A moment passes where we lay where we are in the snow, heaving ragged breaths and letting the last pings and zings of pleasure attack our bodies.
Then he’s lifting himself off me, still moving with grunts like the beast he is.
I roll over, wide-eyed and dazed, unsure what to say.
Even what the hell to think.
There’s no doubt this has been the craziest, most unbelievable seventy-two hours of my life.
But as I’m vaguely preparing myself for him to get up and disappear among the trees like he’s done before, he proves this time is different.
He reaches up and takes off the disturbing antlered Krampus mask. It falls away, landing in the snow a couple feet away from us.
I gasp, meeting his real gaze for the first time—or at least for the first time since these hunting games began.
Staring down at me is none other than Mark, the driver.
His rumpled brown hair hangs over his brow, and his eyes look even darker in the snowy night.
I’m reminded that I’d noticed how intense and unsmiling he’d been the moment I met him at the airport. He was a gruff, composed man with a ball cap and broad, solid build.
Little did I know he was the one who would spend the next three days hunting me.
“Mark,” I mutter in shock.
For the first time, the corner of his mouth twitches enough to form a half grin.
“Not Mark,” he says. “Noah. Noah Taylor. Brother of Neil Taylor, the guy who met you the day you arrived. The Mr. Taylor who really hired you.”
I’m speechless as I blink up at him. He seems to recognize my shock, because he scoops me up from the snowy ground as easily as he’s handled me before. I go from numbed in the mounds of fresh snow to warm in his thick arms, pressed up against his bare chest.
“It’s okay, Ivy,” he says in his raspy voice. “I can explain everything.”
CHAPTER TEN
Noah carriesme from the clearing back toward the large, looming house known as Mr. Taylor’s manor.
But as it turns out, it was thewrongMr. Taylor.
All this time I’d assumed the Mr. Taylor who had hired me was the one who greeted me on the front steps the day I arrived. I had no clue theotherTaylor brother was the real mastermind behind this entire game.
Our correspondence was so vague I’d assumed the man I was emailing was the older man in the blazer.
It’s not as if there was much information about either Taylor brother online. The research I did do into their real estate empire revealed only the bare minimum with the occasional dated photo. I hadn’t even come across any photos of Noah, nor had I realized he and Neil were so easily interchangeable.
The wind howls as we make our way through the snowy landscape. I’m so cold, I’m shivering, cocooned into the warmth Noah’s arms provide as he carries me up the front steps.
It doesn’t help that I’m wearing only a torn scrap of lace lingerie and a coat soaked by snow. But it’s not only the snow that has my body in shock.
It’s the aftermath of the intense, mind-blowing pleasure he brought me. The back-to-back orgasms and the rough, carnal sex in the snow I’ll remember so long as I live.
We became one with nature tonight. We fucked like animals, panting and tearing at each other as if seeking to devour or destroy. The lines were so blurred it didn’t matter anymore.
But as Noah guides me inside the welcoming warmth of the mansion, I’m left wondering what comes next. Where in the hell can we possibly go from here after the last seventy-two hours?
We’re still virtually strangers—at least that’s what I think—and this situation is still so crazy I don’t even know how to process how it’s real.
A billionaire sought me out for a terrifying primal game where he hunted me and then fucked me ’til I saw shooting stars and galaxies explode.
