and wild eyes, her hands raw and rawer by the second.
Every part of me wants to take her again, right here.
Not just to fuck, but to claim, to put back together whatever I just broke.
I kneel beside her instead, dipping my own hands in the icy water. The shock is electric. I rub the blood from my knuckles, the webbing between my fingers, under my nails. It doesn’t want to come off. It never does.
She glances at me, her hair stuck to her cheek, her lips blue with cold. “Don’t regret it.”
My heart knocks against my breastbone.
“I won’t let you regret it, Talon.”
“I shouldn’t have–”
“You did nothing wrong,” she says, her voice fierce.
I snort, a rough, painful sound. “I fucked a princess like an animal, inches from the graves of the men I killed.”
“Maybe this princess is realizing she was made for the forest,” she whispers.
I glance at her, see the defiance written across her face.
I see the truth glinting in the stormy gray of her eyes, the wild magic glowing under her skin.
The dainty, caged princess is long gone, and maybe that’s what smothers the guilt.
Or perhaps it’s the way she stares at me, half dare, half plea, as if she needs me to see her for what she truly is.
“You were made to break the world.”
Something about that pleases her. She smiles and dips her head, resumes scrubbing.
A moment later, she peeks up at me again.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ve got something right there.” She flicks a frigid drop of water at my face.
I stare, then laugh, a harsh, barking sound that makes the birds scatter from the branches. “Oh, you want to play?”
She shrugs, but I see the dare in her eyes.
I tackle her.
She yelps as I pull her into the water, both of us going under in a tangle of limbs. The shock is instant, a blast of cold that wipes away the last hour, the last week, the last nineteen years.
We surface together, gasping and flailing. She’s still laughing, even when I pin her to the bank, her back pressed to a slick slab of moss and her thighs locked around my hips.
I kiss her.
It’s not a sweet kiss. It’s not even a gentle one. It’s the kind that bruises lips, that makes teeth click, and breath catch. She tastes like river water and something sharp and new.
She kisses me back, hard. Her hands clutch my shirt, dragging me closer, her fingers digging into my skin. I let her. I want her to leave more marks.
When I pull away, she’s panting, her eyes wild and hungry. “You’re insane,” she says.
“So are you.” I bite her jaw.
She shivers, but it’s not from cold or fear.
I hike her further up onto the bank, laying her out fully on the moss. She watches, breathless, as I strip my shirt off, then hers. The wet fabric clings to her skin, but I peel it away, hungry for every inch.
She’s marked up and down, bites, bruises, a constellation of freckles on her left shoulder. I run my tongue over the bruises, then down to her collarbone and the swell of her breast. She arches into my mouth, her fingers threading my hair, urging me lower.
I want to devour her.
I slip her pants down over her hips instead, baring the soft, pale flesh beneath. She gasps as the air hits her, but she doesn’t fight. She just spreads her legs, showing me everything.
“You want this?” I ask, my voice a whisper of doubt that she could want me still.
She nods, her eyes wide and dark.
“Say it.”
“I want you,” she says. “Now. Always. Please.”
I push my fingers inside her, slow at first, feeling how wet and ready she is.
She moans, grinding up against my hand.
I fuck her with my fingers, my thumb circling her clit, until she’s whimpering and begging, her hips lifting off the moss with every thrust.
I pull my own pants down, my cock already hard, the veins standing out like roots, and line up at her entrance, the head of my cock slick with her juices.
I push in, slow, stretching her wide.
She cries out, but it’s not pain. It’s relief. It’s hunger.
I set a rhythm, deep and slow this time, driving her into the moss with every thrust. Her legs wrap around my waist, her ankles crossing at my back. She meets me stroke for stroke, no fear, no hesitation.
Every time I go deeper, her eyes roll back, her mouth falling open in a gasp.
“Fuck,” I groan, the word torn from somewhere deep.
She clenches around me, her muscles fluttering.
I fuck her slow, so slow her moans turn to screams. I cover her mouth with mine, swallowing every sound. She bucks under me, her nails leaving new trails down my back, before she clamps down, her whole body tensing as she comes.
The heat of it rips through me, and I slam into her, over and over, until I explode, filling her so full it runs down her thighs.
We lie there afterward, tangled in each other, panting and shivering.
The stream babbles on, washing our sweat and blood and the last traces of my shame downstream.
She’s the first to move. She curls into my chest, pressing her ear to my heartbeat. Her body is soft and warm and alive.
I wrap both arms around her, holding her as tight as I can.
There is no guilt this time, and no regret. There’s just the warm weight of her in my arms and more peace than I’ve ever known.
We don’t move for a long time.
She dozes, her face pressed to my chest, one arm thrown across my stomach like she means to anchor me there forever. I listen to her breathing, the soft, warm exhale against my skin. The world is quiet. Just the buzz of insects and the low drone of water rushing over stone.
Eventually, she stirs, blinking the sleep from her eyes.
“Why did you have to kill them?” she asks, her voice soft but clear. “Couldn’t we have just…hidden?”
I stiffen. It’s not the question I expected. It’s not the one I want.
“They would have found us,” I say. “Or found the others. The king’s men never stop, Raisa.”
She sits up, her hair a dark snarl over her shoulders, her legs curled under her. “You didn’t hesitate.”
“I never do.”
She studies me, searching for something in my face. “Is that what you are, then? Just a killer?”
I want to say yes, but the word sticks.
“I’m whatever I need to be,” I say instead. “I’m whatever keeps us alive.”
She nods, but she’s not satisfied with the answer.
“What did my father do to make you hate him?” she asks, the words hot and sharp, as if she understands far more than we’d like.
I freeze. I don’t want to answer, but the truth burns a hole in my chest.
“Took more than we could afford to lose,” I say. The words feel like knives, but I force them out anyway. “He made us what we are.”
She pulls away, wrapping her arms around herself.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Explain.”
I shake my head. “Some stories aren’t mine to tell.”
She glares, and for a second, I think she’ll hit me.
“I’m not a child,” she finally says, her voice shaking. “I deserve to know.”
She’s right, but I can’t give her what she wants. Not yet.
I stand, pulling my pants back on, then toss her shirt to her. She pulls it on, tying it up with jerky, angry motions.
We walk side by side, neither of us willing to close the gap. Her shoulders are tense, her head held high.
I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her nothing.
When the camp comes into sight, she stops, turning to face me.
“Will you tell me someday?” she asks.
I nod. “If you still want to hear it.”
She smiles, small and sad, and for the first time all day, I see the girl she used to be, the one from the garden, feeding crumbs to the ravens, desperately wishing she was free.
“I think I do,” she says.
I’m not so sure that’s true. I’m not so sure she’ll stay once she knows, but for now, she walks beside me, close enough that our arms brush with every step.
And it’s enough.