Page 28 of Hunting Brooklyn (Stalkers in the Woods #5)

Chapter Fifteen

Brooklyn

W alking back is nothing like walking into the forest.

Leaving, I was electric, every nerve shot through with the violence of being wanted, being claimed.

Now, the world is quiet and the sun has shifted, the green filter of the trees turned cold and metallic.

I can feel the water still clinging to my hair, the damp of my skin leeching heat, but the ache between my legs is louder than the chill.

We’re naked, I’m freezing but Slade doesn’t show if he’s cold. Ever the stoic.

He doesn’t talk. He walks half a pace behind, eyes fixed on me like I am a compass needle, and he’s waiting to see if I’ll spin out or point north for once.

My thighs are raw. My breath is shallow.

I keep waiting for the adrenaline to wear off, for my knees to collapse and send me crashing into the ground, but I stay upright.

Even my own body is betraying me, holding together when I want to fracture.

He lets me lead. Maybe he knows I’ll go back to the cabin on my own, because the woods mean freedom but also hunger and cold and every other thing I’m afraid of.

Or maybe it’s the same reason predators let the wounded animal limp a few feet ahead: to study the way it moves, savor the chase that comes next.

When the porch comes into view, my skin prickles—not from cold, but from the shock of seeing a place that is supposed to mean safety. For a second, I imagine what it would be like to run inside, lock the door, and just be home. Not his home. Not a trap. Just… home.

Despite my love for my family, I never really fit in with them. Home was one nanny after another while my parents went out and worked, built their empires, leaving my brother and I in the care of strangers. Home was never quite home, but rather a place we survived in.

Now Slade has me wondering if home could be a place between his arms with my head on his chest.

He reads the hesitation, or maybe just my shoulders tensing, and doesn’t follow me up the steps. He stops at the bottom of the steps, hands in the pockets of his jeans, head cocked to the side. Watching. Waiting.

Panic is starting to set in and I freeze, just staring at the door.

My body is still humming, but my brain is catching up, patching in all the holes I tore open by letting him touch me. There’s a list forming in my head, all the things that still exist outside this cabin, outside this fucked-up forest:

My company… my father’s legacy. The meeting in Cape Town. The office in Sandton

My apartment, full of books with dog-eared corners and old mugs of tea I never finished.

My friends, who will have noticed by now that I’m gone, or maybe not, maybe they’re all waiting for me to call and explain myself.

My life. My real life. The one I’ve been missing, the one that only exists if I can get out of here.

It crashes over me in a wave so sudden I have to brace myself against the wall.

For a few seconds, I pace the length of the porch, barefoot on wood, dripping a trail that follows me back and forth.

My hands knot in my hair, fingers catching on tangles and burrs.

The cold only serves to heat me from the inside out, burning away the desire and replacing it with fury.

I want to scream, to shatter something, to claw my way through him and rip out his heart, but instead I circle. Over and over, like a dog in a cage.

He finally walks past me and opens the door, pushing me inside before he closes it.

“I’m going to make some food, get dressed.”

Clothing is the last thing I’m thinking about as I press my forehead to the door and try to slow my breathing. If I breathe slow enough, maybe I’ll stop feeling altogether. Maybe I can shrink myself down to a point so small I’ll blink out of existence, and he’ll never find me again.

It doesn’t work. My pulse is a going wild. What the fuck do I do now?

I turn from the window and see it: the knife. It’s on the kitchen counter, lying next to the stove, blade up and glinting in the late light. Is this a trap? Probably. But I don’t care.

I stare at it. My whole body goes cold, then hot.

My feet move before my brain does. In two steps, I’m at the counter.

My hand closes around the handle, and the weight of it shocks me: heavier than it looks, solid and balanced, like it was made for this exact moment.

My palm sweats against the grip. I imagine what it would feel like to put the blade in his throat, but the image comes and goes, as fleeting as a sneeze.

What happens next is pure instinct. I run. Not out the front, but deeper into the house, into the only room with a door that locks. The bedroom.

I slam the door behind me, twist the little latch so hard it almost snaps, and stand with my back against it. My breath is ragged. My hands shake so bad I can barely hold the knife, but I don’t let go. It’s all I have.

On the other side, I hear nothing. No footsteps. No curse. No sound at all, except my own heart beating, and the faint echo of his voice in my head: you belong to me.

For the millionth time since I got here, I wonder if maybe he’s right. Maybe I do. Maybe I want to.

But the knife is real, and the sweat on my hand is real, and the line between hunger and terror is so thin it almost slices me in half.

I slide down the door, sit on the floor, and stare at the knife.

My hand doesn’t stop shaking.

My head won’t stop spinning.

All I can do is wait, and breathe, and try not to fall apart before he decides what happens next.

It doesn’t take long.

The knife is still in my hand when I hear him at the door.

He doesn’t bang, doesn’t even try the handle. Just stands there, his presence a weight pressing through the wood. For a second, I think maybe he’ll let me have this: the room, the knife, the silence. I even imagine him walking away, giving me time to breathe, maybe to escape.

Instead, he speaks. Voice low, slow, the way you talk to an animal you don’t want to spook.

“Brooklyn,” he says. “Open the door.”

I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. My teeth are clenched, jaw locked so tight my ears ring.

“I know you’re scared,” he says, and there’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before. Not pity, not anger. A kind of… disappointment. Like he thought I was better than this. “Just talk to me. Tell me what you want.”

My lungs refuse to cooperate. I can’t get enough air, each breath a stutter, a failure. My fingers cramp around the knife, white-knuckled, sweat pooling in the creases of my palm.

“I want to go home,” I whisper, but it comes out too soft, so I scream it. “I WANT TO GO HOME.”

“Move away from the door Brooklyn. I’m coming in.”

I scramble across the floor, my knees scraping against the hard wood and pull myself to stand facing the door, knife out.

There’s a pause. A sound, like his head hitting the door, or maybe just the slow grind of his patience running out.

Then the world explodes.

The door doesn’t creak or shudder—it just goes, ripped from the frame with a single kick that sends the knob ricocheting into the drywall. Splinters shoot across the floor. I shriek, backing into the far corner like a rat in a trap.

He fills the doorway, chest heaving, eyes blacker than I’ve ever seen them. Sweat beads on his brow, his hair plastered to his forehead from the effort of holding himself back. He sees the knife. He sees me.

His hands come up, palms empty.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, but every muscle in his body contradicts the words.

My whole arm shakes. The blade wobbles in the air between us.

“Stay back,” I say, but my voice cracks in the middle.

He steps in. I brace myself for the tackle, the blow, the violence that always follows.

He doesn’t rush me. Just one slow step, then another.

“You think I’d hurt you?” he says, and now there’s anger, hot and thin, simmering just under the words. “After all this?”

“You kidnapped me,” I spit, louder now, matching his anger with my own. “You fucking ruined my life. I had a company, I had—people, and you—”

He’s close now, but not close enough to reach. He stands there, arms at his sides, breathing hard, eyes locked on mine.

“I didn’t ruin your life,” he says, voice razor-thin. “I gave it back to you.”

“Fuck you,” I say. The knife is shaking so badly now that I have to clutch it with both hands.

He watches the tremor, reads it for what it is. Fear, not resolve.

“Don’t do it,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you, Brooklyn. Don’t make me.”

I scream. I don’t even mean to, but it comes out anyway, raw and ugly.

Then I lunge.

The distance is nothing. I’m on him before I even register moving. I stab at his chest, aiming for the hollow under his ribs, but he’s faster. He grabs my wrist, twisting, and the knife clatters to the floor.

I try to kick, to bite, to claw at his face, but he pins me to the wall with one hand around my throat, the other hand locking my waist against him.

He’s squeezing, but not to the point of strangulation, just enough that it turns me on instead.

The weight of him is everywhere, a wall of muscle and heat and sweat.

His heart hammers against my own, a sick symphony of rage and shame and desire.

He doesn’t hurt me. He doesn’t even move.

He just holds me there, breathing in my ear, until I stop fighting.

We stay like that for a long time. My chest rises and falls against his, desperate for air, but I don’t dare move.

His hand slides down my wrist, fingers loosening. My arm drops. He brings his other hand up, brushing the hair from my face, the touch so gentle it almost makes me cry.

For the first time, I look at him—not the monster, not the hunter, but the man. He’s beautiful. Terrifying. Mine.

“Who are you?” I whisper, voice barely there.

He doesn’t answer right away. He looks down at my mouth, at the place where I bit through my own lip. Then he looks back at my eyes.

“Yours,” he says, and the word almost undoes me.