My hand closed on empty air.
She was only a few yards ahead of me. Her long dark hair flew about her in a tangle of curls, half-hiding her face as she hazarded a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes widened at my approach.
Her head whipped forward, then lowered as she doubled her effort to evade me. She was heading for the clearing, not realizing there wasn’t a field on the other side of those trees, but certain death.
“Madison! The cliff! Stop!”
Unheeding of my plea, she broke free of the trees. The fog hovered over the rocky edge, hiding the steep plunge beneath its cold blanket until it was too late. Her feet skidded on the loose, wet gravel as she tried to halt her momentum.
It wasn’t enough.
Her balance broke.
Her scream cut through the roar of the wind.
A howl of rage burst from my chest as her arms flailed wildly.
Her fingers clawed at the air and found nothing to hold onto before she disappeared over the edge.
CHAPTER 21
MADISON
As I broke free of the tree line, I doubled my efforts to get away.
I sprinted through what I thought was an open field. It wasn’t until the last second that the fog parted to reveal a sheer cliff drop.
There was no guardrail. No warning. Just the edge, and then nothing. Wind howled from below, carrying the roar of waves slamming into rock. The sound hit me before the vertigo did. The sudden, stomach-dropping understanding that the ground I was running toward didn’t exist.
The soft leather of my ballet slippers shredded against the rough, broken rocks.
It was too late.
I couldn’t stop my forward momentum in time.
The storm winds carried the salty spray of the ocean upward, stinging my eyes as the dark waters loomed close.
A scream ripped out of me as I spread my arms wide, grasping at nothing.
The ocean and cliff face merged into a blur of somber brown and muddy blue as the ground fell away beneath my feet. The jagged, wet rocks came within inches of my face as my bodyviolently pitched forward. Before I slipped over the edge, a heavy weight settled around my waist.
I was violently wrenched backward.
Pierce pulled me away from the cliff.
For one breath, everything went quiet. The wind, the rain, my own scream. All of it swallowed by the singular, impossible fact that I was not falling. His arm was locked around my waist. His chest was flush against my back. He was solid and warm and real, and a second ago there had been nothing beneath me but ether.
His hard body cushioned my fall as the force of his grip sent us both crashing to the wet grass a few feet away. He shifted from beneath me to beside me. His intense stare scanned my face as his warm hands ran over my arms and hips, searching for injuries.
“Madison, are you hurt?” he asked urgently.
I couldn’t respond.
Water from the grass seeped into the silk of my blouse as heavy, cold raindrops struck my cheeks.
My gaze shifted from the stormy clouds above to the panic and rage which clouded Pierce’s gray eyes.
His lips pulled back, baring his teeth. “Goddammit, Madison. You could have been fucking killed.”
