by Jayla Kane
“Well, she’s like you, maybe,” he said softly, and stroked my palm with his thumb. It sent a ripple of comfort through me, unexpected but true and sweet. “Maybe none of you will… Will have what I have.”
“It’s not a disease.”
“It is,” he whispered, and I curled my fingers around his.
“It’s not,” I promised. “It’s exactly what you would’ve wanted—don’t pull away, please. You can protect the people you love now, Hunter. You can jump through time. You’re practically invincible—no one can ever hurt Molly if you’re around. Ever.”
He was silent, and instead of the floor he was staring down at our hands. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his, the two of us curled against each other in the dim room. “I feel selfish now,” he said quietly. “You make it seem worth it.”
“It is, I know it will be.” I felt our breath mingle and closed my eyes. Is this what it would feel like to have someone you could rely on? Someone that knew everything and would be there for you? My sisters would die for me, but I could never really be myself around them; I had to protect them. That’s what family did. That’s what they did for me too, and I hadn’t realized the extent at all until hearing this sordid little tale. Zelle hid Tristan to keep Raven away from Jake after he was awful to her, I was sure; I knew them both so well. Raven probably didn’t go to Harvard so she could come here to the Institute and try to make things right with Jake—how, I didn’t know. Maybe she was going to become a profiler or something and find Tristan; I’d concocted several scenarios for her post-graduation, and the only reason I could think of that she would stay in Ashwood—once I spent an entire afternoon arguing with her, just to make sure she wasn’t staying for me—was its bizarre reputation for dark libraries, collections on the occult and whatever. Kind of made sense now. But I didn’t understand how she could pass up a real future, until this moment.
Look at us all, I thought, and it was my turn to rub my thumb over Hunter’s palm; I listened to him suck in a breath, surprised. All of us were willing to do anything to protect our families, except tell the damn truth.
“Hunter, you should go check on Molly,” I said softly. I didn’t want him to leave, but he didn’t need to stay here. I wasn’t really a prisoner any more; I think the Rose just didn’t have another means to make sure Hunter and I were in close quarters, but now that all her cards were on the table and he wasn’t going to do what she’d clearly expected him to do—as I once had—I could take some of that control back whenever I wanted. “And don’t tell me to back off, okay? You should really think about getting her out of Ashwood. And letting her decide.”
“Both?” He didn’t want to move either; the place where our heads touched was getting hot, but I leaned into it even more.
“Yeah. Both. You have to tell her what’s going on. Show her.” I tilted my head and gave him a quick kiss before he could back away, just the faintest press of my lips, so he’d know I was trying to be… Supportive. Not demanding. “It’ll be okay. Promise. She’s a smart kid, she’ll see it like I do, I think.”
“Like an opportunity.”
“Yeah.”
His face was very close to mine. “I think she’s alright right now,” he said quietly, our lips still so near I could feel the rush of breath from his words on my lips. His eyes darted over my face; I could see that grey iris, so deep and strange. It was more like navy and… And violet. Twisted together in a rope around the black of his pupil. It was incredibly beautiful. Hard to see. Subtle. And exquisite.
Just like Hunter himself. “Then you… You don’t have to go?”
“Not right now,” he murmured, and then… Then we were kissing.
And it wasn’t like last time—last time, I hated him. Truly. I hated him with a vehemence that could only come from feeling utterly robbed, taken and twisted and furious with helpless rage. Lust and hate made a heady mix.
But… This wasn’t hate at all. And the lust I felt was…
Hunter pulled me onto his lap, and we were in the same position we’d been in almost a year ago, in the cab of his truck. No steering wheel at my back this time, no lies on our lips. And he touched me, now, his rough hands sliding over my thighs, gentle as they roamed up and over my hips, slipping beneath the fabric of my shorts… He squeezed my ass as his tongue dipped into my mouth, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning in to the kiss.
And I felt kind of shy.
I know that sounds stupid. Yesterday, he fucked my face while I rode his—and I still hadn’t showered since then. The day before yesterday he snatched me out of my bed; I called him a stupid redneck and he almost decapitated some magical asshole that served as my introduction to the reality of life with superpowers. But deep down, the real pain of it, I think… The reason I hated him so much, right from the beginning… Was that we weren’t meant to hate one another.
Hunter and I just fit.
I got him. I understood why he did the things he did—all of them. Why he didn’t want me to drink the magical Kool-Aid and why he had more cameras mounted outside his sister’s trailer than you’d find on the set of Big Brother. Why he stood there when Jake tortured my sister all through high school, why he took a step away from me when we met, why it hurt his feelings when I insulted him.
Because in a different world—a different life—Hunter and I might have had something sweet. The kind of thing you’re supposed to have when you’re barely eighteen and starting your senior year of high school with your virginity still intact. You’re supposed to be able to look at a boy who makes you feel this good and say to yourself, this is safe, this is fun. This will be alright.
I choose him.
But I was never able to do that, not from the first second we met. We were always doomed, and no matter how much my heart might protest, my brain was always there to shut it down. At least my pussy was louder about what it wanted, or we might not even be here right now—doing that thing, that thing you do with a boy you like.
You don’t jump on his face like you’re a champ in the rodeo. You don’t slap it either, and call him names because you hate him—for good reason, at least at the time. In the moment.
You find yourself in his lap, his legs so long that yours dangle over his quads until you wrap yourself around him, your ankles resting on the mattress and your center pressing against his. And it feels exciting, but not frightening, because the way he touches you tells you with every sweep of his hand that he would never hurt you. Never. And as he gently squeezes your bare ass and lets you sigh into his mouth as you ride the hard ridge of him below, he kisses your jaw and your cheeks and your throat with a kind of… Reverence. As if you were the most precious thing in the world. And when his lips find yours again and your whole body starts to light up with fire from within you know you’re safe, that you could say anything, be anything, right now, because this is someone who cares about all the parts of you that never see the light of day—this is someone who will protect you from everything. Even yourself.
“Hunter,” I whispered, and he broke away from me, reaching up to sweep my hair back from my face. I was a complete wreck. I have probably not looked this unkempt since the day I was born. My hair was just a mass of tangles, twisting into a heap on my head; I smelled like sex and grilled cheese. I had bruises and scratches from banging on the door and pacing the rough floor and straw was stuck to parts of me I’m embarrassed to mention.
And Hunter gazed down at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. That was the word he refused to stop using, earlier: beautiful.
I could believe it when I looked into his eyes. He made me feel beautiful.
“You alright?” Kindness, I thought again, tracing the twists of those colors in his eyes, the way they blended and stood out against one another. His lashes made them harder to see; they were so long and thick the shadow they cast darkened his cheek. His skin was almost brown—tan, sure, but there was a lot of gold in it, the highligh
ts gleaming along the edges of his sharp cheekbones, his shoulders where they joined his neck, the muscles so big and defined they stretched his shirt out. Hunter was beautiful too. Very beautiful, that delicious inside rippling out towards me everywhere we touched, a pulse of warmth and comfort and sweetness that almost burned.
“Yes,” I whispered, and pressed my lips to his before leaning back again. I didn’t want to ruin this, but… The fantasy was too intoxicating. Hunter wasn’t my high school sweetheart. We didn’t live that life. His eyes searched my face, and something he saw there made him lean back, wariness creeping in. “I just… I have to tell you a couple of things.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow’s my birthday.” If my absence had flown under the radar until now—and it might’ve what with the absent mother and the bickering sisters and the vanishing act Charlie was pulling—it would end tomorrow. Red alert, def-con level orange, whatever. Raven wouldn’t remember; she was convinced she knew how old everybody was thus making her super great at birthdays, but Raven was just really good at buying presents. She was too damn smart, and bought them way ahead of time. Zelle was forever working so she would split the cost with Raven, but she was also the one who always remembered everyone’s actual birthdays, doctor appointments, hair appointments, and when I needed to be picked up from practice. And she would freak the fuck out tomorrow if I wasn’t home on my eighteenth birthday.
He started to pull away from me, the guilt so obvious I stroked his cheek like I could stroke it away. “I’m sorry,” he said again softly.
“I know, we covered it, we’re done,” I said, and to prove it, I kissed him. He started to relax again, and I rubbed my palm over the soft bristly hair on his head and continued. “That’s not even the big news.”
“Okay.”
“I’m a virgin.” That was not what he was expecting. The moment was well and truly ruined when his expression actually made me laugh out loud, right in his face, then made even better when I finally got to see the full depth of those dimples. “Oh my god, those are cute.”
“Did you just say cute?”
“Yes! Holy crap, you’re frickin’ adorable!” He was so shocked his mouth opened a little too much and they started to disappear. “No-no don’t do that! Keep smiling, please.” He was shaking his head at me and then—no shit, this actually happened—he laughed. Not like, out loud, not like a normal person. But he chuckled. Just a little bit. And he was smiling. Really smiling. I reached up and ran my fingertips over his cheeks, feeling those precious divots, the warmth and happiness lighting up his eyes. “Don’t ever stop. You are so beautiful Hunter. Seriously.”
“I thought you just called me cute.”
“You’re that, too. That’s not a bad thing.”
“That’s crazy, miss.” But he was still smiling, still looked remarkably happy. Happier than I’d ever seen him. It took a second for us both to remember the first thing I said and then he resettled me on his lap, his eyes growing serious; his smile didn’t dim, but it did get smaller, and it was strange for me to realize how visible happiness could be even without it. I found it harder to meet his eyes, and wrapped my hands around his neck again, lacing my fingers together as he watched me. “Baby.”
“Yeah?” He raised his eyebrows at me, and I sighed. “Yeah, right. So… You didn’t know?” He shrugged, and I sighed again when those dimples finally disappeared. “I’ve done… Stuff.” And now he was frowning. Great. “Look, just because you’re all world-weary and have done everything under the sun—”
“I just don’t like to think about what that means,” he said softly, and when I glanced up at him, I was reassured by the way he watched me. His hands were steady on my hips, his thumbs rubbing tiny circles into my skin, and everywhere he touched me felt like heaven.
“It doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t had sex, technically—” His eyebrows went up at that, and I blew out a long breath. “Nobody’s been inside, Hunter, with their… Their stuff.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I have done other things, alright, maybe too many—”
“Baby, it’s okay,” he said softly; “if you think I have something to say about how you’ve lived, I don’t. I just don’t like to think about you being with anybody else. That’s it. That’s all.” When I absorbed the meaning of his words—the real meaning, the idea of it—I couldn’t help gulping. Hard. And when I was able to meet his eyes again, I felt… I don’t know. “Does that make you sad?”
It was hard to watch him try so hard. That question was an invitation, a revelation; Hunter and I didn’t do that. It was something we had in common: a complete rejection of intimacy. Hunter’s roles, both the ones he chose and the ones thrust on him, were never ones where vulnerability would be useful. How do you trust your protector if they admit there are cracks in the armor? And my job had been similar, in our family, although it looked very different. I couldn’t afford that kind of closeness—Raven and Zelle, Zelle and Charlie, Raven and Christa. Me. By myself.
And in that sense, yeah. It did make me sad. Once again I wondered if he and I had met in any other way if we could’ve skipped the whole blackmail-and-kidnapping thing and gotten straight to this. Whatever it was, whatever it was becoming. Because I was afraid that I was too ruined to enjoy it now—virginity doesn’t mean anything to me; it’s just useful for manipulating morons, and sure enough, it didn’t seem to mean much to Hunter either—at least not like that. But it was strangely touching to have him admit that he… He liked me. That some part of him was possessive of me, even while he was aware of how strange that was. And I was sad because I was imagining a world, a time, a way that my memories and experiences could have been with someone who… I don’t know.
God forbid I be loved, right? God forbid I admit I want that out loud.
But that’s what I knew, in my gut. Hunter and I would’ve been disgusting. We would’ve been the kind of couple that held hands all the time and went to prom and lost our virginities to one another on a star-filled night in the bed of his truck, and it would have been romantic as all hell. And I would’ve loved him more than just about anything, and he would’ve loved me the same way.
Instead, here we were. “Baby?” He whispered it this time, and I realized there was an actual tear running down my face—a frickin’ tear. At just the idea.
“Gross,” I mumbled, smearing it away, but then I felt another one arrive immediately afterwards because he pulled me towards him and kissed me, right there, on the damp spot. And it was just so damn… I mean, come on. “Don’t Hunter, please,” I said, leaning back to wipe them all away. “I don’t cry. This is terrible. I don’t want to do this, and if you’re nice to me, it’ll get worse.”
“It’s alright, if you need to,” he said, and I choked back a sob and resettled myself in his lap, trying to straighten my shoulders.
“I don’t,” I said, making myself believe it. We stared at one another carefully through lowered lashes and finally I sighed and blinked down at my lap. At his chest. And his shoulders. They were very distracting, thankfully.
But he couldn’t leave it alone. “I can take you anywhere. Let’s go. Right now.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I want to see that bitch again, and as long as she thinks there’s a chance you’ll—” I stopped myself just in time. She hadn’t thought he and I would do anything like this; she hadn’t understood our connection. Somehow she’d been keen on our chemistry, but she clearly didn’t understand Hunter at all. The idea that he would rape me… I shook my head at the stupidity, the arrogance—and not just hers. “This is the only leverage I’ve got.” I met his eyes, and there was nothing on his face but concern. “It’s okay. I have something she wants, desperately. I don’t think she has the upper hand any more. But she doesn’t know that, and I want more information—I want to get a look at that book, for example. And ask her some leading questions that might give us a chance of finding her, on the outside.”
“
It’s not worth it,” he said quietly, his hands tightening on my body, sliding up around my waist in a protective caress. I shivered from the instinctive movement, that touch of possessive desire and all it implied.
“It’s totally worth it,” I said, and then I ran my fingers over his hair—I have no idea why. We were both being so casually intimate that it took each of us aback for a second, and then Hunter pushed into my palm, his eyelids lowering as he drank in my touch and held me even closer. We were acting like lovers, I realized. Like we knew more about each other than we did.
And I couldn’t stop. I let my hungry fingertips run all over him as I listened to him, as he listened to me, felt his hands tighten on my hips below and his breath quicken. “It’s not safe. I’d rather get you out of here and know you were somewhere they can’t get you.”
“Like the Warfield Plantation?” I scoffed, tracing his collarbones and then running my hands back over his neck and up over his skull; he arched into my touch like a cat. “No thanks.”
“It’s definitely safe there,” he said, sighing. “Security systems, and—”
“And the local psycho upstairs.” I softened the admonishment by resting my forehead against his shoulder, letting my lips brush his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed as my hands went lower again, as I allowed myself to slide them all the way down and then under the hem of his t-shirt.
“Raven’s there.”
“Where’s Zelle?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter said, shaking his head slightly. “Running the shop, I guess. I haven’t been—”
“Because Jake hasn’t asked,” I said darkly, raising an eyebrow at him, but he just shrugged, his eyes lidded as he raised one back at me.
“And neither have you.”
“She sticks close to home, and they don’t do dumb things like follow Jake Warfield around like lost puppies. Charlie will be harder to find.” His nostrils flared. “What?” He was still lazily enjoying my fingers on his body, even with the slight irritation in his eyes.