13. Winter

THIRTEEN

WINTER

I look for Hunter for over an hour. Leo walked through the kitchen where I ate dinner alone sometime around nine p.m., but when I asked him where Hunter went, he shrugged me off and continued walking, distracted.

After checking on August to make sure he ate something other than Cheese-Itz and peeking in on Ella and Veronica where they sat in front of the massive screen in the movie room, I searched all around our wing and even into Misha’s.

Hunter is nowhere.

I make my way back toward the heart of the house—the foyer at the main entrance. Could he have left again? Certainly not, and especially not without bringing someone with him or at least Leo knowing where he went.

I make a circuit around the entryway when a dark shadow shifts on the other side of the frosted glass door.

I open it to find my missing person.

Hunter sits on the front steps with a bottle of liquor in his right hand and his head in his other.

When I move and sit next to him, we’re silent, listening to the cicadas.

After several minutes, he speaks.

“I’m not very good company right now, Sunbeam.”

I inhale, rubbing my hands over my shins.

“Come to bed, baby.” I keep my words light, but he doesn’t acknowledge them. And when I put my hand on his back, he flinches.

He rises from his place on the stone step without saying a word, leaving the door open for me to walk through.

I trail behind him, feeling awkward and off-center, but he moves with confident steps, not appearing at all drunk.

What am I going to do to make this better?

What can I do?

When we enter the room, he drops the bottle on the nightstand and takes off his shirt.

At the movement, I notice his bruised and cracked knuckles and the blood trailing down his wrist.

“H, you’re hurt!” I say, my eyes glued to his hand. When I’m close enough to touch him again, I cradle his palm, looking at the cuts.

What the hell happened?

He doesn’t lean into me, but he doesn’t push me away either. “Let’s wash you up. Okay?” I speak while pulling him into the en suite.

I position him so that he can place his hand under the stream while also resting his hip on the counter.

Locating the first aid kit, I pull out the items I think I’ll need to get him patched up and pay close attention to blotting his abrasions with cleanser. Right when I blot the knuckle of his middle finger with a soapy towel, he speaks.

“You need to leave, Winter. You need to leave me.” His words sound as if they take great effort to produce.

I snap my head up toward him.

“What? Why?”

He doesn’t look at me, choosing to close his eyes. “Because I’ll hurt you. I’m not a good person to be around right now.”

His words are like a battle cry in my psyche, and I feel them as they twist and contort and take on all kinds of meanings.

He doesn’t mean that.

I shake my head. He doesn’t mean that.

Taking in the sharp angles of his strong jaw and the way his dark hair curls over his eyebrow, I silence the drama in my mind and force a bright smile on my face.

“You won’t hurt me, Hunter Brigham,” I say the words with as much conviction as I can muster. I dry his cuts, putting bandages on the areas I can access.

“I know you won’t,” I add, not looking at his face. I kiss the back of his now-bandaged hand.

Rubbing his knuckles with my thumb, I say, “Do you want to talk about it?”

He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he leans into the counter and tilts his head back like he’s looking at the expensive light fixtures above us.

“Do you want to talk about how you ended up a bloody mess or about the bombing?—”

“Go, Winter,” he presses.

Go, Winter.

The two words, three syllables, are like a stab to the heart. He wants me to...leave?

Air traps in my chest, and all sense leaves me as I do the opposite action of what he wants me to do. I bring myself closer to him.

Spinning. Spiraling. I’m losing...I’m lost.

No.

“You need to leave right now, Sunbeam.” His words are deep, bordering on a snarl.

No. No, I will not leave him. Not when he needs me.

He needs me. He needs me to stay.

And why won’t you honor his words, Winter?

“No,” I say, tightening my jaw and staring him down. I can’t. The thought is....

He growls in response. “Winter, do as I say.”

I swallow as terror nearly consumes me. He’s pushing me away—throwing me away for real this time. All my insecurities and fears and the things that haunt me at night come to a head.

The world starts to shake, and when I clench my fingers into fists, I realize that it’s not the world, but my entire body vibrating with tension.

I’m losing....

Release your hands, Winter.

I’m losing him.

Breathe, Winter.

I’m losing the love of my life.

One.

One-two-one.

One-two-three-two ?—

“No,” I say, adding more force behind my words.

I don’t do the sane thing, which is to give him some goddamn space. Instead, I hold him tighter.

I have to hold him tighter.

Later, I’ll analyze my behavior. Later, I’ll look into why I’m chasing behind a man who doesn’t want me—at least, who doesn’t want me in this moment.

I’ll come to terms with the fact that I know this isn’t healthy but I’m doing it anyway.

I push the thoughts aside. “I won’t leave you, Hunter. You can’t make me leave.” My voice cracks, shakes.

He inhales sharply. “Why can’t you just do as you’re told? Why can’t you ever do what you’re told?”

It would have hurt less if he’d slapped me.

“Because I know you don’t want me to leave,” I say. “You can’t.” The last two words are a pained whisper.

Hunter stands, spreading his legs to broaden his stance.

“You want to know what I want, Winter?” He spins us so that we change positions. My ass presses painfully against the counter, and he brackets his arms around me, caging me in as I face him.

“I want to fuck you, Winter. I want to make you bend. Make you beg. I want to show you what I really want to do when you fight me on every fucking thing—even if it’s for your own good.”

I’m stunned silent by the inferno in his eyes, the promise in his words...the blood-curdling fear of what the fuck is happening here.

“What does that mean, H?” I bring my hands up between us and place them on his chest, feeling his heart race despite the vibrations in my fingertips.

“I forget how inexperienced you are, baby,” he says, leaning close to whisper the words in my ear. Wetness floods my pussy because Hunter Brigham, this close to me, whispering dirty things in my ear is a total fantasy. But also because....

Fawn.

When he trails his nose up the side of my neck, he pauses to say, “I want to punish you, Winter Leigh Vaughan.”

Alarm bells clang between my ears, and I struggle to reconcile the arousal I feel with the apprehension welling up within me.

“Why do you want to punish me?”

He peppers kisses along my jaw until he stops to nip at the flesh beneath my earlobe.

“Because I’m a broken man,” he murmurs, and the confession breaks my heart.

I hear what he doesn’t say: He needs to channel his pain and give it to someone else.

Give it to me.

My brain spins on overdrive when I let his words settle. He’s so still around me, as if he knows that what he just confessed is so much—maybe too much. And with my history, the thought of sex and pain combining should be terrifying.

Completely off limits.

But as I take in the fullness of his brokenness, I want to give him everything he needs.

I want to be everything he needs.

…so I silence the alarms.

As if someone shut me into a safe house in the middle of a tornado, the violent whirlwind of my thoughts and emotions calm.

I can be here for him. I will be here for him.

“I’m yours, Hunter.” I grab his face with a cheek in each of my palms. “Take what you need from me.”

He shudders and closes his eyes, hugging me to him for long moments. We’re close, in sync, breathing in each other as the tension between us thickens.

But when he pulls back to face me, another person stands before me.

The shuttered darkness in his eyes makes the blue of them look icy. I shiver.

But I don’t have long to think about anything else.

“If it gets to be too much, say ‘Paris,’” he growls.

I nod and he puts a thumb on my chin in a firm, nearly painful grip.

“Say it back, Sunbeam.”

My jaw drops from the pressure and anticipation.

“Paris. If it gets to be too much. What do you need, H?”

He rests his forehead against mine for a gentle second, but then he says, “Strip naked and get on the bed on your back. Keep your legs spread wide open.”

I stare at him for several seconds until he spins me around and shoves me out the door.

“Strip. Back. Legs spread,” he commands and shuts the bathroom door.

It takes me several moments for the command to register, but when it does, I hurry to comply, stripping out of my clothes. I’m a mess of confused emotions right now.

Now that I’ve had a moment to breathe—a moment to be by myself, all of the voices that come from years of schooling and therapy start to converge.

This is maladaptive.

This isn’t healthy.

This is a betrayal of myself.

You’re obsessing. You’re obsessing over this man.

But then, there’s one voice that’s louder than all of them. I love Hunter Brigham. And I want to do whatever he needs to keep him here with me.

The bathroom door claps open, slamming on the opposite wall with a mighty thwack .

Hunter stands at the entrance naked and hard.

“You can’t do what you’re told, can you, Winter?” Hunter says through gritted teeth.

His eyes are brilliant as he stares me down, and every part of me is at war with myself. The part that loves him is there, ready for battle, but the part that fears how he is right now is ready to run away.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp out. His powerful movements bring him closer to me, and instead of acknowledging my apology, he runs two fingers up and down my slit.

“Sorry for what, exactly?” he grinds out, giving my clit a rub in a firm circle.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do all that you asked,” I pant out, rising on my toes.

My heart races, pounding so loud that I can hear the movement of my blood in my ears.

His eyes fix on my ragged pulse, and he grabs my neck, running his thumb against the artery.

“You’re really stacking on this punishment, Sunbeam,” he says.

“Oh, God,” I say, moaning. Gripping my jaw, he pulls my face toward his while he slides two fingers into my pussy. Not one. Two. He doesn’t ease in with gentle movements like he’d do any other time. He uses his hand as if he wants to bruise me. As if he wants me to feel him.

He speaks against my lips, “What was the directive I gave you, Winter?”

“You said,” I pant, “to strip and get on the bed. Legs spread.”

“Correct,” he grinds out. “And where were you when I exited the bathroom?” He rubs my clit harder with his thumb, and I shiver.

“I was st-st-standing up,” I say, my voice a rasp.

“So you do understand that you didn’t do as you were told. Again.”

I feel my eyes go wide when he pulls his wet fingers from me and circles the pucker of my ass. I don’t respond to his statement because I can’t, so in my silence, he decides to press the tip of his index finger against my rosebud.

“You do understand, don’t you? Answer me, Winter,” he snaps.

“Y-yes, I understand,” I murmur.

When I slide my eyes closed again, he pulls his hands away and pushes me onto the bed. I land on the mattress with a startled squeak, but I don’t hesitate to take the position he commanded.

My heels go to the edge of the bed, legs wide, and Hunter stares as my pussy spreads for him.

He seems transfixed, addicted to the sight.

I want him addicted to me.

I’m addicted to him.

“Like this, Hunter?” I whisper.

His dark, heated eyes telegraph his response, Yes, just like that.

He takes one step toward me, then another. “Remember the word, Winter.”

A significant part of me is terrified that we’d need one. I know he’s angry and fucked up right now, but he wouldn’t hurt me, right?

“Do we really need one, H?” I try to make my voice sound amused, but my jaw trembles, nullifying the action.

“Yes, we do, Winter,” he says, dropping to his knees.

I swallow down my anxiety.

He slides up the mattress and plants his face in my pussy. It’s like he’s doing his damndest to devour me. Running his nose against my folds, he stabs his tongue into my channel, using his lips and teeth to bring my clit to a hard nub with the suction.

“Hunter!” His name is a chant. I plunge my hands into his hair, but he snaps his head up, pulling my hands away and pinning them to my sides.

“Keep those here,” he commands, and he slides my fingers under the tops of my butt cheeks, so they’re pinned by my body weight.

Confusion whirls around. Why doesn’t he want me to touch him?

He runs his hands up to my swollen, sensitive breasts. My nipples are hard like diamonds, and I stare down my body as my breaths saw in and out, causing my chest to tremble.

The look on his face is full of so much—desire, passion, and something even darker.

I try to smile and shower him with the love I feel for him.

“I love you, Hunter Brigham,” I whisper.

He slaps his hand on my mons in response.

“Hunter!” I release a startled cry, jerking halfway up the bed, but he doesn’t let up. Instead, he shoves three fingers into my pussy, and I buck at the intrusion.

Do you like this, Winter?

Hunter watches my face closely, and when I whimper, he brings his thumb to my nub, rubbing it in dizzying circles.

“Do you want to use your safeword, Winter?” His words are rough, and it almost feels like he wants me to tell him to stop.

To tell him I don’t want this.

So I go against the voices in my head that shout that he’s too angry to make this a good idea and say, “No, I won’t.”

He puts his face into the fleshy part of my inner thigh and groans before standing and walking away toward the bathroom.

I sit up in a snap.

“Where are you going?” I say, my words rushed.

He doesn’t look back at me. Instead, he closes the door with a quiet snick .

I sit there on the bed, naked and trembling and confused, and I feel the brick wall that comes up between us.

Hunter doesn’t want me to see him like this. Even after my abduction, Hunter wasn’t overly emotional. At least, not frequently.

He was composed, if a little distant, but he rarely showed me that broken side of him.

Except for one time. The first time we made love was in the sitting room in Amelia Manor. And while we battled against each other and he begged me not to leave, he cried. He cracked under the weight of his love for me and his yearning for us to be together.

And I surrendered to him that night.

I surrendered to the reality that being with him has hurt, hurt, hurt .

But I fell into the chasm and decided that I wasn’t going to let myself crawl out of it.

I wasn’t going to turn my back on Hunter and everything that came with him.

Instead, I faced it. Embraced it.

So now in his brokenness, he wants to shove me out and hide?

Fuck that.

I scramble off the bed and enter the bathroom.

As Hunter leans over the counter with his palms flat on the granite and his head hanging low, there’s only one way to describe him.

He’s haunted. What demons are chasing him right now?

In the moments while I contemplated everything, he turned on the shower and steam mists around the enclosed space.

“I’m not going to let you do this to us,” I say, pushing my shoulders back. When he lifts his head with agonizing slowness, he doesn’t look at me directly. He chooses to give attention to my reflection.

“Sunbeam,” he says. He sounds exhausted.

“No, Hunter. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to ask me to be completely open to you and then push me away. You don’t get to tell me to hand you my pain when you won’t share any of yours.”

He turns his face away from me, but not before I see his jaw flex.

“You don’t get to see me in my most broken and not allow me to hold you when you break.”

He lets out a low curse and gets in the shower, slapping the glass door closed so hard that I’m surprised that it doesn’t shatter.

Turn around. Leave the room, Winter.

I do the opposite of what I should. I follow him, but he sighs heavily as if he expects me to defy him again.

“I need space, Winter,” he says, and for some insane reason, I can’t accept that answer.

I know I should. I know I should.

But I’m?—

But I’m…obsessing.

“You’re allowed to have boundaries, Hunter, but this feels more like you putting the Great Wall of China between us.”

He keeps his back to me, pumping body wash on the loofah and working it into a lather.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort, baby. I’m trying to protect you. I need space right now because I’ll hurt you. I almost just did.” He emphasizes his statement by scrubbing the hard plastic over his arms and chest.

“No, you didn’t!” I shout, and the sound echoes against the tile. He whirls around and his face is like stone.

“What do you want from me, Winter!” he shouts back, his voice rising above mine.

What do I want from him?

The trepidation triples in my chest.

I take a deep breath. “I want you to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he grits out.

I shake my head. “No, you don’t. Clearly. Because if you trusted me, you’d trust me to make my own decisions. You’d trust that I’m strong enough to be there for you. To be your partner. To be your soulmate.”

I take his hand and place it between my thighs.

“What was it you said? Give me your pain. Give me your hurt. Don’t carry this pain in your heart all alone.” The words are a soft vow.

“Winter…” He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. I take the opening to press my body against his, and he doesn’t move his hand from my pussy.

“Give me the hurt, Hunter,” I whisper against his pectoral, right over the fading scar I gave him on that same night.

W.

I count his heartbeats with my ear pressed to his chest as it races.

After a moment, I feel his free hand slide into the tangle of hair at the base of my skull.

“Sunbeam, you know I love you more than life, right?” His words sound dazed, distant, and his heart starts to beat even faster, harder.

“Yes, Hunter, I do,” I say, not moving from my spot.

Another few heartbeats. “Good,” he says.

Then he wrenches my head back with a fistful of my hair.

“Because I’m about to fuck you like I hate you.”

He slams his mouth to mine, his tight fist never providing relief to my roots. I moan into his mouth, putting my arms around him.

I hold him, even though he’s trying to destroy me. I’ve never felt more alive.

The hand that holds my pussy flexes, and in the next instant, his fingers are inside me again. A dull ache settles in my core, but it’s met by the sudden heat of his fingers hitting the most sensitive parts of my sex.

I moan again, letting my voice rise louder and louder.

I want him to know I’m enjoying this. I want him to know that I feel sexy and powerful and wanted and connected to him, even when he’s like this.

Especially when he’s like this.

I have barely a moment to reconcile my position before he spins us, slamming my back against the cold tile. His hand in my hair prevents my head from cracking against the marble.

“You’ve got me, and I’ve got you, Hunter,” I say, my voice hoarse.

“Stop talking, Winter,” he rasps out.

“No, because you need to hear that I love you.”

He lets out a frustrated groan, and in a swift jab, he enters me. I slide up the tile a few inches before grabbing onto his shoulders.

His hand falls from my curls, instead landing on my hip to steady me for his thrusts.

“Shut up, Winter,” he says, and his voice is dark, so dark. He pounds into me in earnest, driving into me so hard that his balls slap against my backside.

“I love you,” I say on a gasp.

“Shut up, Winter,” he repeats, his words even more driven. He lifts my leg onto the stone seat and kicks my other foot to widen my stance.

Spread out now, he pounds even harder, faster, and I clench on him.

I’m there. I’m right fucking there.

“Who says you get to come?” he growls, and the words cause me to tip over the edge, defying him.

Stars sparkle behind my closed lids, and I release a loud breathy moan that goes on and on because my orgasm goes on and on.

“Always fucking defying me,” he says. He keeps pounding into me, and my orgasm recedes but doesn’t dissolve completely. It hovers right in front of me, ready to burn bright again at the slightest strike.

“I’m sorry. I love you,” I say, my voice breaking with each bounce from his thrusts, but he growls at my words, and he does the unexpected.

He grabs my throat.

At first, the action stuns me and my breaths seize in my chest.

He pulses his hand around my throat, applying pressure to the sides of my neck, and I’m startled by the rush I feel.

I exhale instinctively, the breaths rasping as the constriction of my throat causes an erotic tingle to shoot down my spine, centering in my clit. My arousal gushes on his dick.

I open my mouth again, but words don’t come out. Hunter searches my face, and I know I can’t show any fear or discomfort. I have to see this through with him.

He needs it. I need it.

I want it.

“I hate myself every day, Winter. I’ve been the happiest ever in my life since meeting you, but you want to know my truth? It’s that I hate myself.”

His words, the dark confession, shake me.

“You want to know the darkest parts of me, Winter?”

I can’t speak, so I suck in air when he pulses his hand around my throat, giving me a slight reprieve. His hand tightens again, more firm this time.

“I’ve killed ninety-seven people, Winter.”

I’d gasp if I could. The number startles me, but I don’t waver.

“Mostly women, some children,” he continues. His pace in my pussy slows a fraction. “I would tell myself that I was being merciful and saving them from a worse fate, but really? I’m a murderer.”

Oh, Hunter.

“I’ve watched hundreds of women get abused—drugged, raped, hunted, strung up and lynched.” His eyes glaze over, lost in the memories. “I saw all of this, and yet I did nothing to save them. I just let it happen. And when I was told to, I ended them.”

Tears crest my eyes, but I don’t dare blink. He’s telling me the darkest parts of himself with eyes open, his gaze locked on mine, but I’m unsure if he actually sees me anymore.

“I’d done every drug known to man before I was fifteen years old,” he says.

I shake my head, an involuntary reflex, and he tightens his grip. Static starts to form at the edge of my vision.

“The day after my mother died,” he says. He bites his lip and surges into me one more time, stilling with our bodies kissing where we’re joined.

“The day after my mother died,” he starts to say again, but his breaths come faster and faster, more erratic.

I bring my hand to his face as it trembles. He’s distracted by the movement, and he loosens his grip on my neck. I suck in a greedy gulp of air.

“The day after, I was raped.”

My fingers flex against his cheek. I’d suspected, but I didn’t know….

“By several men. I was bleeding, begging them to stop, but they just laughed.” He breaks piece by piece, and he shuts his eyes then, but it doesn’t stop his tears from falling.

“My father gave me to them. He said it was my punishment, but it wasn’t the first fucking time, just the worst time.”

When I try to bring his head to mine to kiss him, he flinches.

Batting my hand away, he doubles down on his grip on my neck. Shaking his head, I watch transfixed as another person takes over his body. As the uncomfortable, terrorizing truth spills from his lips, he goes to the defense mechanism that he knows so well.

He hides, emotionally running away.

And even though I’m familiar with how he copes, this Hunter in front of me, inside me now? I don’t know him.

A sharp slap to my flank comes seconds before he takes the same leg and lifts it around his waist. I’m nearly suspended now, pinned between his hard body and the wall. Throughout his confession, he didn’t soften, and now, he’s hard as steel.

“Is this what you wanted?” His eyes are bloodshot, hard, dazed, and angry, and I try to open my mouth to say something, anything, but he squeezes my throat the tightest he ever has.

He’s still not applying pressure to the front of my throat, but where he presses to the sides it causes my head to feel heavy.

The fuzzy static returns.

“Do you like seeing me weak, Winter? Is it not enough that I’m so vulnerable being in love with you, but now you have to strip everything from me?”

The sensations of him below and the spiraling pressure at my throat cause my orgasm to step to the brink again.

I shake my head less than an inch. No, this isn’t what I want for him.

“I want to be the man you need me to be, but I’m not. I never was.”

Hunter. Oh, my love….

He loosens his grip, and I draw in air again. In the freedom from the compression, I take the risk of saying, “You’re a good man, Hunter James Brigham.”

He inhales sharply, his hand flexing in a crushing grip, and I put both of my hands on his wrist.

It’s too much.

The world tilts.

It’s too much….

And even still...another orgasm rockets through me, bright and vivid, and my head claps back against the tile, all my muscles seizing.

“Fuck!” he grinds out, and his eyes slide closed as he explodes inside me with one-two-three final surges into my body.

Sirens start screeching in my brain, begging me to take in precious air. But as the seconds tick on and he comes down from the high of his orgasm, he doesn’t loosen his grip.

Hunter….

One-two….

My hands fall from his wrist and he releases me in an instant.

“Shit!” he says, looking at me and gripping the sides of my face. He looks horrified.

“Winter, Winter, I-I—” He makes a choked sound, so I go to reassure him.

“I loved….”

The last thing I hear before I fall to the floor is Hunter’s pained roar.