Hunting by desire, Bound by love

Chapter 5

He didn’t ask if she was ready. He didn’t whisper empty, pretty words. There was just the rough sound of fabric moving, and then he was inside her. One deep, solid stroke that filled a space she hadn’t known was hollow. It was so sudden, so complete, that the breath left her body in a shocked, silent gasp before the sound followed.

Jade cried out. The noise was punched out of her, raw and startled, a foreign sound in her own ears. It echoed in the tiny, dusty room, bouncing off the close walls and coming back to her, a testament to her own loss of control.

It was nothing like Hank. Hank had a system, a predictable rhythm but this was… different. It was profound. It was so deep and shockingly full that it felt less like an act of s*x and more like an act of possession. His larger body covered hers, a wall of heat that enveloped her completely. One arm was a firm band of steel around her waist, locking her against him. The other hand pressed flat against the wall beside her head, his fingers splayed wide. He wasn’t just holding himself up; he was caging her in. The world shrank to the space between his chest and the cold plaster, to the feeling of being utterly contained.

He began to move. There was no rhythm at first, no pattern to find and follow. It was just a series of deep, claiming thrusts, each one driving the air from her lungs in a soft, helpless huh. The little rickety table beside them shuddered with every impact, a rhythmic creak of protest. He was utterly silent except for the ragged, hot gusts of his breath against the shell of her ear. Each exhale was a tiny storm that raised goosebumps on her neck.

The Hunger, that terrible, twisting serpent in her gut, began to dissolve. Its sharp coils loosened, melting under the sheer, overwhelming physical reality of him. It vanished under the shocking intimacy of being so completely held and filled. She was used to being used, but not to being held. The relief was so intense, so immediate, that it felt like a drug hitting her bloodstream. It brought a sudden, stupid prickle of weak tears to her eyes, burning at the corners. She blinked them back furiously, squeezing her eyes shut. No. This is a transaction. You do not cry during a transaction.

Then, his rhythm changed. It slowed. Became deliberate, terrifyingly so. Each stroke was now measured, deep, and devastatingly thorough. It was no longer just about relief or claiming. It felt like an exploration. A silent conversation made only of pressure and heat. His body was asking a question hers was too scared to even form, let alone answer. Is this you? Is anyone in there?

His hand left the wall. It slid around her body, over the quivering muscles of her stomach. It splayed wide and warm against her lower belly, his palm a brand, holding her even tighter to him as he moved. The gesture shattered her. It was unbearably intimate. It was the hand of a lover, not a stranger. It was the hand of someone who wanted to feel the connection from both sides, to make sure not a single inch of space was between them. A small, wounded sound hiccupped in her throat.

Jade’s detached mind, the part that always floated safely away, shattered into a thousand pieces. She couldn’t escape. She was pinned here, in this trembling body, forced to feel everything. The coarse, heavy denim of his jeans scraping against the backs of her bare thighs. The damp, warm cotton of his shirt, soaked with sweat now, sticking to her bare back. The incredible, solid strength of him, like a mountain moving against her. The way he seemed to be seeking something, not just from the mechanics of her body, but from the very core of her. He was looking for her, the ghost-woman hiding behind the hunt, and his search was relentless.

A low, broken sound escaped her, a moan that held pure, unfiltered sensation. It was a raw strand of feeling pulled straight from her center. She hadn’t meant to make a sound. Sounds were not part of the procedure. They were vulnerabilities.

He heard it. He buried his face deeper into the mess of her unbound hair at her neck. A full body shudder ran through him, a quake that she felt in her own bones. His movements shifted, became more intense, a rising wave building with a power that threatened to pull her under. He was chasing his end now, but he wasn’t leaving her behind. He was pulling her with him. His careful, controlled silence broke into rough, open mouthed breaths against her skin. The quiet of the room was now filled with the slick sound of skin, their ragged breathing and the frantic tap-tap-tap of the table leg dancing on the floorboards.

When he found his release, it was with a harsh, choked gasp against her skin, a sound that was almost pained. His whole body locked, every muscle vibrating with a taut strain. He held himself deep, pulsing inside her. It was not a shout of victory, but a surrender. A raw, broken sound of a man finally, finally feeling something real after a long, cold season of numbness.

For Jade, the biological release was instant and total. It crested and broke over her, a cool, quiet wave washing through the furnace heat he’d built inside her. The Hunger didn’t just retreat; it vanished, wiped clean from the slate of her body. Her limbs went liquid. Her body sagged heavily against the wall, held upright only by the unyielding band of his arm around her waist. A single, traitorous tear finally escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek and dripping onto his forearm. She hoped he didn’t feel it.

But as the physical urgency faded, something else rushed in to fill the silent space it left behind. A terrifying awareness of the precise weight of him leaning against her back. Of the warm, damp spot his breath made on her neck. Of the shocking, lingering tenderness of his hand, still splayed possessively on her stomach. She was standing in a dark, dusty room with a stranger whose name she did not know, and she felt more known, more painfully real, than she had in a decade. He had seen the hunter and the fear. He had dismantled her armor and now he was simply holding her through the aftershocks, his forehead pressed to her shoulder, as if she were something fragile and worthy of stillness.

He slowly relaxed, muscle by muscle. He softened inside her but didn’t pull away. For a long, endless moment, they stood there, still connected, breathing the same dusty, charged air. His forehead rested against her shoulder. The silence now was different. It wasn't empty or judging. It was heavy and full, swollen with something that felt dangerously like shared ruin. It was the quiet of two people who had, for just minutes, stopped pretending.

Then, with a final, deep breath that she felt expand in his chest against her back, he withdrew. The loss of him, the sudden cold emptiness, was a physical shock. It felt like a door slamming shut in a warm room, leaving her standing in a draft. She felt abruptly, violently alone.

She heard him step back. The rustle of his clothes as he adjusted himself was an ordinary, jarring sound. A zipper. A sigh. It meant the spell was broken. It meant the world, with all its rules and transactions, was starting again.

Jade didn’t move. She kept her palms flat on the cold, gritty wall, her head bowed. Fine tremors ran through her, a vibration she couldn’t stop. She felt ruined. The clean, simple math of the transaction was in pieces on the floor with her dress. He hadn't just taken what she offered; he had taken everything around it. Her control, her clinical distance, the story she told herself about what this was, all of it was gone.

She heard him move behind her. Then, his hands were on her shoulders. They were warm, steady, unbearably familiar already. He turned her around to face him.

He didn’t look smug or satisfied. He looked awake. Devastatingly awake. The haunted emptiness she’d first seen was still gone, burned away. His eyes, too blue and too clear, searched her face. They lingered on her damp cheeks, seeing the tear tracks she hadn’t even felt being made.

He bent down, his movements slow. He picked up her simple black dress from the floor, shook out the dust with a gentle flick. He held it open for her, like a gentleman helping his date after a night out.

Silently, numb, her mind a blank hum, she stepped into it. The fabric was cold. He pulled it up, his knuckles brushing the sensitive skin of her sides, leaving trails of fire. He turned her around again, his hands on her shoulders. He found the zipper and drew it up in one slow, smooth motion. His fingers lingered for a second at the nape of her neck, right at the base of her skull, where he had first pulled her hair free. The touch was a whisper. A comma in a sentence that had no end.

That touch was worse than anything that had come before. It was care. It was a quiet attention that held no demand. It was the final, shattering blow to her system. A cruel or greedy stranger she could have dismissed with contempt. A man who looked at her with seeing eyes, who took her apart and then put her dress back on with careful hands was something she had no defense against. It cracked something open deep inside her chest, a depth of pure, unmanageable feeling.

She couldn’t look at him. If she met those clear, awake eyes now, she would fracture into a thousand unsalvageable pieces. She ducked her head, a prisoner avoiding a warden’s gaze, and pushed past the heavy velvet curtain.

The noise and the cheap, yellow light of the bar hit her like a slap. Laughter, a shouted joke, the tinny chorus of a song from the radio. It all felt fake and garish, a painted curtain over the real world she’d just left behind. She didn't walk. Her legs, shaky and weak, broke into a run. She weaved through the maze of tables, a blur of black, past the bartender who paused, glass in hand, his face a puzzle of confusion.

She hit the night air, cold and sharp as a knife. She ran. She ran until the burn in her lungs matched the riot in her chest, until the streetlights blurred into streaks of gold. She ran, trying to outrun the phantom feeling of his hand on her back, the echo of his breath in her ear, the terrifying, unwanted warmth of his care. She had gotten what she wanted. The Hunger was gone, satiated.

But she had given something away in that dark room, something she didn’t even know she still possessed. A piece of her long buried self. And as she ran into the indifferent night, she had no idea how, or if, she could ever get it back.