Our tact.
Our instinct.
Her footprints stop, as if she vanished into thin air. As if I had imagined her from the start. I look around, letting my eyes adjust to the new layout.
Where are you, rabbit?
My eyes drop to the tree trunks lining a section of the path. I put my foot against one on the left, the other on the right, and hand over hand, tree over tree, make it to the other side where her footprints resume.
She’s fucking resourceful, I’ll give her that.
Prey 3, Predator 0.
I nearly call it off, ending the hunt as a predator with an empty belly. But then I see her. She’s perched low behind brush, looking in the direction she thinks I’ll come from. She probably didn’t expect me to continue this way when her footprints vanished. She underestimates me as much as I underestimated her.
My breath quickens, and my heartbeat thunders. Drool forms beneath my tongue. I creep up behind her, every meticulous step avoiding the twigs beneath my feet. Like a jaguar, I skulk among the shadows to sneak up on my next meal.
And I pounce.
I catch her and don’t bother to cover her mouth as I knock her onto her back and fight her flailing arms and legs. There’s no one to hear the sounds she’ll make, so I let her scream. With her body sinking into the mud, I still haven’t decided what I’ll do with her. Lexington wants to play, and the dark part of me fights the temptation to do more than fuck her. The haunting sounds of my past whisper in my ears. I growl.
“Fuck you, Lex!” she yells as she strains against my grasp on her wrists.
“Sneaky fucking rabbit.”
She whimpers as I turn her onto her stomach. I tug down her leggings, exposing her pale ass and thighs.
I unzip my jeans and rip open the button. “Nothing has changed, but I’m going to fuck you how I want one last time because I won your body, fair and square.”
“I don’t want you to fuck me if it’s going to be the last,” she says.
I laugh. “After all that, rabbit? I’m going to fuck you. The predator doesn’t catch the prey to let it go. Not a good predator, at least.”
I pull her hips up, spit in my hand, and rub it along my cock before pushing inside her. She gasps as I fuck her in the rough, hellish way I want, with every thrust forcing my frustration and anger through her. I push the thrill of the hunt inside her, relentlessly fucking her as if every moment she outsmarted me deserves a moment where Lexington—the man I hide from her, even as she whispers his name—can come out and play.
“Lex,” she whimpers, turning her head to the side, and I don’t know what she wants. I can’t care at this moment.
I can’t.
I answer her by fisting her hair with a hand coated in blood and mud. When I crane her neck, I go deeper than she can take. I fuck her like her pussy is mine, even while knowing I have to give it back. Her body tenses with the fear I’ve caused her.Me. Not the men I worried would hurt her. Instead, I’m the one hurting her—emotionally and physically.
Which is worse than the men who would just break her body.
A tear rolls down her cheek, and I fight the urge to wipe it away. My hips drive her into the soft ground, and I try to ignore the parts of her that will force back the side of me Ineedto feel to let her go. I ignore the soft waves of her dark hair, sticky with sweat, blood, and dirt. I force my gaze above her head instead of at her clenched eyes. Instead of the whimper of pain that leaves her lips with every thrust, I focus on the leaves rustling around us.
The world goes silent, and a nauseating echo of whimpers projects around me. I can’t continue to ignore those sounds in this eerie silence. Lexington can’t stand to hear them, either.
I stop thrusting and rest my pelvis against her ass. Even when she isn’t so willing, she’s warm and inviting. She never cries or begs for me to stop, and I can’t help but find respect within her anguish and stoic fear.
My cock twitches inside her, and I want to keep going, but the need to comfort her overcomes that primal urge to feast on my last meal.
“Goddamn it.” With a deflated breath, I release her hair. I’m disappointed with myself for the inability to do what I need to do to make her hate me so she’ll run.
I pull out of her and turn her onto her back. My hand rubs along her torn shirt, blood drying along a huge gash in her abdomen. Mud spreads over her pale torso. Fear and tears gloss her eyes, but she doesn’t tense as I lean over her. I lift her thighs and pull her against me. She’s slick with mud, and I paint my handprints along her inner thighs as I spread her and push myself back inside. No matter how scared she may have been, she’s still warm and wet for me.
She gasps and digs her fingers into the soft ground. I drive my hips into hers, as deep as I can. She’s the only thing in my life that feels right. Safe.
And she can’t be.