19. Hunter #3
Echo shut the notebook completely and set it beside her. “If you’re talking about me threatening your dick, that part was very clear.”
“I’m talking about the kiss.” I watched her expression change without trying to fill the silence. “I grabbed you to make a point. You were right about that. I won’t use you that way again. But after you could have pulled away, you didn’t.”
She stood slowly, leaving her shoes where they were. “Those are two separate things, Hunter. I can be pissed that you used me and still want your mouth on me.”
The simplicity of it caught me harder than the kiss had.
She came toward me until only a small amount of space remained between us, but she did not close it completely.
Her eyes moved over my face while I waited, and I understood that waiting was part of this.
Echo had spent the afternoon reminding me that I was not her king.
If anything happened now, I wanted there to be no confusion about whose decision brought her closer.
“I like control,” I said. “You hate having decisions made for you. That makes this either a terrible idea or something we need to be very clear about.”
Echo reached up and curled her fingers into the front of my shirt, the same place she had grabbed me during the kiss downstairs. “I hate people assuming they own the decision. If I give it to you, that’s different.”
I covered her hand with mine but did not move it. “And when you want it back?”
“I take it back.”
That was enough.
Echo pulled me down to her.
The second kiss had nothing to do with Camille.
There was no audience waiting for a reaction and no point to make beyond the fact that she had chosen to kiss me again.
I let her control the beginning of it, keeping my hands at her waist until she pressed closer and made it obvious she wanted more.
When I finally tightened my grip and shifted her where I wanted her, she came willingly, and the knowledge of that choice settled into every movement afterward.
She didn’t become passive simply because she let me lead.
Echo still pushed back when she wanted something different, redirected my hands when I assumed wrong, and watched me closely enough that I knew she was measuring whether I understood the agreement we had just made.
I did. Control only interested me if the person giving it understood she could remove it.
I walked her backward until the backs of her thighs hit the arm of the couch.
She let me. Her hands stayed in my shirt, holding on rather than pushing away, and when I lifted her onto the arm she opened her legs for me without being told.
I stepped between them, one hand still at her waist, the other sliding up the side of her throat until my thumb rested just beneath her jaw. I felt her swallow against it.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
Echo’s eyes stayed on mine. “I will.”
That was the only permission I needed. I kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, while my hands worked the buttons of her blouse open one by one.
She shrugged it off herself when I reached the last one, then reached for my belt.
I caught her wrists and guided them back to the arm of the couch on either side of her hips.
“Leave them.”
She left them. The deliberate stillness of it hit harder than any struggle would have.
I unhooked her bra and drew it down her arms, then took one breast into my mouth while my hand cupped the other.
She arched into it, a low sound catching in her throat when I scraped my teeth lightly over the peak.
I spent time there, switching sides, learning the exact pressure that made her fingers curl against the leather, until her breathing had gone uneven and she was shifting restlessly under my hands.
Only then did I move lower. I dragged her skirt up her thighs, hooked my fingers in the sides of her panties, and pulled them down and off.
She lifted her hips to help. I stayed standing between her knees and looked at her for a moment, spread on the arm of my couch, bare from the waist down, waiting because she had chosen to wait.
I opened my own trousers and freed my cock.
The metal of the Jacob’s ladder caught the light as I stroked once, twice, spreading the precum already beading at the tip.
Echo’s gaze dropped to it and stayed there.
When I stepped closer again she reached for me, but I caught her wrist a second time and guided her hand back to the couch.
“Not yet.”
I lined myself up and pushed in slowly, one long, controlled stroke that forced every inch of the ladder against her walls until I was buried to the root.
Echo’s head tipped back, a short, sharp sound leaving her mouth.
I stayed still inside her, giving her time to feel the stretch, the metal, the way I filled her completely.
“Look at me.”
She complied as I started moving with deep, measured thrusts that kept the piercing dragging along her front wall with every stroke. I held her hips steady so she couldn’t rush me, setting a pace that was relentless without being frantic.
Every time she tried to roll up to meet me harder I tightened my grip and slowed just enough to remind her who was controlling it right now.
She let me. The surrender was visible in the way her thighs stayed open, in the way she kept her hands where I had put them even when her fingers dug into the leather hard enough to leave marks.
I fucked her like that until her breathing turned ragged and her eyes started to lose focus. Then I pulled out completely.
Echo made a sound of pure frustration. I turned her without asking, my hands on her hips, spinning her so she faced the couch, then bending her forward over the arm so her chest pressed to the cushions and her ass was presented to me.
I stepped back between her legs and pushed in again in one smooth thrust. The new angle made her gasp.
I reached around, found her clit with two fingers, and started working it in tight circles while I fucked her from behind, still controlled, still deep.
“You can move now,” I told her.
She pushed back to meet every stroke, chasing the pressure of my fingers, the drag of the ladder inside her.
I let her set the secondary rhythm while I kept the primary one steady.
When she started tightening around me I slowed again, denying the edge until she made a low, desperate sound against the cushion.
“Hunter—”
“I know.”
I gave it back to her, faster now, harder, fingers relentless on her clit while I drove into her with enough force that the couch shifted against the floor.
She came with a broken moan, her walls clamping down around the piercing in hard, rhythmic pulses that almost pulled me over with her.
I fucked her through it without stopping, drawing every last flutter out of her until she was shaking and oversensitive.
Only then did I let myself go. Three more deep thrusts and I buried myself to the hilt, coming hard inside her with a low, rough sound against the back of her neck. I stayed there, cock still pulsing, one hand braced on the couch beside her head while the other stroked slowly along her side.
I pulled out carefully after my breathing evened out.
Come slipped down the inside of her thigh.
I reached for the box of tissues on the side table, cleaned her with the same deliberate care I had used for everything else, then cleaned myself.
Echo stayed bent over the arm for another moment before pushing herself upright.
I handed her the tissues and stepped back to give her space while she fixed her skirt and found her blouse.
Afterward, the lounge felt too quiet, Echo sitting on the edge of the couch while she pulled her clothes back into place, and I brought her water before collecting my own shirt from the floor.
She accepted the glass without comment and drank most of it while I dressed.
There was no awkwardness between us, but there was also no sudden softness demanding interpretation.
What had happened was clear enough without either of us trying to name it.
When she finally stood, she picked up her heels in one hand instead of putting them back on. Her eyes dropped briefly to my belt before returning to my face, and I knew she had not forgotten the threat from earlier even if the rest of the afternoon had changed considerably.
“I meant what I said downstairs,” she told me. “This doesn’t erase it. If you need me for something, ask me. If I say yes, I’ll play whatever part I agreed to play. You decide for me again, and we have a problem.”
“I understood you the first time.” I slipped my watch back onto my wrist and met her gaze. “What happened here doesn’t change that.”
She studied me for a moment before nodding. That was all I needed from her.
My phone vibrated on the desk before either of us moved toward the elevator. Malakai had sent an update from the secured room: Nichlas was awake, stable, and asking how long Hunter’s protection still applied.
I read it twice.
Echo saw my expression and waited until I turned the phone so she could read it herself. Her face did not brighten or twist into anything dramatic. She simply looked toward the hallway where Nichlas was being held and then back at me.
Keeping him protected had already become difficult to justify.
Tomorrow, we were going to decide exactly when it ended.