16. Takedown
~ brIDGET ~
He’d rolled me onto my stomach and had me pinned to the dirt, one arm around my chest keeping me from using my arms, the other clapped over my mouth, though he had left my nose free so I could breathe. It wasn’t what was stopping me.
My body quivered, demanding oxygen. But my thoughts were oddly calm and everything felt… weird.
He gave a snarl in my ear and my heartrate ratcheted up another notch because he sounded so feral—exactly how I’d hoped he would be.
But then he noticed I wasn’t struggling and he went still. I felt that large body over mine, suddenly freeze. Poised.
“Bridget?”
He had been panting a little, but his breath stopped for a moment as he listened—and obviously confirmed that he couldn’t hear mine.
“Bridget, breathe… Bridget, fucking breathe!”
The world spun as he flipped me over and I found myself laying on my back, staring up the sky, the sunlight angling through the hole in the treetops above. Then all of it was shadowed by a huge guy, leaning over me.
For a split second my eyes widened—was I going to see his face? But I should have known. When his face came into view it was shrouded by some black mesh facemask—some kind of protective gear for sports, I thought. It circled his entire face and was strapped on underneath his hood. I couldn’t see anything but the shadow of his features under it, which was disappointing. But not the most important point of fact in that moment.
I needed to fucking inhale.
My chest began to pump in and out, but my lungs wouldn’t inflate. And my heart was racing so fast I wondered if it was finally going to give out.
“Bridget, look at me. Is it your heart?”
I shook my head and thumped my chest awkwardly with a shaking hand, but I wasn’t sure if he knew what I meant.
“Shit. Shit.”
He’d kept his voice in that low rasp—half whisper, half growl. But I thought I heard a hint of his real tone when he swore the second time.
All sense of danger and predation dropped from his posture and suddenly, he was nothing but business. With another muttered curse he leaned down and shoved an arm under my shoulders, pulling me up to sit with low, firm instructions.
“Your diaphragm is in shock.”
Not the kind of diaphragm I had hoped you’d shock for me, I thought and wished I could say. Wished I could see if he smiled under that mask.
“You need to sit up—brace your hands on the ground… Good. Now, lean forward.”
I did as he said, but my lungs still wouldn’t inflate. I clawed one hand into my hair, the other into the dirt under me.
“It’s just a muscle spasm. Don’t panic.”
I wasn’t. I was still eerily calm. But my vision was beginning to tunnel.
“See if you can cough—hard. Push air out so your diaphragm will reset.”
I tried, but it seemed I didn’t have any air left. That second impact on the ground after he tackled me had taken care of the last of it.
Then my heart pinched, and for the first time, a trickle of fear entered my bloodstream, because my heart would do all kinds of crazy loops, skips, and dips, but it didn’t usually hurt .
One of those calloused hands flattened on my back and began to rub, first in firm-but-slow circles, then from the base of my spine, up, then back down.
“You need to relax, Bridget,” he graveled. If I could have breathed, I would have giggled because it occurred to me that he sounded like Batman. “Let your shoulders drop. Relax your hands—don’t grip. Tell your body that you’re ok—”
Suddenly, without warning, as my chest fought to expand, my lungs caught and I sucked in a huge wheezing breath.
“Oh, thank God. No, don’t sit up—stay leaning forward. Just breathe. Concentrate on keeping it slow and deep, in through your nose for a count of four, out through your mouth. The last thing you need is to hyperventilate now…”
He continued issuing instructions in that deep husk of a voice, but I stopped listening.
The moment I caught my breath my vision cleared. My hands were still shaking, but I thought that was from the adrenaline more than anything else.
I kept my head down just like he said, but as soon as I was breathing normally, I started to plan. Five more breaths, then I was going to run.
But then he started checking my vitals—fingers pressed at my carotid artery as he watched the timer on his phone and counted the beats of my heart.
He got close and peered into my eyes, touched my forehead. He lifted my hand and checked the color of my nails.
“I think you’re okay… I think you’re okay.” He sounded relieved.
“I know you’re s-supposed to k-kill me, but I didn’t think it would b-be this quick,” I quipped breathlessly.
He grunted and put his hand to my back without a word. I took a second to realize he was counting my breathing rate.
Which meant pretty soon he was going to realize I wasn’t out of breath anymore. Which meant I needed to get ready to run.
“Just take your time,” he growled, sitting back on his heels and finally taking his hand off me. “You’ve got a waterbottle in that bag, right?” He pushed to his feet and started trotting towards the shopping bag I’d tossed to the edge of the clearing. “Don’t worry, we can go back to our game when the time is right, but you need to be checked—”
I pushed to my feet and sprinted in the opposite direction from where he’d gone.
Behind me, I heard him hiss a curse, then heavy footsteps raced after me.
I laughed, but kept running and didn’t look back. I needed to focus on putting each step in the right place so I wouldn’t turn an ankle, and conserving energy to make this chase as long as possible. I was fast, but he was going to catch me. It was inevitable.
Thirty seconds later those footsteps were gaining fast and I knew it was time for evasive maneuvers. But I waited until I heard him pounding right in my wake and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, then I juked him and darted between two trees that had plenty of room for me, but were close enough to slow him down a hair.
“Sonofabitch!”
I snorted, but kept running, eyes on the ground to avoid getting tripped by a tree-root, snickering to myself because I was getting a little lightheaded. But my heart was full and slamming in my chest in the best way.
Of course, it couldn’t last forever. I could feel him gaining again, the ground vibrating under my feet with his heavy steps. I’d had to slow because we were off-trail and I was worried about falling, spraining something. Plus, after the oxygen deprivation, my body was tiring fast. Even though I was pretty fit, I didn’t get a lot of lengthy cardio.
Clearly Cain did, because even though he was a lot heavier than me, he wasn’t slowing down.
There was a moment when I could hear his panting. Then he gave the most delicious chuckle and rasped, “Got you.”
I tried to juke-step again, but I was too late.
A steel bar of an arm whipped around my stomach and suddenly I was running on air, stomach swooping as Cain grunted and whirled me around, curling his other arm around me too and slowing to a walk.
He’d pinned one of my arms against his body, but the other was free, so I used it for leverage, locking against his shoulder and shoving out and away, not giving him the chance grip me close to his chest and take control.
But he just hitched me a little higher on his body, held tighter with the first arm, then used his steel forearm to knock my wrist upwards so I lost my leverage.
He chuckled when I hissed and spat like a cat, struggling and kicking, but now that he had me without traction, he’d turned me over his hip again, clearly remembering how I’d kicked him in the shins last time.
Then he turned back in the direction we’d come from, but after a few steps, he hesitated, and turned again.
I clawed at his arm, trying to break his grip around my waist. But he was wearing a thick hoodie and even though I knew I was pinching him, I couldn’t seem to cause enough damage to even make him swear, let alone let me go.
“Put me down, or I’m going to scream!” I wheezed, still fighting.
“No you aren’t. You want this as much as I do,” he growled in that low rasp and my stomach trilled.
I stopped fighting for a second and looked up at him. “Ohhhhh, do we get to do the fucking before the killing?” I whispered. “I thought it was all teasing before the Big Event. But I’m definitely up for that.”
“Fucking shameless.”
“Lee.”
He looked down at me and even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was staring at me like he was confused. “What?”
“Lee,” I repeated. “Fucking shameless ly.”
He snorted and started hauling me deeper into the trees. “Dear God, you have problems.”
“Said the pot to the kettle.”
He was shaking his head, but before I could come up with anything else to keep him talking, he carried me through a thicket of bushy trees that caught at my hair and scratched my skin.
“Ow! Where’s your chivalry? Push the branches away with one of those ham-sized fists, please.”
“Oh, that’s the part you protest?”
“Only because I don’want to— oh!”
I stopped with a gasp because Cain had brought me to a little clear area surrounded by those thicker bushes and trees, and he’d lifted me upright, shoving me against one of the larger pines, and used his thick body to keep me there while he wrestled with me to grab both my hands that I’d gotten free again when he repositioned me.
It took him a second, but in the end, his brute strength won.
When I stopped struggling, I was pinned against the truck of a big pine, both wrists clamped in one of his hands, his fingers unyielding, like manacles, and locked together above my head. He’d stretched my arms high so I couldn’t get leverage, so I was arched back, hands pinned and body bowed against his.
We would have been nose-to-nose, but he was wearing that mask, so instead I was staring at a black mesh with vague shapes behind it that I knew were a nose and eyes and brows… but I couldn’t make out any actual features.
“Well,” I whispered. “Now you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?”
He gave a predatory rumble in his chest and arousal exploded behind my navel.
My breath got shorter as he brought his free hand up to my throat and clamped it there, not placing enough pressure to stop me from breathing, but the inherent threat was there.
And delicious.
I swallowed hard and felt my throat press against his calloused palm.
He brought his thumb to the point of my chin and pressed it higher so I was looking down my nose at him. Then he leaned in, that mask brushing the side of my jaw as he whispered in my ear.
“The question is, what won’t I do with you, Bridget?”
“My first guess is taxes.”
A little splutter burst from him before he caught himself. “You’re a smartass,” he rasped.
I shrugged as best I could, trussed up like a turkey. “One man’s obnoxious is another man’s endearing.”
“This man finds your humor both hilarious and utterly inappropriate. You really aren’t scared of me, Bridget?”
“Not especially. I mean, I know you could snap me like a twig, but urgh — ”
“How about now,” he whispered as he clamped that hand on my throat hard enough to cut off all my air.
My body fought reflexively—I writhed and for the second time in minutes, tried desperately to suck air through gritted teeth.
“I’ve given you too much freedom and not enough warning,” he whispered in that husky rasp. “I am not to be toyed with Bridget. Do you believe me?”
Then he released my throat enough that I could gulp a lungful of air and nod frantically. “Yes, yes, I believe you,” I gasped, that heady mix of terror and arousal twisting my chest into knots and my belly into coiled need.
“Good, then keep your mouth shut, and listen. As long as you don’t speak, I’ll allow you to breathe, do you understand?”
“Y—” I started to answer and he clamped down on my throat again so the word cut off in a strangled yelp.
“I said, as long as you don’t speak,” he hissed. Then he released my neck again, slowly this time.
I panted, chest heaving, my breasts rising and falling right under his chin because of the way he had me arched back.
Then he pulled his head back far enough to look me in the eye, though I couldn’t see it through that mask.
I nodded without speaking, thrilled that he’d actually made me feel cautious to speak.
“Good girl,” he rumbled warmly, rolling his hips against me so I could feel his growing erection straining against his pants. My body throbbed in response . “Now, as tempting as you are, I’m not ready for this hunt to end yet. So we have a little problem, because you’re trying to run this game, and it’s not yours to control.”
I looked up, towards where he had my wrists clamped, and down towards his hand on my throat, then returned my gaze to that mask to remind him that I had very little control at all.
He gave another husky chuckle that made me want to bite my lip.
“I’m a patient man, Bridget. But this is my hunt, and I will not let you steal it from me. So we now have a new rule…”