Page 57 of Hunter or Hunted

But I lingered longer.

18

GWEN

“Gwen.” Eyes pinched shut, Sebastian pulled back. “Maybe now isn’t the time.”

I cocked my head to the side and unwound my leg from his. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He laughed, eyes meeting mine. “But it was a hard day. Last time we did this, it had also been a hard day. I just—It feels weird, you know? Like I’m taking advantage of the drunk girl at prom.”

“I’m not drunk.” Confusion pinched my brows, and I softened the tone with a quiet laugh of my own. “But I get it. Funerals are hard for you. We don’t have to do anything.”

“No, I’m good.” Judging by the way his face scrunched up, he was offended that I thought this had anything to do with him. “It’s not about me. It’s just… Well, the first time we had sex, you were vulnerable. And today, you’re also kind of vulnerable. I don’t want to take advantage of that.”

I laughed so hard that I snorted. I hadn’t meant to, and I appreciated his very trauma-informed approach, but I didn’t need it.

When I kept laughing, now at the memory of him calling me a little piggy the last time I snort-laughed, he joined in, gingerly taking my cheek in his hand. “What’s so funny? Why are you laughing?”

“Just the whole idea.” Grasping my stomach, still resting my head on the pillow, I shook my head. “If you want to wait for me to be completely mentally and emotionally stable before we have sex again, I don’t know if you’re ever going to get laid.”

Chuckling, he trailed his thumb along my cheek. Rather than concern in his eyes, I caught the hint of teasing playfulness. “I was just trying to be considerate.”

“And I love you for that.” I lifted my leg over his hips and slid my thumb along his lower lip. “But I’m a big girl. You don’t need to be so careful with me. I’m not gonna break if you squeeze me too tight.”

A moment of silence passed as he trailed his fingertips down my cheek, surveying me. Like he had to check that truth of that statement. Like he had to make sure I was as okay as I claimed. Or maybe just to assure himself that I was not the drunk girl at prom.

The longer he looked at me, the more his pupils expanded, taking up almost all the green in his irises. He came in for a kiss. This one was as deep and slow as mine had been. One of his hands twisted around my back, arching me closer until every inch of our bodies were flush. Against my lips, words like velvet parted his. “I’ll always be careful with you.”

Those few words should not have done to me what they did.

I kissed him again, tucking my leg tight around his waist, falling into the euphoria of his touch. My hands traveled over his skin faster, harder, than the last time we had shared our bodies this way.

His did too. The first time, we were slow, cautious, peeling off layers like the fragile skin of a fruit. So afraid of damaging what lay beneath the shell. But now, he ripped through the linens that covered my body with an intense hunger for the taste of the flesh that lived beneath them.

But he hadn’t lied a moment ago. He was careful. Just in a way I had never witnessed before.

As his hands traveled over my body, between my legs, I didn’t feel like a delicate flower whose petals he feared ripping, but a work of art he desperately admired. We rolled beneath the sheets from one position to another, and with every new glance, every new view, his eyes washed over me with a similar look as the faces of churchgoers each Sunday morning. An intense needing, longing, for more. For everything. A sort of worship that had swarms of butterflies dancing through my stomach, my chest, and as far south as my body reached.

It wasn’t the slow lovemaking it had been before, but passionate. Passionate, but not fiery. Not angry. Admiration, obsession, shined in his eyes. A desire to feel every inch of me, know each part of me, every intimate corner of my mind and body.

No one had ever looked at me like that before. Like I was everything. Like they wanted for nothing else when their hands trailed across my skin.

As the waves of pleasure rolled through my body, they set every nerve ending on fire. I made noises that I prayed Beth didn’t hear downstairs. The euphoria stayed with me, and with him, as we crashed into the blankets below.

We spent the rest of the evening in that room. As desperate as I was for more information, I didn’t want to make a lasting impact on this town’s psyche. Imagine we went door to door saying, “Hey, did you know Allie? What about her relationship with Evan? How was he handling her disappearance? Could you see him killing her?”

People who knew him, who loved him, would tell us to screw ourselves. People who hated him would remember us. When the cops came asking about his disappearance after I killed him, they’d tell them about the weirdos who showed up asking questions.

At the funeral, when I talked more to Ava and Allie’s friends, I hoped any memory of me would blur into the chaos of grief. Charlotte was already eager to forget I’d shown up at all.

We ordered a pizza from the place on the corner and ate it in bed. Simone video called me so I could see Honey, and Sebastian spoke to Lizzie for half an hour. Honey looked happy as could be curled up on Simone’s couch, cuddled up with Junie. Lizzie didn’t mind Sebastian’s absence either. She and Aubrey were staying up way past their bedtime, snow tubing and soaking up every moment left of their winter break.

Sebastian and I fell asleep around 11. He woke first, around 8:30. When he finished showering, I got in behind him. He wore his scratchy, uncomfortable button-up again. This time, though, with a cozy white undershirt. I put on black tights and a knee-length black dress. In my purse, though, I had a pair of sneakers, a mask, gray sweats, nitrile gloves, and a big black hoodie. Big, and baggy. Once I threw them over my dress, no one would recognize me.

We stopped down in the dining room for breakfast. I expected more people to have gathered around the table, as bed-and-breakfasts were known for mingling, but it was just Sebastian, me, and a quiche.

He got up to use the bathroom and grab some coffees, set up at a wet bar between the formal spaces at the front of the house. As I spooned a healthy scoop of fruit into my bowl, the chestnut door to the kitchen swung open.