Page 138 of Dirty Hit
“Fuck,” he gasps, voice carrying faintly back to me.
“Language!” I call, just loud enough for him to hear.
There’s a strangled sound, half laugh, half sob and he pushes harder. I can tell by the way the noises get more frantic, more frequent. He doesn’t know these woods like I do. He doesn’t know where the ground dips, where the underbrush thickens, where the creek cuts through.
“Dom,” he yells once, breathless. “This is insane.”
“You’re doing great,” I shout back, and mean it.
Icouldcatch him sooner. If this were real, if I wanted him down, he’d be down already. I hold back enough to let him feel everything. The fear, the adrenaline, the way his lungs burn and his legs protest, and his brain screams at him to keep going because something is behind him that won’t stop until he’s down.
“Please don’t kill me,” he pants, voice high and strained.
“If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t see me coming, Little Sin.”
“That isnotcomforting!” he yells, but there’s a hysterical edge to it that tells me he’s no longer feeling fear.
We burst into a slightly wider section of woods, trees spaced just enough that the moonlight spills in more generously. He stumbles into it first, hoodie catching on a low branch and wrenching him sideways. He rips free, but it costs him half a second.
That’s all I need.
I push harder, closing the gap between us in a few long strides. He hears me at the last second, glancing back over his shoulder, eyes wide, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Our gazes lock for one dizzying moment—prey and predator, sin and sinner, whatever the fuck we are—and then I lunge.
I tackle him.
Gently.
My shoulder hits his midsection, arms wrapping around his thighs as I take us both down. I twist mid-fall, taking the brunt of the impact on my side, making sure he lands on me instead of the ground. We slam into the earth in a tangle of limbs, the air whooshing out of both of us. The knife is still in my hand, but my grip is tight, blade angled away from him.
He wheezes, kicking once, more reflex than actual attempt to get away.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, youmaniac.”
I roll us, using momentum to flip our positions, so he’s on his back and my knees are on either side of his hips. I stab the knife into the ground beside his head, blade sinking into the earth with a satisfying thunk, hilt sticking up like a flag.
“Got you,” I say, breath heavy, but controlled.
He glares up at me, chest heaving, hair full of leaves. “You’re insane,” he pants. “You actually chased me through a fucking forest with a knife. I should have you committed.”
“You ran,” I point out. “Fast, too. I’m impressed.”
“Don’t patronize me,” he snaps, then winces as he realises what he just said.
I grin, leaning down a little. “You like running,” I say. “Your body does. I felt it.”
“My lungs are burning,” he shoots back. “My shoes are full of sticks, there’s dirt in my underwear…”
“You’re hard, baby,” I say calmly, because I can feel it pressed against my thigh.
He makes a helpless, outraged sound, cheeks flushing even in the low light. “That’s… that’s adrenaline,” he protests weakly.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
His chest rises and falls under me, breaths still harsh, eyes wide. Fear and arousal mix in his gaze, the same cocktail I’ve seen a hundred times in victims’ faces for all the wrong reasons. On him, it looks like the most fucked-up kind of trust.
“You’re a psycho,” he whispers, but there’s no real heat in it now. “I thought… I thought you were actually going to kill me.”
“Never,” I say, and this time I let the softness through. I lower myself so that our chests brush, my hands planting on the ground beside his shoulders. “I meant what I said; you’re the one person on this planet I will not harm. I’m not going to break that rule out here in the middle of nowhere.”
