Her breath was coming fast and ragged by the time she reached the path. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of taking the dim trail. She’d been trying to avoid the path as much as she could, highly aware of its significance.
Dylan had informed her that it was on that very trail that Addie Durand had been kidnapped and Dylan himself had been stabbed as he tried to defend her. At the time, he’d been a fourteen-year-old boy, and Addie a child of four. When she’d first arrived at the camp, Alice had thought she’d been chased by a ghost on that trail. The ghost had turned out to be a man Dylan had hired to follow her. The flesh-and-blood, secretive man and Alice’s unconscious, hazy, yet atavistic fear of what had happened in those woods twenty years ago had blended to create Alice’s phantom.
She didn’t feel afraid today. She was too out of breath and focused on tricking her prey.
Several hundred feet down the trail, she decided it was time to make things a little difficult for Mr. Cigarette Man. Spotting a particularly thick growth of underbrush and trees, she ducked off the path, careful to mute her footsteps. Once she was sixty or so feet off the trail, she used a thick oak for cover, pressing her back to it and willing her escalated breathing to slow. She listened for a tread on the path.
Any second now . . .
Was that a rapid footfall in the distance? She twisted her neck, craning her head around the tree to capture the elusive sound. Yes. Her follower was coming. Alice tensed in preparation to follow him and then confront him. She had a few choice words in mind. She hoped like hell Mr. Cigarette Man conveyed them verbatim to his boss.
Suddenly a glove-covered hand was covering her smirk. She spun around, her eyes springing wide.
Dylan eclipsed her vision. He pressed his big body tighter against her, pinning her between him and the tree. Alice realized she’d been struggling in panic and went still.
“Shhh,” he hissed.
They both listened as the footsteps grew louder on the path in the distance. Alice stared up at Dylan’s tense face. He hadn’t shaved yet. His thick hair was mussed. It had fallen forward, parenthesizing his dark, narrowed eyes. He looked scruffy and rugged and delicious.
Shit.
He looked like he did every morning when he left his bed and escorted her safely to her cabin. She’d forgotten that he went horseback riding every morning after that. The gloves pressed against her lips were his riding gloves. But she hadn’t heard a horse. How did he know to find her here?
He wasn’t watching her, but instead staring into the distance. She knew he was tracking the approaching footsteps. It was hard to focus on the man on the path, however, with Dylan’s long hard body pressed against hers. He wasn’t allowing her to move or look down, but she could tell he was wearing jeans, like he did most mornings. The fly of them was pressing against her lower abdomen. His body felt dense and unforgiving against her flesh. His masculinity was flagrant . . . pervasive; about as impossible to ignore as a blow to the head. She caught his scent.
Against her will, arousal blazed in her body. Two nights away from him. Too long.
His stare suddenly zipped to her face, as if he’d sensed the flash fire inside her, like the spark of lust had jumped into him. He pressed his crotch closer. She felt his cock harden against her. The man was on the path directly in front of them now. Alice hardly cared. She twisted her head angrily. Dylan lowered his head until his face hovered an inch over hers, and removed his hand from her mouth.
Instead, he used his mouth to silence her. It was a good thing, too, because Alice whimpered in stark longing at the hard pressure of his kiss. He grabbed her shoulders and bunched her to him, his actions a little angry and a lot possessive. He plunged his tongue between her lips, a thirsty man slaking himself. In that moment, Alice knew for certain that he was every bit as desperate as her.
She tried to pull her hands up so that she could touch him, but he pressed even closer, preventing it. Her hands remained pinned against the tree. His cock felt fuller now, the sensation of it commanding every fiber of her attention that wasn’t already ruled by his demanding kiss. Time passed. The man on the path was forgotten. She drowned in his taste. Her head swam. God, she needed air.
She needed him more.