Chapter 3: The Hunted Become Hunters
The needles pressed into my knees, sharp through the denim, and I barely felt them. Every nerve in my body was tuned to the sound of that breathing. The jacket creak. The weight of someone standing ten feet away, waiting.
Niko's arm tightened around my waist. His mouth pressed against my hair, not a kiss, just a breath, just the shape of him willing me to stay quiet. I felt his heart pounding against my spine like a second pulse.
The footsteps moved. One step to the left. Another. Each one slow and deliberate, the unhurried pace of someone who had all night and knew it.
Then they stopped again.
The silence stretched so long I started counting my heartbeats to keep from screaming. Seven. Nine. Twelve.
A branch creaked, ten yards off. Then another, farther. The sound of someone moving away.
Ethan's head turned, tracking it. His hand left Maya's back, moved to his pack, and came back with the hunting knife. The blade caught a sliver of starlight as it cleared the sheath.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My thighs were shaking. The fear had settled into my bones like cold water.
Niko's hand moved down my side, found my thigh, squeezed. A silent reassessment. The gesture was meant to be comforting, and it was, but it also woke something else in me. The warmth of his palm through the fabric. The press of his fingers. I turned my head, and my mouth was suddenly inches from his, close enough to feel his breath.
I don't know which of us moved first. Maybe both. We were pressed together in the dark, hearts still hammering from the sound of that knife sliding out of the nylon, and one of us closed the gap and the other met it halfway.
His lips were dry and warm, and the kiss was awful and perfect. Awful because I could taste the fear on his mouth, the salt of sweat and the sharp adrenaline tang, and perfect because for one heartbeat the world narrowed to just this. His hand tightened on my thigh, fingers digging in, and I grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer, crawling into his lap without breaking the kiss, wrapping my fingers in his collar.
He made a sound against my mouth, not quite a groan, and his tongue touched mine.
"What are you two doing?"
Maya's whisper cut through like a cold blade. I broke away, my face burning, and found her staring at us in the dark, her eyes wide and angry.
"Are you insane?" she hissed. "They're circling back. I can hear them."
She was right. I'd stopped listening, but now the sound came back. The crunch of boots on pine needles, moving parallel to us, not away.
Niko's hand was still on my thigh. He squeezed once and let go.
Ethan was already on his knees, the knife held low, his eyes scanning the treeline. He didn't look at us. His whole body was aimed at the dark like a drawn bowstring.
"Ethan," Maya whispered.
"I know," he said. His voice was barely a breath. "Two of them. One circling. One holding position by the ridge."
"How do you know that?"
"One set of footprints. Two different cadences." He turned his head, finally looking at us. His face was stripped of anything friendly. In the dark he looked like someone I'd never met before. "We can't stay here. They know we're in this thicket. It's only a matter of time before one of them walks in with a flashlight."
"Then what do we do?" I asked.
His eyes moved to me, then to Niko. The knife turned in his hand.
"We split up."
"Split up how?" Maya's voice cracked on the last word.
"You and me, one direction," Ethan said. "Niko and Anissa, the other. We draw them off, circle back to the lake. Meet at dawn."
"That's insane," I hissed.
"It's the only way we all get out of this." He was already moving, pulling Maya to her feet. His knife caught the starlight again, and I saw his jaw set in a way I'd never seen before. "Stick to the thicket for a hundred yards, then break for the treeline. Move quiet. Don't look back."
Maya grabbed my hand, squeezed once, hard enough to hurt. "Be careful."
"You too."
Then they were gone. The dark swallowed them without a sound, just a shift of shadows and the faint rustle of pine needles settling back into place. I watched until I couldn't see them anymore, and my chest felt like someone had reached in and clamped a fist around my heart.
Niko's hand found my shoulder. "Come on."
We ran. He led, and I followed, my hand fisted in the back of his jacket, my feet finding ground I couldn't see. We crashed through the undergrowth for what felt like an hour and might have been five minutes. My lungs burned. My thighs screamed. The sounds of pursuit faded behind us, replaced by the wet, empty quiet of the deeper forest.
The cabin appeared out of nowhere. One moment dark trees, the next a silhouette against the clouds, all sharp lines and sagging roof. A hunting shack, maybe. Windows black as sockets. The door hung crooked on its hinges, and the floorboards groaned when we stepped inside.
Niko pushed the door closed. It didn't latch. He wedged a broken chair under the handle and stood there, hands on his knees, breathing hard.
I pressed my back against the wall, slid down until I was sitting on the dusty floor. My heart was still hammering. My hand found my mouth, and I realized I was shaking.
"They're not coming," Niko said.
We waited. Five minutes. Ten. No footsteps. No sound but the wind through the gaps in the walls. The cabin was cold and stale, smelled of dust and mouse droppings and old wood. The killers had gone the other way. They'd followed Ethan and Maya.
Niko crouched in front of me. His face was a pale blur in the dark. "Hey."
"Hey."
"They're going to be okay."
"You don't know that."
"No." His voice was rough. "I don't."
He was close. I could smell him, sweat and pine and the lingering smoke from the fire we'd left behind. His hand found my knee, and I felt the calluses on his palm through the denim.
"I don't want to waste this," I said.
"What?"
"Whatever time we have." My throat was tight. "One of us might not make it out of here. I'm not going to spend the last night I might have alive pretending I don't want you to fuck me."
He went still. Then his hand slid up my thigh, fingers curling into the meat of it, and he kissed me like he was drowning.
It wasn't gentle. I grabbed a fistful of his jacket and hauled him down on top of me, and the floorboards hit my back hard enough to knock the breath out of me. His mouth was hungry, open, his tongue sliding against mine, and I bit his lower lip and pulled. He groaned into my mouth, a sound that went straight between my legs.
"Fuck," he breathed.
I was already working at his belt. My fingers were clumsy, shaking, and he batted them away and undid it himself, yanking his jeans down just far enough. His cock sprang free, hard and thick, and I wrapped my hand around it and stroked once, twice, feeling the heat of him. He swore and his hips pushed into my grip.
My jeans were next. He got them open and I lifted my hips and shoved them down, underwear and all, past my knees, kicking until I was bare from the waist down. The cold air hit my cunt and I shivered.
"That's it," he said against my neck. "God, you're so wet."
His fingers found me. Two of them, sliding through the slick, slow and deliberate, and I arched into his hand and bit my own fist to keep from screaming. He pressed inside me, crooked his fingers, and I saw stars.
"I need you inside me," I said. "Now. Fucking now."
He kissed me hard, then lined himself up and pushed in.
The stretch was perfect, that first thick slide of him filling me, and I let out a broken sound, half moan, half sob. He stilled, and I felt him trembling against me.
"You okay?"
"Yes. Don't stop. Please don't stop."
He started moving, slow at first, deep, grinding, and I dug my heels into his ass and pulled him deeper. The fear was still there, coiled in my chest, but the heat was overtaking it, drowning it out. His thrusts got harder, faster, and the cabin filled with the sounds we were making, skin slapping, breaths ripped out of us.
"I'm close," he gasped.
"Come inside me. Do it. Fill me up."
His hand slid under my ass, tilting my hips, and he drove into me so deep I saw white. I came around him, clenching, shuddering, and he followed a second later, his teeth in my shoulder, his whole body locking up as he spilled into me.
He collapsed on top of me. My heart was hammering against his. The cabin was dark and cold and smelled of sex and fear, and somewhere out in the forest, my friends were running for their lives.
"I'm not done with you," I said.
He laughed, a wet, shaking sound. "Good."