Page 17 of Hunting Harbor

I feel alive in this place, in her space, the thrill making it hard to keep my pulse in check. One misstep and she’ll wake up to me there, watching her sleep, wanting her more than ever.

I’m good at waiting. Watching. Knowing the right time. I have hours before she wakes up. I’m not leaving until I get what I came for.

Now I’m so close to tearing into her room and touching her. My fingers remember how soft she is. Remember more than that. My imagination is better than hers, and my mind flashes through all the ways I’ll take her, touch her, feel her shake and beg for me.

I’m almost at her door when I hear it. Her breathy moans as the rustling of sheets disrupts the peace. She’s touching herself. She’s going to make herself come with the name of the man she made up in her head, on her perfect lips.

The man that I know to be me. I stirred this crazy, sinful lust inside her and my cock grows hard. I could barge in there, claim her, force her to take me, but I don’t. People say I’m unhinged, I’m crazy, but I’m not.

Not for the right woman. Not forher.I’ll be whatever she wants me to be so long as she accepts the monster that I become when I need to bury myself inside her.

I stay in the shadows of the kitchen, eyes and breath and body fixed on Harbor through the half-open door of her room, kitty corner to where I’m standing. The moon caresses her the way I will. Her body moves under the sheets. She gasps out that name again, and I can’t help but smile. This fucking girl, writing me into her story even when she doesn’t know it. I want to drag her back to the cabin where we’re free. Instead I keep quiet, and watch. Listen. Memorizing every sound, every moan.

The air’s so thick with her pleasure that I can hardly breathe. My lungs strain as her hands move across her skin, acrossmine, across every place I want to take her. I lean against the counter, let the weight of what I know push me into overdrive. There’s so much she isn’t ready for. My hand moves to my zipper, the sound caught between her sighs and cries and gasps.

She gives me what I came for, a thousand times over. Even though I’m getting myself off, it’s all her. I’m so fucking obsessed with her, my own edging is driving me insane. Every time I’m near her, my resolve crumbles and I want to whisk her away.

Maybe that’s why this works. Maybe that’s why she’s the one. Because of this game. This deep, inner knowledge I have of her, while she stays in the dark about me. Knowing I know everything, and she’s yet to discover who I am…

Harbor is such a Goddamn free spirit, thinks no one’s watching. It turns me on, the thought of her doing this, thinking about me. Her complete lack of concern. I want her carefree and careless, my eyes on her even when she’s alone.

She moans and shifts, one hand moving like it’s tied to my imagination. She’s got nothing on me, this girl, but I’m willing to wait. To make her so needy without her even realizing why, so that when my time comes and I take her for myself, she’s putty in my hands. She will willingly give herself to me because she’s already been primed for the life I want to give her.

Her voice is louder than I’ve ever heard it, her breathing short and fast. The ghost of me hovering just out of view, pushing into her space, making it mine. I let the pressure build until it’s just me and the sounds she can’t keep to herself. My hands are tight around my cock and I bite back every sound she wrings out of me. I let it simmer and boil and fucking sear through my chest until I can’t take any more.

She cries out again, and the world unravels.

My heart slams against my ribs, fists I’ve felt on her body. My throat is raw. It takes everything I have to keep from giving myself away, but I know I can hold on longer than she can. Her back arches and she goes limp, sweat glistening in the dim light, and still I’m not finished.

Her obliviousness gets me harder than I want to admit. My pace never slows. I’m full of heat and pulse and lust. I stay on the edge until her breathing finally goes soft.

I close my eyes and remember her face. Not as good as when she was sleeping, but enough. I imagine her eyes and voice and skin, remember them telling me her story. The cabin’s almost ready for us, which me to call Noah and hurry him the fuck along. I’ve been more patient than I’ve ever been, and Harbor is still mine.

I’m her obsession, even when she doesn’t know it. Especially then. I’m the danger she craves.

The intensity fades into satisfaction as she falls asleep, not knowing how close I am, how hard I am for her. My body coils tight and releases. I’ve never felt this alive. The room spins, then settles as I come onto the counter, soaking her manuscript with it.

There will be no question now. She will know that someone is obsessed. Possessed by the demon that is her.

I move like I’m part of the shadows, leaving everything the way I found it. Everything except my imprint.

Everything is almost in place. Slipping out of her door and locking it behind me, I head down the dingy hall and out into the street before grabbing my phone and calling that do-gooder cousin of mine. He ignores my call, and it goes to voicemail.Fucking prick.

“Better be out of there, Noah. My patience is wearing thin. I’ve been learning to go slow, but fuck man, you’re really testing me here. If you’re not out in two days, I’m coming, and we can all have a happy little family reunion.”

I hang up, pissed that he’s ignoring me and try Slade. He’d been emailing me to attend some business shit for days and I wasn’t replying, but now that I’ve gotten off, and have every intention of taking Harbor to the woods soon, I need to deal with this shit.

“What the fuck, Kairo? Where have you been.” His angry voice shouts down the line. “I can’t keep these fucking vultures off our backs on my own!”

I roll my eyes. Sometimes he has such a flair for the dramatics. Thosevultureswere my uncles investors. Noah’s dad. Who died and left some of his more… underhanded business dealings to me. In turn, I hired my friends. The most profitable of the businesses is the energy sector. We find and curate raw material to turn them into ‘energy efficient’ batteries.

So, we took it and ran with it, implementing new strategies for mining cobalt. Not all of them legal, but what the fuck does it matter if we get paid? Slade runs security, Knox deals with the paperwork and Creed does any and all of our construction, surveillance, etc. Whatever we need, essentially. Our wildcard. We can do it all. The dream team.

About a week ago, we got a call that someone was watching our dealings in Africa, and they wanted to make life rather difficult for us. To push us out of the business and claim market share. We harvest our cobalt in the mines overseas, and we’d hit the jackpot. Put down a claim before our competitors did.

And then I caught wind that the CEO of Enerinc, think his name was Julian, is over there, causing issues for my employees. I sentSlade to track his movements and deal with it. Even a week of no work put us behind our quarterly projections, and I don’t fucking appreciate my bottom line being impacted. Our choice became pay more, or fall behind.

Slade did what Slade does and took care of the problem. Our employees returned to work, and everything went back to normal. I’d missed most of the board meetings about it, but from what I gather, it was causing waves with our board because the Energinc CEO’s untimely disappearance was linked to Slade.

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