Page 41 of Beautiful Prey

Good boy.

He cuts left where the pines open out, gambling everything on the flat, and it’s the right gamble, the only one left to him, because on level ground his lighter frame finally tells. For twenty strides the gap between us holds.

Light help him, it even widens.

I let it. There’s a particular pleasure in prey that can still make me work for it this late in the chase, and I haven’t had one in two seasons. I don’t intend to rush it.

“You’re quick. Somebody teach you to run like that, or did you just get a whole lot of practice being chased?”

“Shut up.” Panted, furious, wasting breath he can’t spare.

“Feel that?” The ground tilts back uphill under us and the gap starts to die, because uphill is where the weight tells, uphill has always been mine. “That’s where the flat ends and the part where I get you back begins. It tips my way in the end, prey. It always does.”

“I’m not.” The sand turns the words into a cough and he spits it out and forces them through anyway. “I’m not yours to toy with.”

“No?” I’m close enough to hear the exact stride where his legs start to come apart under him. “Then stop running like you already know how this ends.”

He goes down hard, a root or a rock or nothing at all, and comes up with mud to both elbows. Somehow he finds his feet again and throws himself onward, every step rougher than the last, until the trees simply stop giving him places to hide.

The ridge narrows ahead into bare stone. A wall of rock rises on one side. Empty air falls away on the other.

My prey runs straight into the dead end.

He spins around, chest heaving, sand and rain streaking down his face. The knife is gone. The pack hangs from one shoulder by a single strap.

There you are.

I slow to a walk for the last few yards. Three days of watching. Three days of waiting. Three days of wondering what he’d look like when the running finally stopped.

Better than I’d imagined.

His eyes stay locked on the visor. They don’t leave it, not even when I stop an arm’s length away. His whole body trembles with exhaustion, every breath dragging through grit and fear, and still he squares his shoulders as though defiance alone might move the mountain behind him.

“Stay away from me.”

I smile. “You stopped running. Now come and thank me.”

My hand comes up between us, slow enough for him to watch it. His back presses harder into the rock. There’s nowhere left for him to go.

“Tell me something, prey.” I close my fingers around the front of his jacket. “Was it worth saying no?”

His throat works. “Fuck you.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” The grin breaks loose before I can stop it. My thumb finds the line of his jaw, warm despite the rain, trembling beneath my hand. “That’s the face I’ve been chasing.”

His breath comes apart against my wrist. I feel it, quick and warm, and I feel the exact moment his body forgets to keep fighting, the small tilt of him into my hand before his mind catches up and hates it. His lips part. His eyes drop to my mouth, then jerk back up, furious with himself for where they went.

I lean in. Close enough now that the storm can’t touch him, close enough to feel the heat coming off his skin, close enough that one more inch is the whole answer to the question he’s been running from since the desk.

There it is. Fucking finally.

The sky cracks open right over us.

For the smallest fraction of a second neither of us moves. The sound rolls through the stone under my boots, deep enough to feel before I understand it, and his eyes leave me for the first time.

Mine don’t.

His hand comes up. “Sir⁠—”