Chapter 10 Sneaky When Wet #2
Ragnar strode toward the water, claws and fangs desperate for release. Brioni’s face lit up with delight—he was sure of it this time with the brightness of the moon on her features—and then alarm followed swiftly after. Wide eyes darted in every direction, and her lips curled up as she bolted.
The water slowed her as she flung herself toward the nearest bank.
Ragnar had no desire to dive into the pond, so he let her scramble up onto the earth, clumsily slipping and further hindering her escape.
It would be easy to cover the distance between them and catch her, but Ragnar hesitated.
She had just done what he’d asked—well, what he’d told her to do, he realized uncharitably, though she’d certainly not complained—and there was that other thing…
the thing that made him scoop her up the time before.
If she simply returned to the barn with him, he could quell it, remind himself that his desires were too feral for his own kind, let alone for a small human who had so recently been threatened by another demon.
But then Brioni ran, and all of those rational thoughts were chased right out of his brain.
Like a kewniq through the ferns, she bounded into the forest, a shock of white and orange scampering between the dark, twisted trees.
His pulse hammered, and his vision tunneled.
She was running toward danger, directionless and shoeless, but also away from it.
Ragnar was perhaps a fool, but he knew well enough what he looked liked stalking prey: dangerous and merciless.
But then she chanced a glance over her shoulder, and there was no mistaking the wickedness in the smile she wore.
Ragnar’s body responded before his mind could completely catch up.
He tore through the woods, instinct compelling him under branches and around rocks with only the slightest effort.
His eyes were locked on her back, and his senses were overwhelmed with her scent, that strange human smell that lingered even after she was cleansed.
Laughter echoed through the trees, and he opened his mouth to respond, but a growl rumbled up his throat instead.
Blood rushed past his ears, but he didn’t need sound, he barely needed sight, her smell sharpening.
His body took over, cock leading the mutiny and straining painfully against its trappings.
Catch her, claim her, it roared. Sink yourself inside her, push her to the brink of pleasure, make her yours.
Ragnar grunted as he cleared a fallen tree with ease. But not before I teach her what happens when she runs from me.
He was on Brioni in moments. It had been no challenge—perhaps next time he would give her a longer head start—but it was an utter thrill to reach out a clawed hand and wrap it around her waist. Her sharp inhale only spurred him on, her twitching stomach under his touch a promise of what he would have her doing beneath him.
He redirected her toward the nearest buckthorn tree and threw his free hand out so it collided with the smooth bark first, bringing them both to an abrupt halt.
Brioni’s shallow, panicky breaths were exhilarating, belly oscillating under his palm.
He’d have her gasping for air soon, pleading, screaming his name.
Pinned between him and the tree, she wriggled in his hold, and her ass ground itself against his cock.
With one arm firmly around her middle, the other with claws digging into the bark beside her head, there was nowhere for her to go, yet she tried, hands pressed to the tree for leverage.
He thrust his hips forward, and she made a startled cry as his cock grazed the cleft of her ass.
Ragnar dipped his head and took a deep breath of her human scent. Even wet, she was fragrant, a delicious mix of musk and fruit he’d yet to taste. She soaked through his clothes, but her body was as hot as fire, and with his next exhale came a groan he could no longer hold back.
He expected her eyes to be huge when she finally looked over her shoulder, but her lids were heavy instead, and her lips fell open as she mewled out a sound that could only be arousal.
She pushed her hind end against him harder, swiveling her hips and coaxing his already hard cock to more painful attention, but she kept her chest pressed to the tree like she wanted to be crushed.
Fuck, she felt amazing, and he wasn’t even inside her. But that…that wasn’t…He couldn’t.
Ragnar released her middle, scraping his claws down the buckthorn and dislodging them. He took her by the hips, spinning her and pushing her needy backside to the tree instead of thrusting against him.
That earned him a shocked gasp, her eyes finally going round and wide, but her taut nipples were there too, still soaked and begging to be nibbled.
He would have devoured her right there if not for the whimper that came next, a reminder of how he’d gotten here in the first place: she’d gone down to the pond alone where it was far too dangerous, she’d undressed, defied him, ran.
“What do you think you’re doing running off like that?” he grumbled, clasping her upper arms to hold her at bay.
“Making you chase me,” she said without a lick of shame.
Whether it was aggravation or his cock that rose then, it hardly mattered, the two inextricably linked when it came to such an infuriating little woman. “Why?”
Her eyes flicked down his front, now wet and surely revealing in how his soaked trousers clung to his body. “I wanted to know what would happen when you caught me.”
Ragnar took a heavy breath, and the air between them stilled. She didn’t blink, didn’t speak, but he knew she couldn’t want what he longed to give her. “This is not a game.”
“But—”
“No,” he snapped and watched her eyes flicker with genuine fear. “Not with me, Brioni. You can’t play games with me.” He released her and took a step back.
Her face lost its sultry guise, and its playfulness fell away too. “I just want your attention.”
“You won’t like my attention when you get it,” he snarled.
“But don’t you…” She squeezed her arms around her middle, words lost as she shrank in on herself.
Ragnar stepped to the side and pointed back the way they’d come. “Go get your clothes on.”
She gave him a last mournful peek between the drying strands of her curls as if he’d actually sentenced her to the kind of punishment she deserved for being such a willful, disobedient thing.
Neither of them could get that lucky though, not when it was only the tenth chapter.
Brioni pushed off the tree, indignation filling her up as she threw her shoulders back with a haughty huff. And because the beast inside Ragnar couldn’t help himself, he slapped her backside as she passed.
Brioni jumped, squealed, then fell still. Wide green eyes turned back to him, her face bright red.
“Go,” he bit out, and like she had always been attentive and good-willed, she scurried through the trees back toward the pond.
Ragnar watched her go, the urge to run, to pin her down, to fuck her senseless subsiding even as he clenched the warmth in his hand. Then finally he followed after, vowing never to touch her again.