Chapter 9 #2
I wanted him to find me. To tear through the dark and slam me into a wall and make good on every filthy promise. I wanted to hear his voice again in my ear, telling me to stop running. To beg. To open my thighs and let the predator take what he’d earned.
But he didn’t come.
And that was the worst part.
Because the longer I had to wait, the wetter I became.
I crept forward, passing a tank with a massive Burmese python curled like sin in a glass coffin.
This wasn’t a zoo.
It was a jungle.
And I was the only prey that mattered.
Hours passed.
Or maybe it was minutes. Time didn’t work the same here.
I moved through biome after biome, the zoo sprawling like a fever dream.
Past flamingos in an eerie, moonlit lagoon.
Past crocodiles half-submerged in black water.
Through dusty plains and faux savannas where giraffes stood still as statues and lions dozed behind fences too far away to offer comfort.
Every space was open. Vulnerable. I felt watched even when I was alone.
Especially when I was alone.
Sometimes I heard footsteps. A shuffle in the brush. The creak of something metal. I never knew if it was another woman or one of the hunters. But I felt him. Not in the air. Not even in the trees.
Inside me.
My body knew Ronan before my eyes ever would .
The waiting was exquisite torture.
Every breath, every cautious step, was laced with the possibility that he might be around the next corner. That this moment—this ache—might break into something I couldn’t control. That the sharp edge between predator and prey might blur and shift until I didn’t know which I was.
I slipped behind a dense wall of palms, my heart pounding—not from fear, but from the unbearable ache low in my belly. The quiet was thick here, muffled by greenery and the heavy breath of nighttime humidity. I pressed my back against a tree, tilted my head to listen.
Nothing.
And yet my skin prickled.
God, I wanted him.
So much I could barely breathe with it.
I closed my eyes, chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm. My hand slipped beneath the waistband of my shorts. Just enough to feel the heat of me. The wetness.
I wasn’t touching for release—I was touching to to imagine.
His hands on my hips, strong and unyielding.
His breath at my neck.
His voice in my ear, telling me what to do.
How to open.
How to beg.
I bit my lip hard, stifling the soft gasp that rose in my throat.
There was something filthy about it—standing here in the dark, surrounded by the scent of animals and earth and wild things, and losing myself to the thought of him.
To the idea of being claimed. Possessed .
My fingers circled once—slow, tentative—and then stopped.
No.
Not yet.
I wanted it, but I wanted it from him.
I wanted to be held down and praised and ruined, all at once. I wanted his mouth on me, his throbbing cock inside me, his voice breaking apart while he made me his.
The restraint made it worse.
The ache sharper.
And still I ran.
Not always fast. Not in fear. But with purpose.
The thrill wasn’t in the chase. It was in the certainty. I would be caught. I would be claimed. But until then, I got to savor the stretch of this wild place. The power in my legs. The sweat on my skin. The heat blooming between them.
And with every step, something shifted.
I was still running, but not just from him.
I was running into something. Into myself.
With each curve I rounded, each shadow I ducked into, I felt more in command—not of the hunt, but of my own desire.
I wasn’t just the girl who wrote a desperate, filthy plea to a stranger.
I was the woman living it. Breathing it. Loving it.
This was mine.
I felt it in my bones, in the boldness of my movements. The confidence curled low in my belly, winding tighter the longer I stayed free. Not because I wanted to win—but because I wanted to be worthy of losing. Of surrendering. Of collapsing beneath him not in fear, but in victory.
And maybe … maybe this wasn’t just about what I needed .
Maybe I wanted to give something, too.
To be the kind of woman who could make a man like Ronan come undone. Not with control, but with the loss of it. I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him—ruthlessly. Recklessly. With hunger so sharp it bordered on reverence.
Because giving him pleasure—watching his mouth fall open, hearing that first involuntary groan when I finally dropped to my knees—suddenly mattered as much as chasing my own.
I wanted to earn the moment he couldn’t hold back.
I wanted to be the reason he shattered.
He spoke to me again once—when I was crouched beneath a canopy near the Africa loop, tucked behind a set of artificial rocks where a zebra enclosure shimmered in the distance.
“I see you,” Ronan said in my ear.
My breath hitched. “No, you don’t.”
His laugh crackled through the line. “You think hiding behind a boulder makes you safe?”
“I think I like that you’re looking.”
A pause.
Then: “I’m not the only one.”
That did something to me. Twisted the heat in my belly into something feral.
Because if someone else touched me first …
He would lose control.
And I wanted that. Almost more than I wanted to be found.
My fingers drifted down again, pressing the inside of my thigh through the bodysuit as I crouched lower. A tease. A warning.
He must’ve seen. The thought drove me wild .
“You touch yourself again,” he growled, “and I’ll make you come in front of them.”
Them.
I didn’t know who he meant.
Other hunters? Orchestrators? Observers?
I didn’t care.
I wanted them to watch.
No. I wanted him to watch them watching me.
Because this wasn’t just about pleasure.
It was about power.
Mine. His. Ours.
A rustle in the distance jolted me upright. I slipped deeper into the shadows. Past a faux-rock tunnel, through a long, open-air corridor, and into an exhibit that looked like the African savanna—grasses knee-high, gentle hills, and a painted sunset still glowing faintly behind the horizon.
The zoo had given these animals space to roam.
And now I was roaming, too.
Becoming the wild thing I was always meant to be.
Another buzz at my wrist.
Another voice.
His.
But softer this time.
“You were made for this,” he said.
“I’m not sure what this is.”
“Freedom,” he said. “You just didn’t know what it cost.”
A sob caught in my throat—not from fear or pain—but because he was right. I had never felt so alive. So electric. So real.
And all I had to do was let go.
Let him catch me.
But not yet.
Not quite yet.