Page 48 of Lady and the Hitman

I felt seen.

Which was more than I could say for Trevor.

God. Trevor.

He would’ve hated every second of this. Would’ve called it performative or pathetic. Would’ve psychoanalyzed my “daddy issues” over brunch with a mimosa in one hand and a smug smile on his face.

He once told me he preferred women who were strong, like that was the opposite of being touched the way I wanted. Like needing to be taken was weakness, instead of proof that I was strong enough to give in.

Trevor had never made me come. Not once. He had thought rubbing my clit like a dial on a washing machine while mansplaining gerrymandering counted as intimacy.

He would’ve been horrified by this.

Which somehow made me want it more.

Because Trevor wanted a version of me that didn’t exist.

But Ronan?—

Ronan wanted this me.

The woman running through a pitch-black reptile house in nothing but a second-skin bodysuit, heart pounding, thighs slick, knowing she would be caught and claimed and maybe destroyed.

And God, I wanted to be destroyed.

A sound.

Somewhere behind me.

A footstep?

I whipped around. Nothing.

But my body responded anyway—heat blooming, breath quickening, pulse skittering against my wrist.

I wanted him to find me. To tear through the dark and slam me into a wall and make good on every filthy promise. I wanted to hear his voice again in my ear, telling me to stop running. To beg. To open my thighs and let the predator take what he’d earned.

But he didn’t come.

And that was the worst part.

Because the longer I had to wait, the wetter I became.

I crept forward, passing a tank with a massive Burmese python curled like sin in a glass coffin.

This wasn’t a zoo.

It was a jungle.

And I was the only prey that mattered.

Hours passed.

Or maybe it was minutes. Time didn’t work the same here.

I moved through biome after biome, the zoo sprawling like a fever dream. Past flamingos in an eerie, moonlit lagoon. Past crocodiles half-submerged in black water. Through dusty plains and faux savannas where giraffes stood still as statues and lions dozed behind fences too far away to offer comfort.

Every space was open. Vulnerable. I felt watched even when I was alone.