Jake's POV Walking in the Shadows Part 13 - contains 18+ scene
Based on my original Descendants of Despair fanfiction of Duskwood.
**Trigger Warning: Contains 18+. It is separated from the rest of the story with dashed line. You can skip this.**
She was in my arms. And somehow, the world had gone still.
For a guy like me... someone who’d spent most of his life hiding in the shadows, ghosting through systems, running from people and truths...this should’ve felt unnatural. But it didn’t. Holding her didn’t just feel real. It felt right.
Her body was warm against mine, but more than that, she was here. After everything. After all the reasons she had to walk away.
I let out a slow breath, trying to steady the storm behind my ribs. There was so much I hadn’t told her. Things I’d buried, things I wasn’t proud of. But she deserved more than my silence. She always had.
My voice broke softly into the quiet between us. “This… this is how I ended up here. Wrapped up in this mess.”
I pulled her in just a little tighter, like she might drift away if I didn’t anchor her.
“I kept myself cut off from the world. It was safer that way. Not just for me l, for everyone. I didn’t want to taint anyone with the fallout of my life. That is… until Hannah found me again. I’d given her a private email years ago, back when I first figured out who she was. I kept it secret, reached out under the guise of a friend. It was selfish. But I didn’t want her to hate me straight away, not like everyone else always did.”
I swallowed, my throat tightening. “She never really knew me, not the real me. Just fragments. Little harmless details. But even that was enough for her to… feel something. To think she loved me. I ended it when I realised where it was heading. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t tell her I was a hacker. She would've pulled away. Or worse… looked at me like I was a threat. And she and Lilly… they’re all I have. They’re my only family.”
I paused, letting my forehead rest lightly against her shoulder. Her scent was grounding. A relaxing mix of vanilla and apple.
“When she reached out again, it shook me. I’d spent so long numb to the world, then suddenly, I felt something. She pulled me out of the dark, and for that I owe her a debt… even if I hated her for it at the time. But you…”
I lifted my head, brushing my lips just barely against her neck. “You came out of nowhere. You didn’t just shake up my world, you flipped it on its head. Nothing about how I reacted to you made sense. But it gave me purpose.”
My arm curled instinctively around her waist, protective, scared of the world that wanted to destroy her. “It still doesn’t make sense,” I breathed against her ear. “But what if it doesn’t have to? What if it just… is? Shouldn’t we be grateful for that?”
I turned her gently in my arms until I could see her face, so close now. “I make you a promise,” I said, the words low but certain. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
I kissed her neck softly, barely a whisper of contact, hoping she felt the truth in it.
“Jake…” Her voice was quiet, fragile, even as she tried to pull away. “I can look after myself.”
Defiant as ever. God, I admired her for that. She didn’t want to be saved... and that made me want to protect her even more.
“If this was just about my safety…” she said, her words trailing off as she leaned back into me, “don’t you think I would’ve given in from the start?”
She closed her eyes, and for a second, she was still. Resting. Trusting.
It hit me like a wrecking ball, how much she had slipped into my life, into the hollow places I never knew existed until she filled them.
She was everything I never knew I needed. And now, with her in my arms, all I wanted was a life I could never have... something normal. Something safe. Something where she didn’t have to be afraid of being hunted, tracked, betrayed.
Her lips grazed my neck and I shivered.
“Are you sure?” I asked, voice barely audible.
“No,” she whispered. Her body shifted against mine until she was facing me fully, her knees on either side of my lap, her eyes locked to mine with a mixture of fear and longing. She reached up, her fingers tracing my cheek, gentle, grounding.
I held her hand against my skin, just for a moment. Then kissed her palm, brushing my lips across her wrist. I felt the beat of her pulse beneath my mouth.
I let her hand fall as I cupped her jaw, thumb brushing the line of her cheek. And then I kissed her, soft at first, in awe of her, but her lips met mine with urgency. And I melted into it. Into her. Into everything we shouldn’t be, but were.
And for once, I didn’t question it. I just let it happen.
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Her lips were warm against mine, soft but certain, like she was telling me with every kiss that I didn’t need to hide anymore. My hands trembled slightly where they cradled her waist, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned in closer, grounding me.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. Not now.
But her in my arms felt like the only thing that had ever made sense.
“Jake,” she whispered, pulling back just enough to look me in the eye, “stop second-guessing. You don’t have to hold yourself together for me.”
I let out a shaky breath. “I’m not worried about breaking, I’m worried about breaking you.”
She tilted her head, touched my jaw with quiet approval. “You won’t.”
I let the silence sit for a second, then whispered, “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
She didn’t reply. Just leaned in and kissed me again, deeper this time. A slow surrender.
I could already feel the shift in her body, the quiet urgency building between us. I wanted her, to blend to her body. But we were on the damn chair. Cramped. Off-balance. I didn’t want to rush this or have it end in some graceless stumble onto the floor.
I slipped one arm behind her back and the other beneath her thighs.
She startled slightly. “Jake—”
I rose, lifting her gently, holding her against my chest. Her arms looped around my neck, and her face buried in the crook of my shoulder. For once, I didn’t feel like a fugitive or a ghost. I felt like someone who mattered. Someone chosen.
As I held her in my arms, her weight pressed into my chest like she trusted me to carry it. All of it. Not just her body, but her past, her scars, her silence. Then, as I neared the mattress, I felt something shift against my arm, a strap, taut and familiar.
Her backpack. The one thing she never let go of. I felt her body tense slightly, not in fear, but in instinct. Like her entire nervous system was debating whether to hold on or let go. Her fingers brushed the strap, a flicker of hesitation in her breath.
She didn’t say it, but I could feel the fight inside her, shaped by years of survival. That bag wasn’t just practical. It was identity. Defense. Evidence. The one constant in a world that had never given her safety. I didn’t speak. I didn’t rush. I didn’t need to tell her she could keep it, my silence said it. You don’t owe me anything. I would never ask her to give it up, never demand that proof of trust. I would’ve carried her and the damn bag both to the ends of the earth if she needed me to.
And slowly, deliberately, she slid the strap from her shoulder. The zipper whispered as it slipped. The bag slumped, then dropped to the floor with a soft, solid thud. She didn’t look at me. And I didn’t look away. Because that wasn’t just her dropping a bag. That was her laying down her last line of defense. Her exit strategy. Her anchor to the version of herself that never relied on anyone.
It terrified her. But it didn’t undo her. And I knew, in that moment, that she wasn’t just letting me carry her. She was letting me see her. Really see her.
I crossed the rest of the room slowly to the edge of the mattress , the one I’d dragged into the corner weeks ago, the only soft place in this half-abandoned space I called home. The same mattress where she’d curled up, fully clothed, bag hugged tight to her chest, like she might have to vanish again at any moment.
Now she was letting go. Of it. Of control. Of something bigger. And she was doing it in my arms. I laid her down gently, my hand lingering at her waist. The air between us was still, charged. She was here, without a wall. I eased her down onto it like she was something breakable. Then followed, half on top of her, half beside, never breaking the contact of our bodies or eyes.
But then, as I helped her ease off her jeans, my eyes dropped. And they found it. The bandage.
I felt the breath catch in my throat as I froze, stunned. I couldn’t t speak...anger raged through me, who…what did this to her. She had brushed it off with a shrug and an offhand comment, a wound from her escape, nothing worth unpacking. But now that I could see it, the realness, the damage,
“Jake.” she whispered, hand pressed to my chest. I knew she could feel my heart beat too fast. Not fear...fury.
I looked down at her, fists clenched, breath shallow as I tried to process what had happened.
“Don’t go there,” she whispered.
“It’s healing,” she said, steady despite the fury radiating through my body. “Let it.”
I hesitated, wanting so desperately to remain in this moment, exploring the body and soul of this marvelous being. The conflict raged on as I tried desperately to choose. To gratify myself when she had been hurt felt like a disservice. But then, she took my hand and placed it at her waist. Not forcefully. Just… deliberately. Like she was choosing me. Like she was asking me to choose her back.
“You don’t have to protect me from the past,” she whispered. “Just don’t walk away from this.”
Right.
Not protector. Partner. She wanted me here, not out for vengeance.
I inhaled once… twice… let the air cool the fury, then guided her hand to my heart so she could feel it slow.
“I’m here,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to her hair.
And the miracle was,I meant it.
That was the moment something deep cracked open in me. Because no one had ever asked me to stay before. Not like that and especially not from somebody so used to pushing people away.
I swallowed hard, grounding myself in the warmth of her skin. Her breath. Her here-ness.
She let her shirt fall away.
I froze for a beat, not just because I was stunned by her body, though I was, but because of the look in her eyes. She wasn’t showing me something. She was offering it. And I didn’t want to break that offering by rushing, or fumbling, or making it about me.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, dragging a hand over my face. “It’s been a while. I’m not exactly smooth.”
She smiled, soft and sure. “You don’t have to be.”
“I’m just worried I won’t… last long enough. That it won’t be good for you.”
God, I hated how small my voice sounded saying that. But I couldn’t lie. Not to her. She touched my face. No hesitation.
“Jake, I’m not here for a performance. I’m here for you. All of you. I’m just as scared as you are.”
Those words rewired something inside me. I’d spent years soldering armour over every exposed feeling, convinced no one could handle the depth underneath. But she was still touching me, still here, and she wasn’t blocking me out.
And somehow, that made it okay. Because we weren’t doing this to escape something. We were doing this to find something. When our hands found each other again, it wasn’t rushed or slick or choreographed. But it was real. She brushed my body, hesitantly, like it mattered. I ran my fingertips down her chest like I was learning her by heart.
Every time I touched her, I felt something inside her ease — a breath, a tension, maybe even a memory. And every time she touched me, it was like she was saying, You’re not too much. You’re not too broken. I’m still here. Gentle caresses over taut abdomens and muscled backs. Bodies that had been shaped for survival.
My thumb swept beneath her clavicle, circling her breast with reverence, not possession — helping to erase the memories of nights when touch meant threat. When her palm paused over my heart, she took with it the weight of all the years I’d spent half-alive. My lips found her shoulder, and when her breath caught in her throat, it made me feel safe. Human.
Everywhere we touched, pain receded by a millimetre, replaced by something unfamiliar — something hopeful. It was like our bodies were performing a kind of silent triage, tending to old wounds, cell by cell.
My hand moved to her ribs, her hip, the curve of her thigh, slowly. Passionate. Every stroke more of a question than a claim. Can I? Is this okay?
She answered with closeness. No hesitation. Just presence. She leaned into me like I was something steady. Something that mattered.
And that’s when I understood: we weren’t just touching. We were healing.
Every kiss to her collarbone, every sweep of my palm down her side, felt like stitching closed a wound I hadn’t even realised was open. Not just mine — hers too. She didn’t flinch. I didn’t rush. We stayed. Present. Breath to breath.
And when I kissed the scarred skin above her knee, near the edge of the bandage, I didn’t do it to apologise or to fix it.
I did it because that part of her deserved love too.
Because no one should be loved in pieces.
And I wanted her to know that.
When I finally eased into her, what hit me first wasn’t urgency or heat, it was something slower, deeper. A sense of relief. A stillness I hadn’t known I was starving for.
There was no choreography. No goal line. Just a slow unfolding. I kept one hand splayed gently over the bandage on her thigh, not pressing, just guarding, while her fingertips threaded into my hair, grounding me every time a shard of doubt threatened to rise.
A subtle shift in her hips. Her breath catching with more than surprise, a gasp, a sound somewhere between need and surrender. Her body arched, hands curling against my shoulders. The tension she’d always carried, the invisible weight she never put down, released. I felt it in the way she gripped me, in the sudden stillness that rippled through her, and the soft, disbelieving moan that followed.
She didn’t say it, she didn’t have to. But I felt her come undone. And I held her through it like it was holy. Her name left my lips without thought, and she whispered mine back, breathless and shaken, like we were rewriting the definition of what it meant to be touched and not hurt.
Every motion after that felt like a question answered. Every breath, a surrender neither of us thought we were capable of. We weren’t just making love. We were making sense of ourselves, of the long, quiet years of being untouched in ways that mattered.
She pressed her hand against my back, arching into me, closing any remaining space between us. I adjusted my rhythm, slow and deep, not chasing a peak but following her need, and a pleasurable tension bloomed between us.
She whispered my name again, soft, incredulous, as if she couldn’t believe the world had finally allowed her something gentle. I answered with her name on a shaky breath, and something jagged dissolved inside me.
Her hand tangled in my hair, and I buried my face in the curve of her neck. I wanted to live there, in that warmth, that quiet, that moment where the rest of the world ceased to matter.
That final wave. That breaking point.
When it was over, when I trembled and pressed into her, breath unsteady, cheeks burning with shame not from her, but from the intensity of how much I needed that, how much it meant, I stayed.
I didn’t pull away. I didn’t retreat into the dark silence I’d always defaulted to. I stayed. Pressed against her, my face tucked into her shoulder. Exposed and overwhelmed and more whole than I’d felt in years.
“That wasn’t just good,” she murmured into my hair. “That was real. The most intense and connected I’ve ever felt.” She kissed the side of my head, a whisper of breath.
“It meant something,” she added. “In a world of nothing.”
I didn’t answer. Because she was right. It meant everything.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to disappear afterward. I didn’t want to vanish or rebuild the firewall around my heart. I just wanted to stay.
I knew then, if she felt even a fraction of what was breaking open inside me, I’d spend the rest of my life making sure she never had to feel alone again.
I didn’t speak. Words felt too fragile, and this moment was already glass-thin. I just held her, letting her hand trace slow, anchoring patterns across my back, each stroke rewriting alone with belong.
The air still smelled faintly of dust and concrete. The mattress springs still ached. The world outside was still trying to hunt us both down.
Because for once, the ghosts were silent.
And the feel of her hand on my skin was a promise that even the past couldn’t take away.
