The wind hisses through the branches, teasing the edges of my hair. I crouch low, listening for footsteps. For breath. For anything. But the woods are silent. Maybe he’s gone the other direction. Maybe I ran hard enough. Maybe I actually got away.
A hand slams over my mouth. An arm yanks me back against a wall of scarred muscle and heat. We fall hard to the ground, grass and dirt scraping my knees as his weight drives the air from my lungs.
“Caught you,” he growls into my ear and pushes me face-down into the dirt.
His breath is hot. Heavy. He smells like sweat and sex and a darkness that makes my stomach lurch. What happened to the man who needed me for courage? The man who declared his love?
I bite down on his fingers hard enough to draw blood.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t yank away his hand. He groans, guttural and low, the sound vibrating through my spine like a tuning fork set to chaos.
“I knew you’d bite,” he growls, his voice ragged.
My cry gets swallowed in the meat of his palm.
“Fuck, I love that sound,” he rasps against my neck. “You’re always the sweetest when you’re scared.”
I want to fight, but my body wants to stay. My mind shouts this isn’t right, but my traitorous pussy clenches around nothing. It’s hungry, obscene. I can’t believe my body’s response.
Rowland trails his fingers over my slit and growls, “Your greedy little cunt is dripping down my hand, begging me to fill it again and again. This is what you were made for.For me.”
Oh, fuck.
Before I can crawl away, his cock slams into my pussy. Hard. Brutal. With no easing in. Pleasure shoots up my spine, sparking along every nerve ending. I shriek once again into his hand.
“That’s it. Scream for me. Take every inch.”
The crazy bastard drives into me like a man possessed. My body jerks along the ground with the force of his thrusts, stretching around his impossible girth. His thrusts go harder, deeper, like he’s marking territory.
“You feel that? It’s your body recognizing its master. Taking me like any way I demand.”
“Rowland,” I say with a choked gasp.
“You’re. Mine.” He punctuates each word with a brutal snap of his hips. “Who. Do. You. Belong. To. Little. Pet?”
“Why?”
“You ran like prey,” he says, his teeth clamping down on my ear. “Now, I get to fuck you like a dog.”
He pounds into me from behind with punishing force, his larger body overpowering mine. I scream my throat raw, a deadly cocktail of ecstasy and terror. What made me think Rowland was noble? His imprisonment, his suffering? I’ve never met anyone so unhinged.
The moment I try to crawl away, he threads his fingers through my hair. “Did you think you could escape me, little prey?”
I thrash within the cage of his limbs, buck against his hard chest, but the power he has over me is absolute. “You’re insane.”
He growls. “And you’re about to discover what I do with my pets.”
Alarm crackles on the edge of my consciousness.What the hell happened to my Rowland? Where is the man who declared his love? Did I imagine him based on what I wanted to see?
“You’re so fucking tight. So wet,” he says through manic thrusts. “Tell me how much you need this cock.”
“Oh, shit… Fuck… Rowland.”
“Say it, or you don’t get to come.”
“I need. It. I need it. Give it to me, please!”
Just as I think he’ll play with my clit, he flips me onto my back and pins my arms over my head.
