Heart of the Hunter (52 page)

“You mean that?” I said to her.

She was playing with my chest, her finger running a little circle around my nipple.

“It depends, Jackson,” she said quietly.

“Depends on what?”

“It depends on what you mean. I’m yours as much as you want me to be. I don’t want to be a fool. If you want me, I’m yours. You don’t have to decide now what that’s going to mean for you.”

I squeezed her tight. She thrilled me. I wanted her to be mine all the way, but maybe she didn’t know that.

“I mean it absolutely,” I said.

“Absolutely?”

“Like, all the way, Faith.”

“Like you want to own me?”

“Exactly. I don’t know how to explain it. You ever see those old documentaries of World War Two?”

“Yes,” she said, a little skeptically. She wasn’t sure where I was going with the analogy.

“Well, I want to own you the way those marching armies wanted to own their conquered territory. I want to dominate you, Faith.”

She was quiet for a minute. My heart beat in my chest as I waited for her to speak. I didn’t see any point in being soft with words. If I had a feeling toward her, I wanted her to know it. And that was the most honest thing in the world I could say to her right then. I wanted her to be
mine
. Body and soul and heart.
All mine.

“You want to dominate me?” she said.

“I want to dominate you completely.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Jackson.”

She was afraid. She’d been hurt before, when I disappeared. She was afraid I’d disappear again, but I wouldn’t. I was back. I was back for her, and for Sam, and I was back for good. I wanted to be the father Sam needed. I wanted to be the man Faith needed. That meant being her husband. I knew it with a fierce certainty. I had to be her husband.

I leaned up and faced her. I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were so deep I could drown in them. I wanted to dive into them. We’d been fucking all night. We were both exhausted, ready for sleep. Outside, I could already see the strange change in darkness that occurs in the hour before dawn. It would be getting bright soon.

“I’m going to make you understand me,” I said to her. “I love you, and I know what I have to do, Faith.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

She smiled. She was struggling to believe me. She was afraid I was tricking her, or leading her on. I couldn’t blame her for that, but I wasn’t playing. I was deadly serious.

I leaned in to her and kissed her gently on the lips. Then I kissed her chin, her neck, the soft mounds of her breasts, still sticky from my semen. I kept going lower, trailing my tongue over her belly and navel. Then I kissed her stretch marks. I knew she was self-conscious of them because she flinched when I reached them.

“I’m ruined,” she said.

I kissed her stretch marks, then I licked them. I didn’t care one bit about those tiny marks on her skin. They were a sign that she’d lived, that she was a woman, a mother. She was the mother of my baby. Those stretch marks made me love her more. I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t know the full breadth and depth of the human heart, I wanted to be with a complete woman who knew the possibilities of life. I wanted to be with the mother of my son.

“I love these stretch marks,” I said. And then I said something that I hadn’t even meant to say. It was something that scared me. “I love you, Faith. I love you. And I’m going to show you exactly how much. I’m going to prove my love to you.”

Chapter 44

Faith

I
T WAS THE CRAZIEST NIGHT
of my life. At least, it was the craziest night since the night Jackson had left me in the desert twelve years earlier. I’d let him come on me, come inside me, we hadn’t even used protection. I didn’t want protection, not from Jackson. I wanted danger. I wanted contact. If he was going to harm me, I wanted to experience it.

We’d only just been reunited, but it felt like I’d been with him my entire life. In a way, I had been. I’d been his, even when he was gone. He’d woken up something in me long ago, and it had been asleep inside me during the years of his absence. Now it was awake again. He’d woken up the lust, the passion, the desire. He’d set free the fierce beast inside me.

For so long I’d given myself to my role as a mother.

Now I was remembering that there was more to my life, more to my purpose, than motherhood.

Wife and mother
.

The two go together. A woman gives herself to her child, but she should also give herself to a man—a man who deserves her. And that’s the thing that Jackson had reawakened in me.

I’d been waiting for him so long, my body had been waiting for him, and now I knew he was back. I just prayed he was back for good.

There was always a risk with Jackson, always a danger, but I didn’t care. We were never meant to live our lives in complete safety. If we were, God wouldn’t have made the world so full of threats, so full of possibility.

“You love me?” I said.

I wasn’t even afraid of him anymore. I wasn’t afraid of what his body could do to mine. I could tell he meant what he was saying. There are certain things in life that cannot be faked. Those orgasms, those screams of pleasure, that complete surrender we’d made to each other in the heat of our passion, that was real. I knew that.

And I wasn’t afraid of what might happen in the future. That was the risk I had to take, and it was the risk I was willing to take.

“Show me what you mean,” I said.

“Show you?”

I looked into his eyes. “You said you wanted to conquer my like a marching army. You said you wanted to dominate me so completely that my body would know it was yours forever.”

“Yes, I did. And I meant it.”

“Then prove it,” I said. “Prove it to me so I know you’re a man of your word. Prove it to me so that I’ll never be able to doubt you.”

Something came alive in him then. I’d woken a beast inside him. He leaned down over my face, but instead of kissing me, he licked me. His tongue ran over my mouth and cheek. If he could have eaten me, I’m sure he would have tried.

“Flip over,” he said.

“Flip over?”

“You heard me.”

My heart skipped a beat. “What are you going to do?” I said.

“Stop talking,” he said. “It’s my turn to talk.”

There was so much I wanted to say but I obeyed him. I held my tongue.

“I’m going to do something to you that I’ve wanted to do again for twelve years, Faith Shepherd,” he said.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“Too bad. You challenged me, and now you’re going to lie there and take the consequences.”

“Jackson,” I said, nervously.

I’d never been so compliant in my life, but at the same time, I’d never felt so empowered. I knew that whatever he was going to do, it would mean something. It would change the world for both of us. It wasn’t just about pleasure, it wasn’t just sex, it wasn’t just fucking. This was bonding, in the full meaning of the word. This was a male, taking his female and fusing his body and soul to hers so that the seal between the two of them could never be broken by anyone.

I was nervous, but also thrilled. I wanted him. I wanted him hard.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he said.

His voice was firm, commanding. I did what he said.

Then I felt his breath on my butt. I stopped breathing. Despite all my bravado, I was terrified of what was about to happen. I felt his tongue touch the ring of my anus and I gasped. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be with Jackson. He’d done this once before, and he was going to do it again. His tongue ran in tiny, rapid circles around my asshole, creating a stir of pleasure inside my body that vibrated excruciatingly.

“Jackson,” I whispered, but he was beyond answering me now. We had gone beyond words. The only things that existed were our bodies, the secret language between them, and nothing more.

“Claim me,” I said, as juice began to flow from my rampant pussy and drip down my legs.

His tongue probed me, forcing its way inside my anus and licking my asshole. I was terrified. I was so scared of what was about to happen, but it felt so good. I knew he was doing what he had to do. This was the way he worked. This was how he would make me his.

“I’m yours,” I cried.

His tongue licked down from my asshole, over my dripping pussy, and I was so wet, so covered in my own juice and his saliva, that every hole was slippery as lotion.

He stopped licking me and I heard him spit on his hand. I shivered in anticipation.

I shut my eyes. I couldn’t bare the suspense.

And then I felt it, Jackson’s massive cock, and it was pressed against the tightness of my asshole.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered.

His cock was so wet, my ass was so covered in saliva and juice, that he didn’t need lube. He began to slide inside me and it was smooth and easy, as if my body wanted him in there. There was no trace of pain, only pleasure. But it wasn’t a normal kind of pleasure. It was the pleasure that melts into ecstasy and orgasm and becomes so intoxicating that you can’t imagine how you’ve lived your life without it.

“Yes,” I cried as his cock pushed forward into that slippery ring of muscle, entering a hidden chamber in my body that could give me a secret pleasure so intense, so private, so intimate.

He slid in, his strong hands gripping my ass, pulling me toward him, allowing me no escape.

“Yes,” I cried.

“Faith,” he moaned.

He slid all the way in. He was buried inside me. It was as if we were a single person, melting together in a hot, wet, sticky mess of pleasure.

“Conquer me,” I moaned. “Claim me.”

He thrust forward and then slid back, thrust forward again and slid back again. He filled my ass, a slap of skin on skin as his torso struck my butt cheeks with each orgasmic thrust. I gripped the fabric of the sofa and wanted to tear it. I wanted to destroy it. I wanted the world to end, to be hit by a comet. I wanted fireworks, or an earthquake. I wanted the world to wake up and take note of what was happening, of the momentousness of the experience I was having.

Jackson’s orgasm was unnatural. I don’t know how to describe it. His cock shot semen into my asshole and it struck places deep inside me that had never been discovered before, not even by him twelve years ago. He was in virgin territory. No one but Jackson and I would ever know what pleasure my body was capable of. He poured himself into me, he gave himself to me, and I knew that having his sperm inside me, in that intimate place, would mean more than the pleasure it was giving him.

It would mean he owned me.

But it would also mean I owned him.

Just as he was claiming me, just as he was making me his, he was also making himself mine.

I screamed. I was orgasming and I don’t even know what part of my body the orgasm came from. It was so intense, so pleasurable and deep and sharp, that it made me scream. I forgot the world, I forgot that I had a son asleep in the next room, I even forgot that Jackson was there with me, fucking me in the ass so deep that I was literally in tears. I forgot it all. And then I collapsed in utter exhaustion.

We fell into a slumber, his rigid shaft still rammed so far inside me he wouldn’t be able to pull out without effort. We fell into such a deep sleep that if it hadn’t been for my phone ringing, Sam would have found us there on the couch the next morning.

Chapter 45

Jackson

Y
OU DON’T WANT TO KNOW
what that felt like. Believe me, it wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you. It’s like, some things in life just shouldn’t be shared. You know what I mean?

I was deeper inside her than I’d ever been inside anything in my entire life. Balls deep would be an understatement. When I slipped inside her ass, all I could think about was how good it felt, how deep I felt. You want to possess someone? You want to own them? That’s how you do it.

When it was over, I collapsed, unconscious. We both did. We fell into a deep, complete slumber, and if it wasn’t for Faith’s phone ringing at about six in the morning, Sam would have probably found us there on the sofa, my cock crushed against his mother’s ass, my semen all over her chest, all over her cunt, still oozing out of her asshole.

What can I say? She told me to make her mine, and that’s what I did.

But it would have been a terrible way to introduce him to the idea that I was his father.

I woke with a start when the phone rang.

“What is it?” Faith said into the phone. “Lacey, calm down, I can’t understand you.”

Something was wrong. I’d been worried about Lacey. She’d seemed unstable. I knew I should have listened to my gut.

“Lacey, I’ll be right there. Of course I will. No, Jackson’s here to watch him. You just calm down, tell the cops I’m coming.”

Faith hung up the phone. She was pale.

“Cops?” I said.

“It’s Lacey. She was arrested at Matt’s apartment.”

“Matt?”

“The guy she’s seeing. He’s been cheating on her, or with her. She was wrecking his apartment. Tearing up his clothes, throwing them off the balcony into the parking lot. I think it got out of hand.”

“Fuck,” I said.

Faith nodded. “She must have really lost it for the police to get involved.”

“Hell hath no fury,” I said.

She eyed me sternly. “Don’t you ever forget it.”

I pulled her toward me. I didn’t want her to worry about me for another second of her life. I’d never hurt her.

“I’ve got to go to the police station,” she said. “She’s got no one else to call. The brothers don’t know about Matt. And you’re not going to tell them. Lacey wants her love life to remain private.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Sam,” Faith said, not knowing what exactly she wanted to say.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll get him to school.”

“Really?”

“Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“He’ll be surprised to see you.”

“I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know all about surprises. We’ll handle it. I’ll get him to school. You’ll be there to pick him up.”

“Are you sure?” she said. “I really hate to inconvenience you like this.”