“Sweetheart. He’ll be fine. No one’s coming here. No one knows we’re here.”
I didn’t call to Lucas, but I still didn’t feel good. Maybe no one was coming now, but they would. When would that be? What would they do? I could feel myself starting to fluster as the weight of Hunter’s life began to settle on me.
“Hunter, who’s house is this? Why aren’t they coming back? How can we just stay here?”
He leaned back in his seat and scratched at the stubble on his face as he sighed. He looked mildly annoyed and I didn’t want to push it, but I was starting to slip out of my fantasy and into his reality.
“Because, Kelly, I fucking say so. That’s how.”
“But what if they come back?” I started to ask but was cut off by Hunter slamming his fist into the steering wheel and wrapping both his hands around it until his knuckles turned white. I stopped talking and sunk into my seat as he turned and looked at me with his wide eyes and all his intensity.
“He’s not coming back because I fucking know he’s not coming back. I know because I fucking killed him.”
I sat in my seat as Hunter spoke calmly.
“He was a piece of shit parasite who did piece of shit things. Things that I won’t say to you right now or ever because you don’t fucking need to know. And I fucking killed him. It was business, I took the order from the old man, but I took goddamn pleasure in making sure that fuck was dead. There’s no coming back from what I did to him. You got it?”
I looked back at him as he turned away. He wasn’t bragging, but he wasn’t lying. Maybe I should have been scared. Maybe I should have felt sick about everything Hunter had just said. But I didn’t. For some reason the awful thing he had just confessed made me feel better. This was a bad man sitting next to me, but he was mine. The unspeakable things he did or could do would never hurt me. He would never hurt me. He was both the storm in my life and my shelter from it, and I felt every ounce of nervousness melt away from my body as he laid down the details of his crime.
“Yes, Hunter. I understand.”
I reached out and touched his thigh and moved my fingers over his heavy cock that sat just below the material of his pants. He looked over at me and I ran my tongue over my lips, spreading them open, and took a deep breath.
He reached his hand across the car and wrapped his strong fingers around my neck, pulling me in for a deep kiss. I felt my body go limp in the seat and threw my arm around him to hold myself steady.
He pulled his lips away and rested his forehead on mine.
“Kelly. You’re safe. You always will be. You need to know that. Not understand, fucking know.”
I kept my eyes closed as we sat there, our faces touching.
“I know, Hunter. I know.”
Chapter 43
Hunter
I OPENED THE CAR DOOR and stepped out into the midday sunshine. I was a long way from the cold streets of Boston and when I turned around to see Kelly standing there, it hit me like a punch in the face. All my life, I had been alone and that was exactly the way I fucking liked it. The only person I ever had to look out for was me, and I did whatever the fuck I wanted, whenever I fucking wanted. Now, standing in the middle of fucking nowhere, surrounded by the highest mountain peaks in the country, I found myself scanning the property not for what could come my way, but for what could be lurking and waiting to take her away from me.