Chapter Three

Zander and Dalton waited as I eyed the man, and I basked in the trust they gave me. I wasn’t a wilting flower. I was the wasp.

“Whatever you want me to be, Daddy,”

I purred in a sickly sweet voice.

Human interaction didn’t come naturally to me, but I’d learned to mirror certain behaviors that made my life easier. Especially when it came to the yearly massacres so I could see my men. The rest of the time, I bounced from town to town, taking on odd jobs and keeping a low profile. I’d been institutionalized one too many times to make a career of killing. I was sure my face was in some database in a psychiatric hospital… or maybe an FBI field office, and I didn’t have the patience to clean up my crime scenes.

“Tillie, focus.”

Zander’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I found the fat cat staring at me with a furrowed brow.

“Is she touched in the head? I’ll still fuck her, but I want a discount.”

Dalton took an aggressive step forward, but I pressed a hand to his chest to stop him.

“I’m just thinking about riding your cock. It got me distracted,”

I said easily, wondering if his tie was in a windsor knot, and how quickly I could get it loose.

“Then stop imagining it and move, you dirty little bitch. I’m paying for your ass, so get in here and show it to me.”

With a warning look at Dalton, I practically skipped to the driver’s side. He put his seat all the way back before opening the door so I could straddle him.

“I’ll pay extra to take this without lube.”

He grabbed my ass in a hard grip while I focused on his tie. Aiming for a flirty look, I slowly tugged at the knot.

“Wouldn’t it hurt to go raw?”

“I like some pain with my pleasure, sweetheart. Especially when it’s yours.”

His hands worked his belt as I loosened his tie and wrapped it around my fists.

“How funny. I was just thinking the same thing.”

Before he could react, I slid off his lap and into the back seat, wrapping the tie around his throat and hauling back with all my strength. His big body lurched in a panic, throwing me around until I planted my feet against the back of the seat and used my legs to keep myself in place.

“You could make this easier, you know,”

I gritted out between my teeth.

“Don’t be greedy. It’s Jeremiah’s turn to use this body.”

The flailing continued a while longer, the wet sounds of his struggle to breathe nowhere near as relaxing as Dalton’s host’s had been.

At last, just as I was considering using my trusty knife, the body gave out with a final shudder. Sweat beaded my brow, and I released my grip on the tie to swipe at it, pushing my hair back off my face as I checked out the window to see Zander standing exactly where he had been.

“You didn’t want to give me a hand there?”

With arms crossed over his chest, he gave me a one shoulder shrug.

“And ruin your fun? You had it handled.”

Swoon.

Some girls wanted flowers and chocolates, but I much preferred degradation and sole rights to a kill. I reached into my pocket, ready to see Jeremiah, and felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as I came up with nothing. Where was my coin purse? Where were Jeremiah and Wade? Shuffling around as best I could in the back seat, I checked the footwell on each side, then slid into the front seat and looked around the body. Nothing.

“What’s wrong, Tills?”

Zander asked.

“I can’t find them.”

“What—?”

He pulled the back passenger door open and stooped. When he straightened, my coin purse dangled from his fingers.

“Good. Gimme.”

He dropped the purse into my hand, and I poured the two remaining coins into my hand. Each was subtly different. Not anything that could be seen with the naked eye, but I never doubted which coin belonged to which of my men. Sliding Wade’s coin back into the purse, I jammed it firmly into the bottom of my pocket before straddling the body and sliding Jeremiah’s coin past the lips.

Where the rest of my men often struggled to settle into a freshly vacated body, causing it to shake and shudder as their essence took up residence, Jeremiah never had a problem. The first indication I had of his presence was the eyelids snapping open to reveal the darkness within. Jeremiah always had pitch black eyes, regardless of what the host body had possessed prior. Big hands squeezed my thighs in a now-welcome touch, and something inside me melted.

“Matilda.”

His voice was deep and smooth, like a fine whiskey, despite the strangulation. That was another difference between Jeremiah and the rest of my men. The body did his bidding. Not the other way around. If he had ended up in Dalton’s body, speaking wouldn’t have been a challenge at all.

Jeremiah was just built different.

“You’re back,”

I breathed.

“We have business to attend to. Be a good girl and hop up. We can play later.”

I wanted to play now. I’d missed him so much, but I knew bratty behavior wouldn’t end well for me. And definitely not in the fun way, like Dalton. So I slid off his lap with a meek “yes, sir.”

When Jeremiah joined me and Zander at the roadside, he nodded a greeting, then looked around expectantly.

“Where are Dalton and Wade?”

“I haven’t woken Wade yet. Dalton…”

I trailed off as the man in question stomped out from behind the nearest pylon carrying a large pile of…rags? No. It was a body. That son of a bitch.

“Did you seriously steal my last kill, asshole?”

Dalton scowled and hurled the body at my feet, then held up a used syringe. Fine, so maybe the host had overdosed, but it better have been recently, otherwise things would not go well for Wade this year. I’d learned the hard way that rotting bodies did not make good vessels for my men. Especially with the way we celebrated our reunion every year.

“Why aren’t you talking?”

Jeremiah asked, narrowing his eyes at Dalton, who tipped his head back with an even darker scowl than before. A smug grin spread across Jeremiah’s face before he allowed himself a single bark of laughter.

“Well done, Matilda. You should make sure to give him a slit throat every year. It’s far more peaceful without his mouth running.”

Dalton flipped me two middle fingers while I gave him a blank stare in return.

“This is fun, but should we move shit along and wake up Wade?”

Zander suggested, cutting through the tension in his trademark way.

I fished Wade’s coin from my pocket and shoved it into the mouth of the body, grudgingly acknowledging the residual warmth of the saliva that proved it was, in fact, fresh.

As with the others — other than Jeremiah, of course — the body shook with a series of violent shudders. The eyes opened and Wade stared back at me.

“Hello,”

I said, offering a hand to help him up.

“Hey, baby.”

He winced, pressing a fist to his eye. “Fuuuuuck. What the hell did you do to this guy? My head is pounding like a bed head in a pay-by-the-hour motel room.”

“Overdose. Blame Dalton, he wanted to ruin my fun.”

Dalton pushed a heavy breath out through his nose as he rolled his eyes.

“He always wants to ruin your fun. Should we make him wait until last this year? Get you all stretched out and full of our cum before he slides inside one of your tight holes?”

He slipped his fingers under the hem of my dress and rubbed my pussy through my panties. I let my head drop back on my shoulders with a shameless moan, widening my stance to give him better access.

“We’ll have time for that later. For now, Matilda will take the car to our usual meeting place. Get yourself ready for us. When we’re done we’ll meet you there and put that little body to use for the rest of the night.”

“Can I go with you this time?”

I knew I shouldn’t ask the question. The answer was the same every year. Preparations require focus none of us are capable of when you’re around. Soon everything will be in place and we’ll never be separated again. Have patience, Matilda.

But we had so little time together that I couldn’t help but try.

Jeremiah gripped my chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting my face up toward his.

“This is the last year we will ask this distance of you. Next year, everything changes and you’ll have to be ready for that. Go now, and know we’ll be there as soon as we’re able.”

He thumbed my mouth open and lowered his lips to mine in a kiss that felt intense enough to suck my soul right from my body. I wouldn’t have cared if he had.

He already owned all of me.

They all did.