Morgan ran at full speed through the bayou, leaping over downed trees and dodging hanging vines. Tears clogged her throat and made it difficult to see. How could he? How could he put her in a closet and lie to the police? Especially after they told him her mother was worried? Selfish man. Selfish monster.

The mental accusation made her feel bad, which was proof she’d lost her fucking mind! How could she have sympathy for a man who’d gagged her and locked her in a closet? He was a kidnapper, through and through. And she’d been a complete idiot for forgetting it. Worse than that, she’d…she’d fallen for him. Even now she could be carrying the man’s baby. Why did that give her a warm, happy feeling? She should want to shoot off his massive dick for trying to get her pregnant without so much as a conversation about the future.

There was a rustling in the brush to Morgan’s right and she skidded to a halt, her sides heaving with exertion. This was literally the worst episode of Naked and Afraid ever. Because in her shirt and no panties, that was essentially her condition. If she didn’t have malaria and a bite taken out of her by the time she reached some kind of civilization, she’d be shocked.

A bellow of anguish sounded in the distance—Rixen—and Morgan forgot all about the movement in the brush and started sprinting again. While browsing through Rixen’s extensive book collection, she’d come across a crude map of the bayou and knew there was a small town in this direction. Maybe she should have alerted the cops once she’d freed herself from the closet, but she’d been worried for their lives. No way would Rixen let them cart her off back to Key Largo. He’d kill them first. So she’d run.

After another three minutes of a flat-out sprint, Morgan’s feet started to hurt. The stickiness of the swamp air wouldn’t allow her to draw a decent breath, either. But that’s when she heard Rixen’s footsteps pounding after her, so she picked up the pace, pumping her arms and legs—

Until that rustling in the brush grew louder. Louder. Followed by a terrifying growl.

A cougar leapt into her path and Morgan let out a blood-curdling scream.

Less than ten feet away, the animal bared its teeth, appearing ready to spring. Its coat was mangy and filthy, its fangs dripping with saliva. Hunger. A predator. And she was the prey. She went through a lifetime’s worth of Discovery Channel viewing and came up empty. Run or don’t move? What the hell was she supposed to do?

Turned out, the cougar didn’t care about her fight-or-flight instincts. It just wanted lunch. It lowered its body in a ready stance and leapt at Morgan. She closed her eyes and cried out, waiting for sharp teeth to sink into her skin. But the pain never came. Instead, there was a loud shout of denial and Morgan opened her eyes to find Rixen battling the cougar, rolling on the soft earth. Rixen’s muscles shone with sweat, bulging and shifting as he fought for supremacy. Animal versus animal. But the cougar was mightier than the alligator had been and not as easy to subdue. Its teeth found Rixen’s shoulder and slashed the skin, leaving blood pooling in their wake.

Morgan snapped herself out of her horrified daze and searched the ground for a weapon, wanting to help Rixen even if he was a low-down, dirty kidnapper. He’d saved her life twice, hadn’t he? At the very least, she should return the favor. Before she could find a makeshift club or something sharp, however, Rixen gained the upper hand with a guttural curse and punched the animal across the face. Once, twice. Again, the cougar surged up, giving Rixen no choice but to end its life with a twist of his deadly grip.

The bayou seemed to suspend all animation as Rixen stood and approached Morgan, blood trickling from his shoulder wound and another cut over his eye. “My gift,” he rasped. “I am sorry. Please come to me.”

Despite her anger at him, Morgan couldn’t help the chemical reaction that took place in her body, watching Rixen conquer an animal that’d wanted to kill her. The rush of lust was swift and consuming. She’d been protected by a superior being. Defended at the cost of injury. An instinct to praise those actions was undeniable, the way it had probably been within women since the beginning of time. Reward the male. Show him his worth. Show him yours.

Morgan gave a close-mouthed moan, her body shaking in its effort to coat her flesh between her thighs with moisture as fast as possible. Awareness prickled her skin with the need to have Rixen inside of her. She’d stopped running long minutes ago, but she breathed like she’d never stopped. Rixen watched the transformation happen in her beneath heavy eyelids, his flat male nipples turning to points, an erection filling out the front of his jeans.

God. God, he was massive and invincible and mighty.

Her anger was no match for the urges he inspired. They were base and…naughty.

“I’m mad at you,” she whispered, intending to push at his chest but scraping her palms over his pecs and corrugated stomach instead. “So mad.”

“And yet you touch me.” Rixen’s voice shook. “You touch me when I do not deserve it.”

Morgan swallowed when he took a step closer. “You did just wrestle an actual cougar.”

His breath fanned her forehead. “I will protect you until I die.”

In other words, you’re staying here with me, bitch. In her heightened state of arousal, Morgan didn’t want to hear that. Didn’t want to hear anything that might make her mad and deter the mission to slake this sudden bout of hunger.

No. Not sudden. She’d been almost crazed with lust for Rixen for days. Insatiable.

It would never go away. How would she live without him inside her? How would she live without his humble smile and sweet gestures? No one had ever cared for her so well. So completely. A sharp object twisted in Morgan’s belly and she cast the thoughts away. Don’t think about that right now. Just get rid of the ache.

She took off her T-shirt, leaving her naked in the muted bayou light. Correctly interpreting the gesture, Rixen fell on her with a snarl. His big hands found her butt, lifting and cradling her against his sweating, blood-stained body. Morgan wrapped her arms around his neck and whimpered into a kiss, impatient for his tongue, his teeth. She demanded all of it with hot writhes of her body, fingers pulling at his hair. While their lovemaking had been frantic and desperate in nature since the beginning, it reached new heights now. Teeth snapped, mouths sucked hard enough to leave marks, fingers bruised.

Morgan was not surprised to find herself thrown down to her hands and knees in the dirt, although it was the first time he’d taken her this way. Maybe she should have been nervous, especially with Rixen growling and unfastening his jeans behind her, preparing to fuck her like a beast. But she wasn’t. No. She wanted rough. She wanted the winning predator to claim her body and take his final victory.

Rixen’s muscular chest pressed down onto her back and she reveled in the smell of him. Male arousal, sweat, blood, earth. His teeth grazed a path up the side of her neck, his hips humping her in great drives, despite the fact that he wasn’t inside her yet.

“I’ve just fought for your life. My mate’s life,” he gritted against her ear. “I’m going to enter your cunt like a battering ram. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Morgan wailed. “Please please please.”

His chest left her back and Morgan watched over her shoulder as Rixen spat on his purple-headed erection, spreading the moisture with purposeful hands. The next time he spat, it landed between her bottom cheeks, dripping down, down, until it reached her entrance. Rixen poised himself there with a grunt, pushing into her with enough force to collapse Morgan’s knees. Rixen jerked her back up without mercy, though, beginning to thrust. Roaring as he filled her again and again, their flesh smacking together three times per second.

Rixen’s hands surrounded her hips, yanking her back onto his waiting rod, grinding, his thigh hair tickling the backs of hers. “You ran from me for good reason,” he said. “But there’s a part of you that wanted to be caught, isn’t there, my gift? This juicy little pussy is proof. You’ve never been wetter.”

She didn’t know how to answer without lying or admitting she’d fallen head over heels for the man who’d kidnapped her and hid her in a closet, so Morgan focused on the sensations instead. His sex was thick and curved at the perfect angle, every pump of his hips rubbing his flesh against her G-spot. She reached for her clit to rub it, but Rixen beat her there, finding the nub of flesh with a callused middle finger. Oh yes, yes. So perfect. She spread her thighs wider and arched her back, letting the orgasm build, letting it wrap around her like a dream.

“You didn’t want to run from your daddy, did you, Morgan?”

“No,” she choked out, forgetting her resolve to stay quiet.

“No. You love him, don’t you?” He slowed down, making his thrusts thorough, luxurious. Mindblowing. “You love these bad things he does to you. And he loves doing them.”

“H-harder,” she whimpered, scrambling to the precipice of her climax. “Faster.”

“If you want harder and faster, I need to hear what you said to me back in the kitchen.” He moaned and laid a loud slap on her buttocks. “You know what I want to hear. Again.”

Yes. I want to say them. Morgan’s fingers curled into the dirt, her flesh giving a hot clench. The words were right on the tip of her tongue when two police officers burst through the brush, guns drawn. Their eyes widened at the sight that greeted them. Morgan gasped and went still, but Rixen didn’t stop his deep drives into her weeping body. His right hand slid from her hip to her breast, cupping and squeezing it, his mouth nipping at her earlobe. And God help her, she groaned and pushed her ass higher on his stomach, wanting more.

“Say it, Morgan,” he rasped, increasing the pace of his pumps. “Let these men know you’ve been a willing victim for Daddy. Let them know you’ve been letting me fuck your tight little cunt any which way I choose.”

Oh my God. Could she do this?

There was something decidedly wrong about these two police officers watching Rixen take her in the mud. Wasn’t there? Their eyes bulged out of their heads, but they couldn’t seem to bring themselves to look away. No, they just continued to stare, wiping sweat from their brow and upper lip. Why didn’t her body seem to care they had an audience? The pressure inside her raced to capacity and her thighs started to shake. And most of all—most of all—she wanted that hot flood of Rixen’s seed inside her. Wanted it to fill every corner of her body and drip down her thighs. There was no way to stop herself from vocalizing that wish.

“Breed me, Daddy,” she moaned, her breasts bouncing with thrusts designed to break, to punish, to own, but she withstood them, knowing they signaled Rixen’s undoing. An undoing she craved more than anything else in this world. “Fill me up, Daddy. I’m sorry I ran away. I’ll be a good girl from now on.”

“See that you are,” he shouted, slapping her backside again. “I’m going to get this pussy either way, though, aren’t I? You love giving up this pretty pink fuck hole. All for Rixen.”

“Yes!” she screamed, her need finding its outlet. “Just Rixen.”

The heat powered through her, rendering her mute for long seconds as her body endured the insane tumult of pleasure. Her fingers turned into claws, sinking into the dirt, while Rixen bellowed his release behind her, thrusting into her spasming flesh. Jesus, she couldn’t seem to stop shaking, her cries turning hoarse. The fruit of Rixen’s loins slicked down the insides of her legs and still he pumped like a demon, grinding himself as deeply as possible. Making his mark. No doubt impregnating her, if he hadn’t done so already.

Moments passed as the last of Rixen’s need left his body. When Morgan would have fallen face first into the dirt, Rixen drew her back, seating her on his bent legs. He tugged her discarded T-shirt down over her head, holding her there. “Turn your backs now or you will meet the same fate as the cougar,” he called to the police.

Miraculously, after some awkward eye contact, they did as they were told.

“My gift,” he murmured in Morgan’s ear, kissing her there. “I have not done right by you today. I have not behaved like a man worthy of such an angel.”

She turned to meet his eyes over her shoulder, her heart flipping over at the anguish there. “Rixen…”

“Letting you go would be my living nightmare, Morgan. I expected to love you. But I didn’t expect to be in love with you to the point of pain.” He gave an audible swallow. “When you ran from me, I realized what I’ve done. I’ve asked you to choose between me and your life, the same way your parents asked to you to choose between them. I’ve hurt you in my selfishness.”

“What are you saying?”

He looked away for several beats, turmoil raging in his eyes. “I won’t ask you to choose. I won’t force you to be unhappy. I can’t. Not when I love you so much.”

The breath froze in her lungs. “You’re letting me go?”

His huge chest shuddered up and down. “I’m giving you freedom and praying you’ll stay,” he rasped, pushing the hair out of her face. “With every ounce of blood in my body, I need my angel to be happy. My Morgan.”

Tears she’d been unaware of fell from her eyes, blazing a trail down her cheeks. What do I do? Common sense shouted in one ear that she couldn’t possibly live in the Everglades indefinitely. With her kidnapper. Those thoughts forced Morgan to her feet. Feeling as though her organs were being smashed in a trash compactor, she took one shaky step toward the police. Two. Three. Of course she had to go back to her life. She had parents, friends, acceptance to college in the fall.

The farther she got from Rixen, though, the more her entire being rebelled. A sob rose in her throat and shook her entire body on the way out. All those kisses, his body curved protectively around her in the night. His voice, his smile, even his unfounded insecurities. The way he looked at her, as if he couldn’t believe his fortune. Much the way she stopped and looked back at him now. This wasn’t some crazy rapid form of Stockholm’s.

No, she’d…fallen in love with Rixen.

Morgan had never been a believer in fate or some almighty power, but in that second she knew with total certainty that she had been sent here. Maneuvered here by some unseen force to be with this man, in this life. All along, she’d thought him crazy to call her a gift, but her heart knew it to be the truth now. She and Rixen weren’t meant to be apart. Couldn’t she feel that now when her heart was trying to rip itself clean from her body to find him?

“I’m staying,” she murmured to the cops, more tears leaving her eyes. “Tell my mother I’ll get in contact as soon as I can, but…I can’t leave. I’m n-never leaving.”

Rixen had been slumped in the dirt, fists bunched, his jaw ready to crack from the agony of letting her go. At her words, though, he rose slowly to his feet, his expression one of a man who is afraid to believe. “My gift. You…are staying?”

“Yes,” she called, running back in his direction. “Yes, yes, yes.”

He caught her up in his arms, swinging her in a circle. “I can’t believe it.” He dropped hard kisses all over her cheeks, eyelids and mouth. “You will not regret it, Morgan. I will live to make you happy. Every day of your life.”

“I know. I know you will.” She took his face in her hands. “I love you, too, Rixen.”

Still holding her, he fell to his knees, whispering prayers of thankfulness to his maker, rocking her in the dirt. And that’s where they stayed, long after the police gave up and left, leaving the soul mates to their happy ever after in the bayou shade.