After her eyes closed and she snuggled closer to Grimm, I quietly rolled out of bed and left them to sleep.
When I heard Zorie softly talking again, I paused just outside the door.
“Are you slow, today? You haven’t told me you love me as many times as Mavros said it.”
“I do that every time I bite you. See.”
At the burst of squealing and the sound of wrestling, I shook my head and smiled. I’d leave them be. I still felt like the outsider. That would change.
I’d found where I should be, after many years in the wilderness stumbling about. Making money and screwing a harem of women hadn’t brought me happiness. Whereas this? With Zorie and Grimm? I wanted to be with them forever, if they’d have me.
And if they changed their minds? Damn. No, for once I wasn’t going to plan that far ahead.
My hint that I would be more sadistic in future hadn’t scared Zorie as much as her behavior suggested. Her arousal had been obvious and Grimm would know that too.
One of the benefits of our mental connection was that lying was difficult. And when it was sexual arousal, she had no hope of concealing it from me.
I figured she’d forgotten that. Tomorrow I would take great delight in reminding her how red I liked making her ass, and other parts of her.
I showered and dressed in shorts and T-shirt, as was the sensible thing here where sweating was the national past-time, and wandered out to the balcony. I stood there watching the sea, the clouds go past, the birds fly overhead, and a small, sleepy possum climbing a tree off to the side. Despite the rising sun and it almost being midday, the beach below had twenty or so men and women sunbathing or playing with their children. Sandcastles galore.
I hadn’t made one of those since my childhood.
I felt fitter than I ever had in my life. My biceps strained at the sleeve of a shirt that’d been loose a month ago. Jogging with Grimm and swimming was doing me some good.
I checked my phone when it buzzed and found a message from Kim.
Sorry. I won’t be refunding your money. We’ve not found him.
Which meant they hadn’t found Wolfe’s body. I shrugged and tucked the phone away in my shorts. Between Zorie and myself, we had more than enough funds to live like kings and queens.
I stretched, rising to full height, and I smiled at the sky. This new life was going to be good, for all of us.
At a sound behind me, I turned and saw Grimm standing, shirtless, in the bedroom window, also admiring the scenery. He waved and I waved back, then he walked deeper into the room.
I resumed watching the beach and the sea.
Every woman on the beach was climbing to her feet, turning to look back at the house, or standing already and looking. My heart did a little skittery beat.
Life might be more interesting and challenging than I’d thought.
Was this why the doctor had let me on board the Medivac plane? Why some things had progressed smoothly when I expected bumps in the road, after we came back to Australia?
I was going to have to educate Grimm. Those women had been looking at the bedroom. It wasn’t me, it was Grimm.
Was he some sort of Pied Piper of women? If a mesmer could affect all women...it might be catastrophic. Perhaps Zorie wasn’t affected by this change, but I couldn’t tell yet. It was lucky that Grimm was a sensible man and devoted to her.
As long as the beast in him stayed quiet, we could do this...as long as no one else had this weird permutation of the mesmer infection.
A bad man with this sort of power over women could do terrible damage. He would, theoretically, control half the population of the world.
Maybe a vaccine was a good idea after all.
I cracked my knuckles and thought about how that would pan out, if a vaccine were possible. It had pluses. It had minuses. I wasn’t keen on the minuses.
I should go in and get breakfast started. That was another change these two had induced in me. I liked cooking for them, sometimes. It was a pleasant way to get conversation going. Talking...I found I was smiling, I’d not even had conversations like I did with these two much at all before, not since I discovered I was a mesmer. I’d been so very young and it’d distorted my life and how I interacted with people.
This had begun with a visit to a restaurant. Curious, how such a small thing could have led us all the way to this. On any one day, paradise or disaster could be just around the corner yet most people never saw it coming.
I’d definitely found paradise.
This is the end of the DARK HEARTS trilogy.
Read the next section if you’d like to learn a little more about what I hope to write next
– a spin-off story.
Epilogue
Thailand, months before.
The crane motor had been shut down merely an hour ago, or so Ngoen had been informed. The foreigners had been brought up from the missile silo and driven away. There were no sounds from below, though Ngoen peered over to check. He hoisted his assault rifle onto his shoulder and resumed his small patrol. There were four of them now, and soon another four men would arrive.
Knowing the monster had been shot was good but no one had seen his corpse.
Patrolling here at night would be worse.
Dawn was coming soon, lightening the sky with pinks and purples.
The two ropes must come up also. He called over two other men and began to haul on the ropes, winding them into big coils on the ground. There was blood on the rope in great gobs and clots, and strands of it stuck to his hands. He wiped it off and kept working. Considering what he’d heard of the state of the foreigners, that wasn’t odd.
They were lucky the monster hadn’t eaten them.
When he picked up his rifle, he noticed the faint outline of a set of footprints leading away, across the concrete. The outline was in blood. Big feet too.
If it was Wolfe? He looked about, nervous.
No, someone would’ve seen if it was him.
They said Wolfe was big enough to dwarf the sun and that he ate women.
He checked the magazine of his rifle. Wolfe was just a story. Besides, he, Ngoen, was a man not a woman.
Some fans have already started a #TEAMWOLFE hashtag.
With such a terrible past, he will be difficult to write about but that also makes him interesting and a challenge, because I can see him in a romance.
About Cari Silverwood
I love to hear from my readers.
If you enjoyed Wicked Hunt, please consider leaving a review on your favorite retailer or website.
Cari Silverwood is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer of kinky darkness or sometimes of dark kinkiness, depending on her moods and the amount of time she’s spent staring into the night. When others are writing bad men doing bad things, you may find her writing good men who accidentally on purpose fall into the abyss and come out with their morals twisted in knots.
If you’d like to learn more go to www.carisilverwood.net
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Pierced Hearts Discussion Group
Also by Cari Silverwood
Dark Hearts Series
(Dark erotic fiction)
Wicked Ways
Wicked Weapon
Wicked Hunt
Pierced Hearts Series
(Dark erotic fiction)
Take me, Break me
Klaus – a novella
Bind and Keep me
Make me Yours Evermore
Seize me From Darkness
Yield
Pierced Hearts Volume 1 – contains books #1, #2 and #3
Pierced Hearts Volume 2 – contains books #2 and #3
Pierced Hearts Volume 3 – contains books #4 and #5
Preyfinders Series
(Erotic scifi)
Precious S
acrifice (Originally published in the anthology, Kept)
Intimidator
Defiler
Preyfinders – The Trilogy
Preyfinders Universe
Cyberella
The Badass Brats Series
The Dom with a Safeword
The Dom on the Naughty List
The Dom with the Perfect Brats
The Dom with the Clever Tongue
Squirm Files Series
Squirm – virgin captive of the billionaire biker tentacle monster
Strum – virgin captive of the billionaire demon rock star monster
The Well-hung Gun – virgin captive of the billionaire were-squid gunslinger monster
Cataclysm Blues Series
Cataclysm Blues
(A free erotic scifi novella)
The Steamwork Chronicles Series
Iron Dominance
Lust Plague
Steel Dominance
Others
31 Flavors of Kink
Three Days of Dominance
Rough Surrender
(Released by Momentum, an eBook branch of Pan Macmillan)
Blood Glyphs
Acknowledgements & Copyright
Thank you again to my eternally amazing friends and read-as-I-write critiquers, Emma Rose and Carly ODonoghue. Alas, I’d be lost without you and subsequently I’m thinking of leashing you both to my desk. Alas that may be illegal. Also a big smoochy MWAH to Nicolette Hugo and Scribe Scarlett (fellow Australian authors), and Jody Rhoton for their answers to my call for beta readers.
If a #TEAMWOLFE story happens, it’ll be partly be because of the urgings of the above lovely, though depraved, people.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2016 Cari Silverwood
www.carisilverwood.net
Editor: Nerine Dorman
Cover art: Thomas Dorman and Cari Silverwood
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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