Page 29 of Rook Takes Queen
He says one last word, and this one I understand. “Run.”
For half a breath I just blink at him.Run? Why would I run?
And then something in me lets go of its leash. Because…of course I need to run. Every nerve I have suddenly screams at me to let go and move. My whole body coils toward the trees, and it isn’t fear, it’s the oldest game there is and some buried animal part of me already knows the rules. I need to make him work, make him earn this and he needs to chase. And I will do everything in my power to make this hard for him. This won’t be easy. He’s given me the head start required by this formal claiming. I can’t waste this time.
I run as fast as I can, rushing through the trees.
I’m small and barefoot and I have never been fast in my life. I am up against a powerful male built by the deep rock he works with. So, I use the only thing I have ever been good at.
Strategy.
I don’t run blind. I run the way I run a board, three moves ahead, watching the terrain resolve around me, reading the lines of attack. The obvious path is downhill toward the stream and soI don’t take it, instead I cut left across the slope into the dense trees, because he’ll expect the water, everyone goes for the water. I weave through the trunks where his bulk will slow him down. Then I double my own trail, step where I stepped before, and break off at an angle through a thicket that’ll tear at him, but it lets me through.
Meanwhile, my feet are killing me because I’m doing all of this barefoot. I swear I’m stepping on every single godsdamn rock and stick in this simulation. This place is fake; couldn’t they have made it a little lessreal?
Behind me, a roar goes up that shakes the leaves from the branches.
My heart slams. He’s coming.
Oh hells.
Go. Go. Go.
I push faster, my mind spinning the board, and here’s the thing I keep almost laughing at even as the fever climbs my spine…I’m trying to outthink the one person on this planet who thinks the way I do. Maxon sees everything. He’s never lost. All the weaving and hiding I’m doing is probably for naught. If this were a game across a board he would read me in four moves and trap me in the corner and name me Queen while he did it. But on the other hand this isn’t a game across a board. The fever has him and he probably isn’t calculating anymore, he’s pure drive and need to fuck me, no strategy in him at all.
And I realize, ducking under a low branch with my pulse roaring in my ears, that for once it’smeseeing the board andhimwho can’t be read. Because you can predict a strategist. You cannot predict a male who has stopped thinking entirely and is simply, relentlessly, coming for you. Wanting to impregnate you immediately.
And my own body is betraying me the whole time because I desperately want that too, but I’ve got to make this hard for him.
Jeez. This is crazy. But good crazy.
Every stride the fever pulls lower and hotter in my body, and some traitor part of me is slowing, wants to be caught, wants to stop running and let him put his hands on me. I have to fight that as hard as I’m fighting the terrain.
I make it to the stream after all, not because it was the smart move but because the slope finally won. I splash in and wade upstream against the current, quiet as I can, because water doesn’t hold a trail. Then I climb out on a flat rock, double back along the bank, slip into a stand of ferns and go still, pressing my hand over my own mouth, chest heaving.
For a moment, nothing. Just the rush of the stream and my own thundering pulse.
I almost believe I’ve done it. Has he actually lost me?
And then the ferns explode and he’s there, bursting through them like the whole forest gave way. I can’t help the shriek that flies out of my mouth. I bolt and don’t make it two steps before an arm like a tree limb closes around my waist and takes me down.
Maxon is so freaking big. How did I forget how big he is? He turns us as we fall. Even now, even gone to the fever, he twists so that he hits the ground and not me. I land on the broad cradle of his body and the grass instead of the dirt. His fevered erection presses against my stomach.
Then he rolls me under him and his mouth comes down on mine.
It’s his first kiss. Our first kiss.
This is not the careful male who sat across the table from me each day this last week. This kiss is a claiming all its own, fangs and tongue. His growls rumble through me, causing my clit to throb. Logical thoughts dissolve like sweetener in traq. I’m drowning. I want to drown. Every part of me is screaming to just let go and let him have me.
Which is exactly when the last clear-thinking sliver of me remembers the rules.
Make it hard, Hallie. The mark is a gift.
So even drowning, even fevered, I pick my spot. I turn my head and sink my teeth into the thick muscle where his neck meets his shoulder and bite down with everything I have.
He throws his head back and roars, and it isn’t pain in it at all. It’s triumph. “Mine,” he snarls, looking down at me with my mark on him, blood on his throat and the most undone joy I have ever seen on a male’s face.
“Yours,” I gasp back, and mean it down to the floor of me.
