Page 73 of Prey

I spin around, looking for another route, but I can hear him now. The measured cadence of footsteps on the forest floor, moving with the confidence of a predator who knows exactly where his prey is trapped.

My breathing is harsh and desperate. All the hard running has pushed my body to its limits, and now adrenaline is flooding my system again, preparing me for the final confrontation.

I could keep running. Try to break through the forest on the far side of the clearing. But my legs are shaking with exhaustion, and I know the chase is over.

And God help me, I’m relieved.

26

NIKOLAI

Iwatch her through the tactical scope, tracking her movement through the forest like the apex predator I was conditioned to be. Ninety minutes of pursuit, and she’s finally reached exactly where I wanted her—the hunting blind clearing, surrounded on three sides by dense timber with only one viable escape route.

Which I’m already blocking.

Her chest heaves as she spins in the center of the clearing, those eyes wild with exhaustion and need. A heat that makes my cock throb against my tactical pants as I watch her realize she’s trapped.

There’s my girl.

She ran well. Better than I expected, actually. Seven miles through difficult terrain, using natural cover and elevation changes to mask her movement. The underground fighting circuit taught her endurance, but this—this is pure survival instinct refined into beauty.

Something that belongs to me.

I emerge from the tree line, letting her see me coming. I watch her pupils dilate as she takes in the full picture—six-foot-four of controlled violence moving toward her.

“You ran well, beautiful.” My voice carries through the clearing, roughened by my own exertion during the chase. “But you knew how this would end.”

She backs toward the far tree line, but her movements lack conviction. Her body knows what mine knows, that the chase is over. The real game is just beginning.

“I could keep running.” Her words come out breathless, but there’s no desperation in them. Just a statement of fact.

“You could try.” I close the distance between us with measured steps, watching her retreat until her back hits the trunk of a massive oak. “But we both know you don’t want to.”

But she doesn’t stay there.

She pushes off the trunk and comes at me. Bare-handed, no weapon, all hundred and ten pounds of her against two hundred and thirty pounds of trained violence.

She aims for the soft places—eyes, throat, knees. Quick combinations she learned in the cage circuit. Strategy that works when you’re half a man’s size and need to drop him fast.

I let her land two strikes before I catch her. One glancing off my jaw. One into my ribs hard enough that I’ll feel it tomorrow. Then I sweep her leg and have her on her back in the pine needles, my weight pinning her hips, both her wrists trapped above her head in one of my hands.

She’s panting beneath me. Eyes wild. Cheek scraped from the forest floor. Magnificent.

“You let me hit you,” she rasps.

“I wanted to feel how hard you’d try.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the idea, beautiful. You wanted this to happen the entire time we were apart.”

Her chest rises and falls rapidly and she manages to shove me off her enough to jump to her feet.

“That’s not—” she starts, backing away right toward that oak tree again, then cuts herself off.

“Not what?” I’m close enough now to smell her—sweat and adrenaline and that particular musk that tells me her body is responding exactly as I planned. “Not true? Not why you stayed in Chicago for three months instead of disappearing?”

Her breath hitches.