Chapter 1
The air from the North was chilly as I stood facing the edge of the forest alongside the other competitors. I looked down at the goosebumps covering the surface of my naked skin and wondered whether it was fear or the temperature causing them.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.Not that I was the type to approach things from a well-reasoned perspective. Ask me, adulting is severely overrated. Luckily, my best friend Ivy and I found jobs that allowed us to play all day while taking care of the Littles in the exclusive b**m club owned by Ivy’s husband aka. our boss, Rupert Taylor.
I’d spent the last several months wearing Priscilla, my friend and also the operations manager at the club, down with my persistence. Neither she nor Ivy were participating in the competition, and I had yet to convince her completely it was a good idea to let me take part in this “Fox Hunt.”
It was a case of two birds with one stone. First, say sayonara to my perpetual state of horniness thanks to a certain powerfully muscled someone, legs as thick as tree trunks, who constantly sported an erection in my presence while refusing to acknowledge I existed. Second, padding my pockets with far more cash than I could ever earn at The Ranch while running the roller rink for littles.
No big deal.
It’s just a game, right?
They told all female participants, a.k.a. “foxes,” that there would be security surveillance during the hunt to ensure our safety. And of course, we each had our safe words. But that word uttered meant a fox received only half the amount of agreed upon compensation.
Ten thousand dollars was nothing to shake a leg at, but if we made it through all the way to the end of the hunt, the reward was even better: twenty thousand. s*x for sport and nobody got hurt.
Money wasn’t at the top of mind when I heard my coworker gasp, looked to my right and saw her panting in terror. “What if more than one of them catches us? I forgot to ask if that was allowed,” she asked. I felt momentary panic as my bodily instinct jumped on board her train of fear.
It was catching.
When the unmistakable sound of the call to hounds rang out, a stab of apprehension raced through me.
I was no fool.
I sprinted to my left, away from the line of unclothed participants whose fox-tails, fastened to them by butt plugs, bobbed behind them, as if goading the hunters on horseback to chase them down.
A row of trees beckoned up the hillside. Once under their cover, I could hide. My gait would be much speedier in the conifers and bushes than that of a man riding a horse.
Or more than one hunter.
Gulp.
Almost there.
I shoved under low hanging limbs, stumbling upon a clearing, and stood stock still for a moment listening for a disruption to the silence that greeted me.
A hush soon broken by the sound of cracking branches and leaves crushed under heavy hooves.
It couldn’t be.
Noah!? I gasped, internally. The hostile glare on his face scared me more than the prospect of being caught by anyone else. A warning voice rang out in my mind, Run! So, I did, turning on my heel and bolting away from him.
Noah!?Run!If I didn’t know better, I’d think he wanted to hunt me down and kill me.
We were given fake fur boots to go along with the fox look, and they protected against sharp objects on the forest floor but weren’t the best for covering distance with any speed. After pushing my way past dangling salmon berries, low hanging hazel nuts and saw-edged huckleberry leaves, my lungs threatened to explode in my chest. Still, I ran, lurching out of range of the furious warrior who looked more like a seafaring pirate than a modern-day varmint hunter. An oddly primitive warning sounded in my brain, outweighing the anticipation I couldn’t deny over the thought of being caught bare-assed as a baby by the tall, handsome man whose beautifully proportioned body I’d lusted after for over a year.
A Greek deity who was hunting humans.
Rather, one human.
Me.
For s*x and sport.
My mind raced, and a thousand thoughts flashed through it, none of them intelligible.
Now, Noah had seen me naked. Instead of viewing me as a temptation, he appeared to enjoy my struggle to escape.
The man was un-figure-outable.
Trust me. I’d tried.
Flirted.
Ignored.
Teased.
All for naught.
Like I said, if it weren’t for his very noticeable erection whenever he was near me, I’d think him asexual.
“Oof!” I crashed to the ground, an impossible weight atop me. I thrashed until my face was out of the dirt, spitting decomposed leaves and duff which landed directly on Noah’s chiseled cheek.
Whoops.
His accusing stare looked as if he wanted to maim me.
“Don’t you know I love it when you run from me, little fox?” He asked with deceptive calm. The critical undertone in his voice was par for the course but hidden under his disparaging demeanor was a Noah I’d never seen before. His eyes raked boldly over my body, and while I waited for months on end for just such an occurrence, his scrutiny made me increasingly uneasy.
We’d always joked around about him, Ivy and I. Calling him the “handy man” because he could do basically anything. I winced as I remembered telling her, “He can do me any time.”
As if this fearsome beast above me was something to trifle with. He swiped my spit off his face and flung it off his hand, grabbing the fox tail at my backside and wriggling it, “I ought to leave this in and have you ride with it for punishment.” I moaned as he slowly pulled the plug.
He smacked my bare ass and yanked me to him. “Whatever it is, your discipline will fit the crime. It appears you like showing off what’s mine to the entire world.”
Wait a minute.
His?
His?“Noah! Let me go.” I whipped my shoulders back and forth, trying to get free of him. “I didn’t know you were taking part in the hunt or I wouldn’t have joined!” Suddenly my head was clear of panic, and I knew this wasn’t how I wanted him.
I couldn’t be the prize he won in some sort of s*x games. No matter what I had thought before, I was in this hunt for cash. Noah showing up was a curve ball I hadn’t anticipated.
“I’m not just participating, peaches. I play to win.” And with that, Noah lifted me and flipped my naked bottom up onto the horse, so I sat sidesaddle. He then leapt up behind me, pulling my legs over his giant thigh so my torso shoved up against him.
He smelled simply edible this close up.
I thought for sure my ass was going to bounce off the horse and land on the ground, but his gait was like a rocking horse. The angle in which I sat had my sensitive bits rubbing against the cantle, and with every stride my boobs jiggled. Less than a mile into our journey, the trip had worked me into an erotic froth.
“Where are we going?” I asked, wondering if he noticed my bouncing breasts. Hoping he would.
“Home.” The smoldering flames I saw in his eyes when he spoke frightened me.
“But you’re supposed to take me in the field or forest. That’s what the rules of the hunt say anyway ‘chase, catch, and fuck.’”
When I said the F-Word, he clamped his hand over my mouth and blew his heated words in my ear. “I’m not here for that. I’m here to rescue you from it, my foolish Gigi.”
Great. He was always growly and overprotective with me, but he’d never gone so far as to try and intervene with my shenanigans while working at The Ranch, the exclusive b**m club.
I wrenched away from his grasp. “Save me! I signed up for it. Stop this thing and let me off!”
Only instead of slowing down, my comments made Noah urge his horse faster along. He held me in a vice grip to keep me from falling off, and my teeth clattered from the cantering.
“You’re not getting off until I say so, princess. I can promise you that.” The pit of my stomach churned at his reprimand. “Only good girls get orgasms and you have been very naughty, indeed.”
He squeezed my n****e between his fingers. It was the first time he ever touched me in a s****l way, and it sent my c**t soaring.
My double-crossing p***y clenched down hard, leaking on his leather saddle so he wouldn’t have to apply saddle soap for months. I jerked away from his hand, and not only did it hurt my nip like hell, there was a second when I thought I’d pitch backwards off of the horse, and a cold fear spiked through my body. He caught me before it happened.
“Please don’t let me fall, Noah,” I said, my voice shakier than I would have liked.
“Never.” He assured me and pulled me roughly to him. Instead of being frightened, I let go of the fight and buried my face in the corded muscles of his chest.
Had I known at that moment that there was absolutely no place like Noah’s home, and that his words, “Just wait till we get to my property…” delivered a dirty oath rather than the promise of comfort, I never would have considered those bulging pecs a safe haven.
I grabbed onto his shirt when the horse’s gait threatened to bounce me off. Looking up into his stern countenance, every time his gaze met mine my heart turned over in response. For a moment, he looked at me with tenderness in his eyes, and I stared at him with longing. I’d never been blind to his attraction, but up close and personal like this, his gaze dropping from my eyes to my shoulders to my breasts, I got caught up in the moment being so close to the vitality he radiated, drawing me to him like a magnet. My feelings for him intensified, welling up in me and making me ache for something only he could deliver.
Let’s face it, I ached for his d**k.
But something beyond just carnal satisfaction. Yes, of course, he turned me on. But when I settled back, enjoying the feeling of his brawny arms around me, protecting me from all harm, I savored the delicious feeling of being worry free. It was as intoxicating as the confusing kiss he placed on the top of my head as we rode up the mountain.
It took my mind off the trouble I was in, creating a false sense of security that left me melting into his chest. That daydream was interrupted by his words which totally contradicted the way his face came coaxingly down towards mine, and he delivered his warning. “Is this how little you think of me?” He plucked one of my n*****s in a single, raw act of possession.
It was hard to remain coherent when this close to him, but I needed him to clarify his words. “What are you talking about, Noah?”
“You planned to sell what belongs to me in some kind of s****l competition?” For the first time ever, his large hand explored my breast. His touch, firm and persuasive, invited more and I leaned forward into his palm. My entire body tingled from the contact.
How dare he? I thought to myself like the independent, competent female I was, asking him, edgily, “Belongs to you? You never give me the time of day. How do you figure I’m your property?” I said, indignantly. “Besides, what do you think this this, the Middle Ages?”
How dare he?He’d mentioned disciplinary action earlier, but I had no idea how much trouble I was really in. Until he spelled it out for me. “I’ve been tallying up your transgressions since the first day I met you in Phoenix over a year ago. It’s high time you stopped making careless mistakes and I’m done with standing by, watching while you put yourself in peril”
Normally Noah was a man of very few words, as was fitting with his ex-military, super-secret security background. So, for him this announcement was practically a speech. I was more than a little shocked to discover after months on end of his treating me like I didn’t exist, he was actually waiting for the right moment to confront and chastise me.
And so it seemed, my hour of reckoning at last, had come.