“She escaped at the same time as us, but she isn’t with us,” I explain to my father.
When he roars like an animal, I quickly add on, “I could get her for you.”
That secures his attention.
“You can?” He sounds like a child being promised a bike for Christmas.
I nod while deliberating how to deliver my next sentence. “But she doesn’t look like that anymore. She’s. . .ah. . . impure,” I settle on.
Anyone would swear I admitted to lacing his drink with arsenic for how loud he gags. “She’s not innocent?”
“No.” I drag out the short word dramatically. Ashlee’s photo makes her look like a preacher’s daughter. She certainly isn’t one of them. Well, not anymore.
“But she is?”
My father steps closer to Megan, his interest now notable. He trails his eyes down her frame partly hidden by my body, loitering on the modest length of her skirt longer than her eyes.
“She looks pure, just in a different way.” He returns his eyes to mine. “Is she like us?”
He doesn’t mean mentally challenged. He’s asking if she’s a fighter. He likes his targets to be innocent, but with a hostile edge that will push the hunt into overtime.
It takes a mammoth effort, but I squeak out, “Yes.”
My father smiles a grin like Hannibal inSilence of the Lambsbefore holding out his hand in offering to Megan. She takes it, although hesitantly. She is good at reading people. She knows she is amongst greatness.
Her eyes rocket to mine when my father leans in to take a deep whiff of her hair.
“It’s okay,”I silently mouth when his nose trails down her neck, over the bumps of her erratically heaving chest and past her quivering stomach.
She squeaks when he thrusts his nose between her thighs to authenticate her purity, but since she trusts me, she doesn’t slap him away as predicted. Although disappointed by her lack of gall, I’m appreciative of her submissiveness.
My father growls, his stamp of approval delivered without words. “Who would have known? The lack of purity these days had me wondering if women were born devirginized.”
He laughs, prompting me to mimic him. I either laugh or be subjected to torture. Nobody wants the latter, not even a madman like me. I prefer delivering the punishments, not being on the receiving end of them.
“Charles!” my dad barks.
Like magic, Charles appears out of nowhere.
“Take. . .”
“Megan,” I fill in.
“Megan to her room and order her some supper. . .”
“We’ve already eaten.”
My father continues talking as if I never did, “Then draw her a bath. Let’s relax her muscles before exhausting them.”
When Charles places his hand on Megan’s back to guide her into my father’s manor, her eyes stray to mine.
“Go on,” I say, demanding she follows Charles’ lead.
I’m not going to lie; it isn’t easy for me to do. She killed for me. She maimed for me. She would go to the ends of earth for me. But everything she has or will do for me, the man standing next to me has already done.
“What time will the show begin?”
My father stops watching Megan’s reluctant retreat to shift on his feet to face me. His pupils are massive, his excitement palpable. Although he doesn’t like my deep snarl, he isn’t stunned by it. Hunting has never been my thing. I like a slow, panther-like game, the watching from afar before creeping up on them unaware. I don’t like my women reeking of fear, sweat, and blood before sleeping with them. I like them smelling that way once I’m done with them.
