The Hunter

by Shen, L. J.

  Thrill. Curiosity. Horniness. (Fine, there was always horniness. Sue me.)

  She popped her healthy shoulder up. “Should’ve thought of that before you called me Carrot Top.”

  “You little sh—”

  Pluck.

  She released the second arrow, this time getting the right side of my hoodie. I was now pinned from both sides. She lowered her bow, striding toward me with her chin up, a queen observing a traitor thrown at her feet. My dick was about to slip out of my sweatpants and curl around her ankle like an eager puppy. A weird image, but the sentiment was clear.

  Sailor stopped with her mouth close to mine, and I couldn’t deny the attraction. It was there—alive, swelling, roaring its three-headed, monstrous crown, cutting me open and bleeding me dry. I was on the brink of goddamn madness, caused by the most unassuming, innocent, dorky girl on the planet.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  “I’ll release you if you promise to step away from the door.” Her mouth moved against mine.

  I don’t think she realized just how close we were to kissing territory. How I could demolish her. Effortlessly, I flexed my shoulders, causing her arrows to drop to the floor with a yielding clink. My expression dead, I grabbed her waist, turned her around, and slammed her back against the door, getting in her face now.

  “Better.” I brushed my lips down her nose, pausing half an inch from her mouth. “Much, much better.”

  I grabbed her wrists, bunching them together and pinning them above her head. She winced at the full motion of her shoulder. I wanted to punch myself for forgetting, but honestly, I wasn’t even sure of my birthdate at the moment.

  “Just so we’re clear, you may be my babysitter, but you don’t call the shots. You do not boss me around, you do not make stupid-ass decisions with your body. Finally, you do not fucking hunt me. I’m the hunter here, sweetheart. And you? The goddamn prey.”

  Her eyes blazed with fire, her jaw locked. I wanted to step into her pupils and let them kill me. She was a war prisoner accepting her fate to die a hero, without betraying one national secret.

  “Your name may be Hunter, but make no mistakes—you’ll never catch me.”

  I smirked, trailing my index finger from her jaw down to her neck. She writhed against my body, the space between us shrinking, and not just because of me.

  “Already did, aingeal dian. Want to know something else? I will domesticate you, too.”

  “Let go of me.” Her lips thinned, her voice dancing with barely controlled temper. “I have to go. You heard Lana Alder. She wants my spot. I’m not going down without a fight.”

  “You’re going all the way down to retirement if you fuck your shoulder up.”

  “It’s not for you to decide.”

  “The doctor decided.”

  “You don’t understand!” She stomped, her cheeks pinking.

  I figured there was a story behind her and the Alder chick, but now wasn’t the time to delve into it. Sailor’s breathing became labored. She balled her hands into fists and jerked around, trying to break free from my grasp.

  “Sailor?”

  “What?”

  “Now,” I enunciated.

  “Now what?” She bared her teeth, trying to kick me.

  The need to tame her made my blood boil. I wanted to fight her to the ground and devour her, ending her and ending me.

  Whoa. What?

  “I’d like to cash in on that kiss now.”

  “What?” Sailor’s eyes were the biggest, greenest, funkiest things I’d ever seen. “What are you talking about?”

  She hadn’t forgotten the kiss. I knew because, in the rare times we were in the same room, I sometimes caught her staring at my lips and wondering. I wondered, too. We both wondered all the fucking time.

  “You’re a terrible actress. Granted, probably still better than Lana Alder, but dreadful nonetheless.” I leaned into her. Our breaths mingled. Minty toothpaste from her, coffee and cinnamon gum from me.

  “We…we can’t kiss.” Sailor squirmed, her tits accidentally brushing against my torso through our respective clothes. Her nipples were puckered. “We’re fighting!”

  “All the better. Pissing you off is my only source of entertainment here in Boston, and this kiss is my out-of-jail card. My insurance.”

  “Your monthly payment will go up if you use your insurance, you know.” She quirked one ginger eyebrow. “The next one will be harder to get.”

  “Guess I’ll have to take my fucking chances.” I erased the two inches left between us, crashing my mouth on hers.

  She gasped into our kiss, and I let go of her wrists, knowing damn well she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Sailor let her arms dangle beside her body. I grabbed the side of her face, prying her lips open with my tongue, groaning in pent-up frustration that had been building for weeks, wrestling my tongue deeper into her mouth. I was met with no objection. Sailor’s body went limp, compliant. She was surprisingly submissive. The prey accepted its fate for now. She opened up for me like a flower—mouth, chest, legs spreading apart, blooming, begging for sunrays, meeting my tongue with hers stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust. She pulled at my lower lip with her teeth, hungry, and I ran my hands up and down her neck and face. She tasted sweet, restless.

  She was so drunk on our kiss, I knew she was a second away from falling flat on her ass. I grabbed the backs of her thighs roughly, hoisting her legs up and wrapping them around my waist, pressing her against the door.

  She moaned a soft protest at the same time her warm pussy met my raging cock through our clothes, grinding against me.

  We kissed for ten minutes straight before Sailor realized she was grinding against my hard-on like an ambitious night-shift stripper paying her way through grad school. I could practically feel her pussy lips clutching my shaft through our clothes. She pulled away and buried her face in my neck, shaking like a leaf. Our hearts slammed against each other, and maybe it was because I hadn’t had any action in over a month, but the kiss made me black out a little. It was a euphoric kind of dizziness, like I’d just taken a benzo and was unsure whether it had kicked in or not. I wanted to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her. I usually got a good feel of what chicks wanted from me, but Sailor was impossible to read.

  Knowing she could spend the next couple months with her face in my hoodie—Death by Mortification: Girl, 18, Dies in Hot Roommate’s Arms—I kissed her neck, the only part of her reachable from that angle.

  “Junsu is going to kill me.” Her words melted into my hoodie, muffled by it. Was it just me, or were our heartbeats freakishly loud?

  “Why? You banging the old sport?”

  No comment.

  Now that I was putting my three working brain cells to use, Sailor and her trainer were kind of tight. I would expect it from people who had Olympic ambitions together, and it wasn’t the first time she’d made it sound like he didn’t want her hanging out with dudes.

  Sailor pushed me away, keeping her head down. She picked up her shit and flung herself back to her room, probably to check on the internet if she could get pregnant from dry-humping. I wondered what was wrong with me that I was obsessing over her goddamn shoulder when Da wanted to make confetti out of my skin, Cillian wanted to spread said confetti in the harbor, and Syllie possibly wanted to mince all of us into meatballs.

  Not to mention, I still wasn’t taking any calls from Mom. Some subconscious, petty-as-fuck part of me wasn’t cool with her dumping my ass in random corners of the world, making me other people’s responsibility—especially knowing what I did about where I came from.

  “I still need to talk to him in person,” she yelled from her room.

  “I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.” I arranged my package in my sweatpants, fishing for my phone and checking it.

  Four unanswered calls from Da.

  Two from Cillian.

  Six text messages.

  Athair: I knew you cou
ldn’t be trusted.

  Athair: Where the hell are you?

  Athair: If the answer is in a ditch after an orgy, just know I won’t be bailing you out this time around.

  Athair: I’m done with you, Hunter. DONE.

  Cillian: You take dumb and pretty to an Olympic level.

  Cillian: Legally Boned.

  Why didn’t Beau kiss me like that?

  My mind rummaged through every corner, cell, and drawer to find the answer to that nagging question during the journey to the archery club, while Hunter drove and voice-texted his friends from California.

  My body was still sewing itself back together after bursting with pleasure at my roommate’s touch. No one had ever touched me the way Hunter Fitzpatrick did—like the world was ending and we had to cram all our passion into one defined moment. It terrified me how seductive the man I shared a roof with was. Because that kiss had seemed genuine, ardent, and earnest, but I knew Hunter wasn’t any of those things. In fact, that’s what had landed him under my supervision in the first place.

  I had to step away from my Hunter-induced fog.

  I wondered why I wasn’t more worried about the upcoming showdown with Junsu, who was going to rip me a new one for having the boy text and call him about my shoulder.

  I wondered why I couldn’t even bring myself to freak out about Lana Alder, who seemed to be putting some PR mileage between us and was likely the frontrunner for the Olympics.

  I wondered what Hunter had thought about my naked body yesterday, when he’d found me shivering and crying, trying to step into the hot tub to warm my shoulder muscles so I could massage the swelling away.

  Promptly after wondering all those things, I began to develop a headache.

  I wasn’t naive. I knew I didn’t chart in Hunter’s life outside the lonely Boston bubble his father had locked him in. Out of the walls of the downtown high-rises, college assignments, and spreadsheets, he had friends aplenty. Hookups. Instagram models he flirted with. A buzzing social life, hobbies, and interests that didn’t include me. He gave me the time of day because he didn’t have anything else to do. But he was going to forget about me approximately two hours after our deal was done.

  Focus. Head back in the game, Sailor.

  Two weeks without training weren’t going to kill me, right? I could use them to finally answer the emails from Crystal, the bloodthirsty PR lady Gerald Fitzpatrick had sent my way.

  I chanced a look at Hunter, who was recording a voice message on his phone.

  “Nah, man, I’m straight. Just keeping my head down and waiting for shit to blow over. Celibacy is going well, too. I’m really getting in touch with myself. Especially my right hand.”

  Pause.

  “Thank fuck the girls here are no match for the Cali produce. My dick would be on suicide watch.”

  Hunter killed the engine in front of the archery club, his face still illuminated by the light from his phone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to maim him. That’s what he had to say after making out with me? That the girls here weren’t worth his hard-on? Because I had sufficient evidence to prove otherwise.

  “Thanks for the ride and the delightful conversation,” I mumbled sarcastically at the same time he addressed me, his voice taciturn. “You have ten minutes to break it to Master Dudebro that your ass is on a two-week sabbatical. Non-negotiable. If he gives you trouble about me, just tell him you were too smashed on painkillers, so I had to take matters into my own hands. There is also a sexual innuendo there, CT.”

  “Shocking. Taking a tour in your mind is probably like visiting the Playboy mansion.”

  “Please. Playboy is tame. And dead. Try Xnnx.”

  I realized with a sinking feeling that I was CT when Hunter was in a sour mood, and aingeal dian when he wanted to cop a feel. God, I hated him.

  We stared at each other. He raised his eyebrows, as if to say, Are you waiting for the messiah? Leave.

  I had a million things I wanted to say to him.

  I said nothing.

  “When I agreed to become your trainer, I thought you cared about archery more than boys.” Junsu’s white, pointy teeth flashed in menace, eager to draw blood. He stood behind his desk, tan fingers spread against the light wood like talons. We were circling around the same two subjects: my going to urgent care to treat my inflamed shoulder without telling him, and Hunter. It’d been fifteen minutes, and I was growing tired, hungry, and frustrated. Junsu was the one who’d insisted I continue training after I complained about my shoulder. Now he was upset he hadn’t been there to monitor the checkup?

  As for Hunter, Junsu went ballistic when he heard the boy was the one who’d taken me to urgent care. He even implied Hunter must’ve taken me to a doctor who misdiagnosed my injury purposefully to hinder my training.

  “I do care about archery more than boys!” I glowered at him, the accusation cutting into me after the make-out session this morning.

  “Then what were you doing with him yesterday?”

  How was it his business? I decided to humor him, for no other reason than the fact I knew Junsu wasn’t some perv who had ideas about me. He never saw me that way. I was certain of that. And although I’d promised Gerald Fitzpatrick to keep our deal under wraps, I figured I could trust the one person who was the closest to me outside my friends and family.

  After all, Gerald had no qualms about spreading the rumor I was dating his son.

  “I’ll tell you something about Hunter, but you can’t tell anyone.” I let out a short breath, looking around us, even though I knew we were alone.

  Junsu half-nodded, dragging his fingers along his desk. Sweaty pads, I noticed. He was nervous. Why?

  “You need to promise not to repeat this.” I stabbed my index in the air, feeling my armpits dampen with guilt. I was breaking a promise by telling him, and I never broke my promises. But I couldn’t lose Junsu. My Olympic dream was drifting away from me, one inch at a time, sailing into the arms of Lana Alder, who’d promised to take the Olympics from me for no other reason than she could.

  She’d never cared for this sport, for the craft, only about ruining it for me.

  “Promise,” Junsu spat the word like it filled his mouth with sand. “Now talk.”

  I told him about my agreement with Gerald Fitzpatrick, about Hunter’s sex video, how Hunt and I were becoming friends, but not lovers. I omitted the kiss, because it was a part of a one-off agreement I now considered fulfilled. Junsu pinched the delicate skin of his temple, mulling the information in his head.

  “It is not exactly, how to put? Ethical.”

  His phone lit up with an incoming call. He flipped it over and scowled at me.

  “It’s kosher. Fitzpatrick offered to take me under his wing, like many businessmen do with politicians and sportspeople. It will be mutually beneficial. We’re not breaking any rules.”

  I was big on rules—celebrated them. I had a chip on my shoulder from being bunched together with my dad and brother.

  “But you sold your soul.” He frowned, his expression like a loaded gun.

  “Hunter is a good guy who needs a break. I’m helping him.”

  Truth be told, right now, he was the one doing most of the helping.

  “I don’t like it,” Junsu said. “At all. I want you out of his apartment.”

  “No,” I heard myself answer. My career was on the line—everything I’d ever wanted—and here I was, refusing the number-one archery master in the country. “I already made this deal, and I’m not going to bail on the Fitzpatricks. We’ll agree to disagree on that point.”

  Junsu considered my words, watching his fingers on the desk. It looked like he had aged overnight. His face was marred with wrinkles like battle scars. It occurred to me he might be going through something, too, that he was an actual human, with dreams and expectations and heartbreaks.

  “Very well. I’ll take this into consideration. In the meantime, you will continue training as usual.”

  “Junsu…�
� I took a breath, shaking my head. “I can’t.”

  “This is the way I train. In truth, you cannot afford two weeks off.”

  “But I—”

  “You will train, or you will look for another trainer.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong.” I heard a voice behind my back as the door to Junsu’s office swung open. Hunter swaggered in, looping my car keys around his finger.

  I closed my eyes and drew a ragged breath. Please, God, no.

  “She’s on a two-week rest period. Doctor’s orders.” Hunter towered a head and some change over Junsu, even from his place by the door, across the room. “C’mon, Sailor. Let’s hit the road.”

  “You.” Junsu narrowed his eyes at Hunter, his entire body shaking with quiet, simmering rage. “You took her to a doctor she doesn’t know like it’s a butcher shop. You don’t know who she is, her athletic profile. How should I know you don’t want to obstruct her Olympic quest?”

  “How?” Hunter blinked, making a show of treating Junsu like a world-class idiot. He was good at it—a hurricane you wanted to chase, jam-crammed with charisma, humor, and self-assurance. “Hmm, let’s see. First of all, I’m not a psycho. Second, yeah, again, I’m not a goddamn psycho. Thirdly, why would I want to hinder Sailor’s efforts? And even if I would, because I’m an ungodly asshole of massive proportions, why would I go through the incredible, excruciating effort of bribing a doctor into breaking his Hippocratic Oath?”

  He let that sink in for a second before continuing. “Besides, it’s only two weeks, not two months. Things could get far worse for her if she continues using that Hulk-sized shoulder.” Hunter jerked his chin. “How do I know you’re not trying to hinder her Olympic efforts?” He folded his arms over his chest, squinting at Junsu comically. “Making her train in this state and pushing her around.”

  To my surprise, Junsu began to cough, taking a good ten seconds to breathe regularly again.

  “Are you accusing me of something? She needs to train.”

  “She needs to rest,” Hunter countered, stepping deeper into the room. “And if you suggest otherwise one more time, or threaten to quit training her because she’s following doctor’s orders, I swear I’ll take this to the local news and tell every asswipe who gives a crap that you’re putting your athletes at risk.”