(⚠️sexual scenes⚠️)

Ash stood at the edge of the clearing, half-shadowed, breath steady and shallow. The forest had gone still—too still—and yet his body thrummed like the earth before a storm.

She was out there.

Every part of him felt her before he saw her. Not the soft girl from last time—no, this was something more dangerous. She moved like prey that had stopped running, like she wanted to be eaten.

The mask clung to his face like another skin—bone, fur, leather, sinew. Not a costume. A transformation. A muzzle that muffled the man and awakened the wolf. The edges of it scraped against his cheekbones, warm with sweat and spit and something older than lust.

He stepped into the clearing and saw her.

She was on her knees. Again.

But this time it wasn’t surrender. It was a dare. Her dress hung crooked off one shoulder, torn open where thorns or hunger had bitten into it. Her thighs were streaked with mud and her own fingernail scratches. Eyes wide, blown, defiant.

She tilted her head slightly, like she knew.

Like she’d felt him coming long before he arrived.

Ash didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The silence between them was a drumbeat. A countdown.

His boots barely made a sound in the pine needles as he circled her. Slow. Controlled. Starving.

She didn’t follow him with her gaze—she kept it fixed forward. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, her lips parted with something between a whimper and a prayer. He knew the sounds she made now. He knew the silence too.

And he knew when she was baiting him.

He stopped behind her and let the air stretch thin. The heat between them pressed against his ribs like a scream he couldn’t swallow.

He reached down and tangled a fist in her hair.

She gasped. Sharp. Not pain—permission.

Ash leaned in, the mask’s snout brushing against her ear.

“You don’t run this time,” he growled.

“I didn’t want to.”

Her voice was cracked porcelain. So fragile he could’ve shattered it. But she didn’t break. Not yet.

He yanked her back by the hair until she was kneeling upright, spine arched, head tilted back against his stomach. Her throat was a ribbon of moonlight—exposed, trembling.

Ash’s other hand slid around to her mouth, his gloved fingers pressing against her lips like a question. She didn’t hesitate. She opened. Took him in.

The first time had been primal. This—this was ritual. Reverent. Violent in how sacred it felt.

He watched her from behind the mask, the muzzle fogging slightly from his breath. Watched how she hollowed her cheeks, how she moaned softly against the leather, how her thighs squeezed together like she was already aching.

And maybe she was.

Maybe she never stopped.

Maybe they were both sick with it. With needing each other in this way no one else would ever understand.

Ash pulled his fingers free and grabbed her by the jaw, twisting her head to the side so he could see the tear tracking down her cheek.

She didn’t blink.

“You like hurting,” he said. Not a question. A knowing.

She nodded, slowly.

“You want me to ruin you?”

“Yes, Ash,” she whispered. “Make me feel something I can’t come back from.”

And that was it.

That broke him.

He shoved her forward onto her hands, tore the rest of her dress at the seams. The sound of it ripping echoed through the trees like a gunshot. He dropped to his knees behind her and pressed his face into the back of her neck, breathing her in like smoke he wanted to choke on.

His hands bruised her hips. His teeth marked her shoulder. The mask made him less careful. Less human.

But even now—even now—he held back the part of him that loved her.

Because if he let that out…

She wouldn’t be kneeling.

She’d be devoured.