Hunter (Reynolds Protective Book 2), page 13
“But because nothing was ever threatening and no one actually approached and harassed you—”
“They said there was nothing they could do,” I admitted shamefully, the helplessness hit me like a wrecking ball to the gut.
I was someone’s… target. And no one could help me because there wasn’t enough damage.
“Fucking hell,” he swore low and pulled me tighter.
“It’s not their fault. What could they do?” I gulped. “They told me even if they tracked down the sender, they couldn’t arrest someone for flattery.”
“But they could tell him to knock it the fuck off or risk harassment charges.”
“They could.” I rolled my lower lip between my teeth for a few seconds. “But I think that would’ve been a lot of manpower for something that wasn’t… threatening.”
I could tell he wanted to say more—to rail against the way my concern had been brushed off by law enforcement. But he knew that wasn’t the end of the story. Unfortunately.
“I stopped doing things. Normal things. I had no idea who this man was or where he’d… found me. So I just began avoiding every place I would normally go, afraid the more he saw me, the greater I risked him actually… doing something. Ironically, the only thing that would’ve prompted the police to actually help me.” I let out a bitter laugh. “But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t… strong enough to use myself as bait.”
“Jesus, Zoey. No one in the right mind would want to use themselves to bait a psycho when they had no one backing them up,” Hunter broke in ardently, his thumb stroking along my cheek as he spoke. “You did the smart thing, baby. You protected yourself.”
I closed my eyes for a second, savoring the sweetness of how he called me baby.
“I told my… boyfriend at the time who suggested I move, and when the nightmares started happening a few weeks later, I agreed.” I ticked through the events. “I moved from my apartment and didn’t tell anyone.”
“Except for Roscoe?”
I flinched. I didn’t like to say his name. My stalker had set me adrift on open seas, but Roscoe’s betrayal torpedoed my life raft.
“Yes,” I croaked. “I stayed… with Roscoe for a month and nothing came to his apartment. So, I was hopeful. I switched gyms and coffee shops—all of my normal spots I avoided because I just… I just wanted it to stop.”
“But it didn’t…”
I shook my head. “I’d been moved into my apartment for two weeks when the envelopes started coming again. The notes… were irritated and more frequent at first, but then returned to their normal tone.”
“Security feed?”
I nodded.
“This time, I was allowed to install a door camera, but the envelopes had started to come addressed to me and brought by the mail person.”
“What did Roscoe say?”
My tongue felt thick and dry like timber about to catch fire. “I didn’t tell him at first. We… We’d broken up by then.” I gulped but pushed forward because it was better than lingering on our breakup and the reason for it. “But then I received an envelope on my desk at work, and I broke.” My voice cracked. “I broke down, Hunter. But nowhere was safe. Not home. Not work—”
“Breathe, baby,” he ordered roughly. “Big, deep breaths for me.”
Deep breaths. The only thing that made the fear go away.
“I didn’t know what to do, Hunter,” I said, my voice waterlogged with lingering pain. “I went to Roscoe again after that, panicked, and told him what happened. Told him I wasn’t safe at work, and that I didn’t know what to do,” I said, and his hold tightened like he knew the end of this story before I told it. “And he told me that I was just trying to get his attention because I regretted breaking up with him.”
His silence was more threatening than his curses or growls.
“He. Told. You. What?” Hunter finally managed to ask.
“He said I was making it all up, faking the photos, the stalker, all to get his attention… his love.” I wanted to vomit when I said the word in conjunction with the man who put Narcissus himself to shame. How I could’ve ever been so fooled by a man was lost on me. “And then he told me this wasn’t a healthy situation for me, and that I should move on from Savon.”
Hunter’s hand directed my face upward, and I realized how much easier it was to talk to him when he wasn’t looking at me—when I didn’t have to see what he thought of me written across his handsome features. I didn’t want him to think me a coward or a victim. And I definitely didn’t want him to think of me as the other woman.
“You went to him for help—because you were in danger—and he fired you?”
I gulped, afraid my answer was also giving him permission to commit murder. “Yes.”
He shook under me. No swearing. No words. Just pure, unfettered, unspoken rage.
“I want to kill him,” he confessed hoarsely.
A death threat shouldn’t send a shot of happiness through me, but it did.
“He’s not worth the crime.” And it was the unfortunate truth.
“Zoey…”
“Nowhere was safe. No one believed me.” My lip quivered. Even now, it was all I could do to not crumble under the immense weight of helplessness, and I confessed brokenly. “I felt like I was trapped in a burning building, and everyone just kept telling me to stand still.”
“So you ran.”
As fast as I could.
“There was nothing keeping me in Florida. The safest thing for me to do was run.” The tears came faster now, but he caught them all—an expert at hunting down my hurt and dissolving it under his touch. “I sold everything, left in the middle of the night, bought my used car, and drove. And drove. And drove.”
His lips tightened along with the muscles of his jaw.
“What happened tonight, Zoey?”
We’d made it back to the present—back to the moment where the person I’d been wasn’t the person he thought I was.
“I was about to leave the office when Walt pulled up with the mail. I took it upstairs. I wasn’t thinking—wasn’t worried.” I exhaled forcefully. “Nine months. It had been nine months that I’d been free, so I didn’t think twice when I opened the envelope addressed to me.” My eyes burned to look at him and try not to cry. “And there was another photo.”
“It was sent to RPG?” he growled.
I dipped my chin. “His chest. The note said he missed me and not to worry… that he’d found me. No return address. No postage.”
My shoulders sagged, defeated by a man I didn’t even know. A man who knew me. Knew where I’d lived. Where I worked. Places I liked. A man who thought I belonged to him when he was nothing more than a stranger. No—not even a stranger. A ghost.
Hunter pulled me closer, his arms like thick shoots of an oak tree as they wrapped around me and rooted me to him.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Out of all the things, I could hear that was what hurt him the most.
“Because I knew you’d come back, and I didn’t want you to jeopardize the business’ reputation—”
“Fuck the business’ reputation.”
The tiniest smile teased the corners of my lips before it fled. “I knew I wasn’t in danger danger. At least, not in the usual sense,” I murmured, stretching my fingers out until they splayed like an open book on his chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me this at the start?” he croaked. “Why keep this from me?”
A sob rushed against my dammed lips, crashing with a force that made me quake before I was able to keep myself at bay.
“Because I thought it was over,” I admitted achingly, wishing like all hell it had been the truth. “I thought I was finally safe… and all I wanted was to forget about the time that I wasn’t.”
All I wanted was a new life—a fresh start. A place where it was safe enough to breathe again.
I pushed myself away enough to look at him. “I don’t know how or where he found me, but I didn’t want to go back to my apartment or Brews. I didn’t want to go anywhere…”
“You did the right thing by staying, but you should’ve called me,” he rasped, reaching out and cupping the side of my face. “We’re going to figure this out, baby.”
“I’ve been running for so long, Hunter…” I hiccupped, not even sure what else to say.
I’d been running from everything. My stalker. Roscoe. Florida. The loss of my parents. Fear. Danger. Life. Love.
“I don’t want you to run anymore.” Both of his hands framed my face, his stare coaxing me out from behind my shields. “Just trust me, heroine. I’ll be your safe place to land.”
A single tear loosed from my eye. It ran from the hunting heat of his gaze. It fled down over my cheek until it tripped on the swell of my lip—tripped as I murmured his name.
“Hunter.”
And there, his stare caught it. Ensnared the tear and the last of my fears.
His mouth claimed mine.
The kiss started soft and chaste—a promise branded to my lips that he would protect me. But one kiss was all it took to open the gates to a desire that had been building for weeks—months—now.
I surprised myself when my tongue slid out and swiped along the seam of his lips, but I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to taste his consuming heat—the one that strengthened me and tore me asunder in the same flame. He jolted like the lick was the crack of a whip—sharp and swift to spur his embrace.
And then he surged against me.
A low growl quaked from his chest as his mouth slanted over mine. The hands that cupped my face now chained it under his hungry assault.
His tongue invaded my mouth in hot, deep strokes. Of course, a kiss was intimate, but this kiss… it was more intimate than any way I’d been claimed by a man before. He replaced fear with fire, worry with want. The world still existed beyond this moment, but it didn’t matter.
I curled my hands into his shirt, crumpling the fabric in my grasp as I sought to pull him tighter. Electricity made my nerves go haywire. The signals scrambled my need for space and screamed that this man was safe.
That this was what I wanted.
Not his protection—his possession.
I’d been strong and on my own for so long, all I wanted now was to be taken care of—taken control of. So I clung to him with a desperation that might make me look weak. But sometimes, we all needed a moment of weakness. And I was the luckiest woman in the world that my moment of weakness belonged to Hunter Reynolds.
I whimpered when his teeth pinned my lower lip between them, sucking the flesh into his mouth hard before laving it with his tongue. Pain and pleasure spiraled inside me, and I felt heat rush from my core.
His hands slid from my face. One crossed down low on my back, pinning my waist to his—my softness to his hard; the other speared into my hair, fisting the weight and pulling until I shivered.
He groaned low as his cock thickened against his jeans and consumed the space between us. With my arms strapped to his chest, it wedged him tight to where I ached for him, my pussy clenching so hard it began to hurt.
“Jesus, Zoey,” he growled, tugging my head back so my neck was exposed to him.
Teeth and lips found their way onto my pulse, biting and sucking on the side of my neck until I panted his name and ground my hips against his length.
Ache coiled in my core like a hot spring ready to unload.
“Please, Hunter…” I begged for release—relief from the way I’d been twisted and tortured and strained for so long.
This was what I needed—the way he made me forget everything I thought I couldn’t have. The way he gave me everything I thought I’d never have again.
My unsteady breaths were interrupted by the claim of his mouth once more, his tongue sliding deep and stroking along mine. He was the perfect mix of steady and savage, kissing me like it was punishment to think of anything else.
Strangling his shirt in my hold, I started to rock along his erection, searching for the friction that drove my clit insane. I felt him swell even bigger, and it dumped gasoline on the fire of my want.
I rocked harder, making him growl.
“That’s it, baby,” he encouraged, his hand on my waist digging in and driving me more forcefully along his cock. “Use me. Use my cock. Show me how fucking wet you can make me.”
I shuddered and let out a small cry. I felt the heat between my legs, sure that it had soaked through my underwear and leggings and was leaving a spot on his clothes. But he begged for it—wanting the mark of my pleasure on his body.
His mouth latched onto the side of my neck, sucking on the skin as pleasure began to quake through me like the steady bursts of a volcano before it erupted.
I wanted more of him—all of him. I wanted to feel the thickness of his cock stretching and spreading inside me, not just rubbing like it was against my clit. But I couldn’t stop moving.
The pleasure I felt was like a runaway train. Fear. Pain. His rescue. It loosened the controls and destroyed the tracks as my body churned wildly toward release.
My finger curled into his shoulders, my nails surely leaving marks, as I ground and bounced on his lap with a wild lack of control. My heart pounded frantically, and I was sure if I stopped moving, so would it stop beating.
“Take what you need, heroine,” Hunter ordered huskily, and god, if I didn’t love when he ordered me to let me be taken care of. “Show me how you come.”
Air rocketed deep into my lungs as pleasure seized me, and then erupted in a loud cry. My climax consumed me in steady, violent waves. I felt nothing except the way my core clenched and released for long, delicious minutes, until the rest of the world came back into view.
Hunter held me, his gaze voraciously consuming the sight of my orgasm, mounting it in his memory like a hunter collects his trophies.
And I’d never felt a sense of power in a relationship like I did in that moment.
My tongue dragged over my lower lip, my sensitive core able to feel the throb of his arousal through our clothes.
More.
Holding that heady stare, I unfurled my fingers from their cinch on his shoulder and slid my hand down over his chest and abdomen, just reaching the waist of his jeans when his fingers caught my wrist.
“Not tonight, heroine,” he bit out hoarsely and brought my palm to his lips for a kiss.
Next I knew, he’d slid me off his lap and stood quickly, creating a little space that felt as endless as a black hole.
He adjusted himself away from my gaze, and I lifted my fingers to my mouth, feeling how puffy my lips were and wondering what just happened… and why it stopped.
“Sorry, Zoey,” he said gruffly, dragging a hand through his tousled brown locks. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he was apologizing—unless the apology was for stopping. “I shouldn’t have—not tonight after—” He broke off and swiped a hand across his mouth.
My brow creased. “Hunter—”
“It’s late and been a long day,” he began, his voice ragged. “You can take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m just going to grab an extra blanket and then the room is all yours.”
He disappeared into his bedroom before I could say anything—not that I had any good thing to say. It took several tries to be able to swallow over the lump in my throat. Had I done something wrong? I flattened my palm to my forehead and then shook my head. I was too drained to think coherently.
Stalker. Office. Hunter’s. Sad. Kissing. Climax. Wanting.
Whiplash.
“I’ll be right out here if you need anything,” he said a few minutes later once he’d grabbed his things and ushered me into his bedroom, stopping in the doorway like it was too dangerous for both of us to be in the same room as a bed.
“Thank you.”
“Night.” He shut the door softly.
“Good night.”
The bed took up most of the room save for a nightstand on one side, the door to the bathroom on the other. I washed up and shed my clothes—wanting to shed everything about this day except for the stain of his kiss on my lips and his fingerprints from my skin.
My only consolation as more tears found routes to escape my eyelids was that the pillow smelled like Hunter. And since tonight was the first time in a long time it felt safe to breathe again, I was glad it was him I was breathing in.
I just hoped that the truth about my past hadn’t cost me my chance at a future with him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUNTER
“I’ll follow up with Walt and see if he remembers who dropped off the envelope,” Ranger offered.
I had him and Arch on speakerphone at my kitchen counter. I’d called them as soon as Zoey told me she was going to take a shower. I wanted to talk to my brothers alone and get my bearings before I looped her into the conversation. After a restless night, I couldn’t bring myself to add more weight to her shoulders at the moment.
My plan to sleep on the couch had floundered miserably when her tossing and turning devolved into small cries brought on from her nightmares. The sound was like a gun to my head, and it sent me to the one place I swore I wasn’t going to go: back to my bed.
I’d made sure to stay on top of the covers when I pulled her against my side, holding her there until she settled. Sure, I was a strong man—a patient man. But damn, I had no idea the strength it required to lie next to the woman I ached to possess and not touch her.
“I’ll give Roman a call and get his opinion on the stalker,” Arch said. “Seems like something the Behavioral Analysis Unit would’ve handled in the past.”
Even though our friend, Roman Knight, now worked for Covington Security out in Carmel, he’d previously worked for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, hunting everything from serial killers to stalkers. If anyone could narrow down the kind of person we were looking for, it would be him.
“Thanks,” I said hoarsely, my elbows propped on the counter, hands linked, and my chin resting on my thumbs. “I’m going to get a list from Zoey in the meantime of anyone she had regular contact with in Florida and see if we can’t match anyone on the list to someone visiting the area.”
