Twice now.
And she didn’t flinch—a rarity very few people had the balls to do.
His thumb spun his ring, an old, unconscious habit he’d never managed to break. The signet was warm from his skin, the engraved initials worn smooth from years of this exact gesture.
He turned from the window and moved deeper into the suite, where shadows pooled in the corners and the clamor of the hunt faded to a dreamlike drone.
Lowering into a chair, Jack lifted his phone, the screen casting pale light across his features as the security feeds blinked to life. Sixteen camera angles capturing the grounds in a silver-tinged, grid view. The maze. The gardens. The grotto. The forest’s edge where fog made ghosts of the trees.
And those were only the angles he was babysitting. The team of men in the security room were on full alert, tracking every player of the game, regardless if they were hunter, stag, or doe.
The bell tolled from above. Another conquest.
On camera seven, a hunter had a tribute pressed against a marble column, her legs wrapped around his waist, her head thrown back in what appeared to be passion.
On camera twelve, three figures moved through an arbor—two hunters circling a tribute who’d stopped running, her chest heaving, her hands raised in what might have been surrender or invitation.
On camera four, a woman raced through the hedge maze, quick and desperate, a white rabbit in a garden of foxes.
Jack watched without response. This was the theater he’d built. The careful choreography of predator and prey governed by rules and contracts and the invisible lines of consent.
One night. One fortune. Total transformation.
It was transactional. Clean, in the filthiest way. Dubious, yes, but also honest.
No stealing.
No helpless victims.
The tributes were armed with the ultimate weapon—a single word that could make it all stop and go away.
That was the beauty of consent.
His thumb brushed the ring as he continued to scroll, unwilling to admit that he might be searching for something specific. The feed from camera nine caught his attention. A crossing, near the eastern gardens. Two figures. The larger moved with mechanical efficiency—thrusting, grunting, utterly without finesse.
Jack recognized the set of those shoulders, the brutal rhythm.
Hadrian Welles.
The tribute beneath him was face-down on the dirt, her fingers clawing at the grass. Hadrian had one hand fisted in her hair, pushing her head down. His other hand scraped up her thigh.
Jack zoomed in on her mouth and her hands. No safeword. No protest. Just resignation. The sort of relentless pounding some hunters enjoyed.
Jack’s eyes narrowed as Hadrian’s mouth moved. The man liked to narrate, liked to remind his conquests exactly who was in control.
Jack’s jaw tightened. Any man of power who needed to constantly remind others of their authority had no power at all.
He looked away in disgust.
It wasn’t a violation. There was no signal of distress. She might even be enjoying it—some of them did. But it still turned Jack’s stomach to watch men like Hadrian Welles get away with treating others without dignity.
The carelessness of it. The way he used them like furniture, objects to later discard.
A knock at the door pulled Jack’s attention. “Come.”
Cole entered, his broad frame filling the doorway before he stepped inside and closed. His militant stare did a quick sweep of the room. “Sir. We have a safeword.”
Jack set down his phone. “Details.”
