...twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
A smile spreads across my face. I stare up at Julian’s pristine ceiling and feel a predatory satisfaction curl through me.
Good. Run.
It’ll make catching you so much more satisfying.
I finally drag myself from the bed and into the shower, turning the water hot enough to steam the glass walls. As I step under the spray, I take inventory of what Victor left behind.
A necklace of purple-red marks blooms across my collarbone. I press my fingers against one particularly vivid bruise and close my eyes at the dull throb of pleasure-pain. Victor’s mouth was hungry, desperate to consume me. I trace the path of his teeth down my chest, across my ribs, lingering on a clear impression just above my hip bone.
“Fucking beautiful,” I murmur, watching water sluice over the marks.
My wrists bear the ghost-grip of his hands—five distinct fingerprints on each, as if he’s branded me. I turn them under the spray, admiring the artwork Victor didn’t even realize he was creating. My thighs tell a similar story—handprints, beard burn, the shadow of bruises blooming beneath my skin.
I’m not surprised Victor fled before I woke. I’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t.
Men like Victor don’t stay. They don’t curl into your warmth and whisper confessions in the gentle light of morning. They run. They panic. They try to outpace the revelation that shattered everything they thought they knew about themselves.
The empty bed doesn’t wound me—it energizes me. Each bruise, each ache as I soap my body, confirms what I already knew. Victor didn’t just fuck me last night. He came undone. He discovered something about himself that terrifies him to his core.
And a man only runs from something that matters.
I smile as I rinse off, feeling my body hum with anticipation rather than rejection. Victor can run all he wants. He can hide behind his hypermasculine fight club and his carefully constructed identity. But I’ve seen the truth of him now—felt itin the desperate grip of his hands, tasted it in the surrender of his kiss.
I step out into the cool air of the bathroom, catching myself still grinning at nothing in particular. I dress in a blur, still thinking about Victor. The way he fought himself even as he surrendered. The way his hands trembled when they first touched my skin, like he was afraid I might shatter—or he might.
It’s a dance I know well. The push-pull of desire versus denial. The frantic flight after the revelation.
I’ve hunted difficult men before. Straight-identified men who discovered they weren’t so straight after all. Closeted men terrified of what they want. Men who swore blind they’d never touch another man, right until they were begging beneath my hands.
I’ve never lost one I truly wanted. And Victor? He’s already halfway caught.
The morning air is crisp as I take the short walk to Eclipse, my nightclub that transforms into the city’s most exclusive coffee spot during daylight hours. The weight of the keys in my hand grounds me as I let myself in through the back entrance.
“You look thoroughly debauched,” Sloane calls from behind the counter where she’s already prepping the espresso machine. Her smile is knowing. “Successful hunt, then?”
“You could say that.” I slide onto a barstool as she pushes a flawless flat white toward me.
“Why do I sense there’s more to the story?” She leans forward, elbows on the counter. “Spill.”
I take a slow sip. “Victor Kaine.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Fight club Victor? Six-five, shoulders like a linebacker, aggressively heterosexual Victor?”
“The very same.”
“And?”
“And he ran this morning before I woke up.”
Sloane snorts. “Of course he did.” She studies my expression. “But you’re not upset. You’re planning.”
I smile over the rim of my cup. “I’m always planning.”
“This isn’t vindictive, is it? Because the last thing we need is?—”
“Not vindictive,” I interrupt. “I don’t have a cruel bone in my body when it comes to Victor.”
