by Lexie Ray
All of a sudden, in a frantic fit of passion, Hunter tugged his shirt off, and yanked his pants down, then his boxer-briefs. No sooner than she had, his member sprung up, bouncing hard from his underwear. He looked so much bigger than he had felt in her hand. She wrapped her warm hand around him again and began stroking, hungry to have him on top of her, dying to feel him inside.
Ash guided her to the bed, stepping out of his jeans that were balled around his ankles and removing her bra at the same time in a furious effort to unite. It seemed their kisses evolved in fits and starts, to a slow, tender ebb and flow that made Hunter weak in the knees, as Ash freed her from her jeans.
By the time he was hooking his fingers under the lace of her panties and pulling them downward, Hunter was wet, already expanding in tight sensual throbs of expectation, the memory of his tongue between her legs fresh in her mind.
Ash laid her onto the bed, kneeling between her legs, and gazed down the length of her. She was absolutely smoldering. The way her smooth, long legs spread wide open around him, revealing the glistening pink slit that he would soon enter, made Ash so hard he felt himself secrete in preparation to penetrate.
He brushed his fingertips, his warm hands, lightly then more firmly up and down Hunter’s inner thighs, teasing her with how closely he could come to the apex of her body without gracing her with a deeper touch. Hunter was reeling with need, the sweet ache between her legs growing unbearable. She began to squirm, her hips rising and falling towards his fingers, hoping to catch them inside.
Ash lowered down to his elbows, leaning further in-between her legs. She could feel his warm breath grazing her skin, cooling the raw heat between her legs. She moaned at the sensation, suddenly grasping for his shoulders, pulling him up to her.
“I want you now,” she said in a manic whisper, losing her sense of rational thought.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go down on you again?” he asked looking up into her eyes.
She answered with her body, pulling him towards her until he hovered directly above. Hunter raised her hips, noticing the heat coming off of his loins, as the hot aching throb increased within her.
Her hand found its way around him once again and began stroking in a slow firm rhythm. She watched as Ash’s eyes floated closed in response. Seeing him turned on, watching him respond to her touch, was intensely arousing.
His eyes drifted open, his gaze met hers, and Hunter inserted his tip in-between her legs. The initial contact was incredible, but when the hard, smooth length of him thrust slowly in, penetrating her deeper and deeper until he was met with firm resistance all the way inside, Hunter’s body began to quake with intense pleasure, clenching around him, expanding and contracting in adjustment to his large size.
He held himself deep within Hunter, allowing her body to get used to him. He could feel her responding. The way she was throbbing tightly against him made his body naturally strain harder. He pressed his lips against hers, kissing her, and began to gently grind in small circles.
A moan escaped her lips, through their kisses, until Ash had no choice but to lift away and watch as she arched her head back riding the wave of pleasure he was giving her. It was beyond sexy. He could watch her indefinitely.
He fit so perfectly inside her. Hunter braced her legs around him, holding him close to her, almost resisting the subtle pumps and thrusts he was delivering. She loved how he felt deep inside, the way his pubic bone aligned perfectly with the throbbing hot button between her legs, sliding slippery around and generating the most delicious form of friction she’d ever felt.
“Do you like this?” he asked, whispering into her ear, and grinding into her.
Hunter moaned, thrusting her hips higher, wanting more. It was building inside her, the hot ache increasing, throbbing, as her body became more and more sensitive to each new sensation he was giving her.
“You feel so good,” she whispered back.
Suddenly, he stopped all movement, teasing her. She began thrusting, furiously reclaiming motion, desperate to resume the building heat of their slow grind. It was almost cruel until she realized what he was doing.
Ash was letting her body crave him. The heat of her sensitive mound flared up, hotter than molten lava, beckoning him to thrust against her. It caused the slow build to skyrocket. Her hips continued to rise and fall beneath him, eager to inspire him to action.
And she did.
All of a sudden, Ash began thrusting into her firmly, causing an intense wave of pleasure to flood through Hunter’s entire body. She relaxed, laying back, loosing the grasp of her legs around his waist, and allowed him to pump up and down, harder and faster within her.
Hunter felt so tight, slippery wet around him, and the faster he thrust, the better it felt. The friction, her moaning, the ever hardening strain of his body inside of her, all of it overwhelmed his senses with such immense pleasure that Ash felt he could explode at any moment, but he needed Hunter to come first.
“Tell me what you like,” he said.
“That feels good,” she said. “Everything you do feels amazing.”
She could barely get the words out. The intensity had built up so high inside her, sweeping ever higher that she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. He was bringing her there. He was so deep inside, so hot, so hard, that it was driving her to the highest heights of pleasure, higher than she had ever thought possible.
Without warning, he slowed his pace down to a deep grind, and that’s all it took. The pressure and slippery heat against her, his hard smooth strokes within her caused Hunter’s body to uncontrollably peak in an explosion of wet, hot, sensuous flutters that rippled through her entire body, causing her to moan out in ecstasy at the intense pleasure Ash was giving her.
He could feel her orgasm, the clenching, the surge of rhythmic contractions, and it took him over the edge as well.
Hunter leaned up and kissed him, as he exploded inside her, and she rode the final waves of pleasure that were coursing through her body.
There was no better feeling in the world than being with the man she loved.
Chapter Nine Sarah flipped through the laminated pages of an oversized menu, not really reading anything.
A waitress hovered over her, tapping the eraser side of her pencil against a pad of paper.
“What’s good here?” asked Sarah without any investment in the answer.
“It’s a diner. We got good diner food,” said the waitress, who was at least a decade older than Sarah and half as patient.
“You know what, I’ll just have a coffee,” Sarah said, giving up on the thought of food. “But leave this here in case I change my mind.” She tucked the giant menu at the far side of her table between the ketchup and the window.
She could feel the waitress’s eyes on her, her lingering gaze, but Sarah wasn’t going to feel guilty about sitting here for hours at the cost of a cup of coffee. It was two in the morning. The diner was virtually empty, except for a rugged looking gentleman at the far end of the bar that Sarah had pegged for a trucker, and a handful of teens, giggling excitedly two booths down, going over the details, blow by blow, of the rock concert they had just attended. Sarah could take up the table for as long as she wanted to as far as she was concerned.
She couldn’t get Hunter’s face out of her mind. The similarities to her own, as well as the differences, kept emerging in her thoughts. She was tall for a young woman, an inch taller than Sarah. They had the exact same eyes. Sarah’s thoughts revolved around those eyes. They hadn’t been much different when Sarah had held Hunter as a baby, or when Hunter had been two years old, three. Always the same big brown eyes, round, wide, pulling the attention of the onlooker, as though the eyes were the entire face.
What had those eyes seen?
Sarah delicately fingered the bullet that lay just beneath her taupe button down shirt. She ran it along the length of its chain, getting lost in the distinct zip-line sound it made. She tapped her fingernail a
gainst its surface, allowing herself to drift off into the nonsense of her wandering thoughts.
The waitress set a mug of black coffee on the table in front of Sarah, waking her from her reverie. Sarah poured cream into the cup, watching the whiteness dive and swirl up around the black.
When Sarah had been Hunter’s age, twenty-five, she had only just had Hunter four years prior and was pregnant with the second, Blair. Sarah’s life had been reduced to diapers, breast pumping, laundry, and going a little insane, but it had all been worth it. Sarah cringed, a volatile shuddering reaction, at the thought of what it had taken to leave Lorne. And it hadn’t even worked, had it?
The bell atop the entrance door behind Sarah jingled, startling her, jolting the mug in her hand, spilling a few drops of coffee onto the table. Sarah wiped it up with a napkin as thin as tissue paper, then realized a man was standing at her booth.
She looked up.
“I shouldn’t be here,” said Ash.
“Yes you should,” said Sarah. “Have a seat.”
Reluctantly, Ash sat down across from her in the booth.
“Someone used Hunter’s debit card, so someone wants to talk to me,” she went on. “I assume that’s you.”
“She would kill me if she knew I was here,” he said, looking down at his hands that had been twisting and turning around each other in knots. “What’s in it for you?” he asked, finally meeting her gaze.
Sarah took a deep breath. She needed to say as little as possible to keep him engaged, but enough that he wouldn’t become distrustful or paranoid.
“Well, Ash,” she began, choosing her words carefully. “I work homicide in Brooklyn.” Ash seemed to lose all color in his face, turning pale. Sarah observed him press his lips together as though his entire jaw was clenching, and yet he didn’t react, not so much, not with words. She continued, “I’m in a difficult position. As you know there have been a handful of murders in Hunter Mann’s apartment. We’ve also linked Hunter to a shooting behind the old sugar factory. My partner, who thank God is asleep right now, wants to arrest Hunter. He doesn’t have enough to charge her, not yet, but he will. He mainly wants to bring her in to grill her for seventy-two hours and see if he can get a confession, or at the very least more information.”
She could see she was losing Ash. He was shutting down, hardening, growing deaf. His arms crossed. She could tell he was considering the fastest way out the door. But he was also a smart kid. He was holding out to hear the good news.
“But you guys crossed state lines, which means that if my partner wanted to proceed formally, by the book, he’d have to involve the Feds. If he does, then he’ll get booted from the case, as will I, and we don’t want that. My partner doesn’t want that because he needs the win, he needs it for his career. He wants the Hunter Mann feather in his cap. So his plan is to usher Hunter back to New York and seize her there.”
“What do you want?” asked Ash point blank, reiterating his initial question.
Sarah took a long sip of her coffee before responding.
“I’m interested in the bigger picture. I know when a superficial case is pointing to a much larger crime. It’s the much larger crime that interests me.”
“And what crime is that?” he asked. He was testing her. Sarah sensed it.
“I think you know the answer to that,” she said, shifting the focus back on him.
“If you knew anything, or had anything, you would’ve acted on it by now,” he said in a deep tone, almost hateful. “Instead you’re chatting with a suspected killer in a diner in the middle of the night. It’s because I have something you need. So what is it? What do you need from me? Tell me, and I’ll tell you my price.”
Sarah looked at him with an unwavering gaze for a long moment. She was impressed, but she wouldn’t tolerate him falling to any side that wasn’t hers.
“The only price you should be charging is the cost of staying out of prison for the murders I’m working in Brooklyn. That’s all I can ever offer you and that offer is conditional and it has an expiration date. You help me, not the other way around, Ash. You know I’m not interested in you, only Hunter. The second you’re no longer helpful, you’ll be gone from the picture. Do you understand?”
Ash pressed his mouth into a hard line and stared at her.
“What do you know about what’s going on at the farmhouse?” asked Sarah, having gained control of the conversation.
“I never lived there,” said Ash.
“But Hunter did,” she said jumping on his answer. “She must have told you.”
“You’re going after the farmhouse?” asked Ash, his tone thick with skepticism.
“I am,” she said.
“But you just said it yourself you can’t actually do anything outside of New York,” he said, challenging her once again.
“As a cop, maybe not,” said Sarah, “but as a person, I can do a lot.”
“That’s Hunter’s philosophy as well, more or less,” said Ash. “She’s dead set on handling matters herself, and it’s going to get her killed.”
“Not if I help,” said Sarah.
Ash began shaking his head, and looked off through the window to gain a little distance from the woman sitting across from him. She was holding out on him. She wasn’t willing to reveal her true motivations, and until she did, there was no way he could trust her.
“She doesn’t want your help. Don’t you get that?” he said, raising his voice. “She doesn’t even want my help. She wants to go up there and kill everyone. That’s what she wants. There are girls up there that need her help, that need to be rescued, and she’ll do that as well, but it will come second to killing. Hunter Mann wants to murder everyone at that farmhouse that hurt her. And lady, I don’t think you can stop her.”
Sarah realized she was smiling to herself.
“You want my help,” she said. “That’s why you’re here, right?”
Ash exhaled so faintly it was barely recognizable, but Sarah caught it, a sigh. She had worn him down, broken him. He was on her side.
“I need your help,” he said. “We’re going to get slaughtered if we go in alone. Hunter’s blind to the possibility, but I see it clearly. Lorne Mann is going to kill us and there will be no way to bargain our way out of it.”
“Tell me everything you know about the farmhouse,” said Sarah.
“Tell me how you know Hunter,” said Ash, staring her dead in the eye.
The question took Sarah’s breath away. Did he know? It was quite a bluff if he didn’t.
“No one helps to this extent, potentially breaking the law, for a total stranger. You’re trying to get on the inside, Detective. In terms of your career, that has to be the worst place for you. How do you know Hunter?”
Chapter Ten Hunter stirred from sleep slowly, waking to the sound of a train whistle in the distance. It was one of her favorite sounds. There was something romantic about it. It reminded her of all the places she could go, as though it was calling out to her, beckoning her to come, as though it would safely deliver her anywhere she wished to go. If only that was the case.
The room was dark and it didn’t take Hunter long to realize that she was alone in the bed. Ash’s side was cold to the touch, she discovered as she slid her hand across the sheets.
A bad feeling seized her. Where could he have gone?
Hunter lifted her head and peered into the bathroom. It was dark and empty, the door ajar, not one sound emanated from within.
It was possible he had gone outside to check on Twitch, or maybe invite him into the room. Hunter debated putting on her clothes, her shoes, and going outside to see.
She resolved to give it a few minutes. The bed felt too good, but the enjoyment it gave her was being spoiled by the eerie feeling Ash was betraying her.
Hunter rolled out of bed and began putting on her clothes. At least she had slept for a few hours.
There was something about what she was doing right now, something about rising in the midd
le of the night to discover he wasn’t there, feeling the need to go off looking for him, that was acutely familiar to Hunter, almost like dejà vu, except that she sensed she would be able to place it if only she thought hard enough. Why was this so familiar? Why was waking in the middle of the night to a feeling that something was wrong and to a discovery that the person she was sleeping beside was gone, so eerily familiar? And it wasn’t just that someone was gone, that didn’t quite describe the feeling accurately enough. It was that Ash was gone. There was something about Ash being gone that was so strikingly familiar that it took her breath away.
That’s when it hit her.
Hunter sat down on the edge of the bed, holding her left shoe in her hand, stunned. She was realizing where she knew Ash from. She was remembering why he had a bullet key chain identical to her bullet necklace, to the bullet pendants that all the girls at the farmhouse had been given.
Ash had dodged the question a million times. He had come up with so many things to say when she had asked how he had gotten the bullet key chain, but never had he answered her directly in a way that made sense.
And now she was remembering.
The memory was faint, murky at best, but nevertheless Hunter knew it was true. When she had been a very young girl, just after Grizzly had abducted her from her mother’s shopping cart in broad daylight, Hunter had been made to sleep in a small bedroom at the farmhouse. This had been before Grizzly abducted more and more girls, before the different camps were made, before the horrifying games in the barn had begun. The farmhouse had been a quiet, almost peaceful place, and the little room, her bedroom, had been cozy, homey, a place she liked. There had been a little boy there with her. He had been made to sleep in the little room as well, and even though he had his own bed, he used to sleep next to Hunter. He had gotten in trouble for it, for sleeping in her bed instead of his own. Hunter had woken to the sounds of him being punished in the hallway for it. That had been the feeling. That was where the eerie bad feeling was coming from, her memory of waking to discover her snuggly sleeping buddy was gone from the bed.
