Chapter Four
Right. Nice try. Beast’s threat wouldn’t scare Stacey.
She stripped off her nightgown and smeared herself in slimy, bog-smelling mud, betting on it saving her against a trip to hell with Beast. Of all people. She could barely believe her eyes when she’d pulled off the tape. Beast. The huge biker her brother had insisted was a good guy.
Beast. What a goddamned hideous name. Suited him, though. He was huge and hot and dangerous. To hell with her crazy crush. Brian was in danger, and this man had the means to punish him. She had to get away from him and warn Brian. Her brother had pushed things too far this time.
Ugh! This mud. She grimaced. Even now she could hear the squish of it under her feet, feel it oozing between her toes as she hid behind a nest of scraggly trees. Mosquitoes zoomed by her ears and settled on her skin. Bugs disgusted her, but she refrained from slapping them.
“Stacey!”
She heard Beast calling, his voice deep and smoky. A man like that would fuck her until she couldn’t walk. Worse, she’d enjoy it.
Not happening. Beast was like a lure to a fish. Once caught, she’d be hooked. He was too handsome, too built, too damned irresistible. Dark-haired looks with the kind of impenetrable brown eyes that had seen too much.
And he’d looked at her pussy like he’d wanted to devour her.
She knew her weakness all too well. College boys she could resist because there was nothing dangerous about them, nothing alluring. Beast was different. There was something about his predatory intractability that appealed to her.
It called to the wildness she kept carefully suppressed.
Despite his threats, Beast had been gentle with her. There was not one bruise on her body. Nevertheless, she had to get out of there.
Because he meant to have her. Worse, she wanted him, too. Had from the moment she’d first met him. His lust had curled around them like smoke. But he was a taste of the wild side that she feared she wouldn’t come back from.
One sibling gone crazy was plenty.
So, gators or not, she wasn’t foolish enough to remain on the track. She slipped into the trees and let the darkness cloak her.
Something slithered around her bare leg, making its way upward, its head brushing her knee. A scream froze in her throat, clogged it like the clay at her ankles. She glanced down just as the flashlight danced a jagged flicker across the copse of trees where she stood.
A snake, brown and black patterned, had curled around her leg, its body cool and smooth on her skin. She gasped. Once bitten, death would be agony.
She heard the crack of Beast’s boots on wood as he came close. The snake raised its head and shook its tail menacingly as the biker stopped opposite.
“Don’t move, Stacey,” Beast warned. “It’s deadly.”
No shit. Her traitorous body trembled from head to foot, even though she willed it to be still, but the thought of the bite the snake could inflict overwhelmed her. She could hear the rattling of her lungs, her fear raspy and brittle.
Beast backed away, his movements slow and easy. “Looks like a cottonmouth. It’ll attack if I come close. It’s warning me off.”
He retreated into the darkness, his flashlight illuminating the ground close to her but no longer directly on the snake. The serpent quieted, uncoiled, and slithered down over her foot, its body rustling on the forest debris as it went on its way.
A moment later, Beast surged forward, his flashlight roving back and forth. “Come.” He held out his hand, and she took it, even though she was naked and vulnerable and terrified, because her choices had shut up shop.
And if she didn’t get another puff on her asthma medication, her lungs would, too.