4. Hunter #2
My hands found her waist. I stepped between her knees, and she opened them to let me in.
The movement was so natural, so unhesitating, like her body had been waiting for mine to arrive at this exact spot.
Her fingers slid back into my hair and her mouth was close — so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my lips.
"Hunt." A whisper. Her mouth barely moving. Her eyes on mine — dark, half-lidded, daring me like always.
And like always, I gave in. The dream stopped being about hands and jaws and names and became more. So much more.
My mouth on her neck. Her spine arching off the wood and the sound — a catch at the back of her throat that broke into something lower, something that vibrated against my lips where they pressed into the curve of her shoulder.
"God — right there —"
My hands moving up her thighs. Slow. Unhurried. The way I do everything, except there was no restraint and no reason for it now. Her legs wrapping around my hips, pulling me closer, and the heat of her through the thin fabric between us. Her breath ragged against my temple.
My mouth on her collarbone. Her hands fisting my shirt to pull it over my head. Her palms flat on my chest, exploring. Her fingers tracing down my stomach and lower.
Her breath hot against my ear as she said, "I want you. Touch me, Hunt — please.”
The please. Breathy and broken and nothing like the woman who commanded rooms. The workbench creaking under shifting weight.
Her head falling back, exposing the long line of her throat.
My mouth on the pulse point. Her hips rocking forward against mine.
The sounds getting louder — sharper gasps, my name between them, syllables that weren't finishing — less controlled, more desperate.
My hands on her hips, pulling her to the edge of the bench, grinding into her harder.
Her ankles locking behind my back and her fingernails dragging down my spine and the moment before — the single, suspended, infinite moment before —
I woke up, my cock was so hard it hurt. My breathing was all wrong and my heart was slamming against my ribs.
I ran a hand down my face, staring at the ceiling.
The apartment was dark. The dream was still on me — not fading the way dreams fade.
It was sitting on my skin like heat from a surface that's been in the sun too long.
Radiating. I could still feel her hand on my jaw.
The path her thumb had traced. The way her legs had wrapped around me and the catch in her throat — the one my brain had invented with a cruelty I hadn't known it was capable of.
I sat up. Put my feet on the floor. Dropped my head into my hands.
"Fuck."
The word came out low and rough and I said it to the dark because there was nobody to hear it and it was the only word that fit.
I hadn’t dreamed about Jessica in years.
I had made peace with her leaving. The kind that came from sitting with a thing long enough that it stopped bleeding and scarred over.
I had accepted that she was gone and I was here, and the friendship we'd had was a beautiful, finished thing that I was grateful for but had moved on from.
But now she was back. Now she was back, and my subconscious had apparently decided that the decade of containment was finished. That every image I had ever filed under Don't was now available for unrestricted access.
I got up, went to the shower and turned the water on.
I stepped in, closed my eyes, and let myself have it.
All of it. The workbench. The golden light.
Jess’s hand on my jaw and her thumb tracing my skin and her legs pulling me closer and the sound she made when my mouth found her neck.
Every image my waking brain had sealed away since the moment she walked through the front door — the red heels, the dark hair, the lip color that dared me to look.
The way she said Hunt like she'd been saving it.
My body had been storing all of it with perfect, merciless recall, building a library I hadn't authorized, and now the library was open, and I was standing in the middle of it.
My cock was hard — aching, insistent, the kind of hard that doesn't negotiate or wait for permission. I stopped fighting it. I wrapped my hand around myself, and the relief of the contact alone made my breath hiss through my teeth.
I didn’t rush. I’ve never rushed anything in my life, and I wasn’t going to start now, not even with this need burning me from the inside out.
I stroked slow. Deliberate. Let the images come on their own schedule.
Jessica and her smile. Her weight against me, her thighs bracketing my hips.
The way her head fell back when my mouth moved down her throat.
The sounds she made in my ear — specific, filthy, things I was inventing from a decade of wondering, and my imagination was merciless tonight.
I gave the images the same unhurried attention I gave everything that actually mattered to me.
Thorough. Complete. My hips pushed forward into my fist, moving at the same pace I would if she were here.
My forehead pressed against the tile, eyes rolling shut at the images flashing through my mind.
I imagined her hand instead of mine — her small fingers wrapped around me, the red nails against my skin, the way she'd look up at me while she did it, brown eyes hot and daring, that mouth curved into the grin that had been wrecking me since we were kids.
Except now the grin was wrecked itself, and she was breathless on her knees on the workshop floor, and the golden light was in her hair and her lips were parted and —
My hand moved faster. The rhythm went from deliberate to something rougher, more urgent.
My breath came in ragged pulls that the steam swallowed.
Her name was in my mouth. Her face was behind my eyes.
Her imagined hand was on my cock and her imagined mouth was close — so close — and the pressure that had been building since the dream coiled tight at the base of my spine and climbed and climbed.
And when it broke, it broke through me like a wave hitting a seawall.
I came hard, my whole body jerking, my free hand braced flat against the tile, her name bitten off between my teeth — not spoken, not allowed out, just the shape of it clenched in my jaw while the orgasm tore through me in waves that left my legs shaking and my vision white.
I stood under the water with my forehead against the tile for a long time. My breathing came back in stages. My pulse settled. The evidence washed down the drain and I waited for the guilt to arrive.
But it didn't come.
I didn't have it in me tonight. What I had instead was something worse — the particular devastation of a man who had just discovered the full scope of what he wanted and knew exactly how impossible it was.
The wanting had been abstract before. Theoretical. A thing I could keep behind glass and observe without touching. It wasn't abstract anymore. It had a shape and a sound and it was going to haunt me for every second of every day until I could get it out of my mind.
I turned off the water. Dried off. Went back to bed. Slept like the dead.
I woke up later than usual. The light through the window was already warm and gold, which meant I'd slept past six for the first time in months. The dream was still there — not sharp anymore, not burning, but present. A low hum underneath everything.
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, and let the night come back to me. Not just the dream. Clay. The walk across the paddock. The way he'd looked at me when he said, The one thing I never did was step out of the way.
She was my best friend. She had always been my best friend.
And she was back and she was in my head every minute of every day and I was going to have to figure out what that meant.
Not today. Not yet. But soon. Because the old answer — let her fly, step aside, love her from a distance — was the answer of a seventeen-year-old boy, and I wasn't seventeen anymore.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I reached for it.
Breakfast at Dottie's? My treat.
Her name at the top. The words sitting there, casual, easy — like there was no version of this where I said no because there had never been a version of this where I said no to Jessica Williams about anything, ever, in my entire life.
I typed one word.
When?
I sat on the edge of the bed. Pressed both hands over my face.
Rubbed hard. The dream was still in my skin.
Clay's words were still in my head. And in forty-five minutes I was going to be sitting across from her at Dottie's holding all of it behind my face while she drank her black coffee and hit me with that grin.
“God, I am so fucked. Get it together, Blackwood."
I got up. Showered. Let the hot water wash the sleep and the night off my skin. Got dressed. Went downstairs.
I put the phone down. Pressed both hands flat on the counter. Dropped my head and breathed.
I was in so much trouble. The kind that didn’t come with a manual. The kind my hands couldn't fix.