Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(25)

He hears a voice, and then I hear it too—a call in the distance.

I suck in a breath, about to scream Help! when his heavy hand clamps over my mouth, preventing me from calling out.

“Oh no, you don’t. We’re going to stay very still right here.”

I look around. The foliage is thick enough to hide us.

And all the while he hasn’t stopped touching me, stroking me, making me feel this terrible pleasure. Usually it’s good, but now it’s hateful.

His hand is tight on my mouth. I breathe through my nose, control fraying, and I go for his eyes with my newly freed hands.

Too slow. Before I can get at him, he has his face tucked, burrowed into my chest, making it so I can’t get at his eyes or even his neck. Like he knew that’s what I’d try. I tear at his ears, but he seems impervious to that.

I bite the finger of the hand over my mouth. He swears and shifts his hand, squeezing my jaw shut. I grab at his hair, pulling, but the feeling between my legs is building; my mind is melting.

He won’t stop stroking me, won’t take his hand off my mouth, and before I know it, I’m holding on to his hair instead of pulling it.

I don’t know what’s crazier—the recklessness of him staying on top of me, getting me off instead of running, or the fact that my fingers are tightening in his hair. Or the fact that he’s nuzzling my breast through my soft sweater, like he knows I’m done going for his eyes and throat. I’m feeling dizzy from breathing fast through my nose, or maybe it’s from what he’s doing to me.

Maybe it’s just that he’s hit a place with the right pressure and I can’t believe how good it feels, and I never want him to stop.

Can he tell? He continues his circling motion as I writhe under him, pushing into his hand. He tightens his seal over my mouth, stroking slowly. I can’t stop arching into him, pulling his head into my breast by his hair, wanting, needing.

And suddenly I shatter with feeling. Sharp, bright, intense. It goes all through me in waves, this beauty, this wildness. I’m breathing hard and he is, too, and nothing matters except that feeling, pulsing on and on. His fingers stop as the intensity fades, leaving me boneless, because it was wonderful. Too wonderful. Too wild. An orgasm. I’m aware that I’m crying. I feel bewildered.

He shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have liked it.

He pulls away from me, grabbing hold of my arm with one hand so that he can wipe his eyes with his sleeve.

And I’m coming down from an orgasm. The best of my life. And coming to my senses.

That’s when I call out. “Help!”

“Hello?” A man’s voice. “Someone out here?”

“Fuck!” he whispers. And then he does something crazy—he lets me go. I scramble for my glasses and leap up, running toward the voice, putting them back on as I go, getting myself back.

I can see a figure up ahead through the trees. “Help me!” I scream, pressing my skirt back down as I dodge around trees and right into a pair of strong arms. A policeman. I’m sobbing hysterically, pointing at where Grayson was. “He’s…he’s…”

Suddenly the man stiffens.

“On the ground. Slow.” Grayson’s voice.

The cop lets me go, and I back off. Grayson’s behind him with a gun to his head.

“You’re not going to get out of this,” the cop says. But I can see that the cop’s holster is empty. Grayson took his gun.

“I think I’ll get out of this just fine,” Grayson says.

The cop spins, and suddenly they’re fighting.

Help the cop!

But I don’t know how to help. They’re a fury of fists and snarls, wolves fighting over a carcass—or deadly fighters grappling over a gun. Grayson catches him with an elbow, smashes a fist into his face, and the man’s down. I gasp. No.

“Run and I’ll kill him,” Grayson says, pulling the man’s arms around a tree and cuffing them, the cop is hugging a tree. “Fuck,” he says, ripping his black T-shirt down the middle, baring his chest like a wild animal. He pulls the shirt off and rips out a couple of strips with a glance at me. “I mean it.”

“You’re not a cop killer,” I hiss. I want to believe that. Partly because I believed in him for so long, reading his work and building him up. But also because, if he’d kill a cop, he’d kill anyone. Me.

He slaps the stunned man in the face. “I can tell you know who I am. Am I a cop killer?” he asks as he wads up one of the strips.

“Yeah,” the cop says.

“See?” Grayson stuffs the fabric into the man’s mouth. Then he ties a gag over his mouth. “This worked out, don’t you think?”

I’m frozen where I stand, hope draining out of me as I watch him blindfold the cop.

He turns and stalks toward me. I back up and hit a tree. His eyes look puffy, but apparently he can see just fine now. He grabs the front of my sweater. “You’re not getting away, you understand? You can’t get away from me.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Say it like you mean it.”

“Okay.”

He’s staring at me weirdly. This softness comes into his face.

“What?” I ask, afraid even to move.

He lifts a hand. I flinch, but he just touches my cheekbone. Even though he’s actually being gentle now, his touch stings. “You’re cut. Did I do that?”