The Cage (Book 2) ✔️

A Lay in the Hay

Mature content warning! 

A Lay in the Hay

The barn was half-lit, dust motes suspended in golden shafts of light slanting through gaps in the old wooden walls. The air smelled of straw and animals, the earthy scent grounding, familiar in a way I hadn't realized I'd been craving. Outside, the wind carried the chirr of insects and the distant shuffle of hooves, but in here, it was just us. Just Schneider and me and the heat we stirred between us.

The hay scratched at my knees, clinging to the sweat that beaded along my spine, but I didn't care. Not when I had Schneider sprawled beneath me, hair mussed, his breath coming hard, eyes blown wide and dark with something between wonder and hunger.

I let my hands roam over his body, each scar and edge a story I hadn't heard yet -and didn't think I had the stomach to. He arched into my touch like he trusted me to map him, to rewrite pain into something better.

With misty eyes, I leaned down to kiss every scar on his chest, his shoulder, his neck. I felt his cock surge inside me.

His hands were all over me, everywhere; my back, my waist, gripping my thighs like I was both anchor and salvation. I kissed him through every pulse of movement, felt the tremor in him that told me he needed this just as badly as I did.

"God, Julian..." he breathed, voice hoarse, cracked open. His tongue darted to lick his lips and he gazed up at me like I was the answer to his every prayer. My name in his mouth was the most sacred thing I'd ever heard.

I leaned down, foreheads brushing, lips barely apart. "I'm here," I murmured.

The barn creaked, a groan of old wood settling—or so I thought.

Schneider's eyes shifted. Went cold, calculating. Predator sharp.

I didn't have time to ask what was wrong before he moved like lightning. One arm wrapped around me, shoving me down and slightly to the side just as his other hand drew something from beneath the discarded heap of his clothes.

A gun.

The crack of it shattered the silence.

I flinched so hard my whole body jerked. My heart seized in my chest as I turned, startled and exposed, barely catching the sight of a man crumpling in the barn's entrance, a ragged hole in his chest and a look of shock frozen on his face.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

The gun the intruder carried lay beside him. He'd meant to use it on us.

Schneider's grip was still on me, steadying. I slowly turned to him, eyes wide.

"Where the hell were you even hiding that?" I asked, voice a little too high, adrenaline crashing into lust like a storm tearing through calm waters.

"Are you alright?" he muttered, already pushing me off him so he could stand, gun still in hand, body snapping to attention like a soldier called to duty.

I sat there in the hay, half-naked and trembling—not from fear exactly, but from the jarring shift of it all. One second, pleasure. The next, a dead man at the door. The reality of our situation slammed back into focus.

We'd been found.

I forced myself to my feet, fingers trembling as I yanked my pants back up and grabbed Schneider's shirt off the pile. "They know where we are," I said, my voice steadier now. "We need to go."

He looked at me then, jaw clenched, face unreadable. But there was a glint of agreement in his eyes. A grim kind of understanding from a life lived on the razor edge.