Page 21 of Hunting Gianna (Stalkers in the Woods #3)

Chapter Fourteen

Knox

I keep my hand wrapped around Gianna’s as we leave the trail.

She doesn’t fight me, not tonight. Maybe she’s tired of fighting.

Maybe she wants to be led, at least for a while.

I drag her down the path toward the west slope, where the trees grow close enough to block the stars, and the ground falls away into a gully that used to be a riverbed before the last drought.

When the guys hunted, I’d come here. To the space where the earth met the water and the sound of solace was all there was.

She shivers in the cold, but doesn’t ask for my jacket.

She won’t show weakness if she can help it, not even to me.

Especially not to me. Her chin is up, eyes scanning the darkness ahead, but every time I squeeze her hand, she flinches just a little.

Like a dog waiting for the next hit, even after I’ve proven I’d never hurt her.

I hate it. I hate whoever did that to her, and I hate myself for being the next link in a chain she never got to choose.

Yet, I’d do it all again because there’s no choice here. She is the one I will grow old with.

“Where are we going?” she asks, voice a notch too casual.

I ignore it, but tug her closer. I want her in my shadow, want her to forget that the world is big enough to swallow her whole. “You’ll see.”

We walk in silence for a while. The only light is the moon, and even that gets cut to shreds by the branches overhead.

I watch the way she moves. She tries to keep her steps light, but the earth here is uneven, scattered with roots and jagged rocks.

When she stumbles, I hold her tighter, allowing her to regain her footing without hurting her pride.

The muscle jumps in her jaw, but she doesn’t pull away.

I could say something. I could tell her how good she looks like this, all soft in the dark, hair catching silver in the half-light. But I don’t. Instead, I push her forward, making her walk ahead of me for a stretch, just so I can watch the way her ass shifts under the jeans.

The riverbed comes up quick. We cross it, and she slips on the slick stones, almost going down.

My hand wraps around her waist, hauls her upright.

She makes a sound, more breath than voice, and the urge to bite her right at the pulse in her neck is almost unbearable.

I settle for squeezing, letting her feel the strength in my grip.

“Careful,” I murmur. “It’s easy to get hurt out here.”

She glances back, her eyes sharp. “Not my first rodeo, cowboy.”

I grin, slow and wide but don’t have a retort. It’s like watching a flower blossom for the first time, her with these funny little quips of hers.

We keep moving, up a narrow trail cut between two walls of trees. At the top, they thin, and the world opens out into a basin maybe fifty yards across. In the middle is the waterfall. Noah and Cassidy’s place is just beyond this spot.

It’s not big, not by Pacific Northwest standards—maybe thirty feet, a single sheet of white water plunging into a deep blue pool. Moss grows in thick ropes on the rocks, and the spray hangs in the air before dispersing. The sound of the falls is a freight train, drowning out everything else.

Gianna stops dead, staring.

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

I come up behind her, slide my arms around her waist. She tenses, then relaxes when she realizes I’m not going to push her in. Not yet.

“Ever swim in a waterfall?” I ask, mouth against her ear.

She shakes her head. “Looks cold.”

“It is.”

I let her go, step around in front of her, and start stripping off my shirt.

The air bites at my skin, but I like the sting.

I like the way her eyes flick over the scars on my chest, the ones she pretends not to notice when we fuck.

I undo my belt, never breaking eye contact.

She’s already blushing, but she doesn’t look away.

“Your turn,” I say.

She glances at the falls, then at me. “You serious?”

“Dead serious. Skinny dip or nothing.”

She huffs out a breath, but her hands go to the bottom of her shirt.

She lifts it, slower than she needs to, and I know it’s a power move.

She wants me to watch, wants to make me wait.

I let her. The shirt comes off her head, and her skin is pale in the moonlight, dusted with goosebumps.

She’s not wearing a bra, just like I planned.

I watch her hands as she undoes the jeans, pushing them down over her wide hips. She steps out of them, standing in nothing but a red thong. She hesitates, then slides them off, shivering in the night air.

Her arms go up, covering her tits. “Don’t stare.”

I walk up, close enough to feel her breath, and catch her wrists in one hand. I pull them down, exposing her.

“Never hide from me,” I say, voice low. “You will never think of yourself as anything other than perfect, ever again.”

She tries to look away, but I grab her chin, force her to meet my eyes.

“Say it,” I whisper. “Say you’re perfect.”

She swallows. “I’m perfect.”

I let her go.

She watches as I peel off my boxers. I stand there, naked and hard, and her eyes widen just a little. I don’t comment, just take her hand and pull her toward the water.

The pool is black and glassy. The roar of the falls swallows every sound. I wade in first, pulling her behind me. The cold is fucking brutal, but I don’t react. She hisses through her teeth, then plunges in up to her shoulders, arms crossed over her chest.

“Jesus Christ,” she gasps. “You’re insane.”

I swim a few strokes out, then turn back, treading water. “Come on. It’s better out here.”

She paddles to me, her hair streaming behind her in dark ropes. I reach for her, slide my hands around her waist, and pull her in so close I can feel the shiver running through her spine.

We float like that, bobbing in the current, the spray from the falls making her skin slick and cold. Her nipples are hard as glass, and she tries to cover them, but I won’t let her. I grab her hands, pin them behind her back, force her chest up against mine.

She glares at me, but I can see the heat under the ice. She wants this. She just doesn’t want to admit it.

I lean in, mouth barely touching her ear. “No one can hear us here,” I say. “You can scream as loud as you want.”

She laughs, breathless. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I squeeze her wrists, hard enough to hurt. “I would. But I’d rather you tell me what you want.”

She goes quiet, thinking.

“I want you to let me go,” she says.

I don’t react. “Lie.”

She smiles, slow and wicked. “I want you to fuck me in the water.”

“Better.”

I kiss her, hard, biting her lip until she gasps. Her legs wrap around my waist, and I feel her slick and hot even through the chill. I slide inside her in one stroke, and she moans, head falling back.

The cold vanishes. All that’s left is her, tight and perfect around me, her body arching and straining with every thrust. The water slaps against us, the noise of it lost in the thunder of the falls.

She bites my shoulder, leaving a mark, and I fuck her harder for it. She comes once, then again, nails digging into my back. I don’t stop until she’s shaking, until her voice goes raw and hoarse.

When I finish, I bury my face in her neck, breathing her in.

For a long time, we just float. Her arms are around me, her head on my shoulder. It’s almost peaceful.

I hate it.

I want to ruin it, to drag us both back down into the violence that feels more real than this.

But I don’t. There’s growth in fear and Gianna makes me want to grow through it instead of caving because it’s who I’ve always been.

Instead, I hold her there, letting the water carry us, letting the sound of the falls drown out the voice in my head that tells me to never let her go.

She pulls back, searching my face. Her eyes are clear, and for once, she doesn’t look away.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

The question is so fucking stupid I almost laugh.

“No,” I say. “But I will be. As long as you don’t run ever again. Well… unless it’s so I can find you and fuck you.”

She nods, pressing her mouth to mine.

I let her kiss me.

I let her have this.

Tomorrow, she’ll probably regret it. But tonight, she’s letting herself be mine.

The water makes her hair heavy. It drapes over her face, sticking in black lines to her cheekbones. She brushes it aside, fingers clumsy and blue with cold, and for a while we just drift, her legs still hooked around my hips, her breath warm on my jaw.

This is the closest I’ve come to peace in years, and it’s fucking terrifying.

Gianna’s eyes are wide open. She stares at the sky, the low cloud smear above us, the occasional gull wheeling overhead. I think she’s counting the seconds before she ruins it.

She doesn’t disappoint.

“My ex was a captain,” she says. “I never told you that.”

I grunt, holding her tighter so she can’t drift away from me.

“He ran one of those luxury cruise liners,” she goes on, voice thin and flat. “Six months on, three months off. He said he loved the ocean because it made him feel like a god. Like he could go anywhere, do anything, and no one could stop him.”

Her nails dig into my bicep. Not hard, but deliberate. I think she wants me to hurt, just a little. Fair enough.

“He cheated on me,” she says. “Every time he docked. Didn’t even bother to hide it. Told me once, if you can’t handle the freedom, you shouldn’t be with a man like me.” She spits, a hot fleck that vanishes into the spray. “Like it was some gift, his honesty.”

I listen, because that’s what I do. I listen and I remember.

“I stayed,” she says, her voice getting softer, “because I thought it would make me stronger. That if I could take it, I could take anything.” She laughs, sharp and bitter.

“Turns out all it did was make me hate myself. He’d tell me I was fat.

Worthless. Show me pictures of the women he’d fuck in between ports. ”