Page 33

This time, I break the kiss. I pull away, so that I can look down at her flushed face, her tousled hair.

“You liked being kidnapped,” I say.

“I liked fighting you,” Penelope pants, her fingers still tangled up in my hair, like she’s about to slam my head against the bed’s headboard and split it open. “And I liked—” She stops, her eyes searching mine. “Did you bring the mask?”

The question comes out quiet and raspy, and for a moment, I’m paralyzed that she knows. She knows I’m only driving her to Clifwell because I’m going to ruin her protest by killing Nicholas Wolrath.

But no. The only emotion radiating off her of is pure, wild lust.

“I take the mask everywhere,” I say, which is not true. But it is here. I want it to be the last thing Nicholas Wolrath sees before he dies.

Penelope smiles.

Fuck, that smile nearly undoes me. It’s a wicked smile, a smile that makes me think of plunging a knife into someone’s heart, of feeling hot blood pulse over my hands. Mary never smiled like that. Mary was sweet and soft. Mary didn’t ride my cock with a knife to my throat.

And that’s what I want. I want blood, I want knives. I want to bend Penelope over the side of the bed and make her scream like I’m killing her.

“Get it,” she says in her whiskey-rough voice.

Right now, with her smiling at me like that, I have no intention of refusing. But I still manage to restrain myself long enough to say, “Why should I?”

She looks me dead in the eye. “Because I want to suck your cock while you’re wearing it.”

I nearly come on the spot.

I don’t let her know that, though. She’s hungrier when she’s being antagonized. I learned that well enough yesterday.

“Is this a trap?” I say. “I go out to the car and your sister attacks me?”

Penelope rolls her eyes. “You’re a Hunter. You would know if I’m lying.” Then she tightens her grip on my hair, pulling my face close to her so that when she speaks, I feel her breath on my lips. “And what makes you think I couldn’t kill you myself?”

Oh, we both know she couldn’t kill me. Not unless I let her. But right now, my cock is so hard that I’d do anything she asked. Even die for her.

“Get it,” she snarls, then shoves me away. I let her, landing easily on my feet. Her eyes drop immediately to my erection, which I’m sure is extremely evident even though my clothes. For a moment, neither of us speak. The only sound is the wind outside, low and howling like a woman in pain.

“Don’t move,” I tell her.

Her smile widens, and she spreads her legs wide and rubs her fingers down the seam of her pants.

I don’t care that she disobeyed me. I want her to disobey me, to fight me. I leave her on the bed and throw the door open, letting in a billow of snow. It’s falling so thickly the parking lot is in a grayish-white haze, my car already covered in an inch of powder. I leave the door the open as I open the trunk, peel back the flooring, grab my mask.

The glass eyes stare up at me, vaguely accusing.

“You’ll get your blood,” I whisper, slamming the trunk down hard. It sounds like a gunshot in the storm. “You’ll get your revenge. Just let me have this.”

Silence.

I leave the car. Leave the outside world entirely. All that matters is the little twelve-by-twelve square of the motel room and what I’m going to do in there, even though I know I shouldn’t.

I pull the mask on as I walk across the parking lot, feeling the weight of it settle across my skin. I only wear the mask when I’m going to kill. Until yesterday, anyway.

Another reason not to do this, and yet I step into the open doorway anyway, my boots splashing in the melting snow. And then everything stops.

Because Penelope is waiting for me on the bed, she like I told her to.

Except now she’s completely naked.

For a moment, all I can do is stare at her, the wind and snow whipping in around me. I didn’t see her yesterday, not like this. I felt her body beneath her clothes and I tasted her skin and I came inside her, but I didn’t see her, the soft rolling planes of her hips and breasts, marked here and there with colorful tattoos like way stations. A rabbit on her hip, a ring of thorny roses around her navel, a scatter of stars falling across her bicep. All had been covered by her clothes like secrets for me to unwrap.