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“You were talking,” she pants, the words matching the rhythm of my thrusts. “To them. Weren’t you?”

That’s not remotely what I expected her to say. I bury myself to the hilt, and she slumps down, moaning into the pillow.

“The gods?” I ask carefully

Her cunt flutters around my cock in response. Maybe she doesn’t know about post-murder sex. Maybe she’s never fucked a Hunter before.

Maybe I’m her first, a thought that makes my jaw ache with need.

“They’re here,” she gasps into the pillow. “Aren’t they?”

I grab her hair and jerk her head up. Start fucking her again. She feels them, too. It’s a dizzying thought.

“Yeah.” I pound into her, our flesh slapping. She grunts with each impact. “They wanted me to kill someone.”

Her cunt clenches down when I say that, fluttering almost like another orgasm. I drag her up to me, pressing her back against my chest, still pummeling my cock inside her sweet, clenching cunt. I don’t want to talk about the gods.

“You like that idea, don’t you? Me killing someone out there?” I breathe the question into her ear, and she doesn’t have to answer, because I feel it, the way those words set her blood on fire.

“No,” she moans.

“Liar.” I reach down to rub her clit as I fuck her, and she keens and rolls her hips to match my rhythm. “Maybe I did.” I nip at the tender skin of her throat, tasting her pulse. “Maybe it got me so fucking hard I had to come right back to her and fuck you until you can’t see straight.”

She’s going to come again, and I know I’m going to come with her. It was never like this with Mary. I couldn’t tell her what I was. Couldn’t fuck her like this afterward, either.

“You—wouldn’t—dare—” Penelope pants out, slamming her hips back on me with each word.

I rub her clit faster, my fingers slick with her arousal, and she drops back down on all fours, moaning her pleasure into the pillow, her legs shaking wildly, like she can barely hold herself up.

“Come on, darling,” I whisper into the ridge of her spine. “Come for me. I need to feel it.”

Penelope screams into the bed, and her body releases, muscles contracting in fast, rhythmic pulses around my cock. I plunge as deep into her as I can, and that’s all it takes for me to come, too. I groan as I erupt inside her pussy, my own pleasure pulsating up into my belly. That release is exactly what I needed. That’s why the kill wasn’t enough. I needed both it and this.

Penelope collapses down on the mattress, dragging herself off my dick in the process. For a moment, I’m not sure what to do. What I want to do is collapse beside her and draw her up in my arms and nuzzle against the back of her neck, and maybe tell her about the kill if she wants to listen. I don’t know why, but I like the idea of it, sharing that intimacy with her.

But I don’t move. I stay kneeling, watching her breathe fast against the mattress, her hair spilling out beside her. Then she rolls over onto her side, looking up at me, her face flushed.

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

I’m not sure how to take that. Penelope keeps rolling until she’s lying on her back, one hand pressed against her belly, her legs pressed up beside me. She blinks at me with her big doe eyes, and I can’t stop myself from leaning over her and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Did you really kill someone?” she whispers.

I pull back so I can look at her. Her expression is serious. Worried.

I consider my options. I consider lying to her. But it feels wrong.

“Yeah,” I say softly, and when she hisses out through her teeth, I add quickly, “It was clean. Won’t get connected to you.”

“You don’t know that,” she snaps. “You could have had some of my hair on your jacket or something⁠—”

“I didn’t.” Of course I don’t know if that’s true. It didn’t even occur to me at all. The idea of DNA evidence is still alien to me, still something that seems like magic, and it doesn’t matter to Hunters regardless. Any scraps of ourselves we leave behind—fingerprints, saliva, cum, hair—are always inconclusive. It doesn’t register as it should. But Penelope’s not a Hunter, and I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some of her hair or flakes of skin wound up in that room.

“Do they have you on file?” I ask.

Her eyes glimmer. “My fingerprints are.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about fingerprints, do you?” I reach over to brush her hair away from her eyes, and she catches my wrist, still glaring at me.