Page 30 of The Captive
What the fuck was wrong with me? This wasn’t supposed to happen and yet, I couldn’t pull away.
The sound of my name on her lips—breathy with need rather than cold with contempt—nearly undid me. I sucked at her pulse point, determined to mark her, claim her, even if temporarily.
"Is this what you wanted?" I growled against her skin, one hand sliding beneath her sweater to find bare flesh. "Your enemy taking you against a tree like an animal?"
"Don't hide behind your fucking excuses," she panted, head falling back to grant better access. "This is about us. Just us."
My fingers traced the underside of her breast, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Through the thin material of her bra, I could feel her nipple hardening against my palm. I cupped her roughly, swallowing her moan with another bruising kiss.
She was intoxicating—all sharp edges and soft curves, defiance and surrender in equal measure. One hand tangled in my hair, nails scraping my scalp in a delicious blend of pleasure and pain. The other slid between us, palming my erection through my trousers with bold possession.
"I knew you'd feel like this," she whispered, squeezing gently. "So hard. So ready."
Her hand disappeared between the folds of her clothing. In my haze, a flash of metal caught my eye as she moved. I kept going, lost in my desire, too invested in the yearning to rip her clothes off and fuck her like she wanted. But the metal flashed again and then it dawned on me—a decorative garden stake she must have pocketed while we walked. Before I could react, she drove it into my shoulder with surprising strength.
White-hot pain exploded through me. "Fuck!" I staggered back, blood immediately blooming through my shirt.
She didn't waste a second, darting away with the speed of someone who'd trained for exactly this moment. Her auburn hair flashed in the sunlight as she sprinted across the lawn toward the eastern tree line.
A primitive, raw rage surged through me, mingling with pure adrenaline. Blood dripped down my arm as I yanked the improvised weapon from my flesh and tossed it aside.
I shouted out for backup while this unexpected pain made me immobile for a moment. Still, I wanted to catch her myself.
She was fast, but I knew these grounds intimately. As she veered toward what she might have thought was a blind spot in our security, I cut diagonally across the rose garden, ignoring the thorns that tore at my clothing, ignoring the fucking stab wound. The tracker on her wrist would trigger the alert if she left the property, but I wouldn’t let her get that far.
I caught sight of her slipping through a gap in a hedgerow. The calculating bitch had been mapping escape routes during our entire walk. Every word, every touch, every moment of supposed vulnerability—all strategic distraction.
Knowing this, she’d make a bigger prize…
I crashed through the foliage twenty seconds behind her. She was halfway across the meadow that separated the formal gardens from the tree line. If she reached those woods, recapturing her would become significantly more complex.
Drawing on reserves honed through years of operational training, I closed the distance between us with punishing speed. I could see her glancing back, eyes widening as she realised I was gaining on her, despite the setback.
Ten feet. Five feet. The gap narrowed with each stride.
I launched myself forward in a diving tackle, catching her around the waist and bringing us both crashing to the ground.We tumbled through the high grass, my momentum carrying us several feet before we came to a stop with me pinning her beneath my weight.
Her chest heaved with exertion, eyes wild with a mixture of fury and something like exhilaration. Blood from my shoulder wound dripped onto her cheek, marking her.
"That," I growled, capturing both her wrists and slamming them above her head, "was incredibly stupid."
"Worth it to see the great Alexander Moore bleed," she spat. But I wasn’t fooled. She was just as aroused as me.
I shifted my weight, pressing my hips deliberately against hers so she could feel exactly what effect our struggle had on me. "Did you think I wouldn't catch you?"
"I was counting on it." She arched beneath me, the movement both defiance and invitation. "I just wanted to see what would happen when the perfect soldier lost control."
I tightened my grip painfully on her wrists. "And now you have your answer."
With my free hand, I grasped her jaw painfully hard, forcing her to look at me. "I could break you right here, Aoife O'Malley. Take what I want and leave you for my men to find."
Terror flickered briefly across her face—the first sincere emotion I'd seen from her. Good. She needed to understand the line she'd crossed.
"But that would be too merciful," I continued, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Instead, I'm going to take you back to your cell, patch up this wound you gave me, and then continue ourconversationwith methods that will make yesterday seem like a gentle caress."
I pulled her roughly to her feet, maintaining a bruising grip on one wrist while my other arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her body flush against mine. The intimacy ofthe position was a mockery of the passion we'd shared minutes earlier.
"You're hurting me," she said, a statement rather than a complaint.
