twenty-seven -Brynn-
twenty-seven
-Brynn-
I hear Ares curse behind me, but the sound is fading as the distance grows between us. I don’t run from fear, more to prove a point. If he wants me to leave, he’ll have to catch me first.
The pine needles don’t do a great job in silencing my footsteps as I run between trunks. The forest floor drops away beneath me as I take a steep incline, using roots and rocks to hold on.
Behind me, I don’t hear anything. Ares moves like a ghost when he hunts, but I expected that from him. Somehow I feel his focus narrowing the distance between us, no matter how fast I run.
This isn’t a real escape. It’s a challenge.
I duck under a low-hanging branch, disturbing a pile of dead leaves on purpose as I take a sharp left. I’m trying to mislead trail signs as my actual path of flight is right into a dense thicket where the underbrush will mask my tracks.
My leg still gives me trouble, but I can dismiss it at this point and try to step heel to toe so that the pressure minimizes the imprint in the damp earth. Ares taught me this himself, during one of our sparring sessions.
Now I use his lesson against him. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. I can hear him right on my tail—and I can, just because he wants me to hear him.
Doesn’t matter. He won’t win.
“The one who gets the other first wins,” I call out, my voice bouncing between trees, impossible to exactly pinpoint. He knows where I’m at anyway. My challenge sounds ridiculous as I’m running and not chasing, but I have my plan.
He doesn’t answer me. Still, I know he’s smiling. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t fight me on this, because he’s accepting my terms.
I double back, crossing my own trail at a perpendicular angle before dropping into a shallow stream bed. The cold water soaks through my boots, but the tactical advantage outweighs the discomfort.
Water leaves no scent, no footprints. I follow the stream for fifty yards before leaping onto a rock, then to another, working my way to the ground, without leaving tracks.
But then, a twig snaps. This is not a coincidence. Ares just announced his arrival.
Is it a warning or a taunt? I don’t know for sure, but I press my back against a wide trunk, controlling my breathing until it’s imperceptible. My eyes scan the forest, seeking movement among the shadows.
Nothing.
He’s playing with me, letting me think I’ve lost him when he’s actually—
A rush of air behind me. I drop and roll as his hand grazes my shoulder, missing me by inches.
I’m on my feet instantly, sprinting in another direction, adrenaline rushing through my veins. I caught a glimpse of his face as I escaped him. He’s enjoying this as much as I am.
I reach a clearing where sunlight barely hangs onto the sky. Stopping here would make me visible. I go around its perimeter, keeping the shadows and watching for movement on the opposite side.
I keep running over fallen logs and dense underbrush. Each step proves to him I can.
I vault over a moss-covered boulder, rolling to absorb the impact on the other side, and then press myself flat against the soil, listening for any signs.
Fuck, that hurt.
His footsteps are loud, not even trying to mask his approach. He’s driving me like a hunter flushes game. And I fucking love it.
Let him think he will win this.
I crawl beneath the low-hanging branches of a young pine, from where I watch him emerge into the small clearing I just left.
He doesn’t bother hiding his presence, just stands perfectly still, his head slightly tilted as he scans the forest, and rays of sun catch in his hair, framing his warrior braids. And I’m already wet for him, the place between my thighs, burns with need.
He turns slowly, patiently surveying the surroundings. I hold my breath as his gaze passes over my hiding place, praying that my heart will stop the thunderous pounding.
His eyes narrow, his head tilting slightly again, like he’s got something.
Could he hear the beating of my heart?
I tense, ready to bolt. But then he moves on, continuing in the wrong direction.
I wait until he’s disappeared among the trees before emerging from my hiding spot.
Instead of running, I climb. The pine’s lower branches provide easy access, so I scale it with ease, ascending until I’m twenty feet above the forest floor.
From this vantage point, I can see Ares realizing his error and beginning to double back.
He walks more carefully now, recognizing he’s been outmaneuvered, but refusing to rush and make any other mistakes.
When he passes directly beneath my tree, I make my move.
I drop silently, the distance between us closing in an instant. My legs lock around his neck as I land on his shoulders. He doesn’t even flinch, but my hands grip his head, and my thumbs are positioned where a twist would snap a normal man’s neck.
“If you weren’t a god, you’d be dead by now,” I declare, the triumph in my voice, all too obvious.
For a second, he remains frozen, then a laugh vibrates through his body and straight into mine, where we connect. “Really, really good, little curse.” His hands wrap around my thighs, not to take me down, but to steady my position on his shoulders. “You’ve earned yourself a prize for your victory.”
“What kind of prize?” I ask, curious and excited about what this victory brought me.
This was a game we used to play during training. If I won, I got my prize, and if he won, he got his. The problem is, I’ve never won before.
“What would you like?” he asks with that I already know in his voice.
We are alone in the forest, miles from McAllister‘s cameras, surrounded by nothing but trees.
The adrenaline of the chase is still buzzing in my system, transforming into a different kind of heat as his hands move up on my inner thighs.
“Hmmmm,” I laugh, reminding myself of something the girls showed me earlier this morning. “I saw something on Booktok earlier today,” I say without shame.
“What is it?” he asks, and I can still feel a smirk on his face.
“A command you must follow.”
“Really? Let’s hear it.”
I hold back a chuckle. “BAGBALTPUICOYF.”
He takes a second, but doesn’t figure it out. “What does that mean?”
I smile, then run my hand over his lips. “Be a good boy and—”
“Lick that pussy until I come on your face,” he fills in the gap as his laughter fills the woods. “Now, how can I refuse that?” He turns me around on his shoulders until my pussy is directly in his face, my legs wrapping his shoulders, and his hands slide under my ass to support me.
“Raise your hands and grab that branch,” he orders, and I follow in a heartbeat. “If you let go, I stop. Understood?”
I nod, wrapping my fingers around the rough bark. For a few heartbeats, he leaves me suspended, my feet dangling above the ground as he hooks his fingers into my pants and peels them off, along with my panties.
Ares cocks his head back to look at me, smiling, as I once again have him off-script, messing with any other plan he might have had with me. He approaches me just enough that I feel the brush of his breath between my legs, and his gaze locks onto the newly exposed skin.
There’s no embarrassment of exposure, just the anticipation of what comes next.
He raises his hands, grabbing my thighs, guiding each leg around his broad shoulders as the heat of his mouth radiates again against my skin.
But he doesn’t start. He just studies me for a long moment. “Remember, I stop if you let go,” he murmurs, and the words vibrate right against my clit.
I want to tell him I won’t let go, but I also know he’s skilled enough to break me, so I don’t want him to turn this into a challenge. The heat of his mouth is dangerous enough.
He begins with a single, lazy stroke of his tongue. Testing me like he wants to memorize every reaction. Then another, tracing slow circles that make my hips buck against his face before I even realize I am moving.
He alternates between feathery laps and flat pressure, the first making me miss the second every time, but equally amazing. It feels like he’s conducting an experiment in cause and effect. Each time I gasp or twitch, he recalibrates, doing something even more shattering.
The only noise in the trees is the wet sound of his mouth and the raggedness of my own breath as I fight the urge to let go of the branch and dig my hands into his hair.
This is going to be much more difficult than I suspected.
My eyes are narrow, lap after lap, until a rough suck of my clit rips a scream from my lungs. That changes the dynamic of things as he starts to tongue-fuck me, entering my channel with the rhythm that makes me want to bite the fucking branch, not just hold onto it.
Victory never tasted so good, but as I’m building up toward that high, he stops and looks up at me from between my legs. “I want to hear you,” he says, not as a command, but as something undeniable. “Let it echo.”
It’s only then that I realize I haven’t let out any sounds. It’s not because my chest isn’t heaving with them. It’s because I think I forgot how to breathe. How to even function.
I’m doing all I can to focus on that damn branch and his tongue.
He buries his face between my thighs again, and this time he’s merciless.
His mouth is everywhere at once—lips, tongue, even teeth nipping with just enough pressure to make me fucking lose my mind, lose any sense of reality as I jerk and moan.
It’s a string of whimpers and helpless little cries that I’d be mortified to hear played back.
There’s a low appreciative hum in the back of his throat as he hears me. He slides one hand up until his palm is splayed against my stomach, grounding me as he works me over.
The other hand keeps my thigh in place, opening me wide open, so there’s nowhere to escape.
When he senses I’m close—because of course he senses it, this man knows me inside out by now—he switches tactics. He slows down to a more teasing pace, then speeds up again, driving me to the edge before pulling me back, like I’m a fish on a line.