Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Then we take a shower together like we’re trying to save water. Although the amount of time we take to finish our shower, because we’re busy doing other things, cancels out all our conservation efforts.
At which point comes our daily horse ride. I’m happy to report I’m able to keep my eyes open on rides now and watch the world streak by. He still takes me to that blue lake where we sometimes have a picnic. We spend hours under the sun, doing the same things we do on our bed every day: lazing around, talking, kissing, making love. I say making love because that’s what it feels like. It feels like slow summer days, sticky and sugary, drenched in sun and love. Days made for fucking on the grass and then skinny-dipping after.
Even though I know these days aren’t just for lazing around. I know why we’re here. Why he has me trapped on his ranch, away from everything and everyone else. It’s not because I’m that girl for him, but because the world isn’t safe for me right now. But I like to pretend. I like to pretend he brought me here because he wanted to keep me isolated from the world, his ring on my finger, and this is our life together. This is our past, present, and future.
Which is why one day, I decide to give him a gift. His fantasy.
Since it’s a surprise for him, I don’t tell him until we get there. At the blue lake. Until he’s helped me off Tulip and we’ve spread out our picnic supplies. He’s kneeling on the ground, digging into the little basket we brought with us, when I do it. When I spring up to my feet and place something on the ground by his knees.
A coil of his rope.
I stole it from the side of his bed and brought it with us. His eyes jerk up from his task and come to settle on me. Swallowing and keeping our gazes locked, I take a step back. His body goes on alert, his chest flexing and his spine snapping straight. A thrum goes through my body as I take another step away from him.
And another and another until I see his jaw is clenched and his hands are fisted at his sides, his eyes flashing. And then, without further ado, I spin around and take off running.
I know exactly what I’m doing. I knew it the moment the idea of running away from him came to me. The idea of taunting him to catch me. There’s only been one other time when I taunted him, really taunted him, to come get me, and it was the night in the parking lot. The night I was trying to draw him out and get answers about my best friend’s disappearance. Unbeknownst to me, he was a bigger hunter, and instead of me capturing him, I was the one who got snared.
I’m sure that this time around as well, he’ll trap me in ways that will make me want to stay his prisoner until the end of time. Only I didn’t know how much because I’ve just entered the woods that line the edge of the lake when I hear a sort of a whistling sound cut through the air. A noise similar to what I heard in his barn the night he was throwing knives. Before I can process that, I see a flash of white streak through my vision, and a second later, I’m tripping on my feet. But before I hit the ground, a pair of arms come around me and cushion my fall.
And I realize what just happened. That whistling sound was him throwing the rope at me. A rope with a noose at the end. That went around my body and caught me at my legs, making me stumble. Which can only mean one thing, right? It means that he used his rope to lasso me.
He lassoed me. Like I’m some… sort of animal. And now he’s on me, his chest panting against my spine, keeping me trapped on the ground with his heavy, suffocating weight.
My palms and my cheek scrape against the dirt and dead leaves. “Did you just…”
His mouth is at my ear, his arms squeezing my middle. “Told you. Don’t run if you don’t wanna be chased.”
I dig my nails into the ground. “But you d-didn’t chase me; you… threw your rope on me. You lassoed me like—”
He moves his face, his stubble scraping against my other cheek, his chest vibrating with his growl. “Act like a runaway filly; get treated like one.”
I clench my eyes shut as goose bumps rise on my skin. As chills skitter up and down my spine, dancing, fluttering, stinging. “You’re psychotic.”
His chest shudders over me, his breaths hot, his arms tight and trapping, much like his body. “You knew that, though. Still, you gave me the rope. Dangled it, almost. Before takin’ off when you know, you fuckin’ know, how my chest cracks and my heart stops every time you try to get away from me.”