My footsteps echo down the hallway, too loud in the silence, and I hear it before I can place it—a footstep behind me. Not running. Deliberate. The same pace I'm setting, like he's matching me breath for breath.
My heart slams against my ribs. I don't turn. I don't slow. I keep walking, past the guest room I've been hiding in for three days, past the bathroom where I sat on cold tile while he waited on the other side of the door. The house feels huge and small at the same time, corridors stretching in front of me, the walls pressing in.
His footsteps don't speed up. They don't slow down. He's not trying to catch me. He's herding me.
My fingers find the brass knob of the east wing door. Cold. Solid. I feel it bite into my palm.
"Running only makes it better."
His voice comes from the shadows behind me, low and rough, and I freeze. Not because I'm afraid. Because the sound of it travels straight to my thighs, to the heat pooling low in my belly, and I am so, so fucked.
I feel him before I feel him. The warmth of his body at my back, the air shifting as he steps closer. His breath lands on the nape of my neck, hot and slow, and then his hand finds my hip.
He doesn't grip. He doesn't pull. He just rests it there, palm flat against the red silk, and I can feel the heat of it through the fabric like a brand.
"I told you to miss me," I say, and my voice shakes. I hate that it shakes. But I don't move his hand. I don't pull away.
"I did." His mouth is so close to my ear I can feel the shape of the words against my skin. "Three hours. It felt like three years."
His thumb traces a slow circle on my hip, and every nerve in my body wires itself to that single point of contact. I should turn around. I should face him. I should—
I run.
Not fast. Not graceful. I wrench the door open and I move, my heels clicking against the hardwood, the sound sharp and desperate in the corridor. I don't look back. I promised myself I wouldn't look back, and I keep that promise even as my chest burns and my lungs beg for air.
I hear him behind me. Not footsteps now. A laugh. Low and dark and full of hunger.
The Animal. I hear the Animal in that laugh, and I run faster.
The east wing hallway is narrow, lined with old family portraits I've never really looked at, faces that watch me flee. I pass a door, another, another, and I don't know where I'm going. I just know I can't let him catch me. Not yet. Not until the ache is unbearable. Not until he needs it.
His footsteps are faster now. Still measured, still controlled, but closer. He's closing the distance, and I feel the panic and the thrill and the raw wrongness of wanting to be caught, wanting to be taken, wanting to be his.
I round a corner and I almost collide with the wheelchair.
Margit's hands catch the wheels, stopping herself inches before I slam into her. Her grey eyes—Kaelen's eyes—widen once, then narrow with something I can't read.
"Dagmar." Her voice is calm, measured, the voice of a woman who has seen too much to be startled. "You look like you're fleeing a crime scene."
I gasp for air, my hand pressed to my chest, my heart a wild thing trying to escape my ribs. "I'm—" I can't finish the sentence. I don't know how to finish the sentence. I'm running from your son because I want him to hunt me.
She tilts her head, studying me. The silence stretches, and I feel Kaelen's footsteps slow behind me. He's stopped at the corner. Waiting. Letting me have this moment because his mother is here.
Margit's gaze flicks over my shoulder, and something passes across her face. Recognition. Understanding. She's seen that look before—on her son's face, on the faces of women who ran from him and the ones who ran toward him.
"I see," she says quietly. "The hunt has begun."
I can't breathe. "Margit, I—"
She raises a hand, cutting me off. "I won't pretend to understand what the two of you are playing at. But I know my son." Her eyes find mine, sharp and knowing. "If you run from him, he will chase. If you let him catch you too easily, he will lose interest. You've chosen your strategy well, child."
I stare at her, my pulse thudding in my throat. She knows. She sees the whole game laid out in front of her, and she's not judging me. She's not scolding me. She's approving.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admit, and the truth of it scrapes my throat raw.
"That's the best way to hunt." She smiles, a thin, knowing curve. "And the best way to be caught."
She wheels past me, and I feel the brush of her hand against my arm. A brief touch. A blessing.
I stand frozen in the hallway, my breath still ragged, my body still buzzing. The thrill is a living thing inside me, electric and wrong and so good I can taste it. I am so fucked up. I am so completely, irreversibly fucked up, and I want it. I want him to lose control. I want to see the Animal, the one they all whisper about, the one who takes what he wants and doesn't apologize. I want him to break the leash he keeps himself on, and I want to be the one who makes him do it.
I ran on purpose. Every step, every heartbeat, I chose this. I chose to bait him, to push him, to test the edges of his control. And now I'm standing in the east wing hallway of his mother's house, knowing he's twenty feet behind me, knowing he's waiting to see what I do next.
I can feel his eyes on my back. I can feel the weight of his attention, the heat of it, and it makes me want to keep running. It makes me want to turn around.
I take a step. Then another. I walk slowly now, each footfall deliberate, my heels clicking a rhythm I can feel in my teeth. I'm heading toward the end of the corridor, toward the window that looks out over the back garden, toward the moonlight pooling on the floorboards like spilled silver.
I hear him move behind me. One step. Then another. Matching my pace again, the same slow, deliberate tread.
"Margit's asleep," he says, so close I feel the words stir my hair. "I checked."
My heart stutters. I don't stop walking. I reach the window and stop, my reflection ghostly in the dark glass, his silhouette behind me. I can see his shape, the width of his shoulders, the way he fills the frame of the hallway like he was built to own every space he enters.
"You wanted me to miss you," he says, his voice a low rumble. "I did. I missed you so goddamn much it felt like a wound."
I close my eyes. My hand presses flat against the window, the cold glass grounding me. "And now?"
"Now I'm done missing you."
His hands find my hips, and I feel the pressure of his body at my back, the heat of him, the hardness of him. He's not gentle. He's not rough. He's certain, like he's already decided how this ends and he's just letting me catch up.
"I said you want me," I whisper, my voice barely a breath. "I didn't say you could have me."
His laugh is low, dark, the same laugh I heard in the corridor. "You ran. You wanted me to chase. Don't pretend this is something it isn't."
He turns me around, his hands gripping my hips, pulling me against him until there's no space left between us. I feel his cock hard against my belly, and the heat surges through me, pooling in my cunt, making me wet and aching and desperate.
His eyes are dark, his pupils blown wide, and I see it in him—the hunger, the edge, the thing he keeps caged. It's there, right there, trembling on the surface, waiting for permission, waiting for the word.
"Say it," he says, his voice a rasp. "Say you want the Animal."
I look at him. This man who ignored me for years, who let me believe I was invisible, who showed me the most intimate parts of himself with other women while I watched. This man who is now trembling with the effort of holding himself back, who is looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters.
I reach up and touch his face. My fingers trace the line of his jaw, the stubble rough against my skin, and I feel him shudder.
"I want the Animal," I say. And I mean it.
Something breaks behind his eyes. The leash. The cage. Whatever he was holding in, it snaps, and I see the change in the way his body shifts, the way his hands tighten on my hips, the way he crowds me against the window until the cold glass presses against my spine through the silk.
"Then you get him," he growls, and his mouth crashes into mine.