Insatiable

Through Kade's¹ narration, the reader learns his secret world. Weeks after the breakup, a woman named Bernadette⁵ — a senior Police Scotland officer who runs the Scottish underworld — approached the devastated teenager with promises about his father's⁶ case.

She drugged him, brought him to her bed, and began the blackmail. Her husband Archie¹⁴ participated in the abuse. They sent Kade¹ to Russia, Latvia, and beyond for weapons training, transforming him into a contract killer called Nāve.

If he refuses work, his family pays: his father's⁶ visitation revoked, his sister³ threatened, even his dogs endangered. He's forced into sexual encounters with clients. The money is enormous but meaningless. He also burns down the houses of men Stacey² sleeps with and monitors her through hacked CCTV — obsession as his only anchor.

Interspersed flashbacks reveal how Kade¹ and Stacey² fell in love. At eighteen, during a camping trip, Tylar¹⁰ dares them to make out. Both confess it's their first kiss — and neither stops when time is called. She climbs into his lap and tells him to keep going.

Days later, he corners her in the kitchen and dares her to kiss him again. Stolen weeks follow: watching The Greatest Showman in his bedroom, holding hands under blankets while his family sits nearby, the first time his fingers make her come in the back of a borrowed car.

In a London hotel after seeing the musical live, they lose their virginity to each other — both trembling, both asking if the other is okay. He draws a shared tattoo intertwining their initials. She becomes pregnant. They lose the baby girl.

Kade¹ unblocks Stacey's² number and texts that he's outside her house. She appears at her window in a bra, gives him the middle finger, and comes down with her suitcase. They're headed to America to visit family, but a motorway crash traps them for hours.

They miss their flight and book the last hotel near Edinburgh airport — one room, one small bed. He spots faded bruises on her throat and scars across her back, demanding answers. She blames dance.

In the dark, side by side, he asks the question that has corroded him for two years: did she blame him for the miscarriage, and was that why she slept with someone else? She shakes her head. She tries to explain but the word catches in her throat — a syllable she cannot force out. He tells her to forget he asked.

Chris⁴ calls Stacey's² phone while she's straddling Kade¹ in bed. She presses her palm over his mouth to silence him, but they can't stop grinding against each other while her stepbrother rants obliviously on the line.

Kade¹ takes the phone, hangs up, yanks down her shorts, and makes her come with his fingers, then his mouth, demanding she scream his name. She does — repeatedly. But when he positions himself behind her, about to enter, a flashback seizes him: Bernadette's⁵ voice coaching him through forced sex beside a dead woman, a gunshot, blood.

He bolts to the bathroom, locks the door, and slides to the floor hyperventilating. She knocks softly, offers to watch a movie. He escapes to the parking lot and calls his imprisoned father, Tobias,⁶ who talks him through a panic attack using grounding exercises.

Kade¹ arranges a private jet through his assistant Barry⁸ — an Englishman whose life Kade¹ once saved by faking his assassination. Stacey² stares at the cream leather interior in disbelief, demanding to know how he affords any of this. He won't answer. Hours into the flight, she drops to her knees between his legs. He fists her hair and thrusts into her throat until he finishes.

Barry⁸ walks in just as she's climbing into his lap — landing protocol. In America, Kade¹ buys a Bentley with cash, then detours to a warehouse where armed men greet him by his kill name. Stacey² enters a world of surveillance cameras, flickering basement lights, and drug-filled crates — a blade tucked into her underwear, a summer dress doing nothing to hide her terror.

In the warehouse basement, surrounded by Crawley's armed gang, Stacey² clutches Kade's¹ arm while men discuss drug transactions around a metal table. Two men approach her. One slaps her ass and announces he'd have a piece. Kade's¹ elbow smashes the first man's nose; his gun levels at the second.

When the man refuses to back down, Kade¹ pulls the trigger — a single round between the eyes. The body crumples. Blood pools toward Stacey's² shoes. She stifles a scream as Kade¹ calmly finishes his business.

Outside, he carries her over his shoulder while holding his gun, threatening anyone who follows. In the car she hyperventilates. He calms her with his father's⁶ grounding technique: name three favorite things. Dancing, she whispers. The Greatest Showman. Your dogs. She demands two separate hotel rooms.

Crawley's men heard Stacey's² name. If it reaches Bernadette,⁵ she becomes leverage. So while Stacey² sleeps across the hall, Kade¹ returns to the warehouse with Barry⁸ and fifteen soldiers. They slaughter every member — Kade¹ carves his name into Crawley's forehead before slitting his throat, then detonates the building.

That same night he completes a separate assassination, crashes his Bentley fleeing bodyguards, and stumbles back to the hotel drenched in blood and high on cocaine. He collapses outside Stacey's² room.

She drags him in, kneels between his legs, and washes crimson from his face with a warm cloth. He mumbles about missing his ex before losing consciousness. She holds him through the night, sleeps on the floor afterward, and drapes the duvet over his shivering body before dawn.

At a club, a young American owner offers Stacey² free drinks. Kade¹ warns her privately: this man is his half-million-dollar assassination target, a rapist who drugged an underage girl. Stacey² dances with the man anyway to provoke Kade.¹

When the target drags her outside and forces a kiss, Kade¹ shatters his face. Stacey,² triggered by memories of her own violation, tells Kade¹ to hit him again. What follows is primal: Kade¹ presses his gun barrel between her legs until she comes on it, then takes her against the alley wall while pointing the weapon at the barely conscious target.

He shoots the man dead during sex. Stacey² orgasms with blood trailing toward her heels. Afterward she wipes her eyes, tells Kade¹ he's out of her system, and walks away over the crimson. She means none of it.

Stacey² arranges a private visit with Tobias Mitchell⁶ — Kade's¹ father, a diagnosed psychopath who has spent twenty years in an American institution. He greets her with contempt, blaming her for destroying his son.

She pushes back: the ten-second video Kade¹ received was edited from three hours of drugging and non-consensual violation. The room goes silent. Tobias⁶ reveals that after the breakup, Kade¹ nearly overdosed on his mother Aria's¹¹ boat — he would have died without managing to text his location.

Stacey² slides a notebook across the table documenting Kade's¹ drug use and violent behavior. Tobias⁶ asks about the pregnancy. She confirms she didn't abort; the baby was lost. He asks who attacked her. She says the person lives under her own roof. Tobias⁶ places his hand on her shoulder and vows to find them.

At the airport with boarding pass in hand, Stacey² answers Kade's¹ call. He's slurring, high, sitting in a dark alley with palms he can't clean, saying he wanted her voice to be the last thing he heard. She abandons her flight and takes an Uber to find him slouched between dumpsters.

In Barry's⁸ hotel room, Kade¹ mistakes her again for a paid companion — confessing that his ex has freckles everywhere, that they lost a baby girl, that he traces her freckles while she sleeps. Stacey² weeps silently and links their fingers against her chest as he falls asleep.

The next morning, he wakes knowing exactly who is in his arms. Neither moves. What follows is a day of desperate intimacy — shower sex, whispered confessions, a motorbike he buys on impulse — before asking her to hide with him just a little longer.

On a quiet pier between moored boats, Kade¹ sits Stacey² facing him on the new motorbike and they begin to have sex — until a Scottish voice interrupts. Archie Sawyer,¹⁴ Bernadette's⁵ husband, has tracked Kade¹ through a bank card purchase.

He introduces himself, calls Stacey² a beautiful little thing, and snaps a photograph of her face before Kade¹ can block the shot. He winks and walks away. Kade¹ goes white. He tells Stacey² they must leave immediately — Archie¹⁴ has sent the photo to Bernadette,⁵ and her men now have orders to kill.

They race through traffic on the motorbike as gunshots crack behind them, Barry's⁸ security team intercepting pursuit vehicles. Kade¹ makes Stacey² climb to his front so his body shields hers from bullets. She buries her face in his chest as he whispers that she's safe with him.

Back at the hotel, Kade¹ straps an armored vest onto Stacey's² trembling body. His guards form a ring as they exit — and gunfire erupts. A guard drops dead. Kade¹ shields Stacey² with his body, shoves her into Barry's⁸ car, and returns fire until they reach the hangar. At the jet stairs, he grabs her face and kisses her — their first real kiss in two years.

She wraps her legs around him and begs him to come. He shakes his head, lowers her feet to the ground, and watches the door close. The jet lifts into the sky. A gun presses to the back of his skull. He wakes zip-tied to a chair, Archie¹⁴ beating him, Bernadette's⁵ voice demanding the girl's name through a speaker. He absorbs every blow. He will not say her name.