Page 64 of Prey

The floor tilts.

I look at the door. At the knife I didn’t reach for.

I let him catch me.

“Sweet dreams, Jenna,” he murmurs against my hair. “And this time, you’re never leaving me.”

22

NIKOLAI

The sedative takes her fast. One moment she’s whisperingPlease. Before I lose my nerve,and the next her weight is sagging against my chest, her breathing deepening into a drugged slowness.

I catch her and lower her to the bed.

Three months. Three months of tearing Chicago apart looking for her. Three months of waking up rock hard and furious because she wasn’t in my bed where she belonged. She fucked me, walked out with my clothes, and disappeared into my own city to murder my competition like she was redecorating it for her own use.

And when I finally caught her, she went for the knife in her boot. I felt the move before her elbow finished moving—the woman she built while I was gone, the one who would have cut me if I’d been a half-second slower. Mine. All of it. The teeth, the trying, and the eventual yielding. I want every piece of what she has become. I want her to keep trying. I want to be the only thing in her life she can’t outmaneuver.

When I finally caught her, she had the audacity to ask me to take her unconscious. Like she was doing me a favor. Like I hadn’t spent three months going feral over her.

“You’re going to wake up wrecked,” I tell her sleeping form. “You asked for it. You’re going to remember asking. And the next time you think about running from me, you’re going to remember exactly what it feels like when I catch you.”

I lay her down on the mattress, and her arms fall limply to her sides. She’s already stripped down to her bra and panties, her pale skin luminous in the dim light filtering through her blackout curtains. Perfect. I won’t have to cut the clothes off her body—though part of me wants to destroy everything that has touched her skin while I was gone.

My hands shake as I reach for her, and I force them to stay steady. Control. I need control.

But when I cup her breasts, feeling their weight in my palms, control becomes a foreign concept.

“Fuck,” I breathe, rolling her nipples between my fingers until they peak. Her body responds to me even like this.

I pinch her nipple harder, and a soft sound escapes her parted lips. Not quite a moan, but close enough to make my cock leak in my pants.

I trail my hands down her ribs, memorizing every curve, every scar I noticed from the surveillance footage. She’s leaner now, harder. The underground fighting has carved her into a fierce and deadly force, but underneath she’s still my soft girl. Still the woman who spread her legs for me and begged me to breed her.

“I’ve been dreaming about this,” I tell her unconscious form. “About finding you again. About putting my baby in your belly.”

The dreams started a week after she disappeared. Vivid, filthy visions of her swollen with my child, unable to run from me, dependent on me for everything. I’d wake up rock hard and furious because she wasn’t there to take care of the ache she’d left behind.

I spread her thighs, and they fall open without resistance. She’s already glistening wet. Her body knows what’s coming. She prepared herself for this before the needle even went in.

“Look at you,” I murmur, settling between her legs. “Already soaked for me. You missed this as much as I did, didn’t you?”

I drag my tongue through her folds, and she tastes exactly like I remember—sweet and musky and completely addictive. The first taste makes me growl against her cunt, the vibration causing her hips to twitch.

I feast on her, lapping at her wetness and sucking her clit until her breathing changes. I slide two fingers inside her, and she’s so tight I have to work to stretch her open.

“That’s it,” I grunt against her pussy. “Take my fingers. Remember how this feels.”

Her inner muscles flutter around my digits, and I curl them upward, finding that spot that made her come apart. Even unconscious, a breathy whimper escapes her lips.

I add a third finger, stretching her wider, and her cunt clenches around me like a fist. She’s close. “Come for me,” I command, sucking hard on her clit while my fingers work inside her. “Show me you belong to me.”

Her orgasm hits like a tidal wave. Her pussy tightens around my fingers, and a flood of wetness coats my hand as she comes, and I drink it all down, groaning at the taste of her release.

“Good girl,” I pant against her thigh, pressing kisses to her flushed skin. “Such a good girl for me.”

But I’m nowhere near done.