Page 4 of Hunting Gianna (Stalkers in the Woods #3)

Chapter Two

Knox

Her breath. Her body. Her sighs, the only sounds I need to hear.

The entire forest falls away until it's just her and me and the way she turns in her sleep, dreaming of things that don't include me.

Yet. I move silent, even the air not daring to shift around me, even the night holding its breath as I push forward, each step leaving my heart pounding faster.

Her tent is close. Then closer. Close enough to taste.

The only thing keeping me out is the thin fabric that I want to tear open with my teeth.

She doesn't even know how close I am. How close she is to being taken.

That reckless oblivion is what brought me here, what brings me closer still.

Each step is a punishment and a reward. I see the sleeping bag pushed down, her skin catching in the moonlight.

A shimmer of sweat where her shoulder meets her neck.

I'm hardly breathing now, her breath the only sound.

Slow and even. As slow and even as my careful approach.

Mine .

I fight against the need to break that rhythm as I stare through the small window at her perfect body. The owl calls in the distance, but it's her soft sounds that hold me here.

It should bother me, this close range, how perfect she looks spread below me, just one flimsy wall between us. Instead, it bothers me that it doesn't. That I don't just rip through that final barrier and claim what I’ve already made mine.

I stare until she almost stops being real.

She turns in her sleep. I flinch. The tension, coils tight, unrelenting, it knows no relief as she turns again, her hand finding a place beneath the pillow, an unintentional twitch as she sighs and says something low and unintelligible.

As good as saying my name, the way it calls to the darkness in me to spread myself across her lips.

Her hair fans across her eyes. I want to brush it back, just a stray strand that has loosened and curved along her cheek like a perfect fucking decoration.

But I don't. I clench my hand. Then I unclench it and run my fingers along the fabric of the tent, feeling it like I would feel her, feeling her underneath it, not even a breath away.

The mesh window separates us, small enough to keep me out, big enough to let me watch. She's a rare sight, her lips parted and skin bare, trusting her safety to the night. Fucking hell. This woman has me undone just at the sight of her. The sight I've wanted since the moment she arrived. My sight.

I hold the tent frame and run my fingers over the corded braid holding the pole in, something to distract from the distraction, something to hold me together when nothing else can.

How easy to reach in. To be in. To be in her without resistance. I imagine that it's true, that I finally make my move and let her sleep through the taking. That it's as easy as the way she breathes and the way her breaths match mine until they're one in the same.

One in the same, that's the trick of it.

But this is one part I want awake. I want her to feel it, to fight it, to understand it. I want to fuck her until she can’t breathe and she wakes up with my cock buried inside her. Her hips will roll, even as her mind struggles to catch up to the fact that I devoured her soul.

The desperate longing turns into something just as desperate.

Something not as soft, something that I push away but can't let go.

Her chest rises, falls, in sync with mine.

She is unaware of how I match her rhythm, how even my pounding heart finds a way to get in tune, gets in tune without trying. Even in sleep she trains me.

Gianna. My little bird.

This is closer than I should get. I should have been in the cabin.

Not watching her shift against the tight confines of the sleeping bag.

Not seeing how the space wraps around her as tight as the warmth of her breath and raw desire wrap around me.

My breath catches in my throat as she moves again, a subtle twist, her arm sneaking out and bringing the bag back with it.

She turns and tucks it tight beneath her chin, hiding the body I want to swallow, hiding but not enough.

The heaviness in my chest mirrors the heaviness of my body. I want her. The thought lands on me and I need her, the longer it stays. Want her so much that I feel it all the way down, fisting my hand around myself, holding tight until it hurts.

I could go now, slip back through the trees and pretend that it's enough to have gotten this far. But I know the lie before I can even tell it.

Another twitch, a murmur, another restless shift.

This is the part where I close the distance.

This is the part where I close the deal.

I shake my head at how close I am to doing it.

She doesn't see me but I'm here, the idea both soothes and wounds.

I could wake her up, shake her out of her blissful fucking dreams, teach her the sharp truth about this wild place.

I could take her with force and make her crave it.

I could and I won't.

It's too good this way, a game.

I'm playing and she's not. The rules are simple.

I will win, because I’m the only one who holds all the cards.

The tension pulls me forward, pulls me in, pulling my control until it's like a breaking fucking thread.

I dig my nails into my palm and squeeze my cock before I come just from the way I imagine her wrapped around me.

Holding, waiting, bleeding energy into the earth while it bleeds into me.

Wanting it now, wanting to see her fight and make her mine.

I keep my eyes steady on the curve of her neck. If I look too long, if I look away, I won't leave. I have to leave. I have to make her see me.

I have to wait. I need to be sure that she’s the one.

The beginning and the end.

I close my eyes.

Then open them.

I'm still here. So is she. She is everything I need and more than I thought I'd want. I don't look away and I don't look too close, waiting for the distance to come on its own, waiting for me to allow it, for me to find some way to break this knot before it chokes me.

The last shred of sense is gone before the rest. It's only my stubbornness, only that rarest fucking moment of clarity, that makes me loosen the knot and makes me wait.

Tomorrow. Or the next day. This is my promise, little bird.

One deep breath and I finally pull back. It's the kind of deep breath I haven't taken since I first found her. A breath that's not the same as hers.

Mine is raspy, rough around the edges. Shaky.

I retreat with clenched hands, with sharp lungs.

Each step away from her burns, until the cold mountain air forces me to look at how far I haven't gone.

I circle the camp, knowing how easy it is to stay and watch over her, but I cant.

I have to go. Away from this little bird.

But I also know how easy it will be to return, to do this right, to turn the tight, dizzy knot into a clean, straight line, drawn as thin as her fucking breath, as thin as mine.

The control isn't like I thought it would be.

But it is. It's not enough until it's all that’s left. She can have this night alone, watching from a distance, from up close, from every fucking angle. When it clicks, she’ll know it, know how it happens.

I hold the patience of a Saint. Each second a sacrifice and each second a gift.

I am above her, looking down. I am beside her, looking in.

I am everywhere she hasn't imagined, everywhere she has.

The way her breath moves her ribs and the way her chest moves mine—these are what keep me, what bind me, what draw me to this single fucking point in the center of the world.

A beautiful girl named Gianna, sleeping and mine. And mine. And fucking mine.

It aches. But it's a good kind of ache. I can stand it. It makes me harder. Makes me want it more. Makes me push every ounce of patience to its breaking point, to its snapping point.

She's still sleeping as I slip from her view. Pain sits in my chest as I walk away, but I do it anyway. I walk in wide, impatient circles, tracking the long path from her body to her car, to her escape. The escape she won't make.

There is no escaping me.

I get to her car and lay beneath it searching. Much like I want to be back at her camp. In her tent. Under her. Looking into her fucking soul. Looking in to her whole world, the world I'll have the moment I give in and make her understand. She's mine. She's so fucking mine.

Wrapping my hands around the ignition wire, I draw my knife and it cuts fast, cutting right through. Right through me. The smooth, solid wire of my own restraint, making me tremble with its sudden clean edges. My breath thick and my head light.

I watch it dangle, and I heard it snap with the snick of an easy cut.

That single moment, a delicious moment, the way she will come to me and be caught and be perfect and be scared.

That single fucking moment stretched forever.

It gets me out from under the car and into my jeans.

Wiping her off, wiping the desire off, wiping every bit of control back into my tightest fucking skin.

The car won't start. She will panic, find the cabin… and walk right into the mouth of the man who won’t stop until she’s breathing his name.

I disappear into the trees, the tightness across my chest, the tension in my muscles lifting when I realize...

This little bird is about to experience what it feels like to sing from inside a pretty little cage, constructed just for her.

It’s enough to make me say it, this beautifully wicked plan. It's enough to make me chuckle as I take the long way back.

It's enough to hold me and it's enough to make her break.

She'll come to me.

When it's time.

All I need to do is wait.