Page 50 of Lady and the Hitman
The thrill wasn’t in the chase. It was in the certainty. I would be caught. I would be claimed. But until then, I got to savor the stretch of this wild place. The power in my legs. The sweat on my skin. The heat blooming between them.
And with every step, something shifted.
I was still running, but not just from him. I was running into something. Into myself. With each curve I rounded, each shadow I ducked into, I felt more in command—not of the hunt, but of my own desire. I wasn’t just the girl who wrote a desperate, filthy plea to a stranger. I was the woman living it. Breathing it.Lovingit.
This was mine.
I felt it in my bones, in the boldness of my movements. The confidence curled low in my belly, winding tighter the longer I stayed free. Not because I wanted to win—but because I wanted to be worthy of losing. Of surrendering. Of collapsing beneath him not in fear, but in victory.
And maybe … maybe this wasn’t just about what I needed.
Maybe I wanted to give something, too.
To be the kind of woman who could make a man like Ronan come undone. Not with control, but with the loss of it. I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him—ruthlessly. Recklessly. With hunger so sharp it bordered on reverence.
Because giving him pleasure—watching his mouth fall open, hearing that first involuntary groan when I finally dropped to my knees—suddenly mattered as much as chasing my own.
I wanted to earn the moment he couldn’t hold back.
I wanted to be the reason he shattered.
He spoke to me again once—when I was crouched beneath a canopy near the Africa loop, tucked behind a set of artificial rocks where a zebra enclosure shimmered in the distance.
“I see you,” Ronan said in my ear.
My breath hitched. “No, you don’t.”
His laugh crackled through the line. “You think hiding behind a boulder makes you safe?”
“I think I like that you’re looking.”
A pause.
Then: “I’m not the only one.”
That did something to me. Twisted the heat in my belly into something feral.
Because if someone else touched me first …
He would lose control.
And I wanted that. Almost more than I wanted to be found.
My fingers drifted down again, pressing the inside of my thigh through the bodysuit as I crouched lower. A tease. A warning.
He must’ve seen. The thought drove me wild.
“You touch yourself again,” he growled, “and I’ll make you come in front of them.”
Them.
I didn’t know who he meant.
Other hunters? Orchestrators? Observers?
I didn’t care.
I wanted them to watch.
