Chapter 8
The park dissolves into a blur of dark trees and flickering orange light. Dead leaves and twigs crackle underfoot, a sound that’s swallowed by the screams still echoing from the center of the park.
He pulls me along like I weigh nothing, his grip on my bicep a band of iron. Every attempt I make to dig my heels in is met with careful yank.
We’re heading for a silhouette against the dark sky—a dilapidated groundskeeper’s shed, half-swallowed by ivy and neglect.
The smell of rust and damp earth hits me before we even reach the door. It hangs ajar on one hinge. He doesn’t slow down, just shoves it open with his shoulder and hauls me inside, kicking it shut behind us.
Darkness. Complete and utter. I can hear him breathing, harsh and controlled through the mask’s modulator. I can smell him. Cedar and something cold, like winter air. And sweat. He’s sweating.
He hasn’t let me go. He pulls me deeper into the shed, my feet catching on discarded shovels and coiled hoses.
The air is thick with the smell of old gasoline and mildew. When he finally stops, he spins me around, shoving me back against a workbench. Tools clatter to the floor. The hand that was on my bicep moves to clamp over my mouth again, hard.
“Not a sound,” the distorted voice hisses against my ear.
My body acts before my brain does. A surge of pure, primal panic takes over. I twist my head and sink my teeth into the fleshy part of his palm. Hard. I taste the salt of his skin.
He curses—a muffled sound of pain and fury that rumbles through his chest and into mine. For a second, his grip falters. I think I might have a chance. But then the hand is gone from my mouth only to be replaced by his entire body slamming me into the workbench. The air whooshes out of my lungs.
“The last thing I need right now is a distraction,” he snarls, the voice modulator crackling with the force of his anger.
He pins my wrists with one hand above my head, his other arm banding across my chest, crushing me against him. I can feel the hard planes of his torso, the solid wall of muscle. And lower—holy shit—I can feel the distinct, rigid press of his erection against my thigh.
The fight drains out of me, replaced by a sharp terror that is somehow worse than the panic. He’s aroused by this. By my fear. By my pathetic attempt to fight back.
He’s breathing like he just ran a marathon, his chest heaving against my back. His head dips, the hard plastic of the mask pressing against my cheek.
“Do you have any idea,” he whispers, the voice dropping, rougher now, “what you do to me? I tell you to stay away. I tell you to stay home. You never fucking listen.” He gives me a little shake. “You just push and push. Why can’t you just listen to me for once?”
He sounds genuinely exasperated, like I’m the one being unreasonable. The sheer audacity of it is so stunning I can’t even form a response.
He starts moving again, dragging me with him toward a sliver of light coming from under a door at the back of the shed. He shoves it open and pulls us into a tiny, cramped storage room.
A single, bare bulb hangs from the ceiling, casting a sickly yellow glow over shelves of rusted paint cans and old hockey equipment. A small, grime-covered window looks out onto a different part of the park.
I can hear them now. Voices. Close. Laughter that doesn’t sound fun, but cruel. A group of guys, their shapes moving past the dirty window.
Instantly, he shoves me into a narrow niche between a metal locker and the wall, pressing his body tight against mine, shielding me from view.
One hand goes back over my mouth, softer this time, almost a warning instead of a punishment. His entire body is tense, coiled like a predator that’s scented other predators on its turf.
He’s watching the window, utterly still, and I realize with a jolt that he’s hiding me.
He’s afraid of them finding us.
The knowledge gives me a spark of courage. He has a weakness.
I twist my head just enough to speak against his palm. “I’m going to scream.”
He doesn’t even look down at me. His focus is locked on the window as the voices get louder. “No, you’re not,” he rasps.
“They’ll hear me,” I push, my voice muffled by his hand. “They’ll find us. Isn’t that what you’re worried about?”
He finally looks down at me. Through the dark holes of the mask, I feel his gaze burn into me.
“You won’t get the chance to make a sound,” he says. The words come out hoarse. And for a split second, the electronic distortion wavers, a glitch in the system. Underneath it, for just a fraction of a second, I hear him. I hear that familiar, low timbre. That cadence.
Zane.
My heart stutters. It can’t be. It can’t.
Before I can process it, before I can even breathe, his hand is gone from my mouth and the lower half of the mask is pushed up just enough to expose his jaw, his lips.
Then his mouth is on mine.
He crushes his mouth against mine, lips hard and unrelenting, prying mine open until I taste him. The rough scrape of his stubble burns against my skin. My hands are still pinned.
Then, just as quickly as the kiss started, it changes. The pressure lessens. His tongue sweeps against my lips, not forcing, but asking.
His free hand comes up, not to pin me, but to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking just under my ear. Then it slides down, fingers splaying across my throat, resting over my pulse. He’s not choking me. He’s holding me. Measuring the frantic beat of my heart against his palm.
A shudder rips through my body. A small, pathetic sound escapes my throat— a whimper.
His reaction is immediate. A low groan rumbles in his chest, and I feel the vibration of it through his entire body.
He deepens the kiss, and it’s no longer punishing. It’s desperate. Hungry. This is a kiss of a thousand pent-up frustrations, and I don’t understand why. But I want to. Want to understand. Need to understand.
My mind is screaming at me to fight, to knee him, to bite him again, but my body…
I’m leaning into him. I’m kissing him back. Timidly at first, then with more confidence as his thumb continues its hypnotic stroking against my throat.
I can feel the tremor that runs through him when my lips finally soften, when I give back a fraction of the pressure he’s exerting. A massive shiver rocks his entire frame, a tangible shock that runs from his shoulders down to where he’s still pressed hard against me.
And with dawning, stomach-plummeting horror, I realize my own body has responded in kind. My cock, tucked uncomfortably in my tight jeans, is hard.
The kiss goes on forever. I didn’t know a kiss could be this long, this all-consuming. It’s like he’s trying to breathe me in, to devour me, to learn every secret I have with just his mouth. He tastes of anger and something that feels achingly like need.
He finally breaks away, tearing his mouth from mine with a guttural gasp. We’re both panting, our breath fogging in the cold air of the tiny room.
He rests his forehead against mine, the cold plastic of the mask a strange barrier between us.
“Fuck,” he breathes out, his voice raw and the modulator completely gone. It’s just his voice. Zane’s voice. “See? You’re messing with my head. As usual. Distracting me at the worst possible time, Beeler.”
Hearing my name in his real voice, after that kiss, shatters something inside me. The fear is still there, but it’s tangled up with a confusing curiosity. I need to see him. I need to know for sure.
My hand, which he’s released, comes up slowly. I reach for the edge of the mask.
“Don’t,” he warns, his voice sharp.
I ignore him. My fingers touch the slick plastic. I’m going to pull it off. I have to—
His hand shoots up and grabs my wrist in a vice grip, stopping me an inch away. With his other hand, he yanks the mask fully back into place over his mouth. The electronic distortion clicks back on. The moment is over. Zane is gone. The monster is back.
“Don’t ever try that again,” he says, and the coldness in the modulated voice hits like a strike to the gut. He lets go of my wrist like it burns him.
“We have to go. Now.” His tone is all business, clipped and urgent. “Listen to me very carefully. Some of these fuckers are making sweeps of the perimeter. We have maybe fifteen minutes before they circle back to this sector. We are getting out of this park in that time.”
He leans in close, his masked face inches from mine. “I will get you out of here. But if you fight me, if you make a sound, if you do anything other than exactly what I tell you to do, I will not hesitate to hit you hard enough to knock you out and carry you. Do you understand me?”
I stare at him, my mind reeling. The other fraternity members. The hockey players. He’s talking about them like they’re the enemy, not his teammates. A part of my brain registers that the danger outside must be real.
But as the words sink in, a more insidious thought worms its way through the fog of my terror.
What if this is just another part of the game? His game. How convenient for him, this entire chaotic ‘Hunt.’ The perfect, violent backdrop for him to play the hero.
He tells me to stay home where I’m safe. I disobey. And now, he gets to prove his point. He gets to manufacture a crisis where he becomes the only solution.
He corners me, terrifies me, kisses me until my brain short-circuits, and then offers me protection from a danger he describes in vague, menacing terms. It’s utterly twisted. He’s making me depend on him.
Are those guys outside really the biggest threat to me right now? Or are they just a convenient excuse for him to drag me through the dark, to hold me, to force me to rely on the very person who’s been terrorizing me for weeks?
Maybe this isn’t a rescue. Maybe this is the next stage of his plan, and I walked right into it just like he knew I would.
The real trap isn’t this park. It’s him. It’s this terrifying, possessive man who has to be Zane Ivarsson, and the fact that he’s making himself my only option.
My body can’t be lying, though. It recognizes him. It craves the danger he represents even as my mind screams that he is the danger.
And that realization, more than anything else, is what drives me crazy. He can threaten to knock me out, he can drag me wherever he wants, but he’s already won. Because my body responded to that kiss, and some sick, broken part of me wants more.
He doesn’t move from our position, his hard body still pinning me into the recess between the cold metal locker and the concrete wall.
My brain is trying to process his threat—knock you out and carry you—while my nerves are still screaming from the memory of that kiss.
He shifts his weight, just a fraction of an inch, pressing closer as if to reassert his dominance after his brief moment of raw honesty.
His thigh slides against mine. The rough denim of his jeans catches on the fabric of my own, and in that tiny movement, the undeniable ridge of my erection is trapped between us.