Page 62

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

I step closer to her. She doesn’t step away. I suppose that’s something.

“You said Hunters don’t care about humans,” I begin, and Penelope stops breathing, just for a moment. “That’s not true.”

I’m right next to her now. She’s fixed the phone’s light on my chest, but her eyes are looking at my face in the dark.

“Yeah, I’m sure you cared about Mary,” she spits out.

And I hear it. The jealousy in the words, as cold and cruel as a knife. I grab her wrist and pull her up to me. The phone slips out of her hands and lands in the mulchy leaves so the light fans up like a fountain, casting her face in shadows.

She looks nothing like Mary. It’s strange I ever thought she did.

“I loved her,” I say, still squeezing Penelope’s wrist. With my free hand, though, I cup her face, forcing her to look up at me. “But I was never honest with her. She thought I was a human man.”

Penelope doesn’t say anything, and so I listen to the torrent of her emotions instead. It’s a confusing jumble: the jealousy and anger, of course, but there’s a faint tremor of trepidation, and beneath it all a heat and hopefulness that swells my cock as much as her scream did.

“What I did with you,” I murmur, leaning close. “At the motel. Fucking you after a kill—that was never an option with her.”

“If you think that’s romantic, it’s not,” Penelope says darkly.

I squeeze her chin tighter, forcing her head upward. “I’m not trying to be romantic,” I say. “I’m telling you the truth. For a hundred years, no one could compare to her. To Mary.”

Penelope stares at me.

“But then I met you.” My voice feels rough. “And you don’t compare to her either. You’re something completely different.”

Penelope tries to jerk away from me, and all that confusing blend of emotions is heightened now, as wild as a summer thunderstorm. But I don’t let her go. I use my full strength to drag her close to me.

She doesn’t fight it.

“You know what I am,” I say. “You know exactly what I’m capable of. You know the whole fucking truth of me in a way Mary couldn’t. But you’re human. And I’ve always preferred humans.” I lean down, breathing her in. “I like reading your emotions,” I whisper. “Smelling your blood. Hearing your heartbeat. I like it when you fight back against me, when you hurt me.”

Penelope’s breathing heavier now. “You might prefer humans,” she says. “Well, so do I.”

“Do you?” I force her chin up again, and her lips part, her eyes shining in the dark. “Can a human ever really understand you?” My heart thumps furiously in my chest, and so does Penelope’s. It’s the loudest thing in the woods right now. “Understand how you grew up? Who your family is? Could you have ever told a human about the First Death with your sister?”

Penelope breathes out, her eyes huge and luminous in the dark.

“I won’t ever make you do something you don’t want to do,” I whisper, loosening my grip on her chin. If she tries to pull away, I’ll let her go. “But if there’s something you want to do that no human could understand⁠—”

She sucks in her breath, sharp and tight, and grabs at my wrist, although she doesn’t pull it away.

“I don’t want you to be Mary,” I say. “I’ve spent the last hundred years trying to find another Mary, and the only thing that put a stop to it was you.”

Penelope stares at me for a long time, and her emotions flicker so wildly I can hardly follow them anymore. All I know is she isn’t angry anymore, and that there’s a heat simmering off her that I don’t think has anything to do with lust.

“I told myself I would never do this,” she finally whispers. “But you—you almost make me want to change my mind.”

The wind gusts suddenly, a cold, damp blast from the north, and Penelope falls into me. For one stupid minute, I think the wind pushed us together, but when her mouth lands on mine, I know she did it herself. She kisses me with a fire that scorches my skin, her hands tangling roughly up in my hair. And I kiss her back, moaning softly because I thought I’d never get to kiss her again.

“I shouldn’t do this,” she whispers against my mouth, only to kiss me again. “I shouldn’t want you like this.”

“You can stop any time,” I say into her jaw, right before I sink my teeth into her skin, marking her. She can stop. She’ll still be mine, though.

But she doesn’t stop. Her kisses grow hungrier and more forceful, until she’s not kissing me really but biting me, her teeth slashing down into my lips to draw blood. The taste spills over my tongue, coppery and bright, and I stop holding myself back. I drag her around, shove her against the trunk of the big pine tree soaring up next to the creek. She rolls her hips against me and grabs at my jacket like she wants to wrench it away.

The wind howls around us, and the night is even blacker than before. And I can feel them somewhere in the shadows. The gods.