Killer Crescent by Leigh Kelsey

16

If I’d been thinking, I would have sucked in a deep breath before my body struck the violent water. But I couldn’t stop screaming as I fell, the fall terrifying and dizzying in a way I’d never experienced before, and thinking was impossible. My hair wrapped around my face, water splashed into my eyes, and I couldn’t see, couldn’t tell if I was up or down until I slammed into a solid weight.

It took me a disoriented second to realise the brick wall I’d crashed into was the water, and my entire chest and shoulder was bruised, flashing with pain. I was smart enough to slam my mouth shut and conserve air now, but it was too little, too late. And I’d never been a strong swimmer.

I kicked my feet, pumping my arms, but the water was moving too fast, spinning me up, down, and in every fucking direction like I was a teddy bear in a washing machine.

My brain shook inside my skull until I couldn’t think, and only instinct kept my arms flailing and legs kicking. Where the fuck was up? Where was the surface? I spun and fell through the water, squinting my eyes open to see nothing but thrashing darkness. There were rocks in here, right? Dangerous, knifey ones that could cut me open? I could be whirling straight for one, and I’d never know.

My lungs burned fiercely, a thousand times worse than when Dean choked me on his cock, and I didn’t have anyone to pull me back, to stroke my face and praise me now. There was only certain death, suffocation, and bubbles of water shoving themselves up my nose until I was choking, spinning wildly.

A huge ripple went through the water, thrashing me to the side, and I screamed using the last of my air when my shoulder rammed into a sharp rock, the joint knocked out of alignment. It wasn’t the first time I’d had my shoulder dislocated but fuckkkkk, it hurt.

Water rushed around me—no towards me—and then parted as a huge shadow reached for me.

I whimpered, wondering if I was seeing things, half waiting for a shark to open huge jaws and swallow me whole. But instead, a hand closed around my good arm, big enough to dwarf my shoulder, and I was tugged upwards in a dizzying, blurring rush. Black spots crowded into my vision, a vicious pain cut my chest as my lungs demanded air, and I stupidly inhaled through my nose, instinct fighting intelligence.

But then I was out of the water, with air scalding my freezing skin and the hardness of the riverbank slamming into my stomach. I couldn’t hear anything but rushing water, couldn’t see anything but blurs as I retched.

A rough hand pushed my shoulder back into place and slammed me on the back, and I shrank away as a massive shadow blotted out the sun. “Cough, little scorpion,” a low, thunderous voice said, so deep it was more vibration than sound. “Cough it up.”

I followed his advice and the urging of the slams against my back, coughing and vomiting water and bile, making a pitiful moan of pain when it stopped. My body ached everywhere, like I’d been run through a blender, and his rough smacks hadn’t helped. The man was built like a fucking tank.

“S...stalker?” I rasped, trying to blink the stinging water out of my eyes. “That you?”

“You’re cold,” he rumbled, and a body twice the size of my own pressed to my back, tugging me against a barrel chest as arms wrapped around my middle.

“Pretty … forward,” I remarked, but a wave of reassurance hit me strong enough to make me wilt, and I tilted my head back against a shoulder made of hard muscle, still shook by the occasional cough. “Mate?”

“Mate,” he agreed, gravelly yet soft. I shuddered as his scorching hot hand trailed up and down my thigh. He didn’t seem to care that my jeans were drenched, but then he’d dived in to rescue me; he was as soaked as I was. “Can you breathe now?”

“Just about,” I replied, but my head was still whirling like I was trapped in the deadly thrash of the rapids. Every part of me hurt, and I was not looking forward to the walk up to the ravine top. At least we could use Dean’s witch charm to get back to Blake Hall. Wait… “You followed us here. How? We came by charm.”

Sluggish, I twisted around to look at my behemoth of a stalker, and my eyes widened. Wet black hair clung to the roughly carved planes of his forehead, cheeks, and jaw, and the entire right side of his face, neck, and shoulder rippled with burn scarring, fiercely red against the alabaster of his unmarred skin. But it was the way his gaze dropped before I could see the colour of his irises that caught and held my attention, and the way his mouth tugged down, his shoulders slumping to follow the movement.

He avoided my gaze, but didn’t let go, didn’t move at all, actually. Like he was waiting for something. The lowered eyes, the way he’d gone still … all signs of submission. Like I was the bigger predator when he was six-foot-a-lot, broad shouldered, barrel chested, and had hands the size of freaking dinner plates. “I have this,” he replied quietly, and moved with exaggeratedly slow movements to point out the bee pin on his chest.

“Ah,” I replied, not staring at the way his wet T-shirt clung to his huge pectoral muscles, or fell into the dips of his six pack, accentuating muscles that took a hell of a lot of work to keep up. Definitely not staring. Me? Stare with glazed eyes? Drool gathering in my mouth? No, ma’am.

“I will not hurt you,” he said without prompting, his voice little more than a raspy whisper, sharply accented with something clearly of Eastern European origin. He gave me super hot bodyguard vibes. Ooh! Maybe he was a bond villain planning the timely demise of a gag-worthy do-gooder.¹

I dragged my gaze from his mouth-watering chest,² a furrow scrunching my brows. “Huh? Why would you hurt me; you’re my mate, dummy.” I could feel the bond, but only faintly. Every time I reached out to it, it rushed away like a skittish creature.

A matching frown drew his thick brows together, and I turned around fully to meet his gaze, making a blech sound at all the sodden material clinging to me, slapping the grassy rocks when I sat back. My stalker was a damned gentleman; his gaze didn’t dip once to my boobs, even though my nipples were standing out like a stripper in a nunnery. My hoodie must have come unzipped in the washing machine nightmare that was the rapids, and my shirt hugged my body every bit as thirstily as the behemoth’s clothing did.

“Most people,” he replied slowly, like he was choosing the right words, “think I kill them.”

I tilted my head. “Do you? Kill people? I know that’s normally a bad thing,” I added in a rush, my voice sore and husky thanks to my drowning escapade, “but I’m not against a teeny bit of killing, myself. So if you did hurt people, I wouldn’t judge.”

“I don’t mean to,” he said quietly, and I sighed in sympathy, my heart going all achy and sad. “Once,” he added, his gaze fixed squarely on the rapids still noisily rushing past us, throwing foam and water onto the bank. “That’s why I’m here.”

“On a riverbank soaking through to your underwear?” I asked, hoping he’d laugh. His moroseness was making my insides hurt. I wanted to hear his laugh, to see what his smile looked like, to know if it filled his cheeks or was just a tiny curve in the corner of his mouth.

He huffed a laugh, but didn’t smile, and said again, “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know, big guy,” I assured him, patting his shoulder before I climbed to my feet, almost stumbling under the weight of my soaked clothes. At least my shoulder didn’t hurt anymore. “Don’t worry, I can handle myself. You wouldn’t be able to hurt me if you tried.”

At that, he sagged in relief, and followed my lead as he stood, grabbing the thighs of his jeans and wringing the water out of them. My mouth popped open as the thick outline of his cock pushed against the tight, wet fabric, and my body went hot all over. Holy kittens, that was a big cock. Enormous. But why was I surprised when the rest of him was massive? He could honestly snap my neck in a second with those huge hands, and yet all he’d done was save me, and promise not to hurt me.

I watched him wring the water out of his clothes with a frown. The way he’d stalked me through the whimpering woods, and then grabbed me in Blake Hall’s foyer made me think he was dangerous and maybe a little bit evil. But now I wasn’t so sure. Now I was wondering if his rough, bruising grip hadn’t been dominance, but because he had no idea how strong he was.

I don’t mean to.

My heart went to mush, and by the time he was finished wringing out his clothes, I was staring at him like he was a terminally ill puppy.

“What?” he asked, his voice so deep and gravelly I felt it moving through me. “You watch me. Why?”

And now I was looking at him like he was a teeny tiny kitten trying to leap onto a huge sofa. He was so CUTE, with his wide eyes—yellowish green now I could get a proper look at him—and his hunched shoulders and his faltering English. I wanted to bundle him into a handbag and carry him around with me everywhere like a Chihuahua.³ “I like watching you,” I replied, trying for cute and sultry. But I didn’t feel cute and sultry, I felt battered and drowned and pitiful. But hey, maybe that was his type?

A deeper furrow formed between his brows, his frown tugging down his burn scars. “You’re lying,” he said, and didn’t sound surprised.⁴ “We walk now. That way.”

He pointed at the row of rangy trees I hadn’t even noticed behind us, and set off, trudging past me and towards a thin path.

“I don’t even know your name, big guy,” I said, hurrying to catch up with his massive strides. “Can you slow down? Some of us don’t have Amazon-ish legs.”

He stopped in the middle of the path, and I nearly tumbled into him, catching myself at the last second and wincing at the stinging ache that went through my knees. Had I hit them on something? I couldn’t remember, but they hurt like hell. “Like the website?” he asked with a deep frown, confusion darkening his olive eyes.

“What?” I asked, tipping my head back, back, back until I met his eyes. Mmmmm, he was tall. I barely came up to the middle of his chest, and the size difference was putting all sorts of ideas in my head. But he’d been nothing but gentlemanly to me, and he hadn’t looked at my tits once, so maybe he wasn’t attracted to me. That thought hurt deep, but I breathed around it, took it into me like all the other pains in my body, and smiled like that smile could chase off the hurt. The least I could do in repayment for him saving my life was not ogle him like the human personification of the male gaze.

“Amazon,” he replied, his confusion clear.

“Oh!” I brightened, giving him a big grin. “Well, it’s a place too, like a massive rainforest, and also these people from mythology who are super tall and epic fighters and just really cool. Not the temperature—”

“I know cool,” he cut in, intelligence spinning behind his deep-set eyes. “Amazon. Tall fighters. Rainy forest.” He nodded, already turning back onto the path—but he walked slower, letting me catch up. “Thank you.”

“For what?” I peeled my wet shirt off my stomach and followed his example, wringing the water out of it as we walked into the sparse tree cover. I scowled up at the bright sun; the last thing I needed when I was wet and in pain was to be burned.

“Teaching,” he replied, ducking his head to avoid my gaze again. “I can’t knowing everything. But I want to.”

I blinked, a piece of the puzzle that was my behemoth stalker sliding into place; he was eager to learn, and curious about everything. Probably a perfectionist, too. “Well, you’re welcome, big guy.” I reached up to pat his shoulder and resisted the urge to squeeze all that muscle that was right there, begging for me to massage it.

“Hugh Petrov,” he said after another few steps, as birds rustled leaves and tweeted high above us, answering the question I’d asked a while back.

“Huge Petrov?” I asked, trying not to choke. Damn, he was aptly named.

“Hugh,” he repeated, but there was a richness and rumbly quality to his voice that suggested amusement.

“Ohhhhhhh, Hugh Petrov,” I laughed, peering up at him and delighted when he met my eyes with a brazen gaze. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Hugh. I’m Rebel Falcon.” I struck my hand out sideways for him to shake while we walked, and couldn’t fight a body-wide shudder as his hot hand dwarfed my own. It felt soooooo good. Too good. He showed no signs of wanting me, I reminded myself, and ignored the hurt that stabbed deeper.

“Falcon?” He shook his head, long black hair flinging drops of water into his face. “No. You’re a scorpion.” He watched me from the corner of his eye as we ducked under a low branch,⁵ something like warmth in his voice as he said, “You’re deadly. Beautiful.”

My whole body went hot. Okay, maybe he had noticed me after all.

“Still… still...” He scowled, a rush of sharp, fluid words coming from deep in his chest. I was swooning, head over heels for whatever he’d just said in his native language until he added in English, “Still can be killed. You slipped?”

“Hmm?” I shook myself. He was right. I could be killed, and someone had tried to kill me. “No, someone sabotaged my fucking bridge. They cut the slats so I’d fall.”

A low, rattling growl filled the space around us, echoing off the tall trees until a dozen vicious wolves roared in rage. I stopped dead, my eyes wide as instincts fired off inside me, my new wolf side warring with my mate instincts, fear versus logic. He wouldn’t hurt me, couldn’t actually hurt me, but damnnnnnn he was alpha as hell. Was he … more alpha than Dean? I’d thought he was submissive and sweet, but maybe that was just to me?

“What is sabotaged?” he demanded, so low the words were barely audible.

My knees went weak. “Making sure someone fucks up. Wrecking someone’s chances on purpose. Messing with a bridge so someone falls off it before they can reach the end.”

I wasn’t sure which part made sense to him, but understanding flashed in his eyes, and his previous alpha growl was just the warm up. This one sent me to my knees on the dirty ground, my cheek pressed to the hard ground and my backside thrust up in the air, wiggling from side to side.

Ah.

Maybe … um. Maybe his growl didn’t terrify my inner wolf; maybe it made her horny. Because I was presenting to him, wiggling my backside to entice him like I was a bitch in heat.

His growl deepened in timbre, not so much a roar as a pleasant vibration. I didn’t understand a word of his reply because it was in Polish or Russian or whatever his language actually was. But I recognised the tone—soft and sensual. His giant hand slid over my ass, the wet jeans moulded to my shape, and I jolted as his thumb dipped lower to rub over my pussy as he squeezed my ass.

“You make very pretty picture, little scorpion,” he said, with a rumble so damn close to a purr. I shuddered, pushing back against his hand and gasping as his thumb slid to my clit. He pressed down hard, finding it as if he instinctively knew where would give me the most pleasure. Maybe he did? Maybe it was part of the mate starter kit. Windows laptops came with Microsoft Office. Mates came with Extra-Accurate Clit Location.⁶ “Is this show for me?”

I nodded, swallowing a moan as he circled his thumb, the friction through my jeans enough to push me halfway to orgasm with only a few swipes. “For you. Fuck, Hugh.”

He knelt behind me, arching over me to press a hot, lingering kiss to the back of my neck. “Is this kitty for me, too?”

I smiled at his wrong word use. Although language was made up nonsense that humans invented; who was to say kitty wasn’t the right word? “Yes,” I gasped as he squeezed my other ass cheek with a gentleness that must have taken effort from a man so strong, his thumb still circling over my clit, his pace almost lazy.

“I will … treasure it,” he breathed, his breath hot on the back of my neck. “And you.” He sounded a little stunned, like he couldn’t believe this was happening. How many people had taken one look at him and thought he was a big, bad guy? I had, too, but that was never a bad thing to me. But to most people…

“I’ll treasure you, too,” I gasped out, heat twisting tighter in my lower belly. I dug my fingers into the dirt, rolling my hips against his hands. “I treasure all my mates.”

He shuddered above me, clutching my ass harder. “Even me?”

“Especially you,” I choked out. “Fuck, keep doing that.”

“I won’t stop,” he promised. “This is gift you give me, little scorpion. I love feeling you under me.”

That last part sent me over the edge, and I gasped and bucked under him, my pussy clenching

“Beautiful,” he praised, dragging another deep throb from my clit. “But we need walk again. Wet clothes are bad.”

“Mm,” I agreed, flopping onto the ground and rolling over so I could reach up and grasp his face. “Definitely bad.” But I tugged him down for a kiss. His lips pressed sweetly against my lips before drawing back. Awww, he didn’t even try to maul my mouth like my other guys did. Hugh was a teddy bear. “My big teddy bear,” I murmured, and nuzzled his jaw before he moved away, getting to his feet and offering a hand to help me up.

“Come on, little scorpion,” he said, all warm and deep. “Let’s get dry. And find others.”

I winced. Dean was not going to be happy when he learned someone had tried to kill me. I wondered if the papers might end up splashed with another Straw Man murder soon.