Page 30 of Natural-Born Cullers

Gray pulled on one leather glove, then the other.

Jack’s phone cut into the silence, and as Gray turned his ear, Jack tugged it out of his pocket.

Voices drifted over, and with it talk with other cattle that took Jack back into the herded fold, into blind stupidity, fucked-up false safety over routine, over…

Tick…

Always fucked-up… tock.

“… Seriously? He accepted the offer?” Jack snorted as Gray stopped behind him. He was close enough to catch Jack’s shower-fresh scent mixed with his run: Amberwood peppered with light perspiration. “Bloody nice one, Ash. Hang on—” Jack paused a moment, his hand going on the wall, so oblivious to just how close the threat was that stood behind him, and Gray looked away, his jaw tightening.

Tick…

Fucking tock.

“You didn’t take Raif with you, right?” A reply came through, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief and ran a hand through his hair. “Thank fuck for th—”

Gray tugged Jack’s phone out of his hand—then pinned Jack up against the wall before he could find breath to cry out.

Tick—

“Fucking tock,” snarled Gray. A grip around his throat, Gray dug a hand into Jack’s jogging pants and gripped his cock. “Routine…. It cries outnothingbutcome fucking rape me.” He shook him a little. “And you have the bastard bollocks to cry no against it in my ear after you live by it, day in, day out, asking for it everyfuckingtime?”

Drip… fucking drop.

He shoved Jack’s jogging pants and boxers over the curve of his ass, digging a rough grip into the cheek and exposing his core as he gripped his hair. “Fucking routine….” Gray ground his cock into Jack a moment later, forcing him harder into the wall. “Vince taught you nothing, did he? How any psychopath can see and hear you, how—”

“Who’s got in your head, huh, mukka?” It came so softly, no fear off Jack, and drip…

Fucking what?

Jack… he should be so scared right now. He should be running far and fucking wide.

Jack’s hard beat of heart drowned out the ticking of a clock, a thud, thud-thud playing under Gray’s touch, and—

“Fuck.” Gray dipped his head into the curve of Jack’s throat and slipped a gentler touch around Jack’s abs, trying to hold on to sense.

“Yeah… who’s really got you in bastard mood there, hmm?” Jack relaxed fully in the next breath and moved to ease around.

“Don’t.” Gray roughed the grip at the back of Jack’s hair, forcing him to stay facing the wall. As he did, he licked at the back of his neck. “Stay like this, stunner… just for a while…. Don’t move. Don’t push it, for your own sake.” His head was caught between two worlds, two…

Drip… fucking tock.

Gray stuttered, stumbled, life nothing but a missed orgasm from dulled masturbation. He needed back into the sound of dripping blood… away from Jack, away from routine, all its regularity and dance along to…

Tick…

Fucking tock.

“Yeah. Okay,” Jack whispered gently. “I’ve got you, mukka. Seven hours.”

Drip…

Fucking what?

Gray shifted, something else entirely running through his blood. “Hmm?”

“Burn it out. You get seven hours with me, no more. So long as I get you back in the aftermath.”

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