Even my treacherous mind whispers,Why go to this effort to get away from a man as sexy as Zane Bethnal?It’s futile. He’s taller and stronger than you. He can take one step for two of yours. He’ll catch you if he wants to.
No.
I have to keep going. For once, I have a chance. I have the element of surprise.
All I’ve ever known is being constrained and told that what I wanted wasn’t important. Smacked down if I tried to express an opinion, and punished for doing what I thought was right. Everyone in my family thinks working in a shop is beneath a Maldon. They’ll never think to look for me there, if I can just escape Bethnal, I could make a new life with the money I have in a secret account.
Footsteps thud, heavy and determined, behind me.
Oh sugar. I snake through the trees, and pain from my feet shoots up my nerves. My arms pump and my legs are jelly-ish as I try to get to some unknown safe place.
The trees are endless.
And that’s when I hear his breathing, almost as loud as my own harsh panting and the pounding of my heart.
He’s really chasing me. Like he means it.
“Help!” I yell the word into the forest, and my panic makes it a screech. “Help!”
An animal skitters off into the undergrowth, and then it’s just the yellow sunlight, the green of the canopy above, the smooth tree trunks, and my path through the endless crunch of leaves. The land has begun to rise, and my limbs are getting tired. My chest burns. I’m slowing, despite everything.
What if he catches me, what will he do…?
He’ll make good on what he said in the car. Cake, and making his captive come until she begs him to stop because it’s too good. And then a worse thought snatches at my ankle, dragging at me like a ball and chain.
What if he doesn’t catch me?
What if I never find out all the ways he’d be filthy and terrifying and so, so hot.
I want him to catch me and do things to me, but I shouldn’t.
“There’s no one else here, bunny,” he rasps, and it’s not even a shout. “There’s no escape.”
A sob escapes me at how close he is, and how alone we are.
There’s empty woodland for miles. I was an idiot to think I could get out. He’s a massive, powerful, muscled kingpin, and I’m a twenty-year-old girl who doesn’t do enough exercise.
Giving a futile burst of speed, I push my body to the painful limits.
I jerk as he grabs my upper arm and spins me around, shoving me against a tree. I let out an “oof” as my back hits the trunk, but it’s not enough to hurt. Or maybe it is, and I can’t feel it past the terror rising in my throat.
Raising my hands, I instinctively go to strike at his face. His eyes. To scratch and claw and get away again, but he’s too quick.He grabs one wrist then the other in a punishing grip and forces them above my head.
He’s breathing heavily, but not fast, and his ice-blue eyes bore into me.
Scowling up at him—and it is up since he’s so tall—there’s a mess of emotions in my heaving chest and we stare at each other for long seconds as I drag in oxygen like I’ve been underwater my whole life.
He doesn’t move, just keeping me pinned, and not saying anything. I don’t know what to do. Cry? Try to knee him in the crotch? I have a feeling he’ll anticipate any attack I make.
The worst thing? He hardly has a hair out of place, while I’m sure I’m a red, blotchy, sweaty mess. He’s utterly gorgeous, and has chased me in a suit. He’s discarded his jacket and tie, and undone his top button, but his shirt remains tucked into his trousers neatly and he’s not even panting.
The tension ratchets up between us as my breathing evens out, but he doesn’t hit me like Robert would have, or berate me like my mother.
The silence draws out my tension, and I begin to shake.
I should look down and protect my face from the inevitable blow, but I stupidly don’t, filled with a fire I haven’t felt for years.
“Just get it over with!” I shout, frustration and fear bubbling over.
