Chapter 19

What happened just now in the bathroom will have me never looking at that tub the same again. The sweet, tortured sounds she'd made as she came will haunt me for the rest of my life. The way her back arched…

This isn't helping.

I sigh, pacing as she dries her hair with the hair dryer I'd just opened from the things I ordered for her. She didn't even question where it had come from. Not that I wanted her to.

"Thank you for that. I feel so much better. Well," she points to her leg, "not better, but you know what I'm saying."

I chew on the end of my thumb, eyeing her as I continue to pace. I know she needs clothes, but I don't want her covered. I know what we did was wrong, but I want to be the one who makes her scream. I'm nearly losing it, and she's looking at me like I need to check myself into an asylum.

"What's with you?" she asks, stepping toward me.

I don't answer. How can I give her clothes when she ran from me? She wasn't good for me, as I hoped she'd be. Fuck, I want so badly to shower her with gifts and attention, and it's never been like this for me with women.

I break them. Send them back to their bosses in tears, with cum leaking from multiple holes, and blood seeping from new ones I made.

"Hey," she says, laying her hands on my arms, and it's not helping me focus at all, "what happened in the bath…"

"It's not that," I blurt. She's treating me like a man who just saw his first tit. That's not the impression I normally give, nor do I want her to think I'm some schoolboy scared to get his dick wet.

"Well, then, what's wrong?"

She genuinely looks concerned, and for a moment, I see my mother in her. It's the way her eyes soften and fill with worry at the slightest inkling something is bothering me. Mama was the only woman in my life who ever cared. The only one who could ever reach me. I resigned to be alone a long time ago. The day we buried her, in fact. I knew, even at that age, that I'd never find a woman who could find me when I tucked inside myself too far.

Someone to pull me from the depths when I've swum down too far.

I growl, throwing my arm toward the bags of clothes behind me. "I got you some clothes, ones worthy of being on your skin. But you didn't behave. You tried to leave. You were running while I was trekking back here with all this for you."

She looks over all the bags, biting her bottom lip, and I suddenly long to be her teeth. To feel what it's like to sink into her flesh that deeply.

"Well," she says, contemplating something behind her beautiful eyes, "don't give them to me."

I stop my pacing. "What?"

"Don't give them to me." This time as she says it, her voice is raspy, and I notice her breathing has changed.

I step toward her, and her muscles tense as she fights the urge to run from me. "Why would you want to stay nude, bunny?"

She shivers, and her nipples bead.

"Because I…" She shakes her head, laughing at something unspoken.

When she turns to retreat to her room, I grab her by the arm and twist her around. She hisses at the abrupt gesture, as I'm sure it hurt her leg.

"Because you what?" Curiosity has my heart racing in my chest. Wondering what she's going to say.

"Because I wasn't your good girl," she says, and I nearly choke on her fucking words.

Both of us stay there, locked on one another, and I don't even register if either of us is breathing.

I clear my throat, letting her arm go. "I'm going to go check the campsite for the equipment box." I back away from her, and her eyes show signs of sadness at the loss.

But she nods. "Alright."

When she makes her hobbled retreat to her room, I turn and lean over the table, panting from the sheer tension between her and me.

The fucking bathtub changed everything. And I don't know if there's a way to go back.

* * *

It tookme a while to get through the rubble of her shelter. She was a lot more insulated inside there than I realized. But there's no black case anywhere. I scour the surrounding woods and likewise find nothing. So whoever had been in her camp had taken it.

There are no tracks, and I haven't had a movement alert on the camera since I changed the battery yesterday, either.

Dark is blurring the edges of the sky when I walk back onto my property, sighing heavily with bone-deep tiredness when I spy the blood still staining the wood under the guest bedroom.

What a fucking couple of days!

It appears my life has become pure madness again since spying Brynne in the woods, but I have to admit, I don't hate it. I feel useful again when I'm caring for her.

Not that I'll admit it to her.

When I get inside, she's on the couch eating straight out of the bag of peanuts that were dropped off with her things.

She looks up from a book. "Hey."

For a split-second, it's as if we're more than we are. I'm coming home from a task. She's carrying on with her day, until we come together again, colliding back into a pair.

"The equipment is missing from your camp. It's nowhere to be found. Someone took it."

She pauses, putting more peanuts in her mouth as she deadpans. "The show took back their equipment? That's…" she gasps, and I move closer to the couch.

"What?" I ask.

"On one of the cameras, the Go-Pro, it has footage of me shooting you."

I absently rub my shoulder where her arrow had wounded me, the ache reminding me I'm still healing.

"And?"

Life drains from her face as she forgets her book and her peanuts and stands, her nude body assaulting my senses too quickly. I stop breathing as I bask in it.

"I'm going to go to jail?!" she squeals, and now she's pacing.

It's honestly nice to see someone else lose their fucking shit. For once, it's not me.

"You'd only go to jail if they found me, confirmed if I was dead or alive, and then asked me if I wanted to press charges. And I, my little rabbit, am a ghost. Effectively scrubbed from the real world."

She narrows her eyes at me. "And what is your line of work, Slate?"

A full shiver starts at my feet and travels through my entire body. I step toward her, and she backs up. And we do it again and again, heading toward the wall of the cabin.

When her back hits the wall, I loom over her. "I'm the man you call when you need a problem to disappear. The one who is so soaked in the blood of others, even my DNA is changed. I'm the reaper," I tell her.

A shaky breath leaves her lips, and I lock my gaze on them. "Slate."

All I can think about is earlier. How her swollen clit felt swirling beneath my fingers. How much I loved to watch her scream for me. As I stand there, lost in imagery, pressing her against the wall, she pants relentlessly.

"Bunny," I manage.

Her hand comes up, touching my face tentatively, and it's as soft as the rest of her. I close my eyes, letting the feeling of someone else wanting to touch me seep through me.

"You're so broken," she breathes.

I only nod, keeping my eyes closed.

"Too damaged to ever repair," I whisper.

I jolt, eyes flying open when something delicate and warm touches my lips. She doesn't press in further, doesn't push me.

We stay there, glued together for a moment before I break. Grabbing the back of her head with one hand, I lean into her mouth, tongue slipping out to play with hers.

She groans, and I swallow it whole.

We become fused lunatics, fighting madness together. I take over the kiss, dominance winning, and I can't help when my hand finds her breast, tweaking her nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

Her mouth falls open against mine, a moan escaping. She shifts on her feet, likely trying to stay standing. She's got to be in pain, but the knowledge only spurs me on because knowing I'm causing pain and pleasure simultaneously appeases a dark entity that I can no longer fight off, only feed.

And he's fucking starving.

"Too bad you weren't Daddy's good girl. These would've been covered. They'd have been safe from me." I pinch harder the second time, and she digs her nails into my sides where she grips me.

"Too bad? More like thank god."

I chuckle darkly. "You will be punished for what you did. For breaking my window. For making me go out of my mind with fucking worry. The very day those stitches are out, bunny, you'll be getting more."

When I take her lips again, I steal her ability to reply. I don't care what she has to say on the matter.

Because it's a fact.

The state of arousal mutes her kiss. She lazily kisses me back, lost inside the feeling of delirium, with a madman nipping at her heels.

"Are you afraid?" I ask, hovering over her lips as her hands cup both sides of my face.

I rarely let women touch me. They can't even try while they're tied down. But I want her fucking hands all over me. I want to feel everything they have to give me.

She drops one hand between us. "Of the reaper?" she asks.

I nod once.

She licks her lips, and I'm anxiously awaiting her answer. I'm a tough man to deal with. Even though she might be the only woman I've ever wanted this way; it won't work unless she can take me as I am.

Fucked up.

She shakes her head. "No. I'm not."

I scoff. "Well, that's a fucking mistake."

Her hand, which I'd forgotten, skims over my hard cock through my all-weather pants, and I growl, slamming my hands on the walls behind her, on either side of her head.

She doesn't flinch as she grips me through my pants. "Why's it a mistake?"

"Because, little rabbit, everyone should fear the Grim Reaper." It's only a rasp of my normal tone because her hand has me transfixed. I'd lost this battle a while ago, but now I'm not even in control of my hips, which are thrusting into her hand haphazardly.

"La mort ne surprend jamais le sage; il est toujours prêt à partir," she whispers against my lips, gripping me harder and making me groan as she continues to stroke me over my clothes. — "Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go."

I can't answer her. I'm too close to coming. Too close to making a goddamn fool of myself in my pants, like a fucking teenager. And there's nothing I can do about it. I can't tell her to stop.

"Fuck!" I groan, edging the line of orgasm. Or la petite mort, as the French like to call it. The little death.

"Call out my name when you come, or nothing else," she whispers, shoving her tongue in my mouth and sending me over the edge.

"Brynne," I groan, and she grins against my mouth, which has gone slack as cum fills my pants in streams.

"You're beautiful when you come," she tells me, and I know I'm a goner. No matter who has come before her, or what other women were to me. She's not them. She's something new and unexplored.

And I'm going to dive into every trench and trek through every forest of her. Because I need more!