Taken for the Hunt: A Dark Romantic Suspense Read online

  I take one step, then another, excitement starting to course through my body. Even though I want to know what he’s doing, I don’t look down. I don’t want to break my momentum and lose the advantage that I have over him.

  But I don’t have an advantage. I thought that I did, but as I take my third step, something sweeps my leg out from under me and I fall down, catching myself on my wrists.

  “Fuck!” I scream, rolling over onto my back and cradling both of my hands up to my chest. They flop against my body and it takes me a moment of trying to move them to make sure that they’re not really broken.

  They’re not, but they hurt like hell. Pain courses through my body and I suck in a breath, forcing myself to roll back over to my knees to try to stand up.

  Marco kicks me, his foot landing squarely on my shoulder and I tip back over, unwilling to use my hands to try to catch myself and break my fall. My shoulder takes the brunt of this fall and I cry out as I roll to the floor.

  “Are you quite done?” He asks, towering over me. He’s huge, bigger than I thought, totally in his element, and I’m just a fucking waitress without a job.

  “Fuck you,” I spit, forcing myself back to my knees. Panting, I keep my head down for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. Right now, he won’t even let me off of the floor, so how the hell am I going to make it across the room?

  “Are you ready to start training now?” He sounds bored, but when my eyes flick back up to his face, I can see that he’s not. He’s excited, his hard cock visible where it presses up against his jeans. There’s a flush in his cheeks and his eyes are bright. As I watch, he darts his tongue out and licks his lower lip.

  What kind of sick bastard gets off on this?

  “I want another shot,” I tell him, slowly standing up. To my surprise, he doesn’t kick me over this time, but he’s still directly between me and the door.

  “Take it.” Marco’s dark eyes land on mine and I hold his gaze for a moment before I have to look away. The man is fucked up, no matter how gorgeous he is. I have no idea what happened to him in the past or who made him this way, but I honestly don’t care. All I care about is getting away.

  His prison psychiatrist is more than welcome to try to figure out what the hell makes him tick once he’s been arrested.

  I’ll make sure that he goes somewhere where he can be studied but preferably where he won’t get too comfortable. Somewhere like this fucking building, but with fewer people around.

  I want him rotting in a hole all by himself, the only person he talks to the one who wants to study him and see how fucking crazy he is. Then, after he dies, they’ll take his brain and study it for years to come.

  Fucking psycho.

  As quickly as possible, I jerk to the side and try to step around him. His arm swings out and he grabs me, pulling me to his chest. Automatically, my hands come up in front of myself to protect myself, but he crushes me to his chest, holding me there.

  “You lose,” he tells me. His voice is deep and dark and I feel the vibrations pass through my body. “Better luck on the real day, Natalia, because this is your last chance until you’re done with your training.”

  “You’re fucking sick, you know that?” I say, trying to struggle against his grasp. My hands still hurt and I’m loathe to put them on his chest to push away, so I try to wiggle out of his grasp instead.

  “And you were fired. Almost homeless. Nobody to love you. Right now, you’re the center of my world, Natalia. I’m interested in everything that you do. Doesn’t it feel good to have someone finally paying attention to you?”

  “Not you. Not like this.”

  He laughs. “I think that you’ll get used to it. Now, are you ready to train? Because you just lost your official trainer, but I’m willing to help you out today.” He releases me and I step back, eyeing him warily.

  “I don’t want to train with you. I want the other guy back.” This is a no-win situation for me and I know it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try to make it as beneficial to me as possible.

  “Oh, no, Natalia. You threw that opportunity away for the day. I’m going to be with you all day long, making sure that you train and eat, making sure you shit, making sure you rest. You want to feel special, Natalia, I can do that for you.”

  I swear, my blood runs cold. There’s no way that that’s physically possible, but that’s what it feels like when he looks at me. I’ve never seen anyone want to hurt another person like this and I’m not sure that I can get out of it.

  He reminds me of a kid in school when I was younger who found a baby kitten. Instead of taking care of it or giving it to an adult, he lugged it around with him all day, making it pose, letting it try to get away from him before he caught it, and eventually killing it.

  I’d cried hard watching him torture the poor thing, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I’m the baby kitten.

  “Today we’re going to work on speed,” he tells me, stretching his arms over his head. This gives me a great opportunity to see his muscles, how they twist beneath his shirt, how wrapped with them he really is.

  I don’t have a fucking chance of getting out of here.

  But I’m going to try.

  “You know how rabbits zig and zag to get away from the thing that wants to eat them?” He asks. I don’t respond and he raises an eyebrow, rubbing his hands together. “You’re the rabbit, Natalia. I’m the wolf. Run.”

  Chapter 10

  Marco

  Natalia stares at me for a moment like she’s trying to figure out just how serious I’m being, but that’s the thing she hasn’t learned yet. I don’t joke.

  The island, the games, all of it — it’s my masterpiece. I’ve worked long and hard for my life to make something that I could be proud of and call my own and it’s my own island, my own rules, my own games.

  Sure, my three best friends live here with me and we all play the games together, but I’m the one who came up with them.

  Kids never wanted to play with me when I was younger because I wanted to play games like this. Not just tag, chase and hunt. Not just sports, which were boring, but hunting games. Fighting games. Games where there was not only a clear winner and a clear loser, but games where the loser really had something to fear.

  Honestly, nobody gives a shit if you get out during dodgeball. You get to sit on the bleachers with your friends and talk shit about the PE teacher. In fact, I’d daresay that getting out in most games is preferable to actually playing in them.

  But not my game. It’s life or death, not only for the rabbit, but for the hunter. The last thing that we need is a rabbit getting away and sharing our secrets with the world. If that were to happen, we’d be finished.

  To stay alive, we have to keep chasing and killing, and I haven’t lost. Not yet. I haven’t even come close.

  All of the rabbits I’ve brought to the island before have been half broken and unwilling to really play the game. Natalia, on the other hand, she has fight. She has spunk. She wants to live and, for that reason, I chose her.

  “I told you to run,” I tell her, looking down at her. She has her face turned up to me like she’s worshipping me, which she fucking should. I control her life and her future right now and if she makes me mad, I can end her and find a new rabbit.

  But I don’t want to. I like this one. I like that she spat at me and has tried to run. I like that she didn’t want to eat last night.

  Hell, I even like the fact that she’s so small I could pick her up and crush her. It makes me want to protect her, makes some instinct I have of looking out for small things try to kick in, but I override it. I don’t want to look out for Natalia and save her, I want to break her.

  She darts to the left, obviously planning on running around the perimeter of the room to try to get to the door. Natalia is fast, I’ll give her that, her arms pumping hard as she pushes off of the ground with every step, but she’s not fast enough.

 
I leap over the sandpit installed along the side of the room and grab her around the waist, flinging her down and to my left. She sprawls across the sand, some of it flying up to hit her in the face when she lands.

  I watch for a moment as she spits the sand out and shakes her head, and when she rolls over to look at me, I grin. “Again, rabbit. That was a terrible effort and you fail.” Swinging my arm out, I gesture around the room. “Maybe don’t take a path that’s so obvious next time.”

  We’re in the largest training room on the island. It sticks out from the main building like a sore thumb, but I wanted it to be big enough to provide plenty of room for running and speed work. Not only are there a few sand pits to mimic having to run along the beach, but there are huge downed logs to jump over as well as some boulders that she’ll learn to jump across.

  I want her to actually have a fighting chance so that the game is as fun as possible. If she doesn’t know how to navigate the island and I catch her right away then it simply isn’t fun.

  “Get up. Try again.” I command, and she slowly pushes herself up to a stand. She’s covered in sand and going to need a shower later. Her eyes are slits as she stares at me but she doesn’t say anything before she suddenly takes of, running to the side before jumping out of the sand pit and climbing up a rock.

  I watch her go, pleased to see that she can pull herself up the huge boulder, but then I clear the sand pit in a jump, chasing right behind her. Sure, I could cut her off, but there’s something more exhilarating about knowing that the person trying to catch you is right on your trail.

  “Faster, rabbit,” I tell her, reaching out to grab her ponytail. She stops short, about to jump down from the boulder, and I pull her back hard so that she’s leaning against my chest.

  Natalia is panting, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tries to catch her breath. “I can’t go faster,” she tells me.

  Instead of responding, I loop her ponytail tighter around my fist. I want to keep her here with me, and if that means I need to physically hold her in place, then I’m going to do that.

  “Please,” she tells me, her voice breaking. “I can’t go faster. I thought…”

  Her voice trails off and I’m interested. Against my better judgement, I let her ponytail go, fully intending to turn her around so that I can get a look at her fact. I hate it when rabbits cry, but I do love watching it.

  But I don’t get the chance. As soon as she feels me let go of her ponytail, she takes off, jumping down off of the boulder and scrambling back to her feet as soon as she can right herself. She clears a log and then starts to sprint, running for the door.

  For just a moment I stand and watch her, then my instincts kick in and I’m after her. This is what I love — the chase, knowing what comes next, seeing her just a few feet in front of me. She’s sweating now, the scent of fear sharp and trailing behind her as she tears across the room as quickly as possible.

  She’s about to jump over some sand when I tackle her, my body slamming her down into the pit. The sand breaks our fall but she still cries out when she lands, her body deflating a little bit as the pressure of mine on top of her hits her.

  I roll her over and stare down at her, fully expecting her to look sad.

  But she’s not sad. She’s pissed.

  “Fuck you!” She screams, slamming her fists into my chest. “Fuck. You! I was going to make it that time!”

  “Stupid little tricks like pretending to cry or be sad aren’t going to help you survive this,” I tell her. “You have to trust your body, not try to make someone else feel bad for you.”

  “I hate you!” She slams her fists into my chest again. I could stop her, but I don’t want to. I like seeing her so full of rage and, besides, it will just wear her out sooner. “I wish you were dead!”

  “Ooh, that hurts,” I say, rolling my eyes as I climb off of her. “Again,” I say, looking down at her.

  Natalia doesn’t move, so I offer her my hand. She eyeballs it, then pushes herself up to a stand without my help. She’s breathing hard, almost panting, the rage obvious in her face.

  “I will kill you,” she tells me. “I promise you, Marco, one of us is going to make it off of this island and it’s not going to be you.”

  “Yeah?” She has me interested now, not because I’m scared, but because I’m more turned on than I care to admit. “How the hell do you think that you’re going to manage that, Natalia? You can’t even make it to the door without me taking you down over and over again.”

  I brush some hair back from her face then grab her chin, forcing her to look up at me. “You hate me, rabbit, and I get that, but you won’t for long. I promise you, by the time you’re ready for your hunt, you’ll be begging me to let you stay.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I laugh and drop her chin. “I think I’ll have a thesaurus dropped off in your room tonight. How does some light reading after dinner sound? Might keep you from being so dreadfully boring.”

  This time she doesn’t respond. I want to shake her by the shoulders to make her answer me, but instead I take a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment. It smells delicious in this room, like rotting wood, sweat, and fear. Natalia has no idea how delicious she smells.

  She has no idea what I’d like to do to her. I want to run my hands along her body, take her for my own. I wasn’t joking when I told her that she’d be begging me to let her stay, but after I use her, I’m going to hunt her.

  She can’t stay, no matter how badly she wants to. That’s not how the island works. There are rules, and when people don’t follow those rules, that’s when everything falls apart.

  “Run, rabbit,” I tell her. “I’m getting bored.”

  Chapter 11

  Natalia

  My muscles ache.

  Muscles that I didn’t even know that I had ache. I want to cry because my body is so sore, but instead I take the pain killers that are handed to me at dinner and slowly walk over to a table to sit.

  There are three other women in the room with me, all of them dressed like me in black pants and tight tank tops. Two of them have long ponytails pulled back from their faces, the third has a bob that hangs down around her face while she eats.

  “Hey,” I say, not to any one of them in particular, but just to try to talk to them. “You guys okay?”

  The woman with the bob glances up at me then looks back down at her plate in a hurry, stabbing her chicken like she’s angry at it before taking a bite. I watch as she chews and swallows, then try again.

  “Can I sit with one of you?” Four tables, four women. It’s obvious that we’re all meant to be separated from each other, but I get up anyway, my chair scraping loudly against the floor, and walk over to where the woman with the bob sits.

  “I’m Natalia,” I tell her, giving her a smile. “I’m new.”

  She nods but doesn’t respond. Instead, she takes another bite, her eyes flicking around the room as she does. I glance around too, looking for a hidden camera, but I don’t see anything.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, but she shakes her head. Popping a bite of chicken into my mouth, I look over at the other two women. They both have their faces bent over their food like they’re afraid to even look up in case I try to talk to them.

  Footsteps behind me make me whip around, but when I see that it’s just the cook, Helen, I relax. That is, until she grabs my plate and slams it down on the empty table where I’d been sitting. I don’t move and she points, her eyes narrowed as she looks at me.

  “Oh, you want me to sit over there?” I ask, slowly getting up and moving to the other table. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  A soft snicker behind me makes me glance back at the woman with the bob, but when she sees me looking at her, she dips her head again. That’s fine, at least I know that she’s not completely broken by the guys here.

  The two women with the ponytails might be too far gone for me to be able to talk to them and connect with them, but I’m go
ing to keep trying. Even though I don’t think that one of us can make it out of here on our own, I have no doubt in my mind that the four of us could band together and take the four guys out.

  It won’t be easy, that’s for sure, but I’ve never been afraid of a little hard work, especially if it meant that I was going to survive. As I eat, mindlessly putting each bite in my mouth, I think about the things that I’ve done to survive thus far.

  I’m not proud of all of them, but they’ve kept me alive up to now, and that’s definitely something to be celebrated.

  When I finish I stand, leaving my plate for Helen, and walk to the door, fully expecting Owen, my trainer, to be waiting for me, but Marco’s standing there, leaning against the wall, grinning.

  “What the hell do you have to be so happy about?” I ask him, turning in front of him to walk down the hall. Even though it’s only my second day here, I know full well where I’m supposed to go. My room is upstairs and I just want to shower and go to bed.

  I’m beginning to see how difficult it is to plan a revolution when you’re so tired you can barely walk. This could be a problem.

  “It was a good day, that’s all. Don’t you think? Didn’t you have a good day, Natalia?” He asks, lightly putting his hand on my lower back as he walks by me to open the door.

  I grit my teeth. There are few things that I hate more than when a man touches me to walk by me when he has no reason to do so. Men always think that they can put their hands on your body without permission and it pisses me off.

  I make a mental note to remind myself that that’s just one more reason I want to kill him.

  “It sucked,” I tell him, walking up the stairs in front of him. My legs feel so heavy and sore that I can barely take each step, but I don’t want him to know that I’m tired. I have a feeling that any sign of weakness will be a strike against me.