He presses me into the bar and thrusts in deep.
“Oh fuck yeah,” I say around a moan.
His hands on my ass now, he pumps in hard, banding me against the bar.
Our fucking is loud and wet and frenzied.
Sweat coats my forehead and my hair sticks to me and when I open my eyes and look over Vane’s shoulder, I see them all watching. Pan and Bash and Kas. Pan is smoking a cigarette, leaning against the wall. Bash is groping himself and Kas isn’t far behind.
I want them all.
All mine.
All of them to worship me and play my game.
“Fuck, Win,” Vane says at my ear, his voice barely human.
“You gonna fill me up, Dark One?”
My nails drag down the back of his neck and he hisses into my ear. “Keep fucking doing that and you’ll regret it.”
I dig in deeper and feel the wetness of his blood filling the half-moon wounds left by my nails.
He abruptly pulls out of me, staggers back and leaves me panting, my dress askew.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“I warned you.”
“I thought you were kidding.”
Cock still out and glistening with my juices, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it. He takes a long hit.
That dark thing grows agitated.
After he blows out a breath of smoke, he says, “Start running.”
“Vane,” Pan warns again.
“Start running, Winnie Darling.”
I right my dress. “And if I don’t?”
He doesn’t answer me. I suppose there is no if. When Vane gives a command, you best start running.
The dark thing likes the sound of that.
Likes the game.
And I like the way Vane is looking at me like he’s not sure if he should be punishing me or thanking me.
I turn for the balcony and start running.
19
BASH
“Now why did you go and do that?” I ask. “I was enjoying that.”
Vane takes another hit from his cigarette, his finger curled around the end at his mouth. The ember sends a shot of bright orange light over his face and his black eyes.
“Vane,” Pan says again, “we need to talk.”
“Not now,” Vane says. “Now we teach our Darling a lesson.”
“Which is what?” Pan asks.
“Yes, please enlighten us, Dark One. You tell her to run, you chase her. And what? We get left high and dry?”
“I have to agree with my brother,” Kas says beside me. “Chasing is your game.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Vane says. He stabs the cigarette into an ashtray. “Whoever finds her first gets to pick a hole.”
“Well shit. You don’t have to tell me twice.” I’m already up and heading for the door. I’m not as fast as Vane is, but I’ve got tracking skills he doesn’t.
Pan grumbles. Something has been agitating him since he came up from his tomb, but whatever it is, probably it can wait. I mean, if there’s a Darling pussy to fuck, I’m fucking it.
Kas and I hit the cool outdoors together. “Bet I can find her first,” he says.
“Fuck you. I’m finding her first.”
He laughs as he hurries down the steps.
Above us, Pan and Vane fly through the air.
“That’s cheating!” I yell to them.
“It’s harder to spot tracks from the air,” Kas reminds me.
“True. Which way you think she went?” We’re at the edge of the yard now. We know our Darling girl. She probably went toward the lagoon. It’s her favorite spot on the island.
But…she’s not stupid. She probably knows we’d think to go there first.
I turn and look toward the opposite end of the island where the moonlight glows against the water of Silver Cove.
If she is a clever Darling girl…
“I say we go south.”
“Worth the gamble,” Kas says.
I whack him on the chest and he grunts.
“Last one there is a loser!” I yell.
Thirty yards from the treehouse, I know we made the right choice. There’s a fresh break in an oak branch that hangs over the foot path leading from the house to the cove. And it’s just about at the height of a Darling girl.
I put my finger over my mouth to silence my twin. He gives me a nod.
We haven’t hunted like this in ages. Before we were kicked out of the palace and the court, we’d hunt the northwest side of the fae territory several times a week. Mostly it was deer to fill the smokers, sometimes grouse or duck.
It doesn’t take my body or my mind much effort to go into hunter mode.