He obeys as his hand slides between us, finds my clit with rough fingers, circling with perfect pressure.
The orgasm hits like a freight train. I cry out, loud and shameless, the sound bouncing off the hedges as he keeps fucking me through it, drawing it out, hips snapping, cock dragging against every sensitive inch inside me until I'm shaking, clenching, soaking him, thighs trembling around his waist.
He doesn't stop.
He pulls me off the hedge, spins us, and drops to his knees on the gravel path. And before my back hits the ground, he rolls under me until I'm straddling him. Gravel digs into my knees, but I don't care. I plant my palms on his chest, feel the rapid thud of his heart under blood-streaked skin, and ride him.
Hard. Fast. Greedy.
His hands grip my hips, guiding, bruising, urging me faster. His head tips back, moonlight carving the line of his jaw, the cords of his neck. He looks wrecked, eyes wild, lips parted, chest heaving, and I've never seen anything more beautiful.
I lean down, bite his throat and he thrusts up so deep I see stars. "Fuck, Elio?—"
He flips us again in one smooth roll. Now I'm on my back, knees hooked over his elbows, spread wide. Gravel bites my ass, my shoulders. He drives into me, deep, punishing, relentless, and I arch, meeting every thrust, nails digging into his biceps.
"Come again," he growls against my ear. "Come on my cock, Violet. Let me feel it."
His thumb just about grazes my clit—and I do, the orgasm crashing through me, harder than before. I clench around him, pulsing, shaking, crying out his name. He follows two thrusts later, buried deep, hips stuttering, a low groan against my neck as he comes inside me, hot and endless.
We stay locked together, breathing ragged, sweat-slick, gravel embedded in my skin, branches in my hair. His forehead rests against mine. His hands, still shaking, frame my face.
I laugh. Breathless. Broken. Real.
Because I just got fucked senseless on a gravel path in a hedge maze in Sicily by a man who tore a trafficking compound apart to find me, and I have dirt under my nails, gravel rash on my ass, and his come leaking out of me onto the ground.
This is my life now.
And I chose it.
Ma would have a stroke. Danny would shoot him. Sean would write a very concerned letter.
I press my forehead to Elio's collarbone. He heaves under me.
Catch my breath. Body still pulsing, aftershocks rolling through me in lazy waves.
Then I push him off until he's on his back. His shirt ruined, there's dirt in his hair, and he's looking up at me like I'm a problem he can't solve and doesn't want to.
I grin.
"Again?" And I'm up. Running before he can grab me. The air is cool against my damp skin, and the slick between my thighs is obscene, but I feel invincible. Feral. Like the compound never laid a hand on me.
Behind me, Elio gets up, then takes off.
Faster this time. The gentleman is dead. The predator learned the rules.
I take a sharp left, then a right, and the hedge corridor opens into the center of the maze. A small clearing flooded with moonlight. Old stone pavers, cracked and mossy, a heavy stone bench at the center.
The stars are visible through the gaps above. Bright. Indifferent. Beautiful.
Elio catches me from behind before I can turn.
His arms band around my waist, mouth finding my neck, stubble scraping skin. I arch back into him because my body has already decided what it wants, and it's him. Now, here, no more running.
"You can't keep running from me," he murmurs against my ear, voice low and wrecked.
"I'm not running from you," I reply breathless. "I'm runningforyou. Keep up."
He turns me, lifts me like I weigh nothing, walks us to the bench. Sets me on the stone edge. Cold hits the backs of my thighs, a sharp winter against fever-hot skin, making me gasp as every nerve lights up at once.
