Page 15 of Hunting Gianna
The silence that follows is thick, sticky. It clings to the air. I can taste her uncertainty, her curiosity, the small, secret thrill she gets from being watched. She doesn’t know what to do with it, so she just sits, hands in her lap, waiting.
“I need clothes,” she says finally, almost a whisper.
I get up, the movement deliberate, and cross the room to a battered old trunk. Noah cleared out Cassidy’s shit when they moved, but left some of her shit here on Kairo’s request. Guess he wanted them in case Harbor needed clothes. I can feel her eyes on me, taking in the width of my back, the scars on my arms, the tattoo curling up my neck. I’m proud of every mark. They’re warnings as much as they are history.
I pop the trunk, dig around, and come up with a pair of worn PJ shorts and a t-shirt. They’re going to be too small for her, and it sends a thrill through me. That will let me eye fuck her more easily, with her busting out of the fabric that will hardly hide her curves. I toss them over, and she catches them one-handed.
“Thanks,” she says, this time looking straight at me.
I nod. I wait as she stands, awkward for a second, and looks around for privacy. There isn’t any, not unless she goes to thebedroom… in which case I’ll just follow her anyway. She knows it, and I know it, and for a moment she pretends to care, then just turns her back and drops the blanket.
I watch the line of her spine, the dip at the base of her back, the pale stretch of skin before the shorts swallow it whole. She wriggles them up, and they fit tight over her thighs. She struggles with the waist band, laughs under her breath, and then yanks the t-shirt down. It hugs her tits, clings to her ribs. She turns, arms crossed, cheeks flushed. She hates that I’m watching, but she loves it more.
“Better?” I ask, my voice low.
She nods. “Yeah.”
We spend the next few hours in a kind of dance. She tests the edges of the room, the edges of me. She opens cabinets, pokes through drawers, makes a show of not being afraid. I let her. I let her think she’s free. I make her a sandwich and watch the way she devours it, like she hasn’t eaten in days. Damn, I love a girl who isn’t afraid of eatingand enjoying it.
At some point she sits across from me, legs pulled up, her chin resting on her knees. “Why are you being nice?” she asks.
“Do you want me to stop?” I counter. I half-debated on it. This isn’t me.The nice guy.I’m more introspective than extroverted, I think murderous thoughts but have enough restraint not to act on them.
Though… for her… I would. I’ve been in bar brawls and prison fights. Yeah, my time in state jail was a fucking trip. Got tripped up on illegal carry with a weapon whose serials I’d filed off. Good thing considering I had been on my way to some stupid fucking college fight that Creed had started. With every intention of killing the guy.
That stop saved me from a longer stint in prison because it turned out, Creed had pissed off the police commissioners son. That pig stopping us that day saved his ass.
She shakes her head. “No. Just… not used to it, I guess.”
I stare at her, let the silence stretch until she squirms. “People are shitty,” I say. “But not all the time. Sometimes, you get lucky.”
Not with me though, little bird. Soon, you’ll be running, screaming from me and you’ll understand why they say ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’
She smiles at that, a real one, and I feel it hit me in the gut. I want to ruin it. I want to make it permanent.Maybe I’ll tattoo it across my chest.
The day crawls by. We talk about nothing—her job, her travels, the dumbass ex who thought he was doing her a favor by dumping her. She doesn’t know that I know all of this already, that I made it my business to know her inside and out. Once I set my sights on her, I used Noah’s surveillance systems to dig intoher life. I ask questions anyway, just to hear her answer, just to see the way her mouth moves when she lies.
At dusk, she stands by the door, staring out at the line of trees bleeding into the sky. “It’s beautiful out there,” she says.
“It’s beautiful in here, too,” I say, and I mean it.
She glances over her shoulder, hair catching the last of the light. “You’re full of shit,” she says, but it comes out gentle. Like a compliment.
I close the distance, just a step, maybe two, and reach out. My hand lands on her shoulder, my palm heavy, fingers curling just enough to let her know who’s in charge. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. She just stands there, breathing slow and even.
“You ever think about just… disappearing?” she asks, voice quiet.
“All the time,” I say, and I let my hand slide down her arm, slow, steady, the way you’d touch something fragile but not breakable. I can feel the heat of her through the fabric, the tension wound up tight beneath the skin.
She leans into it, just a little, and I know I have her.
“Tomorrow, then,” she says. “We’ll see if you can get me out.”
I nod, but my mind is already working the angles, already planning every second I get with her. I could keep her here for days, weeks, years. She wouldn’t know the difference until she tried to leave.
As the light dies, I let her go. “You can have the bed again,” I tell her. “I’ll take the couch.”
She hesitates, then nods, then disappears into the bedroom, the door left half-open behind her.
