Page 130 of Prey

He slides the ring onto my finger with trembling hands. It fits perfectly. The diamond sparkles like the water around us.

“Yes?”

I kiss him instead of answering, pouring six months of impossible love into the connection.

When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard.

“I love you.” The words come easier now, after months of practice. “My hunter. My husband. My choice.”

“Always your choice,” he promises against my lips. “Every day.”

Back in the villa, he worships my pregnant body with religious devotion. I lie on crisp white sheets while he maps every change with lips and tongue and careful fingers.

“So beautiful,” he breathes against my neck. “Look at you.”

I catch our reflection in the mirror across the room—me flushed and round and glowing, him dark and predatory as he touches my skin. The contrast still shocks me sometimes.

He pays special attention to my swollen breasts, sucking gently on my nipples which have grown sensitive and dark. I arch beneath him, already so close from his mouth.

“She’s going to nurse from these,” he says against my skin. “Our daughter will be fed from your body.”

His hand finds my center, fingers sliding through wetness that flows constant now. Pregnancy makes me perpetually ready for him.

“And this sweet cunt was so beautifully stretched around my cock when I put her there.”

“Nik, please?—”

He enters me slowly, mindful of my belly, holding most of his weight on his arms.

“My fiancée,” he says as he moves inside me. “Carrying my baby. Perfect fucking paradise.”

I come with a cry that echoes off the walls, clenching around him as he follows me over. He collapses beside me and I roll over, breathing hard, his palm pressed to my belly.

“I love you,” he whispers into my hair. “Both of you. More than anything in this world.”

I believe him. This monster who learned to love. This man who gave me paradise after pulling me through hell.

Outside, waves lap against our private deck. Tomorrow we’ll swim in crystal water and eat fresh fish and make love in the hammock swaying in the tropical breeze. We’ll pretend, for two weeks, that we’re normal people who met in normal ways.

But tonight, with his ring on my finger and his baby in my belly and his body sheltering mine, I know the truth.

Monsters can love.

Captives can choose.

And sometimes, what feels like the most impossible darkness leads to light.