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"Say it," he growls. "Say you like it when I make you dirty."

My breath catches in my throat.

"Say you like being on your knees with my fingers buried in your cunt."

"No," I breathe, though the protest sounds pathetically weak even to my own ears.

He yanks my hair harder. "Words, little thief. I want your words."

When I remain silent, he delivers a sharp, open-handed slap to my thigh that cracks through the trees like lightning. I whimper at the sting, heat blooming across my skin.

"You don't get to lie to me." His voice has grown deeper, thicker with a need that mirrors my own. "I'm the only one who sees you. The real you. The one who wants to be ruined. Who wants to be owned."

His fingers thrust harder, and a scream tears from my throat before I can suppress it.

"Say it."

"Fuck you," I choke out.

He leans closer, lips ghosting over my jaw, the bone mask still grinning silently against my skin.

"Wrong answer."

He withdraws his fingers completely before drivingthem back in—deeper, harder, crueler than before—and I collapse forward onto my elbows, my entire body trembling.

"You'll beg before I'm done," he promises softly. "And I'll still make you say please."

I don't understand how I'm still fighting him when every part of me burns with desire and exhaustion. My knees sting from the rough ground, my thighs shake uncontrollably, and my mouth feels raw from biting back sounds I refuse to let him hear. I'm desperately trying to hold onto something—anything—that feels like control.

But he's relentless, still touching me, still speaking in that quiet, merciless voice that seems to exist inside my head and under my skin and between my ribs.

He wants me to admit it, to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that everything he's done to me has worked perfectly. And perhaps it has, but I refuse to surrender that last piece of myself.

I can't.

With one last burst of defiance, I twist suddenly—throwing my elbow back and trying to jerk away, attempting to bite whatever part of him I can reach. But he's faster, as though he's been waiting for precisely this moment, as though he knew I had one last fight left in me and wanted to feel it before taking that away too.

His hand snaps around my jaw with bruising force, yanking my head back against his shoulder, my body trapped between his solid warmth and the cold, unyielding earth.

"Still got teeth?" he murmurs, satisfaction evident in every syllable. "Good. You'll need them."

I snarl up at him. "I'm not yours."

He grinds his hips against my ass, and I feel the unmistakable hardness of his cock straining against rough denim.

"You were mine the second you didn't scream."

Twelve

LUNA

My body is feedinghim my every thought and emotion, and he reads it like a confession. His hand slides back between my legs, fingers slick with evidence of my surrender. The slow circles against my clit are maddening, deliberate, drawing reactions I can't suppress no matter how hard I try.

A shaky breath escapes me, and his voice drops lower, softer.

"God, look at you," he whispers, reverence replacing cruelty. "Still fighting, even as you melt on my fingers."

"Fuck you," I manage through clenched teeth.