Epilogue
ACHILLES
One month later:
Snow crunches under my boots. My exhaled breath hangs in front of my face for a moment before it disappears, and I turn up the collar of my black peacoat against the cold as my eyes pierce the darkness in front of me.
I really should have worn snow camo.
Fuck, and a snow camo mask to go along with it. That would have been awesome. I also know with complete certainty that it would get my current prey—my only and forever prey—very, very wet.
Sadly, though, I’m without the proper camouflage tonight. Not because I’ve magically stopped being a meticulous, psychotic-level planner, but because tonight’s hunt is a bit more impromptu than usual.
It’ll be Christmas soon. But while most of our friends, including the ones who’ve finally come out as being a lot more than friends—more than enemies, in some cases—are snuggled or cuddled or whatever normal people who love and desire each other do when it’s cold outside, I’m chasing Yelena through the campus woods with a knife in my hand and a raging hard-on in my pants.
Again, this wasn’t planned. At least, not by me. I mean, this coat? Black against fucking white snow?
Amateur hour.
But Yelena texted me a little over an hour ago, saying she was “going for a walk in the woods” and “hoped no predators would find her” because “God only know what they’d do to her, even if she begged them to stop”.
Then she said if no predators did find her, she might just have to make a certain one wait until after the New Year to get into her panties again.
Yelena seems to have developed a bit of a brat kink.
And I’m really fucking into it.
I pause to scan the ground. A devious smile creeps over my lips.
I’m going to find you, little prey.
So good of her to leave fresh footsteps in the snow, leading me to wherever she’s trying to hide.
I reach into my jacket and pull out my knife out as I follow Yelena’s footsteps.
It’s been an interesting month.
Beyond the recent changes in relationship status and whose beds some of our friends are sleeping in now, there's two big pieces of news around Knightsblood: one, Angelo Santoro is having to liquidate almost his entire empire to repay his son’s debts to some of the most notorious crime families in the world.
It’s one thing to borrow money from the mafia. It’s another to embezzle it.
Honestly, I did Kyle a fucking favor by cutting his throat, thereby saving him from being tortured by some mafia don or bratva pakhan for the next year of his life.
And I did everyone else a favor by making it abundantly easy to find Kyle’s body, thereby saving those same people from having to comb every non-extradition country in the world looking for him.
You’re welcome, everyone.
The other big news is that there is no news regarding the two unsolved homicides in Hawthorne Hollow. Plus, our little town now has a third one.
That’s literally what the police called it when it was announced: “assumed homicide”.
I mean, I’ll give the new Chief of Police her due, but when you find a body with the hands and head cut off…I think we can probably all agree that he didn’t trip.
The fact that there are now three unsolved murders just down the road arguably makes the fact that Yelena and I are running around the goddamn woods at night an even more psycho thing to do.
But it also arguably makes the girl I love so turned on that I’m amazed I can’t smell her sweet pussy from here. To me, at least, that negates any danger.
Besides, if there is a potential killer on the loose and running around the woods right now, he’s going to have to contend with me.
I step around a half-fallen tree, and then I go still.
Found you.
Yelena is just up ahead, trying to move as silently as she can vaguely in the direction of The Garrison.
She’s not going to make it that far.
Not tonight.
Instead of just running up behind her, I decide to make claiming her even more fun by jacking her adrenaline even higher before tackling her to the ground, ripping off her clothes, and stuffing my cock into her wet pussy.
I flank her, moving off at an angle then quickening my pace to overtake her.
I’m faster. I’m also lot quieter. So Yelena, good as she’s become at this game, doesn’t even spot me as I easily move ahead of her to wait behind a tree.
My pulse thuds.
My hand flexes around the handle of my razor-sharp knife as I stuff snow into my mouth to mask the white plume of my exhalations.
My dick is so hard that precum is leaking into my boxers.
I hear the soft, furtive crunch of her size six boots crunching quietly in the snow as she approaches the other side of the tree.
She steps past me, her wide eyes stabbing into the night ahead of her.
Wrong direction, baby.
I could clamp a hand over her mouth, but my cock loves it when she screams. So I just let the sound of her fear and arousal smash into me when I grab her.
“Got you, little prey.”
Yelena obviously knows it’s me. Still, the body’s response to being freaked the fuck out like this, especially at night in the woods, taps into that primal part of her lizard brain and makes the fear genuine.
It closes her throat beneath my hand.
It makes her body stiff and yet utterly pliant as I whirl us around and pin her hard against the tree trunk with me at her back, my erection digging into her ass.
It sets her nerve endings on fire, so that when I bite down on the shell of her ear and then rake my teeth down her throat, her body comes alive for me.
Her nipples are pebbled and achingly hard from much more than the cold when I yank her coat open and slide my hand up under her sweater, holding the knife to her jugular as I bite her ear again.
“Wrong night for a stroll in the woods, baby.”
Yelena squeals when I pinch her nipples roughly, twisting on the sensitive buds as she writhes between me and the tree.
I normally enjoy dragging this out, and I’ve actually had a fantasy recently involving fucking her throat while the back of her head is against a tree and her hands are pinned above her head.
But it’s fucking cold out here, and I’m so turned on by the impromptu nature of this chase that my dick is aching to plunge into her hot cunt.
“Please!” Yelena pleads. I just chuckle darkly into her ear, feeding our shared insanity as I drag the edge of my knife against her throat.
“Too late for that.”
I don’t even bother unbuttoning her jeans, just shove them down over her hips before tugging them to her knees.
“My my my,” I snarl darkly into her ear. “Not even any panties…”
She whimpers.
“Did you come out for your walk hoping to get grabbed and fucked like a bad girl?” I hiss as my hand slides between her thighs.
Fuck me, she’s dripping. Like literally coating my fingers as I barely touch her. Then I sink two fingers deep inside her molten pussy.
Jesus Christ.
I need this woman.
Right the fuck now.
Yelena whimpers, pushing back against me like we’ve now fully abandoned the fantasy. She moans, kicking her jeans down to her ankles and spreading her legs as much as she can as I yank open my belt and unzip my pants.
My cock doesn’t exactly love frigid New England December weather. But when I wrap a fist around him and slide my swollen head up and down her lips, he understands that he’ll be warm enough soon.
“Is this what you were looking for, little prey?” I growl into her ear, teasing her throat with the knife. “To get fucked and used?”
Yelena gasps sharply, moaning as she pushes back, desperate for my cock. I have half a mind to deny her that, and to just keep teasing her.
But yeah.
Cold penis.
“Scream for me, baby.”
I ram every fat inch into her with one hard thrust. And scream she does, the sound so deliciously pulse-quickening that I groan and bite down on her throat as I keep myself inside her for a second.
Her pussy ripples around me, squeezing as her wetness drips down my balls. I bite her again, making her moan as I drag my cock out and then thrust back in, right to the hilt.
My blade dances over her jugular, keeping the adrenaline roaring through her body; heightening her senses, making her blood pound hotter, and making her pleasure so intense she’ll barely be able to stand it.
“Achilles!” She lets out an ecstatic whine, turning her head. Her green eyes glint so fucking beautifully in the snowy white night that I can’t remotely keep up the monstrous facade.
I kiss her hard, the knife still at her throat and my other hand pinning hers above her head against the bark. Our fingers lace, and her free hand reaches back to grab my hip, urging me on.
“Harder,” she begs. “More.”
All too happy to deliver that.
“Achilles,” she moans into my lips.
I fucking feast on her. I devour her, nibbling and biting every square inch of skin I can reach with my mouth as I ram into her, my hips and my abs smacking her ass, every brutal thrust rocking her up onto the balls of her feet.
I feel her pussy clamp down around me, her velvety walls squeezing and milking my cock before she screams her release into my lips.
“I'm coming!” my little prey cries out.
“Come with me, baby,” I rasp. “Come all over this big dick like my good girl.”
When she explodes around me, it's more than I can take after getting so worked up by the hunt.
With a grunt, I bury myself inside her, my fingers digging into her flesh as I drag the tip of the knife up her throat, dumping more serotonin and adrenaline into her system just as her orgasm rolls right into another.
Yelena’s body wrenches and writhes against mine as I pin her to the tree and pump my cum deep inside her.
“Fuck,” she breathes raggedly into my mouth as she shivers against me, squeezing my dick with her pussy, wringing the last drops of cum from my balls. “How did you get so good at that? It’s like you know exactly…” She trails off, and a grin ghosts over her lips.
Well, that’s an easy answer to an easy question.
“Probably from stalking you,” I growl into her lips as I kiss her.
“Must be,” she giggles.
I slowly slide out and help her tug her jeans back up. I tuck my cock back in, away from the cold, then my brow furrows as my gaze lands on her throat.
Oops.
Yelena gasps quietly, her eyelids falling half shut and her body shuddering as my mouth descends on her throat. To kiss her in a place I know she loves, yes, but also to use my tongue to lick off the little drops of blood from where my knife was perhaps a bit too heavy-handed.
“At a certain point,” she giggles as I pull away, “it’ll be spring, then summer.”
“And?”
“And it’ll be a little harder to get away with turtlenecks and scarves then.” She cocks a faux-stern brow at me. “My friends will have questions.”
I frown. “Doubt it. They’ll all be wrapped up in their own romances.”
She giggles. “Oh my God, Wren—”
“And to think we were once the scandalous pairing,” I chuckle. “Not to mention my cousin…”
Yelena’s brows pinch. “Yeah, what is exactly going on with Selene and—”
“Don’t know, don’t want to.” I make a face. “Truly.”
“Fair.”
I smile. “At least Galina’s happy.”
“It had better stay that way,” Yelena says sharply. “Or I’ll have more than words for—”
“Baby?”
She grins. “Yeah?”
“How about we continue this conversation indoors, in bed.”
She blushes as she pulls close to me, tugging her coat around her. “Or how about we don’t continue it, and find something else to do instead?”
“I did get some extra strong zip-ties at the hardware store yesterday,” I growl.
“And they say romance is dead,” she sighs happily, grinning up at me.
I smile back, cupping her cheek and leaning down to crush my lips to hers.
“I love you,” I murmur quietly.
“Promise?”
“Promise-promise.”
She beams. “I love you too.”
I take her hand and we turn and walk through the woods back to the warm, twinkling lights of Knightsblood in the freshly fallen snow.
If someone were to see us right now, they’d think we were perfectly normal.
The golden boy with his golden girl.
I think we both love that they’d have no idea what lurks beneath our masks.
Our deviance, and our madness.
But it’s us.
And to me and to her… It’s perfect.
The Dark Descendants series continues with The Villain We Tempt.