“Both. At first you were simply ignoring any red flags. You wanted to believe so badly the job was the real deal.”
He’s got me there. I can’t argue with a word of it, because it’s the truth—I had wanted so badly for this job to be mundane and normal.
…at least that’s what IthoughtI wanted until I spent the last three days being chased through the woods at a deserted mountainside estate.
A shiver passes through me. I glance down for the first time at my balled up hands and let the truth wash over me.
For the first time in my life, I acknowledge my secret desire for danger and excitement. The electric thrill that sparked inside me when I heard his pounding footsteps behind me in the dark. The consuming sense of fear as I ran for my life only to be caught then viciously fucked.
It brings color to what’s been an otherwise boring, black-and-white existence, where I skated by with a fledgling business and inactive social life.
“This can’t… this can’t be right, can it?” I ask.
Noah cradles my chin in his large hand a second time, guiding my gaze back to his. “Right and wrong are relative. They mean nothing until you give them meaning. What’s right for us doesn’t have to be right for others. You enjoy tapping into more primal, intrinsic emotions and experiences. As do I. Why should we have to deny ourselves?”
I can’t think of a single reason to give. I can’t provide any sort of counter argument.
“You needed someone who could meet the darkness inside you without flinching,” he explains. His thumb brushes along the corner of my lips. “I needed the same. Someone whowouldn’t be afraid of it. Someone who would give in so completely the way you did in those woods.”
I lean into him this time, reaffirming his words with a deep kiss. His other hand slides along my jawline, framing my face in his hands as we kiss and let our mouths speak for us in a different way.
When we break apart, Noah rests his brow against mine. His fingers stroke at my cheek then jaw, as though mapping out the soft shape of my face.
Then he draws back and says, “I have something else I want to show you.”
He reaches for something on the end table. An item I’ve never noticed but that he must’ve somehow placed there in between me leaving the house tonight and him showing up in the woods to chase me.
It’s a thick leather folio with a pen tucked inside the spine. He lays it in my lap as if it’s a gift he’s picked up specially for me.
“This,” he says, “is therealcontract. The only one that matters.”
“A… a contract?” I stammer. “Another one?”
“Read it,” he urges.
I openly it so cautiously you’d think I was afraid of the paper biting me.
My pulse jumps when I see my name written at the top in neat, clean print. I read carefully this time, eyes scanning line by line, absorbing every word on the page.
The verbiage is much like the other contract, except the terms are a lot more intensive.
The participant may start, pause, or end the hunt at any time by uttering the safe word.
Hunts will be arranged with both participants’ consent. But the specifics of the chase to include time, location, and other elements are at the hunter’s discretion.
The dynamic is prey and predator with primal play and other sex acts incorporated into the hunt..
I swallow, reading the next part.
Ivy Davis agrees to participate willingly.
Noah Taylor agrees to protect his prey at all times, ensuring no real harm comes to her, and bears the responsibility of aftercare.
My breath stalls when I reach the final line:
The prey is only prey if she chooses to run.
I bite at my bottom lip and then glance up at him. He’s still kneeling in front of me, his dark and penetrative gaze set on me this entire time.
