Page 161 of Villainous Rise

“Maybe not,” Annie agreed with a smile. “But you’ve got me anyway.”

She bit her bottom lip, her gaze fixed on my chest. I could hear the gears turning in her head.

“Is the beach clear?” she asked suddenly. “Any obstacles?”

An odd question, but I immediately scanned our surroundings, my senses cutting through the fog where normal vision failed.

“Thirty-seven yards of open sand directly ahead before the water. Twenty-two yards to the left before rocks. Forty-five to the right before the boardwalk starts.”

She nodded once, still worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Something shifted in her expression. A decision made, a boundary crossed.

“Want to play?” she asked, her voice soft but steady.

The chase. The violence. The surrender.

I didn’t hesitate. Not for a second.

“Run,” I told her, my voice dropping to something darker, hungrier.

Annie held up one finger, a silent command to wait. She gripped my shoulder for balance, lifting one foot to unbuckle the strap of her heel. The shoe dropped to the sand with a soft thud, followed by its mate.

She looked up at me for just a second. In that fleeting moment, I saw everything—desire, challenge, the lingering hurt from earlier, and something that looked dangerously like forgiveness.

Then she was gone, slipping into the fog like a ghost.

I counted to five in my head, giving her a head start. Not that it mattered, I could find her blindfolded in a hurricane. Her heartbeat was a beacon, her scent a trail I could follow across continents.

But that wasn’t the point of the game.

The point was the chase. The hunt. The moment when I caught her and we both pretended she didn’t want to be caught all along.

I smiled, feeling something loosen deep within me. The night wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

And time was up.

I stepped into the fog after her, becoming the predator she’d invited me to be.

CHAPTER 28

ANNIE

I ran through the fog, my heart pounding. Cipher’s tux jacket hung heavy on my shoulders, the fabric carrying his scent.

The full skirt of my evening gown clung to my legs with each step, a beautiful trap threatening to send me sprawling across the sand. I gathered fistfuls of fabric, bunching it at my thighs to free my stride.

I couldn’t see anything. The fog had swallowed the world whole, leaving nothing but ghostly white emptiness. The ocean roared somewhere to my right, the rhythmic crash of waves against the shore my only orientation. The city must have been to my left, but its sounds were drowned by the water’s constant thunder.

A shadow moved through the fog, there, then gone.

He was stalking me. Playing with me.

He could end this chase whenever he wanted. With his abilities, I might as well have been running in slow motion with a spotlight on my head. But he was drawing it out, letting me feel the thrill of the hunt.

Another flicker of movement to my left. I pivoted and sprinted in the opposite direction, my feet digging into the damp sand. My heart hammered so hard I wondered if he could hear it, if he was tracking me by the sound of my pulse rather than my footsteps.

There was a whisper of movement, the subtle displacement of fog. Then his body collided with mine, a solid wall of muscle and heat slamming into me from behind. We tumbled forward, his arms wrapping around my waist as he twisted mid-fall, taking the impact on his back with a grunt.

Sand exploded around us and my breath left in a rush as we landed, his body cushioning mine. For a heartbeat, we were still, his chest rising and falling against my back, his breath hot against my neck.