Page 26 of Hunting Gianna (Stalkers in the Woods #3)

Chapter Seventeen

Gianna

After a while, the fire burns down to fat, red coals.

The bottle of whiskey is empty and I am more than buzzing.

I’m draped over Knox, the stretch of his chest under my cheek, breathing in the faint stink of sweat, smoke, and blood that always seems to hover around him.

His fingers are tracing lazy circles over my skin, dipping between my thighs before trailing back up and over in a big, looping pattern.

He’s been quiet for a long time. I think he likes it that way, the slow scrape of the clock and the hiss-pop of the last log splitting in half. I think he could sit like this for years, holding me, going nowhere, being nothing.

I fidget, picking at the bandage he stuck on my knee. “This is a problem, you know.”

He grunts. “What is?”

I gesture at the room, at the mess of two lives smashed together in the crucible of trauma and bad whiskey. “This. We can’t stay in your little mountain love-shack forever.”

He lets that hang for a second. “Why not?” He says it soft, but his jaw flexes. He knows why. He just wants to hear me say it.

“Because someone is going to come looking for me eventually,” I say. “Because I still have a job, you do too, probably. Because I have to, I don’t know, give notice before I can run away and become a cave woman.” My laugh is ugly. “You ever hear of two people less equipped to be a real couple?”

Fear is clawing it’s way up my spine. But I always do this. Anytime something gets real, I want to run. Except with Brad. Because I knew exactly what he was and what to expect.

It’s the ones I can’t predict that scare the fuck out of me.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he peels me off his chest and sits up, tossing the blanket off us.

I yelp as the chill air prickles over my skin, and cross my arms over my chest. I’m pretty sure I look like hell.

He looks like a fucking MMA hero—lean, bruised, shirtless, but every scar making him more of what he’s always been.

“Here are your options,” he says, and now his voice is sharp, cutting through the buzz.

“Option one: I build us a cabin farther out, somewhere no one will ever find. We go full hermit, live off the land, raise little monsters. Option two: we go back. To the city. You do your job, I do mine, we see if we can make it work in the real world.” He pauses. “You get to choose.”

I stare at him. It’s the most he’s ever said about the future, and it stings that both options are binary—either I become his wild woman in the woods, or I chain myself to the grindstone and hope to God I succeed.

“What if I don’t want either?” I say, quieter than I mean to.

He tilts his head. “You don’t want me?”

My chest knots. “That’s not what I said.” I try to laugh it off, but it comes out as a whimper. “I just… I don’t know if I know how to want anything anymore.”

The room is silent for a long time. Then he leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes on the embers. “What did you want before you met me?” he asks.

The question is a sucker punch. I want to say I had dreams. I want to say there was a time I could see more than five feet in front of my own face.

I want to say I was happy, or at least functional, or at least something.

But all I can think of is the slow, sinking dread of waking up alone, day after day, hating myself a little more every time.

I shake my head. “I think I just wanted not to die,” I say.

He sits back, and for a moment I think he’s going to be cruel, to tell me I’m weak, or broken, or a waste. Instead, he just says, “Same.”

It shouldn’t feel like a confession, but it does.

We sit in that for a while, the ugly truth of it crawling around in my head. Maybe we were more alike than different, after all. Eventually, he breaks first, which is a new record.

“You want to go back,” he says, and it’s not a question.

I stare at my hands, at the blue-black fingerprints circling my wrists, at the mess of scabs on my knuckles, at the dried blood I start picking away at.

“I should go back,” I say. “But I don’t know if I want to.”

He’s right next to me now, all heat and gravity, his arm heavy over my shoulders. He smells like burnt pine and old sweat, and it’s the first thing that has felt like home in years.

“People are going to think this is Stockholm syndrome,” I say, and try to make it a joke. “Hell, I think it is Stockholm syndrome. You kidnapped me, Knox.”

His eyes go dark. “I call it fate.”

I almost roll my eyes, but then I see the way he’s looking at me—like I’m the last thing on earth that matters. I want to laugh, but I also want to cry, so I do neither. I just curl into his side, pressing my nose into the hollow above his collarbone.

“Did you ever wonder if we’re just two broken people who found each other at the exact wrong time?” I ask.

His fingers find the spot at the base of my skull, rubbing slow circles. “No. I think I waited my whole life for you.”

I should make a snide remark, should tell him that’s the most manipulative thing anyone’s ever said to me, but I can’t, because he means them. Instead, I trace the white scars running across his ribs, kissing each one like it’s a secret only I get to know.

He shivers, just a little.

“You know I’m never going to stop coming after you, right?

If you try to leave me,” he says, and I know he means it.

I know it in the way his hand holds me just tight enough to bruise, in the way his voice goes rough around the edges, in the way he never lets me out of his sight for more than a second.

I smile, letting my lips brush over his skin. “Good,” I say. “Because I think I’d kill myself if you did.”

There’s nothing left to say after that.

Just the sound of the fire, and his breathing, and the slow, terrifying certainty that I have finally, truly given up on ever being safe again.

I’m okay with that.

I think he is, too.

He says nothing more, just sits with me in the half-light, the weird peace of people who have accepted their own extinction.

I watch the movement of his hands—callused, dirty under the nails, a scar running the length of his index finger—and I want to put my mouth on every inch of him.

Maybe it’s a trauma response. Maybe it’s just that I am, at the core, a greedy little whore.

I don’t know and I don’t care. I slide off the couch and onto my knees, right there on the fur rug.

Knox raises an eyebrow but says nothing, just watches me with that quiet patience.

His cock is already half-hard, the head poking out above the waistband of his boxers, angry red and glossy with pre-cum.

I lick my lips, the taste of cheap whiskey and salt on my tongue.

My hands are shaking, a tremor that makes everything feel both dangerous and precious.

I reach for him, running my palm along the thick length through the cotton.

He’s so fucking big, I forget sometimes, forget until I see it again up close and remember how it splits me open every time. I love it.

He watches me, eyes hooded, face gone slack with the anticipation of violence.

“You want it?” he murmurs, voice low, almost teasing.

I nod. “Yes.”

He grins, that slow, mean smile. “Then take it.”

I do. I yank his boxers down, and his cock springs free, heavy and beautiful, veins standing out.

I wrap my hands around, one stacked above the other and work him slowly up and down.

The tip is already wet, a droplet running down the side.

I lap it up, tasting the salt. His eyes darken as he stares down at me, his hand working through my hair, ever so gently.

My mouth waters, a primal response to being wanted this much.

I start slow, licking up the underside, tracing every vein, every ridge.

He tastes like sweat and salt and something darker.

I hollow my cheeks, sucking just the head, letting my tongue swirl around the crown.

His breath catches, just a hitch, but I hear it and it’s enough to make my whole body go hot.

I go deeper, taking more of him in, working my hand in time with my mouth.

I gag when he hits the back of my throat, but I don’t stop.

I want to choke on him. I want to taste him for days.

My other hand drifts down between my legs, fingers slipping through my folds, finding myself wet and swollen.

I circle my clit in slow, messy circles, matching the rhythm of my mouth.

He threads his fingers through my hair, not rough, just possessive.

The touch is electric. I moan around his cock, the vibration making him hiss between his teeth.

He holds my head steady, watching as I bob up and down, spit leaking from the corners of my mouth, tears already stinging my eyes.

I love the way it feels—messy, obscene, real.

“You look so fucking beautiful like this,” he says, voice gone ragged. “You were born for this.”

I want to argue, make a joke, but my mouth is full and my throat is burning.

I swallow him down, again and again, until I can’t breathe, until my mascara is running in black streaks and my jaw aches.

He starts to thrust, slow at first, then harder, fucking my face with a desperation that makes me whimper.

He grunts, hips snapping, and I let him.

I want to be ruined. I want to be nothing but a hole for him to fill.

He holds me down, cock deep in my throat, and I fight not to panic, not to claw at his thighs.

I relax, let myself go soft, and the rush of power is almost as good as the pain.

He shudders, and I feel the pulse, the first hot spurt of come flooding my mouth.

I swallow it greedily, the taste sharp and sour, and he groans, the sound animal.

When he’s done, he pulls out slow, a string of spit connecting us. I gasp for air, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. My face is a disaster, streaked with tears and snot and smeared come. I’ve never felt more alive.