Huntsman, page 14
“Is that supposed to scare me?” She tips her head to the side, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s genuine curiosity in her voice.
I snort, irritated. “Now isn’t the time to play whose clit is bigger, Eshe.”
“I would invite you to find out, but that would mean you’d have to compare. Then I’d have to add another body to my count. And I’ve killed enough people who thought they could get away with touching what’s mine.” She smiles, but her tone is as flat as her eyes. “But I’ll do it again. And again.”
Her words take a minute to sink in, and my eyebrows arrow down over my nose. “What’re you—”
She pops up a hand. “I’on want to talk about them hos who fucked around and found out. Unless there’s something you need to tell me.” Her brilliant eyes narrow on me, heat flickering in them. “Like you doubled back and couldn’t find them…”
She seems to be waiting on me to supply her with an answer— or an apology …
“What the hell is going on right now?” I’m so fucking confused.
Her expression clears, and she leans back against the couch, picking up the forgotten and undoubtedly cold slice of pizza. The way her teeth chomp down on the crust is faintly threatening, and my dick jumps in both horror and interest.
Shit.
Even my mans is confused as fuck.
“Nothing,” she finally says around a mouthful of food.
Yeah, okay. I’ve never been in a relationship, but even I know what nothing means. It means a fuck ton of something.
Swallowing the bite of pizza, Eshe grabs the bottle of water and twists the cap off. Without removing her gaze from mine, she drinks deeply. “As I was saying, I’m a firm believer in staying ready so you don’t have to get ready. I’ve dealt with Abena Diallo all my life. One of my eyes hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in nine years because it’s always open. So nah, Huntsman, I don’t need you to tell me to be vigilant. And as far as fear? I don’t know her.” She demolishes the rest of the slice, then tosses the crust into the box. “You’re wrong.”
I stare at her, loosely linking my fingers together on my stomach, and silently wait on her to explain, because those are two words I don’t hear often, especially not paired together. And if I do, I guaran-fucking-tee the person doesn’t repeat them. Ever. At least not on this plane.
“This Poison—you believe she’s more dangerous than you or me because she doesn’t have shit to lose and no principles holding her back. That’s not a strength; that’s a weakness. Me? I’ll go to war for mine. I’ll fight dirty. Lie. Cheat. Go to the lowest, filthiest pit in hell, fuck the devil, and then gut him while he’s still shaking from a nut with my pussy on his breath. That’s how I’m coming behind mine. There’s nothing I won’t do, no line I won’t cross, no rule I won’t break to protect those I love. Because without them, I have nothing. The only person more fucked up than one with nothing to lose is the person who has everything to lose—and knows what it’s like to have nothing. They’ll do anything not to go there, to feel that again.”
I don’t move a muscle, but inside? Inside, my heart pounds against my rib cage with huge meaty fists as if it’s trying to punch holes through to get to her. For a second, I don’t recognize the sensation crackling like a live current. It shortens the breath in my lungs, sensitizes my skin until even the slightest caress—like the brush of my shirt or the stale air in the room—feels too much, damn near painful.
That ferocity. That passion. That brutality.
Like a caveman with his first sight of fire, I desire to creep closer on all fours, craving its heat, its beauty. But fear it. Fear the pain of its touch. The intensity of its power that I have no hope of controlling.
So, when that fire throws back the covers and crawls across the mattress, my voluminous T-shirt riding up silken thick thighs, flashing a teasing glimpse of bare plump folds, I don’t move away. Don’t move closer. I’m trapped by my own wants, my own uncertainties, my own inadequacies.
She perches on the edge of the bed like a beautiful exotic bird—no, that’s too easy, too easy. An eagle. Gorgeous, yet cunning, deadly. Ready to strike. And right now, I’m in her sights, her prey.
And fuck if I don’t want to be run down to the ground by her, feel those nails curl and dig into my flesh, draw blood while she fucking feasts.
“You know what I do want to feel again, Huntsman?” she murmurs, shifting to her knees. Her handful of breasts sway free under the gray cotton, momentarily distracting me. That and the shadow of her beaded dark brown nipples. I swallow, my mouth watering for a taste. Just one.
Briefly closing my eyes, I shift my attention back to her face.
If she noticed where my focus was fixed, she doesn’t call me out on it or seem pissed off. Judging by the gleam in her hazel eyes, it might please her.
“I asked you a question. Do you know what I want to feel again?” She scoots back a bit, falling to her ass, bringing her knees up.
I wouldn’t answer even if I could.
And let’s be clear. I can’t.
My shirt falls to her hips, hiding not one goddamn thing. Her legs cradle the prettiest pussy I’ve ever seen. Bare. The same shade of mahogany as the rest of her body on the outside with a delicate pink on the inner lips. Already, she’s glistening, as if just my eyes get her wet. With those shapely legs propped up, I’m blessed with an unrestricted view of her ass’s full lower curves.
Though I make sure to always keep the apartment’s temperature at a cool 62 degrees, I swear the furnace just clicked on in this bitch. Because I’m sweating. It’s like a blacksmith’s bellows took up residence in my chest, and each rise and fall emits enormous blasts of heat and fire.
It requires a strength I didn’t know I possessed not to grab my dick and deliver a punishing stroke and squeeze. But shit, with that utterly perfect pussy framed by her thighs like a fucking Van Gogh painting, cum might decorate the backside of my joggers with just one pump of my fist.
Eshe eases onto her elbows, slowly letting her legs fall to the sides, and fuuuck. A growl rolls up from my gut to my chest and rumbles in my throat. She cocks her head, staring at me.
“You, Huntsman,” she says. “I want to feel you again. And I’m not above keeping count. You owe me an orgasm. What were your exact words? Hol’ up because I want to make sure I quote you correctly.” She taps a fingertip against her cut lower lip. “Riiight. ‘Lick it.’”
Yeah, I did issue that order, didn’t I?
And she followed it, though it hadn’t been with submissiveness. Nothing about the encounter in that freakishly fairy-tale cottage was about submission. It was a fight for dominance all the way until she wiped my seed from her mouth and pulled a gun on me.
Now, here she lies with her legs sprawled wide, demanding the same from me. Ordering I concede to her what she never once gave me. Not even with my dick lodged in the back of her throat.
“No?” That smirk rides her mouth. “That’s cool. I’ll start without you.”
Lowering her back to the mattress, she slides one hand up and over her T-shirt-covered body, cupping her tit, squeezing it. She arches into her caress, loosing a low, sensual moan. The other hand winds a path down her torso, traveling farther until it slips between her thighs and covers her pussy. Another groan dances on the air, only this one is deeper, sexier, drenched with lust.
Abena could send a whole army of Mwuaji soldiers through that front door right now, and I still wouldn’t be able to tear my gaze away from those nimble, elegant fingers tunneling through those swollen, soaked folds.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Eshe’s body twists, slowly undulating on the bed to a silent, hedonistic tune only she can hear but that has me caught up in its intoxicating melody. I’m a willing prisoner, cuffed to this chair as surely as she had me chained to her bed days ago. Now, though, the shackles are hunger, obsession. Invisible but just as strong.
Stronger. Because it’s my own need that keeps me here.
I lick my dry lips as she plays in her pussy, teasing her clit with firm, tight circles. More moisture leaks from her, running down her slit to the crack of her ass. Oh shit, I want to kneel before her, drink it all up. Fucking lift my sheets to my mouth and suck them dry of every drop of her juices.
A shudder rocks her, and she gasps, her legs going so wide, her knees almost press to the mattress. My teeth clench, choking down the roar barreling up from my goddamn soul. The wild rocking and jerking of her hips can only mean one thing—she’s nearing orgasm. She’s reaching for that nut, and it’s without me.
I’m a fucking hypocrite, a head case.
I won’t allow myself to touch her. But I don’t want her to release without me.
This woman is bent on driving me goddamn crazy.
Her grunt punches the air as she drags four fingers through her pussy, spreading the lips wide and thrusting three of them inside her.
“Oh fuck,” she whines. Her breathing is labored as she lifts her hand. Her lashes flutter, and her bright eyes meet mine in a collision of gazes that pilfers whatever air I have left in my lungs. My chest damn near caves from the impact, and I battle the sensation of hanging on to my sanity like a gutter fighter. “If you don’t want it”—she pants—“I do.”
She sticks all four fingers into her mouth, her lips closing around them. On a long, low groan, she sucks them clean. Her tongue flicks against each digit, slipping around each knuckle and supping on every fingertip. She leaves nothing behind but clean brown flesh when she pops her hand free.
But it’s that smile. It’s that fucking smug, slightly unnerving, and wholly beautiful smile that snaps the last of my threadbare restraints.
Before she can lower her hand back to her soaked flesh, I’m on my knees at the edge of the bed, my palms are flattened against the inside of her thighs, and my face is buried in her pussy.
“Oh God. Shit.” Her cry echoes throughout the room, and her body stiffens beneath me as if struck by a bolt of pure electricity. “Malachi!” she screams, her fingers digging into my head, nails scraping my scalp as she shoves my face deeper into her soaking-wet flesh.
But fuck that. It’s not like I’m trying to go anywhere. Not even Jesus himself could come down and rapture my ass away now that her fresh yet musky flavor is coating my tongue. Now that her silken sex is rubbing against my lips. Now that I’m satiating the hunger she started. Fuck her. She started this.
Now I’ma finish it.
I latch onto her clit, graze my teeth over it, then not-so-gently bite. Another scream pierces my hearing, and she quakes beneath me. What feels like a flood of cream messes up my lips, beard, skin.
More, more, always more.
I’m nowhere near done with her yet.
This greed is nowhere near satisfied.
“Again, goddammit. Give it to me again,” she growls. Grasping my head, she lifts it until I meet her gleaming, lust-filled gaze. “Don’t stop until I let you up, got it?”
Yeah, I got it.
Bowing my head, I lap at all that juice. It’s mine, after all. I hauled that nut out of her. It belongs to me. Slipping my hands under her ass, I tilt her up, dragging my tongue from her clit, over the entrance to her pussy, and down to her asshole. I ignore the little sound she emits and the tensing of her muscles.
Like I said, it belongs to me.
I flutter the tip of my tongue over that tight little hole, licking and then sucking, only drawing back when she releases a broken gasp. But by no means am I done. Nah. I need to feel her. All of her. I thrust two fingers into the hole protected by her folds, burying them high and deep.
“Goddamn.” I grunt, pulling them free until only my fingertips remain, teasing the entrance before driving them forward again. “Why this pussy so wet, olori?” Thrust again. “Huh? You gon’ drown me in this shit.”
Her nails claw at and scratch my scalp, my jaws, my shoulders. Growls rumble out of her, and they’re so sexy, I vow to myself right here and now that I’ll feel them roll down my dick as they climb up her throat.
“Fuck me, Malachi,” she snarls. “Fuck me with that mean-ass mouth.”
Her body shudders, her hips twisting in a violent rhythm. The walls of her pussy clench so hard, they almost shove me out, but with my own snarl, I lower my head, suck her clit into my mouth, and shove harder against her, reaching higher inside this too-tight, slick sex. I seek out that smooth, firm patch and press my fingertips against it, rubbing, rubbing, not giving her any mercy.
“Jesus.” She pants, heels digging into the bed. “Malachi…”
“This is what you wanted,” I remind her, clamping an arm around her hips, holding her in place. “C’mon and get this nut like the bad bitch you are. ’Cause ain’t shit good about you.”
I massage her G-spot, never letting up. Her curses burn my ears, spurring me on, fueling me. I attack that little engorged bundle of nerves cresting her sex, licking, sucking, biting. And when her choked scream rends the room seconds before her walls collapse around my fingers, I lift my head, a fierce, brutal satisfaction barreling through me as a stream of clear fluid squirts up from her pussy, spraying my mouth and chin, coating my beard and the front of my shirt.
Lowering my head, I lap at it like sipping from a hose on a hot summer day. When the stream slows to a trickle and then stops, I still sip at her hole, chasing every drop. With a soft whine, she pushes my head away.
“What the fuck was that?” Eshe rasps, easing her legs closed and curling them toward her chest.
I stand, looming over her still-shaking body, a damn-near-primitive pride expanding inside me, filling me at the wild, raw, vulnerable look in her eyes. I’m two seconds away from pounding my fists against my chest like a caveman.
Gripping the bottom of my T-shirt, I whip it over my head and swipe it over my chest, neck, and face. I’ll need to take a shower—we both will—but at this moment, I want to rub her essence into my skin. Mark myself with it.
“I licked it,” I say, tossing the ruined shirt to the floor, edging closer to the bed.
She shakes her head, her curls a glorious tangle on the bedcover. “The hell?” she whispers. “This muthafucka don’t talk and then suddenly he fucking bilingual in coochie and ass.”
The urge to chuckle surges in me. It wars with the need to pounce on her.
Shit.
She has several assassins on her ass, and one of them is the deadliest in the world. And possibly on my ass too since I didn’t complete the contract with Abena. Eshe’s aunt wants her dead and, probably even at this moment, is plotting her next move to eradicate her niece from this earth. I still want blood from both of them.
All this should be at the forefront of my mind, because the shit is real.
But she’s awakened something in me.
I’ve had sex before. Plenty of it when the urge strikes. But I’ve never craved it, and it’s never felt like this. Like I’m going to claw my way out of tissue and bone if I don’t have more. If she doesn’t have more of me. Fucking has never felt … necessary.
Not until now.
And that fucking terrifies me.
Someone becoming necessary is a weakness. Someone becoming necessary is handing my enemies a way to maim me.
To destroy me.
Miriam was the last person who gave me a reason to breathe, to exist. And when she died, I almost did, too. Allowing Eshe to creep into my skin, my bones to be my reason …
No. Never.
My soul fucking rebels at the thought.
Yet … yet that knowledge, that deep-rooted fear doesn’t stop me from edging closer to her.
Her eyes flare wide, excitement lighting them up, as I lift a knee to the mattress—
My phone rings.
I pause, unmoving. I really contemplate saying fuck that phone and continuing with exploring the limits this woman pushes. Discovering who I become when I’m face down in her.
It stops ringing.
Then starts again seconds later.
Shit.
That’s my personal phone, and very few people have the phone number. Even fewer would be calling me. After shoving off the bed, I stride over to the small couch tucked in the corner under the window.
Snatching up my jacket, I remove the cell from the pocket and glance down at the screen.
Jamari.
Flicking Eshe a glance, I press my thumb to the ANSWER button and raise the phone to my ear.
“Yeah.”
“H, I’ve been trying to reach you,” Jamari says, and the urgency in his voice clears the last of the lust seething in my blood.
“What’s going on?”
Eshe sits up, turning around in the bed and facing me. Her jeweled gaze fixes on me, alert, sharp.
“Is Eshe Diallo with you?” I don’t answer, and he huffs out an annoyed breath. I don’t know why he bothered to ask.
Yeah, I might use him to get info for me, but that’s because he’s going to do it anyway. I’ve tried to get Jamari to leave me alone, to go back to being a regular sixteen-year-old who doesn’t associate with a killer. Nothing’s worked so far.
I made the mistake of snapping the neck of a home invader I spotted climbing through a bedroom window. The house had been Jamari’s, and the woman I’d prevented from being raped and probably murdered was his mother. Since Jamari had been in the room, I’d also saved him from witnessing that shit and being scarred for life. Shit, saved him from becoming me. Since that night two years ago, I haven’t been able to get rid of Jamari. And at some point, I stopped trying. Still, I’m not dragging him any more into my world than he already insists on being.
