Heart of the Hunter (18 page)

I stood up, keeping hold of her in my arms, and drove my mouth down on hers. She wrapped her arms around my neck and sighed softly as I kissed her hard and deeply.

I pulled my lips away from hers and stared into her eyes.

“Kelly. I’m a fucking nightmare. You might think you know that, but what I did to those two fucks in the diner, when I walked out on you earlier, that is nothing compared to who I am and the things I’ve done.”

She slid her arms from my neck and down to my chest, taking her gaze down to my chest too. I put her down on her feet and she sat on the chair. I walked over to her car, grabbing the bottle on the way.

I leaned back on the car, lit a cigarette, and looked over at her. She had her feet up on the chair and was holding her knees close to her chest.

“Hunter, please,” she said, a slight tremble in her voice. “What are you talking about?”

I took a drag of my smoke and exhaled a thick cloud up toward the ceiling.

Well, Hunter boy. This is it. Tell the little lady about the fucking god-awful ride she’s about to take.

“There are people,” I said. “People from Boston. They’re coming after me. They will find me, and when they do, they will try to fucking kill me. But that won’t happen. Because I will kill them. All of them. It’s what I do.”

She sat there trying to process the words that had just come out of my mouth.

Darling, we haven’t even scratched the surface. Don’t let that rattle you.

“So, so you go to the police. Tell them you’re in trouble. Nobody has to die.”

I laughed as I breathed out smoke and caught myself when I realized she was serious.

“What?” she demanded. “That’s what you do when you’re in trouble.”

You are fucking adorable.

“Kelly,” I said. “First off, what about me makes you think that’s what I do when I get in trouble? Second, did it ever occur to you that I’m not in trouble? That maybe I
am
the fucking trouble? That this is what happens to me because this is who I am?”

She didn’t respond and I didn’t expect her to.

“These people that are coming for me,” I said and paused.

How the fuck could I possibly sum this up in a neat package for her? I decided to let it all fly, and field questions later.

“These people are my family. My old man, specifically. The Donnelly family, and
me
, are the dirtiest, most lethal and low down fucking criminals in Boston. Those two guys in the diner today, they were nothing. I’ve never boxed, Kelly. I learned how to pound people’s skulls into the ground by doing it for a fucking living. That’s what I do. For money. And I am goddamned good at it. It’s in my blood.”

She just stared back at me. As if she was trying to come to terms with the fact that the man she just surrendered herself to was the same man that was standing in front of her now, saying these horrible things.

“So your dad, your dad wants to
kill
you?”

It was a lot to take in for the poor girl, but she wanted the truth. And this was it. After everything we’d been through together already, the least I owed her was the truth.

“He’s not really my dad. I have no fucking clue who my real parents are. I’m some orphan piece of garbage that got cleaned up by the wrong goddamn family. My mother, or the closest thing I had to one, was a sweet woman. She was the one who took me in. I don’t remember anything before that, but she’s gone. Been dead for years. The only family I had was the old man and his equally pitiful sons. They reminded me every chance they got that I wasn’t one of them, and I’ve known it since I was old enough to think for myself. I just got,
caught
. Caught up in the family business because of my certain talents.”

“And what would those be?”

She knew the fucking answer. She knew, but I guess she wanted to hear me say it.

“Violence, Kelly. Fucking mayhem, destruction, murder. The ability to do things that most people wouldn’t dream of in their sickest and most twisted fantasies. I do those things and I don’t give two shits about it.”

She stopped me.

“Hunter, no, stop.”

She was pleading, but it was too late. She’d wanted to know me. Now she did.

“I fucking like it. I can’t explain it. I guess I’m just fucking bad. I’m a bad seed right down to my fucking core and I just landed in the right family to exploit that.”

She was crying, trying to pretend it all wasn’t true. I could tell she wanted to go back to ten minutes ago when we were lying on the car, covered in sweat, stuck in a post orgasmic daydream, but there was no going back. This was where we were, and where we always would be. She had known I was bad news. Now she understood just how bad.

Then she lifted her head and wiped her eyes, suddenly seeming more composed than she had been seconds ago.

“Okay. Fine. So, you’re the devil on earth. The only question I have is this. If you’re so bad, and if your
family
is so bad, then why are they trying to kill you? Could you have possibly done something
good
that upset them, Hunter?”

Smart fucking girl. You’re a real smart fucking girl, Kelly.

I sat there on the car and let her words sink in for a moment.

“Well? What did you do, Hunter? What did you do to make your father want to track you down and kill you?”

“I fucked him over. I fucked the prick over like he had been fucking me over since the day the bastard brought me home.”

Then I told her, not sparing any gory detail, about the night that had sent me on the road from Boston. The night that changed my life. The night that brought me to Stone Peak and had me spilling my guts to the most beautiful woman I had ever set eyes on in my whole goddamned life. The girl who was now as much a part of me as any low down, dirty fucking thing I had ever done.

Chapter 34

Kelly

A
S HUNTER LAID OUT THE
details of his life for me, I felt a sick feeling growing in my stomach. I had never thought such things, let alone heard someone talk about them in the first person. He spoke about them like they were just something that he did, like grocery shopping or going to work in the morning. He calmly talked about hurting people, torturing them, and murdering them, like they were the same as him changing the battery in my car. Something he could just choose to do for money. I felt dizzy. I didn’t want any of it to be true, but I knew it was. What made me really sick though, wasn’t just the fact that he did those things, but the fact that a part of me had always known this was the truth. From the moment he walked into the diner, I knew there was a dark power that he possessed deep inside. He had tried to cover it up, but somehow I saw it and, for whatever reason, that power had a hold on me. At the same time, even as he told me every disgusting detail about the night he killed someone and drove off with his father’s dirty money, I saw a layer to him that he couldn’t even see. He was a bad man who did unspeakable things, maybe even enjoyed them, but he wasn’t evil. He could pour whiskey on his soul all he wanted, but there was a part of him that cared, no matter how much he wanted to act like there wasn’t. He was violent, he was powerful, he had certain
abilities
, but underneath it all there was a good man. A man with integrity. And I just wished he could see that being one, didn’t mean the other did not exist.

“So there you have it, sweetheart. That’s who’s in your sleepy little town, and that’s the storm that is heading my way.”

He threw his cigarette to the ground and immediately brought another to his lips and lit it.

I looked at him. His arms bulged as he cradled the lighter to his face, stray hairs fell across his weathered, beautiful face. I didn’t care what he had done. I didn’t care what he would do. I just knew that I was meant to be by his side. And he knew it too.

“I don’t care,” I said bluntly.

He looked up and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“You don’t care about what, Kelly?”

“Any of it. I don’t care. I don’t care what you’ve done, who you’ve done it to, or who you’ve done it with. I don’t care about any of it. I only care about you, Hunter. I care about,” I paused for a second, not wanting to say out loud what I was about to admit to him. “I care about
us
. I said it because you made me, but it’s the truth. I’m yours. Remember? I know who you are. I always have. And I don’t care about any of it except you.”

Hunter leaned against the car and smoked his cigarette while he stared back at me, smiling his same sly smile.

“You know,” he started as he took a drag and then blew out the smoke, “it’s a damn good thing you’re such a pretty girl.”

He ditched the cigarette and walked toward me. I stood up and started to back away until I felt my legs hit the chair I had been sitting in.

“And why is that, Hunter?”

He stopped just in front of me and ran his hand along my jaw, tucking the hair that had fallen on my face behind my ear. He looked deeply into me with his piercing, blue eyes.

“Because you are incredibly fucking stupid.”

He pulled my face toward his and placed his lips on mine, kissing me like only he could kiss me. Every feeling of love, hatred, desire, need, and violence poured out of him through his kiss and I could feel myself being pulled further into him and his world.

As he moved his warm, wet tongue in and out of my mouth, I could feel his hands move into my hair and then across my shoulders and down my back, pulling me close into his body. He held me there in his arms and we fell into each other. I never wanted this moment to end. I wanted to stay right there with him forever and never have to worry about anything else.

He pulled himself away from me, looked into my eyes, and I knew he was never going to leave me. At the same time, I knew that I could never leave him. We were bonded together by something stronger than the two of us. A whole chain of events had occurred to bring us together and nothing could tear us apart.

“Jesus, the sun is coming up, darling. I better get you home so you can get ready for work. Or is Grace running things on her own today?”

I laughed. I hadn’t really ever heard him joke around before.

“No, no, I’m working. Grace doesn’t. Oh no. Grace. I completely forgot.”

“What? Jesus, Kelly, what the fuck?”

“Grace. Grace is staying at my house. I was locking the diner and giving Dennis back, giving you back, your keys and then I was supposed to go straight home. Shoot. Oh lord, I hope she’s not up. She’ll have a heart attack if she realizes I’m not home.”

“Kelly! Christ! Your house is like four fucking blocks away and it’s very early. I doubt she’s up and rattling around yet. Your car is good to go. I’ll drive you home.”

“Okay. You’re right. It’s more I just want to be home before Lucas wakes up. He would freak if he got up and didn’t know where I was.”

Suddenly I felt Hunter clench. It was like every muscle in his body tightened at the same time. He looked like he was physically in pain.

“Hunter. What’s wrong? Why are you doing that?”

He pulled me close to him and snarled at me through clenched teeth.

“Who, the fuck, is Lucas?”

Chapter 35

Hunter

I
COULD FEEL A RAGE
boiling up inside of me as I stared at Kelly. The name was still hanging in the air. Lucas.

“Kelly. Fucking answer me. Who the fuck is Lucas, and tell me why I shouldn’t go to your place and put a piece of steel through his fucking eye?”

She tried to shake me off her, but I held her close against me and glared down at her so she could see the violence that was building up inside me.

“Hunter, let go.”

“Tell me who he is, Kelly.”

She screamed it at me.

“He’s my little brother. God. Let go.”

I let her go and she pushed me away from her.

“Hunter! Jesus. Did you really think I was hiding some secret boyfriend from you? He’s my brother. My little brother. He’s ten.”

I took a step back and turned my back on her, trying to collect myself. I could feel the rage going down, but my blood was still up.

“Listen. I’m sorry about that. I just thought, well, you know what I thought.”

As I turned around, she stared back at me with her huge green eyes and looked almost touched by my intentions to murder her brother by misunderstanding.

“I get possessive over the things I,” I stopped myself before completing the sentence.
Jesus
. What had I been about to say? “The things I
like.
”

“Yes. I know what you thought. But that’s not the case, okay?”

I looked back at her and could feel myself relaxing. I took her by her shoulders and pulled her back in close to me.

“Fine. It may not be the case. But you have to understand. No, you have to fucking
know,
that other guys and you, that shit is done. You’re fucking
mine
, Kelly, and I swear to whatever God you pray to that I will end anyone who tries to come between us. Got it?”

She looked up at me with the same
fuck me
eyes she always got around me and I knew she understood. As she licked her lips, I moved my head into hers and kissed her deeply before pulling away and resting my forehead on hers.

“I’m never fucking leaving you and you’re never fucking leaving me. That’s the way it is.”

She took a deep breath and rested her head on my chest as I pulled her body into me and held her tight in my arms.

“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

We stood there for a moment and then I heard my phone buzz.

Who the fuck? Shit. Deacon.

I let Kelly go and rushed to the table where my phone was and opened Deacon’s message.

Goddamn it, pal. I left you high and dry. I hope you’re not bleeding out somewhere.

I read the message and saw all was well.

“Place is as empty as my cold, Irish heart. Not like yours, lover boy. On the road home now. Say hey to the missus. D.”

Asshole. I might have to go back home just to put a boot in his fucking ass.

I heard Kelly speak up from behind me.

“Who’s texting you at this time? Maybe I should be the one who’s worried here.”