I glanced behind me. Shit. I must have gotten off the main path somehow and ended up on a game trail. Doubling back would cost me precious minutes I couldn’t spare, so I forged onward, following what looked like another game trail that ran parallel to the ravine and further up the hill. I had to slow down because of how close it skirted to the ledge. One wrong step could send me tumbling over, but I took heart in the knowledge that if I had to be careful, so would Josh.

As much as I didn’t want to lose, part of me couldn’t wait for him to catch up so the chase could start for real. He’d given me a five-minute head start. To be sporting, he’d claimed. He’d grown up in the boonies, after all, and some of his fondest memories were bonding with his stepfather during their camping trips. Rob was a country boy through and through, and Josh had learned a ton from him about tracking animals and how to survive if he ever got lost in the wilderness.

I didn’t know anything about bushcraft, but I did have two advantages on my side: speed and endurance. I’d been a sprinter on my track team in high school, making it to the state championships my senior year. Unbeknownst to Josh, I’d spent the past three months skipping the gym two days a week to go to a local track instead. I alternated between sprint and distance training, pushing myself to the max because I had no desire to make this easy on him.

Yes, I longed to be hunted down and fucked in the forest, but I wanted the full experience more than anything. I wanted the chase. I wanted to make Josh earn the right to claim me. From the hungry gleam that entered his eyes whenever we discussed our plans leading up to today, he wanted that just as much as I did, and I couldn’t wait for him to let his darker side out to play.

We didn’t have many rules, but the ones we’d agreed on were iron-clad, and if either of us broke them, we forfeited. First and foremost, there was no cheating. We had GPS trackers on us in case we got lost, and promised not to check them unless an hour passed without Josh finding me. Dirty play was forbidden as well. We couldn’t throw sand in each other’s eyes or try to set booby traps – not that I would even know how to go about doing that.

The last rule was that only penetration counted as a catch. If Josh caught up to me, I could still win if I managed to keep his dick out of me until time ran out.

On paper, it toed the line of dubious consent, but I was more than into it, so maybe it was more like con-dub-con? Plus, Josh was adamant that all I had to do was tell him to stop, and he would. Just like always.

Part of me hoped it came to a knock-down, drag-out fight for dominance. I loved the idea of him physically overpowering me, and we’d had so much fun with orgasm denial and edging that trying to keep him off me would only make me wetter for him.

Not that I wasn’t already soaked.

I’d been primed and ready to go since the second I stepped into the trees, turning to blow a goodbye kiss at Josh and telling him not to go easy on me just because I made him feel weird in the tummy.

He’d barked a laugh and told me to run, and the sight of his eyes darkening with desire sent me sprinting into the woods.

Initially, I’d wanted to do this at night to really play into the scary vibes, but we’d decided it was too dangerous. The risk of tripping over something and either spraining an ankle or knocking ourselves out just wasn’t worth it.

A sound pulled me from my lustful thoughts, and I spent a heart-stopping moment thinking Josh had found me, but it was only a squirrel fleeing up the side of a nearby tree. I refocused my full attention on the narrow path, breathing a sigh of relief as it started to veer away from the ravine and widened enough that I was able to put on more speed.

The trail continued to pitch upward, heading higher into the foothills of the mountains. I crested a small rise and pounded down the other side of it, spooking a deer and her fawn when I reached the bottom.

A brook ran through the center of the gulley, and I decided to hurdle it instead of taking the time to find an easier crossing. My toe caught on an exposed root when I landed on the other side, and I nearly went sprawling face-first into the dirt.

I paused for a second to catch my breath and make sure I hadn’t pulled anything. When it seemed like I’d escaped unharmed, I took off again, lifting my watch to check the time. I nearly yelped when I saw that I’d been in the woods for a quarter of an hour. The timer officially started when Josh entered, so technically, we were now halfway through the hunt. He’d been on my trail for the past ten minutes, and even though I hadn’t seen or heard him, I couldn’t shake the thought that he was gaining on me.

The man was huge, and we’d worked out together enough in his apartment’s gym that I knew he was fast for his size. I regularly drooled over the sight of him sprint-pushing a three-hundred-pound sled from one end of the gym to the other, and I could only imagine how much faster he’d be without all that weight holding him back.

I strained my ears and started being more careful about where I placed my feet, avoiding as many sticks as possible. Whenever I thought about forests, I always imagined them full of birdsong, but it was eerily quiet so deep in the trees, and it made the sound of my passage all the more obvious. Last year’s fallen leaves littered the trail, crunching beneath my heels. Branches rustled as I pushed between them.

The upside was that if I was being loud, someone who outweighed me by nearly a hundred pounds was probably louder, but I’d long since learned my lesson about underestimating my boyfriend, so my senses remained on high alert, waiting for some warning that he was nearby.

I heard nothing but the noises I was making and the occasional nattering squirrel or pissed-off blue jay. The quiet made me paranoid. I imagined hands reaching out of shrubs, ghost steps racing after me. A shiver licked down my spine that made me feel like someone had just breathed on the back of my neck. I whipped my head around, but there was no one in sight.

Good thing we hadn’t done this at night because it was unnerving enough in broad daylight. My heart thundered in my chest. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, urging me onward and up over a rockfall where I had to grab onto saplings to pull myself forward.

Why the hell did I have to choose this route? The hunt was becoming less of a run and more of a hike, and while my endurance was great on flat ground, my legs were already starting to burn from exertion. It made me feel even more unbalanced, jumpy and nervous, like a rabbit with a fox on her heels.

Hoping to spare my aching legs, I took a sharp left near the top of another hill and abandoned the trail to run through the woods along the hill’s wide peak. This high up, the old-growth forest was more conifer than broadleaf, and the understory was sparse enough that I could see hundreds of yards ahead. The trunks of pine trees rose around me like matchsticks, clear all the way to the canopy far above. I’d be able to see Josh long before he reached me.

It was perfect.

I slowed to a quick walk, grateful for the soft needles carpeting the forest floor, silencing my steps. The time for speed had passed. Now was the time for stealth. With any luck, I’d be able to hear Josh coming and either hide or take off back down the mountain, letting gravity do most of the work and saving my energy for when I hit flat ground and could sprint again.

I might have been prey, but I was smart prey, and I was going to make my predator work to catch me.

A sharp snap echoed through the trees.

I turned around and nearly screamed.

Josh stood less than a hundred feet behind me with a broken stick in his hands. I wasn’t proud of it, but he caught me so off guard that I froze. Where the fuck had he come from?