Page 26 of Hunting Gianna
He has to catch me first.I pull on my shoes and straighten my shoulders. I survived a fucking storm, I could survive running a few kilometers to the main lodge.
The outside world is cold and damp and smells like pine needles and rot. The forest is thick, but not impassable. The path is right there, a thin dirt line leading down to the lake, down to the lodge, anywhere but here.
Freedom. If I want it.
I hover at the threshold. The sky is silver and fat raindrops start falling.Of course. Why wouldn’t it fucking rain?The wind cuts through my shirt and makes my nipples hard, the fabric sticking wetly to my skin. I want to cry, but the tears won’t come.
I take a step outside.
The earth is wet and soft. Every footfall is a betrayal, every movement too loud. I walk, then jog, then stop and turn, looking back at the cabin. The windows are black and flat. There’s no movement, no shadow. If he’s fixing my car, then I need to go around it, through the copse of trees on the outskirts of the trail to avoid a run in.
But I know better.
I run.
I don’t make it ten yards before I hear him. Not footsteps, not breathing. Just the sense of presence, the way a storm front feels before it breaks. I duck behind a tree, my breath clawing at my ribs, and try to make myself small.
It doesn’t matter. He finds me anyway.
He’s there, right behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body through the bark. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to.
“I knew you wanted to play hide and hunt,” he whispers, his voice a low, rough rumble, “keep running, little bird. I’ll be right behind you.”
I turn, slow, and see him.
He’s wearing the mask.Fixing my car, right.There’s something in the way he’s standing that makes me pause. He’s somehow soft, yet strong, calm yet on edge. It’s beautiful and terrifying and so perfectly him.
He doesn’t move.
I could run. I could scream.
Instead, I just stare.
He tilts his head, the gesture so human and so monstrous at once that it makes my bones vibrate.
“Go on,” he says. “I’ll give you a head start.”
I run. I run until the trees blur, until the air is hurting my skin, until the world is nothing but the sound of my own pulse and the certainty that he’s right behind me, always, forever, just close enough to touch.
I run because I want to live. I run because I want him to catch me.
I run because I finally understand the game.
Chapter Ten
Knox
There’snothingmorebeautifulthan my woman running for her life.
That’s a hard truth, but it’s the only one worth saying. Most men will never know the feeling of finding their other half and forcing her to confront the darkest parts of herself. They’ll chase, but it’s never real. It’s not true. Not primal. Not what’s pounding in her veins right now as she barrels through the woods like she’s the first person to ever feel fear.Truefear.
I let her think she’s outsmarted me, just a little. Give her that head start. Let the taste of hope bloom in her chest before I ripit out again. There’s an artistry in the patience. The anticipation is everything—the way it sharpens each sense until the world is nothing but nerves and need and the absolute conviction that this moment is all there ever was.
It’s beautiful, really. Not only had I just slit the throat of some nobody, but now I get to ravage her in the most basic sense a man should destroy a woman. And she will try to hate me, but love me all the same. I stalk her, silent on the rain-slick earth, boots rolling heel-to-toe through the moss. It’s not a pursuit, it’s communion. A tense cord between us, drawn tighter with every gasping step she takes. She crashes through bracken and slips in mud, leaves a clear track for me to follow, and I do, methodically, savoring every sign of panic.
She tries to make noise, to break through the silence and call the world to witness, but these woods don’t care about a woman’s screams. There’s no one out here. Still, she does it anyway. At the bottom of a draw, her lungs splitting, she lets one loose—a perfect, throat-shredding wail that ricochets off every trunk and branch. It’s a beautiful thing, a hymn, a perfect note that makes my blood go liquid-hot.
I almost wish she could see my smile.
