Straight into the goddamn water.

Cold! Fuck, it was cold!

Though it was barely a foot deep, it felt like I’d been dumped into an arctic lake. The brook must have started high up in the mountains, where white still capped the tallest peaks.

I came up spluttering, my mouth full of water. If I contracted giardia, I was never going to forgive Josh for having such shitty timing.

He grabbed my ankle and hauled me toward him. My ass hit about a dozen river rocks along the way. I tried to kick him, but he snatched my other foot out of the air, fingers clamping down and biceps straining as he fought to keep me still. His show of strength was impressive as hell.

I had to get away, or I was done for.

I stopped fighting him and surged forward instead. He wasn’t expecting it. I plowed straight into his chest, knocking him over backward into the water. His hands popped loose, and I started to scramble away, only for him to grab my pant leg and tear a huge hole in it as he dragged me back down.

More splashing ensued as he tried to get ahold of my slippery flesh, and I tried to get the hell away from him. We must have looked ridiculous. Like two lost salmon ineptly flopping around as they attempted to unravel the mystery of which way was upstream. Thank god this section of forest was far enough away from civilization that we were the only humans for miles around, and there was nothing but confused forest creatures to witness our idiocy.

I would have laughed if not for the genuine threat of becoming a guest star in Josh’s next video. People online were mean. And also a little scary. There was an ongoing discussion in one of his comment sections about where we might live based on the glimpses of the city they’d seen out his windows. We’d stopped filming near them in response, but that didn’t mean web sleuths weren’t still trying to find us.

If I could avoid giving them more fodder, I would, which was why I needed to get away. Now.

I managed to slip free from Josh long enough to flip onto my front and scramble forward on all fours. I’d barely made it to the muddy edge of the brook before I was tackled again. This time, Josh put all his weight into it, flattening me like a pancake. I floundered beneath him, trying to throw him off, but between the slimy mud and the fact that he was well over two hundred pounds, it was a lost cause.

He managed to grab both my wrists in record time and pin them over my head, holding them in place with one oven-mitt-sized hand.

Shit. I was going to lose.

A dozen jujitsu moves flashed through my head, but each one could cause serious injury, and as much as I wanted to win, I could never bring myself to hurt Josh like that. And nor could he, I realized. Josh was even more skilled than I was in martial arts, but he hadn’t used a single move on me either, which was why we’d resorted to slap-fighting like a couple of amateurs.

Still, I wasn’t ready to give up, so I bucked my hips sideways, trying to throw him off.

He dug his fingers into the hole in my pants and ripped upward, tearing them to my waist. My underwear got unceremoniously yanked aside, and I had just enough time to realize what was happening before he surged into me with a brutal thrust.

I cried out, both from surprise and relief.

Josh froze behind me, tension in every line of his body. “Are you done fighting, or do you want me to give you another chance?” He ended the question by rocking his hips forward, showing me what I’d be missing if I made the wrong decision.

The sharp sound of an alarm rose around us, our watches beeping in tandem. My time was up. He’d won with seconds to spare, and there’d be no more chances for me.

Instead of answering his question aloud, I turned my alarm off and arched my spine, lifting my hips enough for him to slide in another inch. My pussy clenched around him, trying to drag him deeper. I wanted it hard, rough. He’d run me down like I was prey, and now I wanted him to fuck the last of my resistance out of me.

He groaned, the hand pinning mine loosening but not letting go. “You did so good, baby.”

With a snap of his hips, he thrust into me harder, deeper, and even though we’d been doing this for months, I still felt like he was going to split me in half.

“I loved chasing you,” he said. “Loved that you were smiling the whole time.”

Was I? Even when we’d been fighting? Damn, I really needed to work on my poker face.

Another thrust and Josh was hilt deep. It felt like he was close to hitting the back of my teeth. I loved it. Loved being so filled that I could barely breathe, barely think past the initial sting of discomfort and the way my body had to work to take all of him.

“You’re soaked, Aly,” he said, his voice rough with lust. “Did you like being hunted?”

“Yes,” I moaned.

“You liked getting run down like prey.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered him anyway. “Yes.”

“Spread those legs for me, then. Show me how much you like getting caught.”

“Make me,” I told him.

He froze for half a second, but I could tell from the way his dick twitched inside me that he liked the idea. The hand pinning mine pressed down even harder while the other gripped my hip. He yanked me up with him as he repositioned us, and then used his knees to shove mine even wider, one after the other.

And then he was moving, driving into me deeper, harder. The angle made me feel every inch of him thrusting inside. My pussy quivered, a tremor wracking my spine. The way he pinned me left me with almost no leverage. All I could do was angle my pelvis and push back against him as his movements picked up speed.

His hips snapped against my ass. We knelt at the stream's edge, water rushing over our lower legs, mud squelching beneath our knees. The smell of the forest filled my nose, the scent of pine mingled with dirt and fallen leaves. My back heated where the sun beat down on me.

Yes. This was what I wanted. To be pinned like an animal out in the open, with no inhibitions and no thoughts in my head besides how well my boyfriend fucked me.

“Harder,” I said.

Josh grabbed my hair and hauled me up by it, his fingers tangled in my strands as his thrusts turned punishing. My mouth fell open as I stared wide-eyed at the woods around us. Sunlight fell in dappled shafts along the gulley floor. Moss clung to nearby rocks. The sound of our ragged breathing filled the air.

There was something so primal about it, so right.

I thought I wanted this because of things I’d read in paranormal romances involving werewolves, but now I wondered if my desires went deeper than that, were more instinctual. This was how our ancestors fucked, rough and desperate in stolen moments between hunting and being hunted, giving it everything they had because they didn’t know if they would live to see the next sunrise.

It made a strange sense that I craved it, and I felt like the luckiest woman in the world to have a boyfriend willing to play into my every fantasy.

“I love you,” I said, punching my hips backward.

Josh groaned, his fingers tightening in my hair. “I love you, too, but don’t say it again, or I’ll come.”

I grinned. “I love you.”

He thrust into me so hard that I slid an inch forward in the mud. “I’m serious, Aly.”

“I love –” Another ruthless thrust had me gasping. Words of praise and devotion started pouring from my mouth as he fucked me closer and closer to the edge. “I love you so much. I love being your prey. I love how easily you overpowered me. I love that your cock is almost too big. I love feeling it get even bigger inside me right before you come.”

Josh’s thrusts became frenzied. I moaned, almost senseless with need as my pussy spasmed around him. Tremors wracked my whole body. I clawed at the mud, trying to find purchase, desperate to ground myself through the pleasure that was building inside me. Usually, I needed more than this, clitoral stimulation or nipple play to push me over the edge, but Josh was fucking into me so deeply that he was about to trigger my favorite kind of orgasm: the brain-melting, spine-buckling, knees-shaking, titties-bouncing, pussy-soaking cervical orgasm.