The Hunter’s Game: Blood for Blood: 01

by Fox, Logan

  I’d woken many times with blood on my hands, not knowing how it got there. But the day I woke with a twist of a girl’s hair in my pocket was the day I no longer saw a man in the mirror, but a monster.

  I moved back into Hill Manor the next day.

  I DIY’d my rehab for an excruciating four weeks.

  When I was clean, my father paid for my studies in botany.

  I founded the Hill Institute, paid for mainly with a trust fund I’d forgotten I had. The Institute turned a profit in its first year—a profit that grew exponentially each quarter as word spread of the luxurious rehabilitation facility tucked away in the redwood mountains of the nowhere town of Mallhaven.

  My programs were inspired. Unique. Bleeding edge.

  But still patients would relapse. I’d start seeing the same faces as file after file crossed my desk.

  I took one Ayahuasca trip after that, but never again. My demons were too plentiful—I feared they’d overrun me the next time.

  About three years ago, a surge of sentimentality brought me back to these exact woods where I’d taken my first plunge. I was feeling despondent, as if the carefully crafted programs I ran were a band aid on a festering wound that would never—could never—heal.

  I’ve always had a remarkable, if selective memory. I worked my way back to the brute’s cabin.

  What was left of it.

  The forest had reclaimed much of it by that time. Moss and a few tender trees had sprouted amid the carbonized remains. I stood there for the longest time, staring at the heap of black-burned wood.

  I should have been angry. Instead, I was just forlorn.

  My proof consisted of pure conjecture, but I knew Kane had come here and set this place alight. That hank of hair? It had been the brute’s. The blood? His too.

  But what had Kane done with the body?

  Probably nothing. He was a wild man back then. He might have killed the brute and simply left his body for the forest to consume like it had done the remains of his crude cabin.

  It took six months, but I rebuilt the cabin as perfectly as I could remember. Better, even.

  The brute wouldn’t have cared. For him, it was a place to lay his head and ward off the rain.

  But I cared.

  I was responsible for his death.

  Just as I was responsible for those poor girls at the compound.

  Those who didn’t make it to the end of the harvest.

  And those that did.

  * * *

  No.

  This is not a cycle of abuse.

  I chose to do right, and so can she. It’s the Mother plant that’s confusing things. Somehow, it’s affecting me too.

  Or is that the weed?

  Can’t be—it’s never had this effect on me before.

  It’s her. Clover. She’s the one that’s shutting down my rational mind in favor for things I can’t define.

  Dangerous things.

  Science is neither good nor evil. It’s simply factual or inaccurate. Every neuron in my brain is telling me that the very fact that I’m here in this cabin, with this woman, is simply not the most effective way of conducting this study.

  But my body craves her like I craved heroin.

  Addicts should never be allowed close to another addictive substance. Too many rehab facilities treating alcoholics have no problem with their patients smoking cigarettes.

  Anathema.

  An addictive mind can never overcome addiction until it’s free of every addiction.

  Sugar. Alcohol. Nicotine. Heroin.

  Clover.

  I’m addicted to Clover. I want her even though I’ve already had her. She’s right in front of me, but I’m already missing her.

  It’s not logical. It’s not even possible.

  I’m stronger than this. I’ve overcome worse than this.

  I have the scars to prove it.

  But I’ve already had a taste, and it’s going to take a lot more than positive thinking to break me from her.

  I wrap her matted braid around my hand, yanking her head down and to the side so I can see her pretty neck bend for me.

  Her carotid pulses against her fair skin.

  Terror or anticipation?

  I expect the first. After all, I’m standing over her with a bunched jaw and what I can only assume a fierce scowl on my face. A junkie faced with her worst nightmare. After being clean for so long, who could relapse without hating themselves, the drug, the fucking entire world?

  She sinks down until she’s perched on the edge of the mattress. Her pupils have dilated to the point that her irises are a sliver of turquoise. She’s doe-like in her complacency, a kitten under the paw of a wolf.

  Clover spreads her legs. Despite her neck at an odd angle, despite the fierce grip I have on her hair…

  I step forward, claiming that space she’s opened with my thighs. Her body arches forward, her naked breasts brushing my stomach.

  She watches me. Silent, but with a mouth set in challenge. Commanding me to do my worst because she’s been through much worse than the likes of me.

  I touch my thumb to her lips. They’re a lighter shade now after I wiped off what was left of her makeup. Her eyes, too. I brush my finger over her mouth, and I can feel her quivering under me at the soft touch.

  She doesn’t know about my past. She doesn’t know of the things I did when the demons took control of me.

  If she did, she wouldn’t still be here.

  If anyone did, I’d be locked away on death row.

  But I made peace with the past. I locked that part of me deep, deep down. Until now, I’ve never even thought about it.

  Now I’m starting to worry that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t lash down those demons tight enough.

  If they were ever to get out…

  I must warn her. Perhaps give her a chance to flee. She deserves that much, at least.

  Instead, I ask, “Do you really think you can handle me?”

  My voice comes out as a grating murmur. Her eyes are answer enough—she stares at me as if she’s trying to fry my brain.

  She doesn’t get it. No one does. What she sees standing in front of her is a mask. A puppet.

  I’ve been able to hold myself back these past years. I’ve dealt with all my addictions, not just heroin.

  Addictions no one except Kane and The Father would ever know about.

  Some harbor more evil inside them than others.

  As if to impress this on her, I say, “You’re too weak.”

  Clover’s lips quirk as she lets out a tiny snort of derision.

  “Yeah? Try me.”

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Clover

  It’s been a strange few hours. I’m tripping on something called Ayahuasca in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods with a psychic—psychotic?—hippy. I’ve just realized that the reason I was addicted to heroin was some desperate need to escape the past.

  Shit like that changes you, man.

  It’s changed me.

  I won’t call it night versus day, but I’m different. I feel motivated.

  But not in a good way.

  I feel self destructive. Like I want to hurt myself, but I don’t have the guts.

  That’s where Hunter comes in.

  He can hurt me without trying. In fact, he has to try not to hurt me.

  Is that ironic? I never could tell.

  College was for those losers that had people to impress. Me? I just had to survive and that shit required a whole new skill set. Things like sucking dick and knowing when to fake it.

  The only thing left of that Clover is a few grains of dust. Hunter shattered that persona.

  I want Hunter to grind me out under his heel.

  I know, it’s crazy.

  Where’s my sense of self-preservation, right?

  Well, it’s gone now. I’d be just as happy if he killed me as if he fucked me.

  You think I wanted to see that shit? I’d buried those memories for ve
ry explicit fucking reasons. That shit was never meant to see the light of day. Or the light of a fire. Whatever.

  Pandora’s box.

  He wrenched it open without a fucking care in the world.

  I’ll cure you, Clover, you junkie. You’ll be free as a fucking bird.

  Thanks for nothing, asshole, because free is far from what I am.

  “I’m not!” My voice doesn’t echo in the small cabin—it fills it.

  Hunter’s attention diverts back to my face. He’d been staring at my cunt like a bee sizing up a flower he was about to invade for pollen.

  “You’re not what?” he asks.

  I’m seeing shit. I must be. His face isn’t the same. There are faint scars on it. So very, very faint, but they’re there. I reach out to touch one, and Hunter flinches like I’ve scorched him. He snatches my hand away from his face and watches me from the corner of his eye. “You’re not what?” he repeats slowly, expectantly.

  “I’m not free.” I toss my head, managing to rip my braid from his hand. “I was, but I’m not anymore.”

  He laughs, but cuts the sound short. “You’d have preferred living in that void?” He flicks his hand. “Empty. Soulless. The only meaning in your life your next hit?”

  “Ignorance is fucking bliss.” I hiss the words at him and cut him off when he begins speaking again. “What? You’ve never wanted to forget your fucking past?”

  His mouth is open, but ain’t shit coming out.

  “Oh, right.” I cock my head. “You’re a trust fund baby, aren’t you? Born with a fucking silver spoon in your—”

  He claps a hand over my cunt and gives me a rough squeeze. Whatever I’d been about to accuse him of disappears in a wave of pleasure.

  “You don’t know shit about me,” Hunter says, and for once he doesn’t sound like he was born with a stick up his ass. “And you never will, because I’ve dealt with it. My past is my past.”

  “Dealt with what?”

  “Is this some pathetic attempt to distract me?” Hunter’s eyes flash with anger, his mouth turning up in a cruel smile. “Did you honestly think you could throw down a gauntlet, and I wouldn’t accept?”

  Gauntlet? What the fuck is a—?

  He grabs the front of my throat and forces me onto my back. His entire weight is on me an instant later, his cock pressing against my cunt.

  Damn, he moves fast. I didn’t even notice him taking off his boxers.

  I laugh at him. “You think having some entitled asshole taking what he wants is the worst I’ve been through?”

  It was supposed to be glib, a way to rile him up. But now, after those floodgates in my mind were opened, I realize the statement has so much more truth to it that I’d ever imagined.

  And then I’m fucking pissed at Hunter for doing this to me. He had no right to interfere with my life. No right to attempt to fix me. Because, face it, I’m broken. I’ve fallen off the motherfucking wall, and there’s no putting Clover Vos back together again.

  Christ, now I want to bawl like a baby. What the hell did this shit do to me?

  Hunter tightens his grip on my throat before forcing his way inside me.

  The thought disintegrates, as does everything else in the fucking world. I expect blackness behind my eyes. Instead, things move against my eyelids. Long, slender, slithering things.

  I don’t want to look at them anymore, but for some reason I can’t open my eyes. I don’t know how much more of this hippy drug I can take.

  “How long till I come down?” I ask through gritted teeth as Hunter eases out of me.

  “Depends.” His voice is by my ear, his lips brushing my skin.

  “On what?”

  “How long you take to walk the path.”

  I squirm under him, furious at his Cheshire cat riddles. “I’m done, okay? I’m fucking done.”

  “You might be, but the Mother isn’t yet.”

  “The…?” I finally get my eyes open.

  Hunter’s watching me, a rapt, almost zealous expression on his face. “Why does this feel so wrong?”

  “Because you drugged me?” I snap back.

  He’s inside me again, so I’m not quite as snappy as I wanted, but at least I tried. “Because you’re supposed to be my doctor or some shit? Instead you have me holed up in this—”

  He has a hand between us, and my sentence dies when he begins massaging my clit.

  Jesus, this is wrong. Is that what makes it so fucking delicious? Or is that the aya—whatever-the-hell he drugged me with?

  But he didn’t drug me, did he? I took it. I felt I had no choice, but I didn’t resist him either. I could have poured out that water bottle.

  What would he have done then?

  I study his face as he studies mine. Those scars are still there and they’re driving me insane. I touch his jaw, running a finger along the barely visible line that runs up to his ear.

  He jerks away his head, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing?”

  “You have so many scars.”

  Hunter shakes his head, his mouth going into a cruel line. “You’re hallucinating.” And then, as if he could no longer stand me looking at him, he pulls out and flips me over.

  I have a second to struggle, to protest, before he kicks open my legs and burrows himself inside me. I want to scream, but instead I groan as my back arches. He grabs my braid and jerks back my head, putting his mouth by my ear.

  “Where will you go after this?”

  I laugh at the question, or maybe at the tone of his voice, or maybe just this entire fucked up situation. This man is obviously several sandwiches short of anything approaching a picnic. So what, am I just supposed to roll with it?

  “Home,” I say, not knowing why, or even where the fuck that was supposed to be.

  Hunter plunges into me again, drawing a gasp. He speeds up, fucking me so hard that I have no idea if what’s driving me to the edge is pleasure or pain.

  Probably both.

  I was always fucked up like that.

  I guess, sometimes, if you lie to yourself often enough, you start believing in every made-up thing you invent.

  “Yes,” Hunter says. For a moment I think it’s one of those, ‘Oh, God, yes, fuck,’ statements, but he doesn’t strike me as the type.

  I’m close. I think he is too, judging from how hard he’s pounding into me. I balance on a hand and start getting myself off with the other. I have good timing sometimes, but if I can’t read him, can’t figure out how close he is—

  “Yes, what?” I manage in a tight voice. Fuck, this feels so glorious. I want to command him to go harder, but I think he’s at the peak of violent fucking.

  “You are going home,” he says, his words running together. “With me.”

  Words have never triggered me into climax before so it must have been good timing.

  I come with a throttled groan, bucking fiercely into him. He twists my head, pressing his mouth to mine as he comes a second later, meeting my thrust with one of his own. A sliver of pain tears through me, but it’s muddled with so much bliss it doesn’t stand a chance.

  I’m moaning against his mouth as I ride out my climax with him pulsing inside me, his hips grinding against my ass. He nips at my bottom lip, breath hot and fast.

  “What?” I manage, my head reeling.

  He twists my hair even harder, pulling me an inch away from him so he can stare into my eyes as he eases out an inch before pounding into me again.

  I could be hallucinating, still, but at the same time I’m pretty sure the possessiveness in his eyes is as real as whatever connection there is between us.

  He shows me his teeth in a fierce snarl before putting his lips to my ear again. When he speaks, his voice is husky as fuck.

  “You are going home, Clover. Home with me.”

  Part Five

  Join Me

  “I have never felt like this

  You and I were meant to be

  This don’t go away

  I�
��ll go to my grave about this

  Cause you had me believing till our final days”

  Kings 810 - eyes

  Chapter Seventy

  Clover

  I’ve always been a light sleeper. I guess it comes with the territory—the last thing you want is someone sneaking up on you when you’re incapacitated.

  All it takes to rouse me is the sound of Hunter’s voice, despite the fact that he’s not even close enough for me to hear what he’s saying.

  My eyes open to a too bright room. I swipe a hand over my face, trying to chase away dregs of sleep as I roll onto my back. A deep groan escapes me. Fuck, you’d think I ran a goddamn marathon, as sore as my body is.

  I guess I did, in a way. Clover Vos isn’t use to running for her life.

  Pushing to my elbows, I strain to make out what Hunter’s saying.

  I’m on his bed. I vaguely remember getting here—we trekked back here earlier today. He carried me upstairs and put me to bed. He lay beside me for a while, but I must have fallen asleep.

  There’s a touch of either frustration or annoyance in his voice before he says something that almost sounds like, “Then fix it.”

  Silence.

  The bedroom door opens. Hunter stands at the threshold, staring at his phone as he taps his thumb over the screen. Does he feel my eyes on him? A second later, he looks up.

  I expect a smile. Instead, I get nothing. Not even a flicker of change in his expression. Phone still in his hand, he points to the closet door. I follow his finger and stiffen a little when I see a kaftan hanging from the door handle.

  “Bathe. Get dressed. I need you downstairs in five minutes.”

  He leaves without another word.

  I slide out of bed and pad over to the en-suite bathroom. There, I hurl violently into the toilet bowl until there’s nothing left in my stomach.

  Not that there was much to begin with.

  I flush the toilet and blow my nose. As soon as I can breathe again, I glance to the copper tub positioned in the middle of the expansive bathroom.