Page 50 of Prey

“Or she’ll disappear into the underground,” Darius counters. “Plenty of places in this city to hide if you know where to look.”

“She doesn’t know—” I stop. Because actually, she might.

“Ezra.” I turn to him. “Pull up her background for me. See if I missed something initially..”

His fingers dance across the keyboard, data scrolling past. “Jenna Reeves, born in Los Angeles, parents deceased, lived with her step-father until age seventeen—” He freezes, jaw clenching.

“There are police reports.” Ezra’s voice takes on that detached quality he uses when reading data that would bother normal people. “Domestic violence, stepfather, multiple emergency room visits. She ran away at seventeen, was missing for eight months before aging out of the system anyway.”

Eight months. Enough time to learn the underground, to make contacts, to understand how people disappear when they need to.

“Fuck.” The word comes out hollow.

“So she’s not some innocent little pharmacy worker,” Raphael observes. “She’s a survivor who knows how to disappear.”

“And you handed her the perfect opportunity,” Damon adds. “Let her get close enough to study you, learn your routines, figure out your weaknesses.”

My hands clench into fists. Weaknesses. The way I’d responded when she said my name. How I’d lost control when she begged for my cock. The absolute desperation I’d felt to be inside her, to claim her, to?—

“This is insane.” The words burst from me. “You’re talking about her like she’s some criminal mastermind. She’s a fucking pharmacy tech.”

“You felt what she wanted you to feel,” Darius interrupts. “Jesus, Nik, for someone who’s supposed to be the expert at hunting people, you got played hard.”

“She came on my cock,” I snarl, beyond caring how ridiculous it sounds. “Multiple times. You can’t fake that.”

“Can’t you?” Marcus raises an eyebrow. “Women have been faking orgasms since the dawn of time.”

“Not like that.” But doubt creeps in anyway. The way she’d shattered around my fingers, her pussy clenching so tight I could barely move. The wetness that had soaked my hand, thedesperate sounds she’d made. “She squirted. You can’t fake that.”

“Actually,” Theon begins in that clinical tone, “with the right combination of muscle control and?—”

“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Just fucking don’t.”

But the seed is planted now. Every moment replays in my head with new context. Her initial defiance melted into submission. The perfect way she’d responded to pain and pleasure. How she’d begged for exactly what I wanted to give her.

How she’d asked to see my face.

“She wanted the mask off,” I say suddenly. “From the beginning, she kept asking to see my face.”

“To humanize you,” Dominic says quietly. “Make it harder for you to keep her at arm’s length.”

“To make you trust her,” Ezra adds.

“It worked,” Lucien observes.

The rage building in my chest threatens to take over entirely. She’d played me. Thoroughly. Perfectly. Used my own desire against me, turned my need to possess her into the key to her freedom.

And I’d fallen for every second of it.

“We’re wasting time.” The words come out controlled and professional. Hunt mode is engaging despite the chaos in my head. “She’s human. She leaves traces. We find those traces, we find her.”

“And then?” Darius asks.

“Then I bring her back and I make sure she never tries to leave again.”

“How romantic,” Marcus mutters.

I ignore him, turning to Ezra. “I want everything. Traffic cameras, security feeds, facial recognition. Start with a six-block radius from here and expand outward.”