No sound but the blood whooshing in my ears as I ready to run again.
“But the catch—” Colin’s hand whips around the tree, circling my wrist. But if he thinks I’ll make it easy on him, he is sorely mistaken. I tear out of his grip and bound down the rest of the hill, leaping over another tree as the butterflies dance around in my stomach.
My feet aren’t back on the ground for more than a moment before Colin’s arms are circling my body in a bear hug. I scream when he grabs me, the force of his body teetering us forward, but he rights us again, spinning me and pressing my back flush with one of a hundred trees in our vicinity.
We’re breathless, his chest pressing against mine, skin flushed, lips pulled into easy smiles. He’s watching my eyes, and I’m entranced with his, howperfect and lovely his natural happiness looks and feels on his features. Like nothing was meant more for this brooding detective than the fun of a chase. The chance to forget everything for a moment and justrun.
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” I breathe. He tilts his head back in laughter, and I watch the ridges of his throat move to accommodate the foreign sound, maybe even the foreign feeling. Then his eyes are on mine again and his hand is weaving into my hair at the base of my skull, wrenching my neck back against the rough bark of the tree.
“Of course you’re not,” he groans. His other hand slides against the side of my face in a rough drag, the heat of his palm possessive and claiming as it grips me. His thumb glides against my lip, rough at first like he’s not in control of it, a wild ferality blazing to life in his blown pupils. Then the gesture softens as he tugs my lip down and I feel the cool air on my teeth before it pops back into place.
I fist the fabric of his shirt in my hand, the feel of his hand in my hair drawing my body taut as a wire, ready to snap, like the feelings he’s been dancing around for as long as I’ve known him. My other hand fumbles with the button and zipper of his jeans, his hard length impossible to miss as I free it from its confines and it twitches in my palm as I stroke it.
“Reckless,” he whispers on a moan, tickling his lips against mine. The slight touch has the heat in my chest dropping down, down, down, kissing a path of warmth between the sharp points of my nipples, torching through my gut and spiraling into a dangerous whirlpool between my thighs. I arch my back off the tree, my nerves frenzied with desire, and he slides his hand from my hair, squeezing my waist between his fingers. “Chaotic.” He presses his face into my neck, and I move to give him full access, savoring the feel of his skin against mine as his lips feather kisses on my throat. “Dangerous,” he hisses, and it’s like he’s relaying to me the blaring warning signals his mind is setting off.
Thrusting his hips into mine, his cock throbs through the fabric of my dress against my clit that isachingfor friction. Forhim.
“Yes,” I whimper in affirmation, even though I’m afraid to.
This is all those things.Iam all those things. And this is his chance to walk away from it all, though he has yet to fully understand exactly what he’d be walking away from. I feel only slightly guilty that he doesn’t exactly know what he’s walkinginto. Emphasis ononly slightly.
Because my body ignites where he touches me, and his eyes flame with indifference to the fact that he thinks I’m arrant and wild. I’m an unruly, offbeat dance of energy around his carefully constructed foundation of morals, and he’s reaching his hand out to me anyway, offering to join me though the movement of his soul is more rigid, more restrained.Barely.
He bends toward the bottom of my dress, his hand disappearing underneath until he’s standing straight again and his fingers are swirling on the edge of my lips.
Colin forces out a tense-sounding breath. “Fuck, Chloe. You’re so fucking wet.”
His lips descend toward my neck again as his fingers slowly disappear inside me. And they’re such aperfectfit.
“It must be the chase you like then?”
I cry out and squeeze the fabric of his shirt in my hands as his fingers curl inside me. His movements quicken as I shiver against his body. I can’t decide if I think the question is rhetorical or not because my pussy feels like it’s fucking weeping, and I feel like I’m levitating.
“Hmm?” he prods.
Not rhetorical. Got it.
“The chase, yes,” I stammer through jilted breaths, gripping his shoulders and lifting my leg over his hip.
“Yeah?” He drags his fingers lazily back and forth, the movement teasing, just on the edge of giving me what I want. “Thinking about getting away, or what’s going to happen when you’re caught?”
I let out a breathy groan when the curling begins again before I can answer. “You can run as far and as fast as you want, Chloe. There is never a world where I don’t follow. No world where I don’t find you.”
His hands are off me in a flash as he drops toward the ground, and my pussy is on fire for release as he stares up at me with a hooded gaze. I take my lip between my teeth, squeezing my thighs together, watching as he slowly slides his palms up my legs, under my dress, against my thighs until my clit is pulsing with need, the emptiness inside me so painfully obvious. My entire body shakes as he stands to his full height and bunches my flimsy dress at my hips.
His movements are jerky as he thrusts his hips against me and hikes my thigh over his hip again, pressing his hard length into my bare, soaking center. We’re skin to skin, and my cunt glitters desperately to be full of him, to feel the length of him driving against my insides. My head falls back into the tree, the rough bark pulling my hair and digging into my back, but I barely feel it. All I feel are his bright eyes coasting across my flushed skin and his tight grip bruising my thigh.
“We’re falling.” His whisper against my lips is a warning, maybe to me. Maybe more to himself.
Still, I know what he’s referring to: the precipice. The looming edge. The weightless descent to the below with no landing in sight. No redX Marks the SpotorLand Here to Avoid Certain Demise.
The sign by the edge of the sharp cliff where rocks and pebbles are tumbling over saysLast Chance to Turn Around. And its letters are gold and green like the swirl in Colin’s heated gaze. The post is slanted in the ground like his hard body against mine.
But I’ve been waiting at this ledge for a long time. Kicking pebbles over and watching them fly off. Glaring at that sign and whiningI don’t want to turn around, you nitwit, I want him to find me here.
“We’ll survive,” I promise, though I can’t be sure. But it’s enough for him, and as he drives into me, I toss my head against the rough bark behind me, a shuddering moan lashing through my throat.
“Colin,my God,” I grit out. He sinks his teeth into my neck.
