It sounds totally fake. It sounds like something out of your wildest fantasy.
Yet it’s as real as the snow drifting outside or the hot flames crackling from the hearth inside.
Noah takes me straight to the living room then sets me down on the closest sofa. I release a soft breath, grateful for the heat after enduring the last hour or two in the arctic cold.
He kneels before me and gingerly begins undressing me, sliding off the soaking wet coat and untying the laces on my boots.
Firelight dances across his face, highlighting every angle of his rugged face. He’s just as striking without the horned mask, equally as intimidating and masculine with his messy dark hair and broad jawline and piercing eyes.
I find myself staring as he slides off the second boot then looks up at me with his penetrative gaze.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for weeks,” he says at last, his voice low and husky. “From the first moment I ever saw you.”
I swallow hard, throat tight. “You were watching me.”
He nods, not ashamed or defensive. “Ilearnedyou. Long before you stepped foot on this property. Long before the first night. I needed to be certain.”
“Certain of what?”
“That you could survive this,” he answers. “That you were what my instincts told me you were—a woman with a fire lit inside her but who lived her life by playing it safe instead. Deep down you were looking for excitement. For the thrill of the chase.”
My brows quirk. “And you knew all that just by watching me?”
He reaches out to tuck a damp curl behind my ear. “Yes. Because human instincts never lie. Mine knew from the moment I saw you, you were the woman I was looking for. But I spent a long time observing you just to be sure.”
I look away, unable to bear another second of his intense dark gaze. Instead, I focus on the flames in the fireplace. They’re so bright and vivid compared to the shadowy winter hellscape we’d played in.
For a second they transfix me, drawing me in so deeply I’m able to figure out the next question on my mind.
“Then why didn’t you just… why couldn’t you approach me?” I ask. My eyes flick back to him. “Why couldn’t you be upfront about it?”
The corner of his mouth quirks. He stares at me as if the question’s amusing. Like the answer couldn’t be more obvious and it’s funny that I’d ask.
“Because,” he says slowly, “then it wouldn’t be a real hunt, would it? You wouldn’t feel the sense of fear and thrill you love so much, would you? I wouldn’t get the same pleasure out of chasing you and dragging you kicking and screaming in thewoods—taking you like a beast with his hard-won prize. It was important to keep the realism. Especially for the first hunt.”
…first hunt?
I try to make sense of what he’s said, but he goes on before I can.
“You did a design job for a man I do business with,” he says. “You spent a week coming and going, making a dead space come alive. You didn’t realize how deeply you inhabited the rooms you touched. That you breathed life into them simply by walking through them. You were quiet but sharp and observant. But you carried this tension in you—a kind of silent hunger. I recognized it at once and knew what you were. Even if you didn’t know I was around when I was.”
I go for a breath and find myself coming up short. Our gazes are still connected, still so locked in on each other I’m cognizant of the visceral effect he has on me.
Racing pulse. Breathless lungs. Flushed skin.
I’m on the receiving end of all of it and more.
Somehow, my nipples are hard and stiff again. I’m distracted by how slick my pussy is—fresh arousal but also the cum Noah had filled me with.
His eyes darken as he watches my reaction. He clearly knows what I’m thinking. Probably even smells how wet my pussy is.
“I knew I had to give you this experience,” he rasps. He cups my chin and draws my mouth to his for a soft, fleeting kiss. “Even if it were a game you never wanted to play again. I knew you deserved to be my prey even once—and that it’d give you more satisfaction than you ever conceived it would.”
I lick at my lips, tasting the salt of him. “I… I’ve never done something like this before. I never knew…”
“But I did, Ivy,” he says, a crooked grin coming to his face. “A predator recognizes his prey in the wild. Just like you knew what I was from the moment you met me.”
I smirk back at him. “Mark the driver or the crazed Krampus chasing me through the woods?”
