Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
I didn’t know how he got there, how he tracked me, in the woods, at least a mile from the cabin. Not the city boy that he was. Maybe he was supernatural. Maybe he tracked me by scent. Smelling my blood. My fear.
I believed in all of that. In things that couldn’t be explained by science. I believed intuition was a form of divination, that souls called to one another, that auras communicated the true nature of people.
Knox was challenging those beliefs. His aura was dark, thorny, dangerous. Yet his soul called to mine in a way I couldn’t explain.
He wasn’t leaning anywhere, just standing in the middle of what couldn’t really be called a trail, more like a break in the woods.
I’d followed my instincts through the woods, running where the ground was most forgiving, lapsing into memories of my childhood, tearing through the trees and over ground carpeted with pine needles like the ones outside my grandmother’s house. Though her old property had been sold, abandoned, hundreds of miles away, I yearned for it. To be running back to a cozy house with freshly-made biscuits cooling on the counter, scrambled eggs from the chickens she kept. Thick cuts of juicy bacon from her neighbor who kept pigs. That’s what turned me into a vegetarian. I’d petted those pigs, named them.
My grandmother, an Appalachian woman through and through, was soft in many ways but hard when it came to life and death and sustenance. She cared for animals, loved her cat Frank and her hound Lewis, but she’d never hesitated to kill when she needed to.
My grandmother didn’t agree or understand my vegetarianism but had accepted it. Just as she had accepted everything from those she loved. Even when accepting that my mother loved my father and would be leaving the mountains for the city lost her her daughter.
“What are you doing?”
Knox’s flat voice jerked me out of my stupor. I was standing in the middle of the woods, half-dressed, panting and sweaty, staring at a killer.
“Running.” My voice was a little breathless but not weak. Weakness had no place in these woods, in front of this man.
Knox didn’t respond, he just stared.
“Not running from you,” I stipulated, unable to weather the stare. “I’m running. Like I do every day. I was planning on coming back.”
Again, Knox didn’t speak as the woods gently hummed between us.
“Running. Here,” he said flatly. He didn’t look around, keeping his gaze firmly on me.
I felt one hundred pounds heavier under the weight of his gaze. I had an urge to shift on my feet, but I couldn’t signal my discomfort.
“Yes, here.” My tone was sharp. Challenging.
His jaw twitched. Barely, but I saw it. Only because I was determined to scrutinize him with the same intensity as he was looking at me.
“These woods are not Central Park, Piper,” he gritted out. “There are predators here.”
“I’m well aware that there are predators in these woods,” I raised a brow, my meaning clear. He was my predator. “And I’d rather face off with any of the animals in these woods than some of the men that lurk in Central Park, waiting for a woman to let her guard down.”
Though his expression didn’t change, not even a miniscule jaw twitch, I could feel his anger, his fury. A flock of birds even fled from a nearby tree.
Even though I believed in forms of magic, I convinced myself it had to be a coincidence.
“If you’re not smart enough to fear the wildlife—”
“I’m smart enough to know what to fear and what to respect,” I huffed.
The run was enough to rejuvenate me. Even if it depleted the physical energy reserves that I needed, I still fully possessed my mental faculties.
Again, I could feel a burst of enraged energy coming from Knox’s general direction.
He wasn’t used to being interrupted. I had the sense he was used to commanding a room, with underlings cowering beneath him in fear.
I wasn’t going to cower. It would be my destruction. My instincts told me that much.
After not so much as blinking, Knox drew in a visible breath. He was a fearsome creature. Like some kind of devil walking the woods. Though I sensed that even Satan would fear him.
“If you do not fear the animals, you’re still running in unfamiliar terrain. You could get lost.”
I didn’t mistake those words for concern. If he was concerned with me in any way, he wouldn’t have taken me here in the first place.
“You found me,” I shrugged, my tone as sharp as a blade.
He nodded. “I’ll always find you.”
My skin raised with gooseflesh at the promise in his words. It was terrifying. And exciting. Comforting.
Comforting? The fact that my captor would always find me? My mind was obviously fraying at the seams. I thought I’d last at least twenty-four hours... The reality of how brittle my mind truly was, was frightening.