Page 23 of Willing Prey

NINETEEN

Shane

I may have gotten carried away.

Correction: I did get carried away. It was the perfect storm, literally.

Rain beating both our bodies. Lightning charging the air.

Her blood in my mouth. Thunder crashing.

The memory is visceral. Her slick skin beneath me, claiming heat around me, and that scream.

Rage, rebellion, and pleasure all combined into a sound that stole my breath. My stomach tightens when I remember it.

It was incredible, but it was also intense.

Extreme in a way that makes me feel like I fucked something up, pushed too far.

I don’t know enough about BDSM best practices; hell, I don’t even know if BDSM is technically what we’re doing.

I’d known some people liked rougher stuff sexually, but I never thought I might until I heard Keith talking about hunting Claire at that damn party.

Now I know I do like it. Love it, actually. Or at least I do with Claire.

I should have known I was jumping in the deep end.

The first woman I hired asked me about aftercare when I was putting together the contract, and that was the first time I’d heard of it.

How she explained it, the concept seemed uncomfortably intimate, emotionally vulnerable in a way I couldn’t equate with any sexual experience I’d ever had.

Now I think I’m starting to understand it.

Walking away from Claire in the field tonight felt wrong on a cosmic level.

Seeing the raw emotion on her face one second, then watching as she pulled a mask over it and told me to head back without her, was unnerving.

I had to do something , so a bath it was.

For twenty minutes, I stew at the kitchen table.

It’s irritating because I’m not a worrier.

I wait, hoping Claire comes down for coffee.

Trying not to picture the look on her face in the bathroom, the way her mouth was smiling, but every other part of her looked upset.

A horrible thought leaps into my mind, shoving out all others.

Claire could leave.

She could come down the stairs with her suitcase packed.

There are eight days left of our arrangement, though I’ve been intentionally ignoring the looming end of this agreement.

Coffee sours in my stomach. What if she decides that she’s made enough money by this point that she’d rather go, even if it means leaving a few grand on the table?

Fear makes me confront what I’ve been running from.

I want Claire to stay. And I don’t think another thirty days will be enough, though I’ll take it if that’s all she’ll give me. But I’d rather her stay for real, as a partner, to try and figure out whatever dating looks like when you start a relationship this way.

I wish I could shake my past self. As much as she seems to enjoy my company, for all I know, she’s being polite because this is a job to her. She could be repulsed at the thought of an actual relationship with me. Why didn’t I ask her out like a normal person?

I’ve never been great at seeing from other people’s points of view, but tonight I feel terrifyingly aware that through Claire’s eyes, I’m probably a sexual deviant who pays women to fuck in the woods and doesn’t do aftercare.

Does she think I’ve done this dozens of times?

That I’ll be moving someone else in to take her spot when her thirty days are up?

Fuck fuck fuck.

I have difficult conversations for a living, but the thought of asking Claire to stay as a romantic partner makes my mouth go dry.

There are too many ways it could go wrong.

Will she think I’m attempting to keep having sex with her for free?

Or be insulted that I have the audacity to ask her out after paying her for sex?

Maybe she hates me because of whatever happened tonight.

I’m moving before I can stop myself. Out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and down the hall. I’m knocking on Claire’s door before I even stop to think about what I’ll say.

Please don’t be packing.

Please don’t be leaving.

I swing the door open the second I hear her quiet “Come in.” Stepping through the door, I stop hard. The room’s dark, but moonlight through the open window illuminates the bed enough to see a Claire-sized lump under the quilt. She props up on an elbow, her silhouette clear but her face shadowed.

“Shane?” She’s groggy. I woke her. “Everything okay?”

Shit.

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t think you’d be asleep.” I blurt out the question before I can second-guess it. “Did I hurt you?”

Are you going to leave?

Now she really sounds confused. “You bit me pretty hard, but it’s fine. Biting is an approved action in the contract.”

The contract. A handful of papers that might be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I want to shred them into a thousand pieces, light them on fire, and piss on the ashes.

All right, rein it in.

I try to control my voice when I ask, “But are you okay? You didn’t seem like yourself after…” I’m butchering this. I wasn’t this tongue-tied at my first trial. Before I can try to make more sense, Claire laughs.

“Yeah, I’m good. Honestly, you’re fine. I was just overwhelmed after. It was intense.”

“I’m sorry if it was too m—”

“Don’t apologize,” she interrupts. “It was fine. I liked it. Don’t worry, seriously. Besides, that’s what you pay me for.” A yawn chases her sleep-slurred words.

I stumble through some semblance of a second apology, and I think she’s asleep by the end.

That’s what you pay me for.

The words burn like a brand, confirmation that what we do is work for her, first and foremost. I don’t know if I can change that, but I have to try. Hurrying to the library, I flip open my laptop. I’ll start with researching aftercare.

· · ·

The next morning at work, everything I learned from my research stews in my brain. Jumping into primal play cock-first and assuming that as long as I had a contract in place, there was nothing else to worry about was not my finest moment.

Turns out I’m a jerk—unintentionally, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I especially don’t want to hurt Claire.

That means no more parting ways immediately after the hunt.

More talking afterward and checking in to make sure everything went okay.

Ensure Claire, and myself, I suppose, are in a good place mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I’ve been operating on the mistaken assumption that as long as she didn’t use her safe word, we were good to go.

I created the contract to avoid the emotional entanglements of a relationship and inadvertently made myself a complete jackass of a sex partner. That changes today.

This lightning strike of reality has me thinking more rationally about my sudden interest in primal kink. Questioning what I like, why I like it, and why I’m having some kind of sexual awakening at forty years old. Unfortunately, there isn’t time to dwell on it this morning.

From the moment I reach my desk, it’s email after email, call after call, and then back-to-back meetings.

It’s three thirty before I have a chance to grab lunch, and then it’s only because it’s a working meal.

Tanner and I are joined by a potential client who’s an official client by the time the check arrives.

All in all, it’s a good day. A productive day, the kind that used to be the highlight of my week.

Happy as I am, there’s this nagging in the back of my mind that’s new.

A sensation that something’s missing, but I can’t figure out what.

There’s a reprieve when I return from lunch, and I retreat to my office. Sitting at my desk, I fiddle with my phone.

Text Claire.

Scrounging my brain for a reason, I’m left empty-handed.

Because I want to talk to her doesn’t feel like a good enough one.

I can wait until I’m home. Summon her for another hunt, put my newfound aftercare knowledge to use, and have a conversation afterward.

See if I can work in an apology without making her uncomfortable. I’m oddly excited for it.

Thinking of hunting reminds me of a website I bookmarked last night. Clicking it open, I peruse the home page. It’s a kink resource directory, listing and linking to dozens of potentially interesting websites. As I scroll through the options, one stands out.

Comprehensive Kink Test

The link leads to a website that promises to help me identify my kinks. It looks legitimate, the design and layout vaguely academic. A check of my watch shows I have twenty minutes until my next appointment.

Fuck it.

After entering my age and reading a quick how-to blurb, I’m ready.

This will be a breeze. A statement will appear on the screen, and below it, there will be a line numbered one through five.

What number I select is determined by the statement’s accuracy.

Five means it’s completely true; one means it’s completely false.

Simple enough.

I click to begin the test.

The first statement pops up: I like being degraded by my partner during sex.

Do I?

I can’t think of a time I’ve ever wished someone would degrade me, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like it.

Three it is.

On to the next. I like to tie or otherwise physically restrain my partner during sex.

Another thing I’ve never considered. Again, neutral and opting for three.

The statements keep coming, and my answers don’t change. Threes for days, useless in their lack of preference. Is it me or the test? I keep waiting for something to spark inside me, catch fire the way it did when I learned that hunting was a thing.

I’d been looking at Claire across the Christmas party, watching while she chatted with a woman I didn’t recognize.

Keith had been droning on to Tanner and me.

I hadn’t paid attention until he’d said Claire .

Then I’d tuned in, absorbing every detail he spilled, discovering that the idea of hunting a woman—Claire—through the woods was immensely appealing.

I click to the next question: I enjoy leaving evidence of play on my partner, such as bruises or bite marks.

Wait.

Testing the theory I’m forming, I mentally edit the sentence. I enjoy leaving evidence of play on Claire , such as bruises or bite marks. My cock twitches. I choose five.

Next question: I don’t mind playful resistance from my partner.

Again, I make my edit, and again, I get a five.

I fly through the questions, applying each scenario to Claire.

Receiving pain? Four.

Exerting control? Five.

Denying orgasm? Four.

Most activities hold at least some appeal when I consider doing them with Claire. With the exception of watching her have sex with someone else—a hard one—or her watching me have sex with someone else—also a hard one—I’m game to try almost anything.

Leaning back in my chair, I try to make sense of this new information. Few activities interest me when I consider them with some nonspecific partner. With Claire, though…

Is it still a kink awakening if I only want it with her?

Remembering how dismal the hunts were with the two professionals makes my skin crawl.

It feels uncomfortably significant that my only successful, enjoyable primal experiences have been with Claire.

There’s no relief at moving closer to solving this mystery, though.

Discovering I have new sexual interests is far less intimidating than discovering that I have sexual—and perhaps emotional—interest in a specific person.

A person who has been through a horrible, possibly traumatizing, relationship.

And I hired her to fuck me, complete with a contract essentially stating I don’t even have to show her a baseline level of consideration afterward.

Does she think I’m like Keith? Selfish and sex-obsessed?

There’s a knock at my office door. Shit. All sense of time has escaped me. Forcing my brain back to work mode for my appointment, I shove all thoughts of kink and Claire out of my head.

Hours later, climbing into my SUV to head home, I contemplate my discovery again. My phone rings before the vehicle is even in drive, my brother’s name and number flashing across the dash panel.

I answer. Caine’s voice fills the SUV. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing.” I’m half listening, my thoughts far from the conversation. “Why?”

“Because I’m house-sitting like fifteen miles from the firm.”

“Why? Is it haunted?” Caine lives about an hour and a half away. He’s a tattoo artist and manages the Abattoir, Newbound’s haunted house attraction, every autumn.

“Funny. No, but it belongs to Alyssa—I know her through the haunt. Her house sitter canceled on her last minute, so she asked me. You should come over.”

I want to go home and talk to Claire. But I haven’t seen Caine since last Halloween.

He’s also probably the only person in my life I can talk candidly to about my relationship with Claire.

As I’m debating, he badgers me: “Come on, what else are you going to do? It’s not like you have better company waiting at home. ”

“Fine.” I fight a groan as I relent. I can practically hear the arrogant grin spreading across his face. “But you’re wrong about the ‘better company’ part.”