Page 28 of Hunting Gianna
When the stars rise, I circle the perimeter again, slower this time, savoring the way my body aches with anticipation. It’s a good pain, the kind that makes every nerve feel like it’s lit from within.
Tomorrow, I’ll let her think she’s outlasted me. Tomorrow, I’ll let her taste the sunrise and the idea that maybe, just maybe, she’s won.
And then I’ll show her what it means to be caught.
For now, I crouch outside the window and listen to the sound of her tears.
It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever heard.
Daybreak brings the answer I’ve been starving for. I don’t sleep. There’s no point. My mind runs laps around her, stripping the outpost down to blueprints and probabilities, rerunning the scene of how she’ll try to hold me out, how she’ll fail, how she’ll beg for mercy and I’ll pretend to care.
My body hums with need, with the absolute certainty that soon I’ll have her. I can almost taste the sweat and salt of her skin, the sound of her heartbeat stampeding against her ribs as I pin her down and make her understand. The anticipation burns through me, crawling up my arms, winding around my neck until my vision sharpens and everything else falls away.
When the sun cracks the horizon, I move.
The outpost is silent, but I feel her inside—coiled and bristling, the way a wild animal waits in the trap, unsure if it should fight or die. I throw my shoulder into the door. The barricade gives way with a splintered shriek, wood exploding into the room as I step through the dust.
I wear the mask. I want her to see it first. Want her to see the demon before she sees the man, so she knows that both are real, and both are hers.
She’s waiting, pressed against the far wall, lips cracked and white with fear. Her eyes are blown wide, whites stained pink with the sleepless dark. For a second, she freezes, and in that second I see the math running behind her stare—run, plead, scream, or maybe just let go.
She doesn’t. She’s better than that.
Instead, she raises an old rifle I must have missed seeing her grab, an old Winchester crusted with rust and spider webs. She rips it down, aims it straight at my heart. The barrel trembles in her hands, but her arms are steady. I see the moment of hope flare inside her, the sick hope that maybe this time, something will break her way.
She pulls the trigger.
The click is so loud it might as well be a gunshot. The room echoes with it, the vacuum of failure. The smell of her despair hits me, metallic and sharp.
I laugh, the sound raw through the mask. “That hasn’t worked in years,” I tell her, voice thick with delight. “You really think I’d let you ever raise a gun to me? Tsk, tsk, little bird, you should understand me a bit better than that, though, I do understand we haven’t exchanged life stories. Yet.”
She screams, a perfect, wordless animal sound. She hurls the rifle at me, and I let it hit—pain blossoms across my ribs, but it’s nothing compared to the high of watching her fight. She bolts for the window, tries to pry it open with her bare hands. I’m on her before she can get a finger beneath the wood.
Funny. The very same window she tried to reinforce to keep me out, is the one keeping her in.
I grab her by the waist, hauling her back towards me. She rakes her nails across my forearm, drawing blood, then turns and sinks her teeth into my wrist. She bites down hard, hard enough to break skin. God it hurts so good. Maybe I’ll tattoo her teeth marks on me. My pulse spikes and I grip her harder, dragging her back against my chest.
She kicks, she twists, every muscle in her body dedicated to the single cause of not being mine.
But that’s the thing: she is.
There is no choice here.
I throw her to the floor, pin her wrists above her head, my body pressing her into the filthy planks. She spits at me, a feral, furious gesture, and I let it drip down my chin before swiping my tongue over it.Delicious. It’s perfect, and I want to ruin her, to take every last drop of defiance and squeeze it into something I can keep forever.
She thrashes, screaming again, then grinds her heel into my thigh, aiming for my balls. She almost makes it—I block her with my knee and press down, hard. Her eyes fill with tears, not from pain, but from the bright, helpless rage of it.
I wrench her arms above her, locking them with one hand while I tear the mask off with the other. I want her to see my face when I break her. I want her to remember exactly who she lost to.
Her breath comes in frantic, shallow gasps. Her skin is hot, burning, the veins in her neck blue and perfect against the red flush rising up her cheeks. She hurls a string of curses at me, her voice wrecked, each word a blunt weapon aimed at my skull. I take every one and let it hammer into me.
I grab her jaw, force her to look at me.
“Done?” I ask, voice so low it barely registers over the beat of her pulse.
She bares her teeth, every inch of her vibrating with hate and fear and something else—something that makes her even prettier than before.
“No,” she spits. “Not even fucking close.”
