As I felt my tightened muscles uncoiling, releasing their grip on his flesh, I rode out the last few orgasms while he panted in exhaustion. It must have been six, maybe seven in a row…
Hunter gradually slid me to my feet on the floor. Gasping, groaning, and clutching his head with a single hand, I could see how his chest heaved.
He was completely spent.
“Did we… did we just come together?” He groaned, one eye closed as he watched me. “I think we did…”
Fighting my clumsy legs, I strolled over to him and placed my palms against his hard chest. He was slick with a thin layer of sweat, and I wanted to lick every salty drop of it off of him.
“Do you see why I can’t give you up? Even if you try, you can’t make me pass on this… I need you too much… And you need me.”
Hunter nodded, pulling me into a deep embrace. I could feel his racing heart beneath his skin and bones, pumping against my cheek, and it only reminded me of how fast my own was beating…
We wound up together on the sofa. It was always so easy to curl up with him. My body fit the contours of his so easily, and his skin was like a furnace – putting out enough warmth to soothe me with something as simple as a cuddle.
My head had stopped pounding, and I was looking at the world with renewed eyes… renewed vision.
That meant him as well… and these silly ideas of leaving me behind.
“Hunter,” I told him, guiding his face to regard my own. “If you’re going to do this – if you’re going to join this world… I’m coming too.”
“Sarah…”
“No, don’t. Don’t tell me that I’m naïve, or that I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.” I nestled a little closer to him. “Look into my eyes… I know what I’m doing.”
He turned slightly, our eyes separated by a couple of inches and nothing else. He regarded me calmly, and then resigned himself.
Hunter knew that I was right.
“Okay,” he finally answered.
I felt the warmth of Hunter’s chest against mine, and comforted myself in the rhythmic rising and falling of his lungs. Nestling closer to him, I nuzzled my face into his neck, preparing to nip his skin and slip into sleep…
* * *
Something felt wrong.
My eyes flashed completely open.
Wait. I twisted my neck, gazing around at the room. Panic began to seize at my chest.
Oh fuck. We fell asleep!
What time is it?
I extracted myself up from Hunter’s slumbering body. He shifted slightly in his sleep, turning inward to the sofa as I fumbled around in the semi-darkness, whipping on my panties, jeans, and what was left of my shirt. Quietly but quickly, I crept over to the blackout curtains on the other side of the small, private room…
Ripping open the drapes, I gazed upon the clear sign of my own damnation. My strength left me as I dropped down to my knees in defeat. The bright sun filtered in, casting its infernal glow across the entire room.
“Mmf…” Hunter groaned, moving to cover his face in the sofa’s seam. He lazily called out to me: “Hey… Sarah, can you… turn out the light?”
“The light’s not on,” I groaned.
There was a pause.
Suddenly, there came the sounds of quick and panicked rustling. I felt the warmth of Hunter’s form as he stopped behind me, rubbing sleep from his eyes with a terrified look on his face.
“What fucking time is it?”
“I don’t know,” I moaned, scrambling around the floor for my phone near the sofa. It must have fallen out of my jeans pocket during the festivities the night before.
“Maybe your father hasn’t noticed that you’re gone,” Hunter spoke optimistically, taking a quick look at the window.
Before I could retort, there was a sound of commotion from deeper into the strip club. Apparently, there were still some people from the night before…
My spirits crashed further down when I heard the distant shout… “Police!”
Hunter groaned, covering his face with his hand. “I guess that was a tad optimistic, now that I think about it..."
All of a sudden, another noise joined the fray… Louder… Vicious… Deadly.
BANG!
I turned to hunter feeling as pale as a ghost.
“Was that a gunshot?”
“No,” Hunter replied as I listened to the hissing sound on the other side of the door. “That was pepper spray.”
Chapter 41
Hunter rushed across the room, his posture completely changed.
“Babe, we’ve gotta go.”
As Hunter threw his jeans on, I finally put my hands on my phone. A million missed calls, of course, and all of them from my father. I glanced back up and could see coils of smoke drawing into the room from outside the door. My eyes had already started to water.
“What are we going to do?” I said with panic in my voice.
Another muffled call came from down the hall somewhere. “Police! Drop the guns!” That one sounded familiar enough to strike terror down my spine…
“It’s war,” Hunter hissed. “Your father is coming for you and it sounds like he brought half the police in the damn city. The problem is this club isn’t going down without a proper fight…”
“The club?” I asked, confused. “Are you talking about the strip club, or your motorcycle club?”
Hunter didn’t skip a beat as he threw his shirt on, straightening a quick crick in his neck. “Yeah, Sarah, at this point I don’t think that there’s really a difference…”
The commotion had slowed in its progress, but it was still conspicuously advancing down the hallway towards us… And it had intensified. The sounds of actual gunfire were now filling the club as Hunter ran to the window, fiddling at the latches.
“Dammit!” He hissed when they wouldn’t move. “Stupid goddamn thing must be locked… guess I’m just gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way…”
I was frozen to the spot as I heard the violence going on outside this little room. Every part of me wanted this to be a dream… I just wanted to wake up in Hunter’s arms with the whole world set right again.
But this was no dream. My father was outside that door, and he was coming…
Hunter put his hands on a bar stool beneath the small bar along the far wall. Carrying it across the room, he steadied himself beside the window and raised it up to the glass, shattering the window. With quick reflexes, he used one of the bar stool legs to break out the glass along the edges of the windowpane, securing a safe passage out – so long as I didn’t touch the sides.
More smoke poured under the door, my throat burning as I locked eyes with Hunter.
He could read the terror on my face.
“Princess… we need to go.”
I couldn’t move.
“This way!” Another muffled shout: this time, it was undeniably my father. “Give me back my daughter, you sons of bitches!”
His response was given in gunfire.
Hunter’s gaze shifted from me, to the door, and then to me again. He was hesitating, one boot already on the crunched glass outside, the other on the carpet. I could see him evenly split between a world of freedom, and a world with me… even if only for a few fleeting moments.
He was calling out to me, saying something. I could barely register his syllables. Everything was moving in slow motion, and I was struggling to maintain my grip on the world.
I swallowed slowly. It was the first motion I’d made in what felt like years.
He was even more pained now.
Still saying something. Maybe even shouting.
I tried to speak the words to him, “I’m coming, Hunter.” When I parted my lips, I tried to tell him, “Please just take me away from here.”
But those weren’t the words that came out.
“Just… go…”
The world came to a complete stop.
As blurry and disconnected as everything felt, the next image
burned into my mind. It was the striking pain plastered across his face. I met his heartfelt gaze and watched his heart completely shatter.
All this time, he had been afraid he would hurt me. Hunter had feared that taking me into the life would corrupt me. I had whittled at his conviction, convincing him that I was ready for this. I had promised him my complicity, my place at his side, supporting and nurturing him in the fire that he was about to tread.
The truth was now all too apparent. He shouldn’t have feared hurting me. He should have feared being hurt by me.
I had broken my Hunter.