Page 59 of Hunting Gianna

“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.

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