Chapter 12: The Prospect
The silence after JT’s question was total, broken only by the crackle of the dying fire. Kane’s grip on him, which had been possessive and warm, did not tighten in threat. It loosened, as if in resignation.
“Then I would let you go,” Kane said, his voice devoid of its usual rumble, flattened into something terribly final. He shifted, pulling out of JT with a soft, wet sound that seemed grotesquely loud. He moved to sit against the wall, drawing his knees up. The demon looked, for the first time, simply tired. “That has always been the plan, has it not? When you were healed. When you were no longer… fascinated.”
JT shoved his pants up, turning to face him. The loss of contact was a physical chill. “Fascinated?”
“A pet. A novelty. A temporary madness for us both.” Kane would not meet his eyes, staring into the embers. “The bond is a product of captivity and proximity. It is not real. Your father’s world is real. So if you walked out that door, I would not stop you. It would be… the correct thing.”
The words felt like a betrayal far deeper than any JT had considered. The idea that Kane’s obsession, the all-consuming hunger that had reshaped JT’s very bones, was just a passing madness—it was worse than any threat of violence. It hollowed him out.
“You don’t mean that,” JT whispered.
“I must.” Kane finally looked at him, and his eyes were ancient pools of regret. “Because if it is real, then what I have done to you is unforgivable. And if it is real, then your father is right to want me dead. And you with me.”
JT pulled his knees to his chest, mirroring Kane’s posture. The cabin felt immense and lonely. “He doesn’t want me at all. Not the me that exists. He wants the son he designed. The flawless weapon. I was never that. I was a disappointment before I could even hold a blade. My mother… her death. He never said it, but I knew. He looked at me and saw the reason she was gone. A weak, squalling burden.”
The confession, voiced aloud in the demon’s sanctuary, hung between them. It was a truth he’d carried so long it had become part of his spine.
Kane was silent for a long time. Then he spoke, each word a carved stone. “Your father is a fool. The greatest of fools.” He reached out, not with lust, but with a strange, hesitant tenderness, tracing the line of JT’s jaw. “He looked at a miracle he had a hand in creating—a life of resilience, of feeling, of beauty—and saw only flaw. He does not deserve the ash of your footprint, let alone your loyalty.”
Something cracked open in JT’s chest. A dam of desperate, starved need. No one had ever spoken to him like that. Not as a soldier, or a legacy, or a replacement. But as something… precious.
Tears, hot and shameful, welled in his eyes. He turned his face into Kane’s palm, a silent admission of defeat.
“I don’t know what I want,” JT choked out. “I’m so fucking tired of choosing. Of being torn in half.”
“Then do not choose.” Kane’s thumb wiped a tear from his cheekbone. “Just be. Here. Now.”
“And when they come?”
“Let me worry about that.” Kane’s voice regained a sliver of its old steel. “My only concern is your safety. Your peace. If that means you leave this forest with him, so be it. But if it means something else…” He leaned forward, his forehead resting against JT’s. “Then I will become the nightmare he believes I am. I will burn the world to keep you.”
The certainty in his voice was terrifying. It was also the most real thing JT had ever felt.
He thought of Tara’s skeptical friendship, always laced with pity. He thought of his father’s cold, assessing glances, the perpetual frown of disapproval. He thought of the empty rigor of his old life, a script written for a ghost. Then he thought of the searing fullness of Kane inside him, the shocking care in his touch afterwards, the way the forest had begun to speak to him in a language of shadow and essence.
He was not healed. He was transformed.
“Kane.” JT’s voice was raw.
“Yes, little hunter?”
“Don’t let me go.”
The air left Kane’s lungs in a shuddering rush. His eyes, lambent gold in the firelight, widened. For a second, he looked shattered. Then his expression coalesced into a focus so absolute it stole JT’s breath. “Say it again.”
“Don’t let me go. Even if I ask. Even if I scream for him. Don’t let me go back to that. Promise me.”
A low growl built in Kane’s throat, a sound of pure, possessive triumph. “I promise.” He surged forward, capturing JT’s mouth in a kiss that was less a kiss and more a claiming. It was salted with JT’s tears and driven by a desperate, wild joy.
They moved toward the massive bed in a tangled rush, shedding the hated borrowed clothes. This time was different. There was no conquest, no punishment. There was a devastating sense of ceremony.
Kane laid him down on the furs as if he were something fragile and priceless. He worshipped JT’s body with his mouth, tracing every scar, every plane of muscle, with a reverence that made JT tremble. He took JT’s cock into his mouth, not with brutal urgency, but with a slow, sucking dedication that built the heat in JT’s belly into a slow, unbearable boil.
“Kane… please…” JT begged, fingers twisted in the demon’s dark hair.
“Please what?” Kane released him with a wet pop, crawling up his body. His own erection, thick and ruddy, lay heavy against JT’s stomach.
“I need you. I need to feel you. All of you. Fuck, just…”
“Tell me.”
“I want you inside me. I want to feel owned. I want… I want to be yours.” The words, once unspeakable, now felt like the only truth left.
Kane’s control snapped. He hooked JT’s legs over his shoulders, the position obscenely open, vulnurable. He spat into his palm, slicking himself, then nudged against JT’s entrance. “Look at me,” he commanded.
JT forced his hazy eyes to focus on Kane’s face.
“You are mine.” He pushed in, a relentless, inch-by-inch invasion that burned so sweetly JT saw stars. “Every part of you. Your fear is mine. Your courage is mine. This tight, perfect heat—” he seated himself fully, making JT gasp, “—is mine. Your father’s son is dead in these woods. Do you understand? He is gone. You are mine.”
He began to move, and it was a piston-like rhythm that had no patience, no quarter. It was affirmation. Each drive was a punctuation mark on his vow. JT was unraveled by it, his own cries echoing off the log walls, a litany of yes and more and yours.
Kane leaned down, biting at JT’s shoulder, marking him anew. “Come for me,” he snarled. “Spill yourself on my cock like the good, owned thing you are.”
The crude words, wrapped in that terrifying possession, tipped JT over the edge. His orgasm ripped through him, violent and soul-deep, his channel clamping down on Kane in rhythmic pulses.
With a roar that shook the antlers on the walls, Kane followed. He drove in one last, punishing time and held, his body rigid as he emptied himself in hot, endless jets deep inside JT. The feeling of being filled, claimed in the most primal way, sent aftershocks of pleasure jolting through JT’s spent body.
Later, sticky and spent, wrapped in Kane’s arms and the silence of the warded cabin, JT felt a perilous kind of peace. He had chosen his cage. He had chosen his monster.
He had just closed his eyes when a deafening crack shattered the night. Not thunder. It was the sound of splintering wood and shattering energy, a catastrophic, wrong noise that vibrated in the teeth.
Kane was on his feet in an instant, a dark shape poised for violence.
From outside, through the broken silence, came a voice JT had known since childhood, now ragged with fury and raw pain, booming through the trees.
“JEREMIAH THOMPSON! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”
Marcus had found them. And the first layer of Kane’s defenses had just fallen.