Chapter Text
The evening twilight had already begun to devour the city, painting the streets in cold, unsettling tones. It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday — at least, that’s what I thought back then. A chilly wind slipped under my light jacket, making me shiver as I raced along the sidewalk on my work electric scooter.
I had just turned eighteen. I’d only recently stepped into adult life, but so far it felt like nothing more than an endless race for survival. Money was catastrophically short: my scholarship vanished in a week, and rent for the room devoured everything else. I had to cling to any opportunity I could get, and these few hours of evening courier shifts were my salvation. The straps of the bulky thermal backpack pressed heavily on my fragile shoulders. I was too petite for this job — small, slender, with long blonde hair that now escaped from under my hood and kept falling into my big blue eyes, obstructing my view.
The phone mounted on the scooter’s handlebars vibrated, lighting up my pale face with a video call screen. Mia. My roommate.
I slowed down and accepted the call, trying to shout over the street noise.
“Hey! Where are you stuck?” Mia’s voice sounded energetic, loud music already playing in the background. She was applying lipstick, looking into the camera like a mirror. “We’re going to that club tonight, remember? I’m almost ready!”
A smile slipped across my lips by itself. The thought of loud music, dancing, and a carefree night warmed me just a little.
“I remember!” I shouted into the speaker, brushing a light strand of hair from my forehead with my free hand. I waved at her on the camera, feeling my fingers ache from exhaustion. “I’ve only got one address left! I’ll drop off this damn pizza and fly straight to you. I’ll start getting ready the second I walk through the door!”
“Deal! Waiting for you!” Mia winked, and the screen went dark, leaving me alone with the hum of the motor and the rapidly darkening city.
I twisted the throttle, feeling the cold air burn my lungs. The navigator was taking me farther and farther from the lively center. The bright neon signs of shops gradually gave way to dim, rarely flickering streetlights, and then finally surrendered to the gloomy shadows of the industrial zone.
Fatigue was taking its toll. In the dim light of a broken streetlamp, the numbers on the crooked fence blurred into one dirty smudge. I needed house twenty-eight, but because of my inattention, haste, and desperate desire to finish my shift quickly, I had turned toward twenty-three.
I approached the peeling wooden door and knocked loudly. Silence. Only the cold wind howled somewhere in the cracks of the roof. I knocked again, shifting from foot to foot against the cold. No one answered.
“Deliver it faster — get my pennies faster, maybe even beg for a tip and rush to Mia,” a naïve thought flashed through my mind. I reached for the handle and hesitantly pushed the door. It gave way with a long, unpleasant creak.
I stepped inside, into the semi-darkness of the room, expecting to see an ordinary hallway. But instead of the smell of a lived-in home, the air hit my nostrils with a heavy, metallic scent of gun oil, ingrained tobacco, sharp cologne, and male sweat.
My blood literally froze in my veins. My breath caught in my throat.
In the dimly lit, half-empty room, two men sat at a rough table. My gaze darted in shock to the smaller of the two. A sturdy, broad-shouldered brunette with shaved sides and a short mohawk. At the sound of the opening door, he froze, his hand reflexively darting toward his hip, where metal glinted. At first, genuine, almost comical surprise flashed across his face, but a second later his lips stretched into a predatory, crooked smile. That smile sent icy sweat pouring down my back.
But the real, paralyzing horror gripped my body when I looked at the second man.
He was enormous. Monstrously big. The man sat leaning back in his chair, yet even then he looked like a mountain of muscle packed into black tactical gear. A thick black balaclava covered his face, hiding everything except his eyes.
And those eyes… Dark, predatory, unblinking. They bored into me from under heavy brows, scanning me on the spot.
I felt my knees buckling. The thermal backpack with the pizza on my shoulders suddenly felt unbearably heavy. My fingers, clutching the edge of my jacket, trembled finely and uncontrollably. A ringing, suffocating silence fell over the room. I could hear only my own heart pounding wildly, thundering in my ears.
The giant in the balaclava slowly, smoothly moved. I heard a quiet, nerve-scraping creak of rough leather from his gloves as he braced his hands on the table. His broad shoulders tensed, the fabric of his black turtleneck stretching so tightly across his chest that it seemed about to rip at the seams. He radiated such an aura of overwhelming, primal threat that my mouth went dry and a tight, hot knot suddenly twisted low in my belly — a mix of raw animal panic and something else, dark and irrational, that sent a wave of heat through my entire body.
They didn’t look like guys who had ordered pizza late at night. They looked like men who hid bodies in abandoned houses like this.
I stood frozen on the threshold, small and pathetic, unable even to squeak. With terrifying, crystal clarity, it hit me: I was trapped. Trapped badly.
“Excuse me… I must have made a mistake,” my voice came out pathetic and thin, like the squeak of a mouse cornered in a trap.
The words stuck in my dry throat. I frantically pulled the heavy door toward me, desperately wanting to shut them out, to hide, to dissolve into the saving darkness of the street. My fingers turned white from the strain as they gripped the handle.
But I wasn’t fast enough.
For such a massive man, he moved with frightening, unnatural speed. Like a predator making a lethal strike. I didn’t even see the movement itself — only a blurred black shadow. I heard only the heavy thud of combat boots on the wooden floor and the sharp rustle of tactical gear.
The door jerked and stopped dead, just ten centimeters short of the frame.
I flinched as a huge male hand, sheathed in a black tactical glove with rigid plastic inserts, slammed onto the edge of the door right above my head. The wood creaked pitifully under his fingers.
He was so close that his shadow instantly swallowed me. Enormous. Overwhelming. I pressed my back against the cold doorframe, feeling tiny and completely defenseless. My panicked gaze locked onto his massive chest, stretched tight by the dense black fabric, beneath which I could sense the monolithic hardness of a plate carrier.
The air around us seemed to thicken. A sharp, intoxicating scent hit my nose: acrid metal, burnt gunpowder, bitter tobacco, and a heavy, pungent male cologne. This wild cocktail filled my lungs, completely tangling my thoughts. I could feel the primal heat radiating from him.
My heart hammered against my ribs so violently it hurt. My knees turned to cotton. I was trembling uncontrollably, but through the icy, paralyzing fear, something else broke through — a pulsing heat low in my belly, hot and completely out of place. A sweet spasm born from pure, animal instinct of submission before someone who was so much bigger and stronger.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tucking my head into my shoulders and bracing for a blow or something worse. But instead, I heard a low, vibrating growl right next to my ear.
“Inside.”
His voice sounded like stone scraping against stone. Hoarse, rough, penetrating straight to the bone. It wasn’t a request. It was an order that allowed no delay.
I didn’t even manage to draw a breath before his second hand — huge, like a bear’s paw — landed on my shoulder. The hard plastic inserts of his glove dug painfully into my collarbone through the thin fabric of my jacket. His grip was steel, merciless. One short, sharp movement — and he yanked me into the room as easily as if I were a feather, not a living person with a bulky thermal backpack on my back.
The door slammed shut with a dull thud, cutting me off from the night street and any hope of salvation. A massive bolt clicked into place. In the silence that followed, the sound rang out like a final verdict.
I staggered, barely staying on my feet, but the giant didn’t let go. He stepped forward, driving me back until I was pressed against the wall. I had to tilt my head back painfully to look up at him. In the dim lamplight, his eyes through the slits of the black balaclava seemed bottomless. His darkened, predatory gaze scanned me: sliding over my wide, frightened blue eyes, my trembling lips, then down to my thin neck where my pulse was now beating wildly. I saw how his square jaw tightened under the fabric of the mask, how his cheekbones flexed.
His heavy, ragged breathing settled on my face, stirring my light strands of hair. He emanated such a dense aura of dominance that I literally lacked oxygen. I was suffocating from his closeness, from the fear.
The brunette with the mohawk, who had been silently watching us from the table the whole time, quietly chuckled:
“Looks like dinner delivered itself, Ghost.”
Ghost didn’t even turn at his voice. He continued looming over me like a dark cliff. His fingers, still gripping my shoulder, pressed harder into my flesh, forcing a quiet, convulsive exhale from me.
“Take it off,” he ordered curtly, his low voice vibrating through my chest again. He nodded at the stupid square backpack with the pizza on my back.
My hands wouldn’t obey. I tried to reach the straps, but my fingers were shaking so badly I couldn’t grab the plastic buckles on my chest. I yanked at them desperately, feeling hot tears of panic and helplessness welling up in my eyes, while he stood right against me, watching my pathetic attempts in heavy silence.
The lock on the backpack straps finally gave way with a pitiful plastic click. The bulky box thudded onto the dirty floor, nearly hitting the mercenary’s heavy combat boots. With trembling, disobedient hands, I unzipped it, pulled out the cardboard pizza box, and in desperation held it out in front of me, almost pressing it against Ghost’s broad chest. He didn’t even move to take it. The box hung awkwardly between us until the brunette stepped forward, took it with a slight smirk, and retreated back to the table.
But Ghost remained standing like a mountain, towering over me. His unblinking gaze from beneath the black fabric burned a mark into my face.
Panic finally overwhelmed my mind, pushing out the last remnants of common sense. I frantically shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. My fingers found crumpled bills — my meager tips for the day and what was left of my scholarship. Everything I had.
“T-take it…” my voice broke into a pathetic, thin squeak as I stretched out my hand with a fistful of wrinkled, sweat-dampened notes. “Please. Take the pizza. And this… this is all I have. All the money. J-just let me go, I’m begging you.”
I stared at my thin, pale fingers clutching those pitiful coins. Against the background of his figure clad in black armor, they looked ridiculously small and fragile.
His heavy, measured breathing and my own ragged gasps were the only sounds filling the suffocating silence of the room. I could see the fabric stretching across his massive shoulders with every inhale.
He didn’t even glance at the money. His dark eyes stayed locked on my lips, then slowly rose to my pupils, blown wide with terror.
His hand shot up with terrifying speed. The huge palm in the tactical glove clamped around my wrist like a vice. The stiff leather creaked as his fingers dug roughly into my soft skin. He squeezed with such force that I let out a quiet cry, instinctively opening my fingers. The crumpled bills fluttered down like pathetic rain onto the dusty floor at our feet.
“I don’t need your money,” he growled.
His voice was so low and rough it vibrated deep in my bones. With one short, merciless tug, he pulled me toward him, forcing me into a stumbling step forward. I crashed straight into his body, my soft breasts pressing against the stone-hard plate of his tactical vest.
I gasped sharply. The smell of raw male sweat and bitter tobacco flooded my lungs, stealing what little oxygen I had left. The heat of his enormous body burned me even through our clothes, enveloping and crushing my will. My thin wrist completely disappeared in his massive fist — one wrong move and he could snap my bones like dry straw.
The realization of this total, absolute helplessness before his raw physical power triggered something strange and unhealthy inside me. My heart slammed against my ribs, and a heavy shiver ran down my spine. I was suffocating, pressed against this dangerous predator, unable to tear my gaze away from his darkened eyes behind the slits of the balaclava.
“Soap,” Ghost said without looking away from me, his tense jaw barely shifting under the mask. “Check the street.”
The brunette with the mohawk gave a short hum, clicked the bolt of his weapon, and silently melted into the shadows of the corridor.
We were left alone. Him and me. And his heavy breathing scorching my face.
His palm slid from my shoulder to the back of my head. Fingers in rigid tactical gloves roughly tangled in my long blonde hair, gripping it tight at the roots, locking my head in place and cutting off any chance of escape. I didn’t even have time to cry out before he pressed down hard. There was no haste or jerkiness in the movement — only absolute, overwhelming power that my body physically could not resist.
His heavy, measured breathing and my own ragged gasps were the only sounds in the room.
I dropped to my knees with a dull thud against the dusty wooden floor. Small, trembling, and completely broken at his feet.
“Please…” Hot tears burst from my eyes, rolling down my pale cheeks. “Let me go… I won’t tell anyone… I swear, please…”
My pleas dissolved into the suffocating silence of the room, meaning nothing to him. He said nothing. Instead, I heard the heavy creak of his boots as Ghost stepped even closer, forcing my face directly into his crotch. The dense fabric of his black tactical pants burned against my soft skin. His massive hand on the back of my head didn’t allow me even a millimeter of retreat. His fingers were tightly tangled in my hair, holding my head at the exact angle he wanted.
He slowly, almost lazily rolled his hips forward. The tactical fabric brushed against my cheek with a quiet rustle. I choked as he began to move — rough, possessive, as if marking his territory. Each movement pressed what was hidden beneath the layers of clothing hard against my face.
I froze, paralyzed by animal terror. My wide eyes stared straight ahead at his massive thighs while he rubbed himself against my face. I could feel him getting hard rapidly. Right here. From my helplessness. From the fact that I was on my knees before him, broken and pathetic. His swelling cock filled with burning heat and weight, mercilessly and demandingly pressing into my cheek.
He smelled so thickly it made my head spin. Sharp male sweat, heavy musk, gun oil, and something raw, primal. That scent sank straight into my lungs, mixing with my own fear. And the worst part — from this concentrated, brutal masculine power, a painful, throbbing knot tightened low in my belly. My body was betraying me, responding to his primal, dominant force in a completely unhealthy, wild way. Heat flooded my thighs, mixing with icy, sticky horror while my mind spiraled in panic.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling hot tears slide down my cheeks where his rough pants had just rubbed. Only one feverish, doomed thought pounded in my head: I am physically weaker. Much weaker. To him, I was nothing more than a butterfly caught in a bear trap. If I screamed, he could snap my neck with one hand. If I tried to hit him — he wouldn’t even feel it.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” This silent scream of despair tore through my chest.
Maybe… maybe if I do it myself? If I give him what he wants? If I suck him off, satisfy this animal need, then maybe he’ll just lose interest in me? Throw me out the door like a used toy, and I’ll be able to run?
The thought disgusted me, but the survival instinct drowned out everything else. It was my only desperate chance to survive.