Chloe
“Ilove her!” I squeal, skipping into the parking lot in the direction of Colin’s truck. “We should move her closer.”
He chuckles behind me, his steps slow and steady as he follows me.
“She seems to love you as well,” he calls.
I press my back to the cool steel of his truck when I make it there, and let him close in on me, his eyes sparkling with curiosity as he closes the distance between us, my chest one breath away from touching his.
“Have you met before?” He tilts his head, his gaze bouncing between my eyes.
I’ve never met her before, but she knows me. And I know her, in every woman I’ve tried to save before.
“Yeah,” he says on a sigh, and that one single syllable is exactly what I needed to hear.
My lips are itching to touch his, tingling with the memory of our kiss, to feel the soft skin of his mouth on mine again. The air between us feels more alive than it’s ever felt before; tiny, electrified molecules kissing his skin before carrying to mine with little zaps of potential.
But I need to know if he saw what I saw in there.
“That nurse was a little off, don’t you think?
” He studies my face as I stare up at him, his gaze bouncing from my eyes to my lips to the thrum of pulse in my neck and back.
Maybe he’s seeing it all again, wondering why I was so forward.
Why I came between his mother and the medication she so desperately needs to heal and stay healthy.
I’m seeing it all again myself, the brashness of my actions, now that the adrenaline has worn off.
But she needed my help, she asked for my help.
She made a silent plea for protection and there’s not a single cell in my body that could have turned a blind eye, even with the detective who may or may not want me in prison sitting right next to me.
Colin rolls his lips between his teeth, looking torn and confused.
He flattens his hand on his mouth before squeezing his chin in his fist. “Yeah,” he breathes.
“A little off.” Glancing back at the complex, he flattens his hand on his truck next to my head.
“I’ll call her doctor, see if I can get her a new nurse. ”
I have a better idea.
“You wanna go for a walk?”
“A walk,” Colin repeats, leaning his body away from mine, caught off guard by the suggestion.
“Hunting,” I continue, nodding past his shoulder to the expanse of tall grass and woods at his back. He turns to face them, and then back to me, his gaze casting down my dress as he probably thinks neither of us are dressed for such a task, but I kick a boot out.
“Why do you think I wore these?” I smirk, shouldering past him. My skin explodes where our bodies touch, a cloud of energy forming at the point of contact and expanding across my chest like a storm ready to open on the ground below it, wet, moody, and raging.
I turn back to face him, walking backward as my boots bounce against the ground in a taunt. “Always come prepared!” I shout, and then I turn and bolt for the tree line in the distance, the loose edges of my dress fluttering against my legs as I bound away from him.
I don’t need to look back to know he’s behind me, I can feel it. He picked up chase the moment I dashed away from him, his feet thundering against the asphalt beneath us.
After a handful of paces, the ground beneath my boots shifts from rough and hard to soft and crunchy. The tall grass tickles and itches at my legs as I speed through it in a blur. I’m giggling, the frantic energy of running from him consuming my thoughts, allowing only one to break through: Faster.
My heart skips and my hair flows wild and unruly behind me as I break into the tree line, immediately casting my path into shade.
Colin is a pavement princess. A suit and tie who doesn’t like getting his boots dirty. And I love him for that, but this is my element. The wilderness. The hunt. He will learn to love it. He will learn to find me here.
There’s no actual trail, just layers upon layers of moss, pine needles, and branches under my feet as I hurriedly glance around, looking for the easiest path to traverse even as my body keeps barreling forward.
This isn’t my normal hunt. I’m not expecting to find a lonely skeleton in these woods. Rather, he’s hunting me, and I’m hunting his heart.
Colin’s breaths are fast and heavy behind me, his long legs eating up the distance between us.
My stomach is tight and fluttery with anticipation, like I’m slowly careening over the edge of a roller coaster waiting for the drop to take my breath away, to send my stomach flying into the sky.
And then I veer left, my legs parting in a split to clear a downed tree.
There’s an incline that I shuffle halfway down before flattening my back against a wide redwood.
Colin’s footsteps slow as he scans the area for me.
Silence. A howl of wind through the trees.
Shaky breaths quiver through my chest as my fingers flatten behind me against the bark.
I cast my face toward the sky, my body trembling with excitement as a crunch on the forest floor behind me causes a bluejay to squawk and flutter off a limb above, soaring through the trees and gliding to a stop on another perch with a better view of us.
Tell me, Mr. Bluejay, is he close?
Will he find me?
Will he like what he sees?
He screeches.
“Chloe,” Colin sings through the trees. “I wonder what part you like best, the chase or the catch?”
I swallow, my breaths coming faster and the nerves pitter-pattering in my stomach at the smooth roll of his voice through the wind.
“Can’t say myself,” he muses, his voice traveling in all directions around me. The slow, soft crunch of his footsteps sound in the near distance. “There is something about the thrill of the hunt.” Silence.
No sound but the blood whooshing in my ears as I ready to run again.
“But the catch—” Colin’s hand whips around the tree, circling my wrist. But if he thinks I’ll make it easy on him, he is sorely mistaken. I tear out of his grip and bound down the rest of the hill, leaping over another tree as the butterflies dance around in my stomach.
My feet aren’t back on the ground for more than a moment before Colin’s arms are circling my body in a bear hug. I scream when he grabs me, the force of his body teetering us forward, but he rights us again, spinning me and pressing my back flush with one of a hundred trees in our vicinity.
We’re breathless, his chest pressing against mine, skin flushed, lips pulled into easy smiles.
He’s watching my eyes, and I’m entranced with his, how perfect and lovely his natural happiness looks and feels on his features.
Like nothing was meant more for this brooding detective than the fun of a chase.
The chance to forget everything for a moment and just run.
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” I breathe.
He tilts his head back in laughter, and I watch the ridges of his throat move to accommodate the foreign sound, maybe even the foreign feeling.
Then his eyes are on mine again and his hand is weaving into my hair at the base of my skull, wrenching my neck back against the rough bark of the tree.
“Of course you’re not,” he groans. His other hand slides against the side of my face in a rough drag, the heat of his palm possessive and claiming as it grips me.
His thumb glides against my lip, rough at first like he’s not in control of it, a wild ferality blazing to life in his blown pupils.
Then the gesture softens as he tugs my lip down and I feel the cool air on my teeth before it pops back into place.
I fist the fabric of his shirt in my hand, the feel of his hand in my hair drawing my body taut as a wire, ready to snap, like the feelings he’s been dancing around for as long as I’ve known him.
My other hand fumbles with the button and zipper of his jeans, his hard length impossible to miss as I free it from its confines and it twitches in my palm as I stroke it.
“Reckless,” he whispers on a moan, tickling his lips against mine.
The slight touch has the heat in my chest dropping down, down, down, kissing a path of warmth between the sharp points of my nipples, torching through my gut and spiraling into a dangerous whirlpool between my thighs.
I arch my back off the tree, my nerves frenzied with desire, and he slides his hand from my hair, squeezing my waist between his fingers.
“Chaotic.” He presses his face into my neck, and I move to give him full access, savoring the feel of his skin against mine as his lips feather kisses on my throat.
“Dangerous,” he hisses, and it’s like he’s relaying to me the blaring warning signals his mind is setting off.
Thrusting his hips into mine, his cock throbs through the fabric of my dress against my clit that is aching for friction. For him.
“Yes,” I whimper in affirmation, even though I’m afraid to.
This is all those things. I am all those things. And this is his chance to walk away from it all, though he has yet to fully understand exactly what he’d be walking away from. I feel only slightly guilty that he doesn’t exactly know what he’s walking into. Emphasis on only slightly.
Because my body ignites where he touches me, and his eyes flame with indifference to the fact that he thinks I’m arrant and wild.
I’m an unruly, offbeat dance of energy around his carefully constructed foundation of morals, and he’s reaching his hand out to me anyway, offering to join me though the movement of his soul is more rigid, more restrained. Barely.
He bends toward the bottom of my dress, his hand disappearing underneath until he’s standing straight again and his fingers are swirling on the edge of my lips.
Colin forces out a tense-sounding breath. “Fuck, Chloe. You’re so fucking wet.”
His lips descend toward my neck again as his fingers slowly disappear inside me. And they’re such a perfect fit.
“It must be the chase you like then?”