Page 20 of Pleasure & Prey: Vol. 2

I mull that thought over in my head before tilting my chin forward in agreement. “Okay. Does that mean you’ll answer what I ask you?”

His stare lasts a few more seconds, eyes seeming to lighten to a ghostly, ethereal blue. “Yes.” The word is simple, honest, and seems to echo in the woods. Jed gently tugs on my arm again, pulling me down the path until the structure fully comes into view.

It’s a bridge. A wooden bridge, starting a few feet from where the ground drops away from under the now-grassy path. I want to stop, to stare at it, to take it in as I wish I had my camera, but Jed pulls me along with him, onto the wooden planks of the bridge and up.

My hand goes out, fingers trailing along the wooden railing as we walk, until a sharp jolt of pain makes me hiss between my teeth, jerking my arm away from it as it burns.

Naturally, I’ve cut myself on something. The scrape is shallow and long, stretching from the underside of my wrist up towards my elbow, though stopping halfway.

Wonderful. Now I’m probably going to get Ebola or wood-tetanus.

Still, the view of the gentle river below is worth it. Jed stops and drops my hand, having not noticed my cut just yet as he leans his arms on the bridge’s rail to stare at the water as well. “I like coming here,” he admits. “There are trails on the other side, but they aren’t used much anymore. I don’t keep going unless I see signs of someone being here.” His words are thoughtful, explanation easy and sensible.

I lean against the railing as well, my ears flooded with the sound of water as my eyes take in every inch of the woods and the river below the old wooden bridge. “It’s so pretty,” I admit, almost ruefully. “What nature preserve are we in?” I don’t mean it as a prodding, escape-type question. But Jed’s snort and his baleful look make me realize that’s exactly what it seems like. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. I was just curious,” I mutter with a roll of my eyes and my weight shifting from my heels to the balls of my feet.

“You can ask whatever you want,” he tells me after another minute of me mentally painting the scenery into my memory. I don’t know if I’ll be back, after all. “Just remember the way back if you decide to run.” He barely sounds put out about it, and it occurs to me he expects me to run.

But I don’t ask right away. Though the questions bubble to my lips and I know they won’t last behind my gritted teeth for much longer. If not now, when?

“Why were you covered in blood yesterday?” I ask, almost wishing I didn’t. “When you killed that guy like three days ago. You told me it was human blood.”

“It was,” he agrees, dipping his head without looking at me. When I look at him I can tell he’s searching for the least offensive or horrifying answer he can, but then he sighs, resigned, and adds, “One of my friends needed something cut up for…disposal.” Even with him muttering the last word, I still hear it, and it still sends tremors down my spine.

“Was it someone who was bad?” I whisper, barely audible over the rushing of the water. “Like the guy from the marsh?”

“I don’t know,” Jed admits with a shrug. “I didn’t think to ask. He showed up when you were asleep yesterday morning, asked me for help, and left. I was trying to time it so you wouldn’t know anything about it. It was…bad timing all around.” He grins wryly, the look dropping from his face a moment later. “I’m sorry. Even though I don’t know anything about the guy, or what happened, he probably wasn’t an upstanding citizen.”

Shudders run up and down my spine as I stare at the water. But there’s nothing I can do about that person. That blood. Or that murder. It wasn’t Jed, and something in me unclenches in relief at that, though it shouldn’t matter to me which of them had done it.

Murder is murder, after all. And Jed had helped. Even if he’d only helped at the very end. Surely that should stir up my fear and my disgust more than it does.

My eyes are drawn to the blood on my wrist, welling at the scratch from the rough wood of the railing. “Why did you…” God, I really shouldn’t ask. I should let this particular question die. “I’m not judging,” I say, as if for some reason it should matter to me if he’s offended by the question.

But that draws his attention towards me in full, and I feel the moment he sees the cut on my arm. “Why do you care when there’s a dead guy’s blood on me? Why do you…?” I trail off, unable to finish my question. Unable to ask why he’s so quick to lick the blood of murdered men off of me.

A low, grating chuckle leaves him, and Jed reaches out gingerly, his fingers encircling my wrist, just under my palm. He tugs, lightly enough that I know he’d let me pull away, and gingerly pulls my arm up toward him. “It’s not just a dead man’s blood that I care about.” When did his voice get so hoarse? So rough and low in my ears? “It’s just something about seeing blood on you, Saylor.” Instead of saying anything else, he turns my wrist to face him, his eyes locked on mine. I know what he’s going to do.

I know I should stop him.

But I only loosely curl my fingers, my breath stuttering in my chest as his tongue darts out to run up my arm, over the line of still-wet blood from the cut. It doesn’t hurt; it tingles. The warm wet sensation of his tongue is strange against my skin as he cleans up my arm way more thoroughly than he needs to.

Like he’s looking for any missed speck or drop of it before he can let me go.

“That can’t taste good,” I whisper, and his eyes darken at the words.

“It tastes better than you can imagine,” he replies in a strained whisper. My heart pounds as he surveys the cut, blood welling at its irritated edges just for him to catch it once more on his tongue. “When did this happen?” he asks, distracted, when once again there’s no blood for him to lap up like a cat.

“Just…just now.” There’s a lump in my throat, but that’s not my biggest problem. No, I’m much more concerned at the warmth spreading through my body; pooling between my clenched thighs.

I barely even notice when he pulls me another step closer. My brain certainly doesn’t register anything until my back hits the railing, his body pressed against mine and one of his hands still holding my wrist up to his face, while the other one presses against the rail beside my hip.

“It can’t taste good,” I say again, brain short circuiting. There’s no other explanation for why I’m still here. For why my body is begging for him to close the scant centimeters between us so I can rub against him like a cat.

“You don’t think it can?” His eyes slant to mine, impossibly blue in the light filtering through the trees. “You really don’t?”

I shake my head, extra-aware of the fact he’s sliding impossibly closer, until his body presses against mine, thigh slotting between both of my own.

And fuck, I should really push him away.