Letting go of the door, he swiped an arm around her waist, lifted her clear off the ground, and kissed her in a way that made me blush.
Lord, I felt like a peeper watching them.
The woman was back on her feet again, laughing as she twisted out of his embrace.
They started toward the pavilion. Halfway across, the man looked over his shoulder and his eyes narrowed exactly on where I stood.
I sucked in a sharp breath. A heartbeat passed and then he looked away, placing his hand on the woman’s lower back in a possessive way.
I crept forward. The man had to be like Hunter, but the woman? Her skin was rosy and she looked human, way more human than Hunter and this man. Then again, what did I really know?
I looked back to the lodge. There would have to be some kind of phone in there, but I was hesitant. What if there were more like Hunter inside? Would they hurt me?
Real smart of me to think of that now, and I couldn’t help but think that might have been why Hunter had told me not to leave the cabin.
Worrying my bottom lip, I stepped out of the gazebo, unsure of what I should do next. My hasty, panic-fueled plan crumbled like falling rocks. Giving up and going back to the cabin could mean certain death. Going into that lodge could also mean death. And what had I been thinking, involving a friend in this mess? With Hunter, I probably had a shot at surviving this.
A shot—not a promise, not guarantee. A huge part of me wanted to scream this wasn’t fair, but I thought about the kid I had in my office last week—a boy who was about to flunk out his senior year. He’d ended up with me to see if there were any issues hindering him with his studies and I’d discovered that he’d made it all the way through high school with a severe learning disability. The only chance he had was to get with several tutors. It might not work—there was a good chance that it was too little too late, but what had I told the student?
“With a tutor you have a chance, a shot at passing,” I had said.
And the student had taken that shot. By running, I was lessening any real chance I had at surviving this.
If there was any real chance at all.
…
The slab of wood was supposed to be a horse, because I’d always thought there was something majestic about those creatures, but the torso had taken on a shape that somehow resembled the curve of a woman’s sweetly rounded hips.
And then there were the breasts.
Last time I checked, horses didn’t have breasts that filled a man’s hand perfectly.
Glaring at the chunk of wood, I tossed it across my study, where it bounced off a chair harmlessly, joining a pile of crap I’d given up on carving—a pile of crap featuring a lot of breasts.
Shit.
I slid down in my seat, toeing myself around in a large circle. Restlessness itched under my skin. I was getting tired of seeing the inside of my study—the books I’d read a million times, the Internet I was sure I’d reached the end of, and the fucking pile of carved breasts.
My gaze slid to the door.
But the walls in here, the books, the Internet, and even the disturbing pile of wood were better than what waited for me out there.
I pushed myself into another circle.
While Serena and I had been talking in the kitchen, when I’d touched her face, I’d seen the slivers of arousal around her, and even now, my cock immediately came to life in response. So did another kind of hunger. It clawed at my gut, burned my throat, because I knew how so very fucking sweet she had tasted.
It was why I’d holed myself up in here, because self-control was a relatively new thing I was practicing in life.
A year or so ago, if I wanted something or someone, I went after it, balls to the wall, or so they say. I never forced a woman. I didn’t need to. They flocked to me, sometimes more than one at a time. It had been a long, long time since I actually wanted a woman in particular. Usually they were nameless faces and bodies, a long steady stream of getting off and getting fed.
I didn’t need to feed—not after the recent Luxen kill, and the opal-encased anklet helped conserve energy and killed part of that need, but it wasn’t a complete fix.
More like a nicotine patch for the chain smoker. It did nothing for my oral fixation.
My cock swelled and my eyes rolled back as I toed another circle behind the desk. I was craving—craving a taste of a human, both sexually and for feeding. Fuck. The sex I could get behind, but the feeding? Humans did very little for us.
I needed to go into town, find the first woman with all her teeth and a half decent body. Well, a woman really didn’t need all her teeth for what I had in mind.
Letting my head fall against the back of the chair, I groaned. While Serena had slept the past two days, I’d kept a watchful vigil over her. Either sitting by her bed like a goddamn nurse or loitering out on the deck. That’s what I’d been doing when she woke up. It was also why I was so damn pissed.
God, my cock was still hard as a motherfucker…
My cell phone went off, ringing and clattering around the drawer in the desk. Sitting up, I grabbed it, frowning when I saw Dex’s number.
“What’s up?” I said, kicking my feet onto the desk.
“Nothing much,” came the reply. “Eliza and I were down at the main house a few minutes ago.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“And I’m wondering if you’re missing anything. Like, maybe, something that’s barely five and half feet, a head full of pretty, blond hair. Nah, honey, your hair is beautiful and not just pretty,” Dex said, his voice a bit farther away from the phone.
“Anyway, just sort of wondering…”
I dropped my feet onto the floor. “Aw, shit.”
There was a deep, highly amused chuckle on the other end. “She’s up in the gazebo.
Funny that she’s there. You better head up before anyone else sees her. P.S. You suck at the whole babysitting thing.”
“Fuck off.” I was already at the door, throwing it open. I added, “Thanks, man.”
“Anytime.”
Son of a bitch.
I was going to strangle her. Better yet, I was going to strangle her and then lock her in her room. On second thought, I was going to skip the strangle part, go straight to the locking her in the bedroom and then tie her to the bed.
Hmm…that was a really good idea.
Damn it, Dex was right. I did suck at this babysitting shit. I should’ve expected that Serena wouldn’t listen or would try to make a run for it. Humans had this remarkable ability of making incredibly horrid, emotion-based decisions.
Not even bothering to maintain any normal sort of speed, I shot down the driveway and came to the main road. A strange sort of feeling descended. There was definitely anger balling inside, but there was another thing—a thing I couldn’t quite name. But I was definitely back to adding the strangling part into my evening plans.
I reached the pavilion within a frail, sluggish human heartbeat, and immediately felt the presence of others. They were close—close to Serena. And that little idiot was just sitting in the gazebo, with her head in her hands.
My chest clenched as I slowed my step, my eyes settling on the thick trees crowding the back of the lodge. I recognized the others; they were new to the commune and young, eager to prove themselves to the others. Their leader, a punk named Raz, drifted forward, more shadow than mass.
Take one more ssstep and it will be your lassst.
For a moment, I thought Raz was going to challenge me and I welcomed the idea of kicking some ass, but he drifted back. Seconds later, the little group was gone, but I knew that wouldn’t be the last I saw of them.
They’d been stalking Serena, and by the looks of it, she had no clue.