“All the better to hunt you.” His lips graze my temple. “And eat you.”
I exhale a shaky breath, repeating the lie I keep telling myself.I don’t want to know who he is.That was the entire point.
I relax into him, letting him think he has me as we stand there and watch. But once his grip on me loosens, I yank free and bolt through the trees.
He stalks after me, boots crunching through the leaves like the soundtrack from a horror movie.
He doesn’t have to run. His strides cover at least twice as much ground as mine. Even so, I think I may stand a chance of finding somewhere to hide. That is, until I trip over a fallen branch and splat onto the ground.
It doesn’t hurt, but my pride is wounded as I glance over my shoulder and see him closing in on me.
I try to crawl away, but he grabs me by the ankle and yanks me back, pinning me to the ground as he mounts me.
“What’s it going to be,Praeda?” He grips my thighs and plies them apart. “Fawn or fight?”
In response, I slowly lift my gaze to his, softening beneath him in silent offering.
He leans over me, the solid press of his body flooding mine with warmth.
“Look how pretty you are.” He wraps his hand around the front of my throat, nipping at my ear.
He buries his face against me, breathing me in as his lips tease my neck. A barely restrained hunger hums low in his chest, sending goosebumps scattering over me.
I close my eyes, losing myself in the slow, drugging kisses he trails over my fragile skin. My body melts in surrender, completely unguarded as he lulls me into a familiar sense of safety.
Then, just like a wolf, he strikes when I least expect it, biting down on my neck and branding me with his teeth.
The sharp sting draws a gasp from my lungs, fading to warmth as he soothes the burn with another tender kiss.
The contrast disorients me, and I don’t know what to expect from one moment to the next as he sucks and bites a path all the way down to my shoulder. He leaves his imprint everywhere he touches, the reverent glide of his hands at odds with the scrape of his teeth. It’s an intoxicating kind of sensory overload—being massaged and devoured at the same time.
His palm skims over the curve of my hip and down to my bare thigh before he pushes up the fabric of my skirt and unsnaps my leotard. Cool air coasts over me, and anticipation builds as he lets me linger in the uncertainty of what he’ll do next.
He slaps my thigh, ejecting another startled sound from my mouth as my legs widen instinctively—as if it were a command. The next blow strikes my still-tender ass, and this time, I shriek even louder.
Those sounds seem to feed the darkness in him, as each smack comes harder than the last.
He works over both of my thighs, landing blow after blow as blood rushes to the surface. I close my eyes as the world around me blurs at the edges, and my mind goes quiet.
It’s a blissful, weightless feeling like I’m floating adrift in the ocean, untethering every trace of tension that lives inside me.
In this space, only contentment exists.
When he slaps me between the thighs, it triggers a rolling cascade of pleasure that ripples through my entire body. He does it again and again, ratcheting up the pressure until I’m squirming beneath him, crying out for another release.
He leaves me wanting as he loosens his belt and unzips his pants, shifting slightly to drag down his briefs.
There’s something insanely hot about him fucking me right here in the dirt—feeding his craving to use me as he pleases. He does exactly that when he grips two handfuls of my ass cheeks, spreading me apart as he buries himself inside me with one hard thrust.
A strangled cry wrenches from my lungs, and the growl that echoes from his modulator floods my body with heat.
“Scream all you want.” A feral rasp edges his voice. “You know it only makes me harder.”
Those words summon my baser desire to let him claim me in the most primitive way. Trusting someone so brutal with my safety is an addictive rush, and it allows me to relax into the roles that are clear and defined. He takes, and I yield.
He fucks me hard, pounding me into the ground as the sounds that rip from my throat escalate at a frantic pace. When he grabs the anal plug and twists it inside of me, the intensity sends me careening toward the edge. I’m on the verge of coming, and I think I start to beg him, but it’s too incoherent to even understand.
Before I can get there, he slows to a torturous pace, his fingers biting into the flesh of my hip and squeezing possessively.
