Page 5 of Hunting Gianna
The fire dies, slow and warm, like the best kind of love. And the pencil feels solid again in my hand, a simple line between me and all of it.
By the time my picture forms, I’m exhausted, so I head into my tent and zip it shut, settling on my bed, grateful that I spent the extra money on one of those heavy duty sleeping bags.
Closing my eyes, I sigh.
Snap.
My eyes snap open and I wonder what’s out there. What’s been watching me.
A bear, maybe?Good thing I brought spray. Nothing is going to stop me from enjoying my time alone out here.Nothing.
A giggle escapes me. Of course there’s wildlife out here. I’m just curious if it’s the kind I have to be concerned about. By morning, I’ll have my wild theories. And I'll be laughing at those, too.
It's just that I don’t want to die.
But maybe I do want to know what it feels like.
Maybe that makes me crazy. But here’s what it doesn’t make me: afraid.
Another sound from the woods. A hitch in the wind. It should be a wolf that terrifies me, but no. It's something else. It’s the fact I would literally rather be eaten by a Goddamn bear than to ever go back to that low-effort prick.
I say the words I was too ashamed to say out loud before. Say them in the dark, like they belong to someone else. Say them and mean them.
I deserve better.
I believe it. I believe it’s possible to find better, but at this point my heart is jaded. I stayed when I should have walked, and fuck if that doesn’t speak volumes about me as a person.
I deserve better.
There are no white flags to fly, no ghosts to scare, just the lonely march of my own stupid breath as the noise fades and I drift into sleep.
Chapter Two
Knox
Herbreath.Herbody.Her sighs, the only sounds I need to hear. The entire forest falls away until it's just her and me and the way she turns in her sleep, dreaming of things that don't include me. Yet. I move silent, even the air not daring to shift around me, even the night holding its breath as I push forward, each step leaving my heart pounding faster. Her tent is close. Then closer. Close enough to taste. The only thing keeping me out is the thin fabric that I want to tear open with my teeth.
She doesn't even know how close I am. How close she is to being taken. That reckless oblivion is what brought me here, what brings me closer still. Each step is a punishment and a reward. I see the sleeping bag pushed down, her skin catching in themoonlight. A shimmer of sweat where her shoulder meets her neck. I'm hardly breathing now, her breath the only sound. Slow and even. As slow and even as my careful approach.
Mine.
I fight against the need to break that rhythm as I stare through the small window at her perfect body. The owl calls in the distance, but it's her soft sounds that hold me here.
It should bother me, this close range, how perfect she looks spread below me, just one flimsy wall between us. Instead, it bothers me that it doesn't. That I don't just rip through that final barrier and claim what I’ve already made mine.
I stare until she almost stops being real.
She turns in her sleep. I flinch. The tension, coils tight, unrelenting, it knows no relief as she turns again, her hand finding a place beneath the pillow, an unintentional twitch as she sighs and says something low and unintelligible.
As good as saying my name, the way it calls to the darkness in me to spread myself across her lips.
Her hair fans across her eyes. I want to brush it back, just a stray strand that has loosened and curved along her cheek like a perfect fucking decoration. But I don't. I clench my hand. Then I unclench it and run my fingers along the fabric of the tent, feeling it like I would feel her, feeling her underneath it, not even a breath away.
The mesh window separates us, small enough to keep me out, big enough to let me watch. She's a rare sight, her lips parted and skin bare, trusting her safety to the night. Fucking hell. This woman has me undone just at the sight of her. The sight I've wanted since the moment she arrived. My sight.
I hold the tent frame and run my fingers over the corded braid holding the pole in, something to distract from the distraction, something to hold me together when nothing else can.
How easy to reach in. To be in. To be in her without resistance. I imagine that it's true, that I finally make my move and let her sleep through the taking. That it's as easy as the way she breathes and the way her breaths match mine until they're one in the same.
