“No.”
“Yes.”
I turn and run.
I know it’s useless. He’s twice my size, and this is his jungle, and I’m still in my work clothes, but I run anyway, because the alternative is standing still and letting it happen, and I refuse.
I jump over a root and skitter around a tree. He’s right behind me, crashing through the undergrowth like a freight train, not even hurrying, and that’s the worst part.
I force myself to move faster, but it’s no use.
A hand closes on my shoulder and spins me around to face him. I swing at him. My fist connects with his jaw, and it’s like punching a wall. It hurts, but I don’t care.
I kick at his shin, his knee, anything I can reach. He doesn’t even grunt. He catches my wrist in one enormous hand.
“Stop.” He gives me a small shake. “Don’t fight me. I am mating you now.”
“Like hell you are.”
He grabs the collar of my jacket and rips it off me, the seams shrieking, my arms wrenched back as the fabric tears away. I scream and claw at his face, going for his eyes. He turns his head, and my nails rake his cheek instead, leaving four red lines that close up in front of me. He tears my blouse open, buttons popping into the leaves.
He rips at it again, tearing it clean off me. Leaving me in just my bra, panties, and skirt.
“No! Get off me. Getoffme!”
His fingers hook into the waistband of my skirt, and the fabric gives way down one side, and then he shoves me, and I go down onto my back so hard the air leaves my lungs in one whoosh. For a second, I can’t make a sound at all. I can’t pull anything in. The canopy spins above me.
I have to work to get air into my lungs so that I can keep fighting.
I have to fight.
Then he’s on top of me.
His weight pins me to the ground and his hands close around mine, trapping them against the dirt above my head. I buck and twist, and it does nothing. Nothing. It’s like fighting a statue. Like he’s made of stone and I’m made of paper. My lungs come back online, and I scream. I scream so loud it scrapes my throat raw, and the birds explode out of the trees above us.
“Shhhhhh.” He glances around, scanning the jungle, his head cocked to listen. “More will come. You don’t want that. You will be hurt…killed.”
Like he’s not hurting me now.
He turns his head again; this time his body lifts. It’s the only chance I’m going to get.
I drive my knee up into his groin with everything I have. Everything. Every ounce of terror and fury in my body, all of it concentrated into one strike.
He makes a sound I’ll hear in my nightmares, high and strangled, and rolls off me, both hands clamped over his crotch, his knees drawing up.
I’m on my feet and running. I dodge trees, vaulting a fallen log, ferns slashing wet against my thighs. There’s a slope ahead, and I take it at a sprint, half sliding down the muddy bank, catching myself on a vine, and I keep going, keep going, don’t look back, don’t you dare look back?—
There’s crashing and bellowing from behind me, so I force myself to go faster. My breath is sawing in and out, my legs are screaming, and it’s not enough; it was never going to be enough?—
Something hits me from behind, and I go down onto my knees, palms skidding through wet leaves. A fist closes in what’s left of my skirt and tears it away completely, and I’m screaming again, trying to twist back, trying to?—
And then he’s gone.
The weight, the hands, the heat of him, gone, ripped away, and the jungle fills with the most terrible snarling I’ve ever heard. It isn’t human.
I scramble around in the mud, expecting to see a mountain lion, but it isn’t. It’s two of them locked in battle.
I recognize…
