She snapped the shutter down one last time and scurried backward to free herself from the bush. She foolishly stood up, then immediately realized her mistake when she found herself face to face with the giant, with only a hundred yards of water between them.
She couldn’t move. He was magnificent, standing there like a demigod, his penetrating stare rooting her feet into place.
“Come on, Quill,” she whispered, her gaze still locked with his. “Move while you still have the advantage.”
He must have heard that, too, because he went into action before she did. He dove into the water and began swimming toward her.
Freed from his flint-green stare, Sadie snatched up her backpack and headed into the forest. She broke into a run as soon as she hit the overgrown trail and set a fast, steady pace toward home.
She grinned as the forest blurred past.
The swimmer didn’t stand a chance of catching her. He had to get to shore first and then find the trail as well as the direction she had taken. Sadie’s long legs ate up the ground with effortless ease, and she actually laughed out loud at the rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins.
This was her strength; there were very few people she couldn’t outrun. Especially a barefooted streaker that looked like he outweighed her by a good sixty pounds. It took a lot of energy to move that much weight through the winding trail, ducking and darting around branches and over fallen logs.
Yes, her long legs would give her the edge this time, rescuing her from the folly of trespassing on a stranger’s right to privacy.
Sadie slowed down after a while, but she didn’t quite have the courage to stop yet. Only a maniac would have followed her, but then only a maniac would be swimming naked in a cold-water lake.
So Sadie kept running, easing her pace to a jog.
Until she heard a branch snap behind her.
She looked over her shoulder and would have screamed if she could have. The man from the lake was fifty feet behind her. Sadie turned back to watch where she was going, the adrenaline spiking back into her bloodstream.
There was nothing like seeing a fully naked, wild-haired, wild-eyed madman on her heels to make a girl wish she had stayed in bed that morning. Sadie ran as if the devil himself was chasing her. She could actually hear the pounding of his feet behind her now; could practically feel his breath on the back of her neck.
She grabbed a small cedar tree to pivot around a corner, and that was when he caught her, hitting her broadside in a full body tackle. Sadie wanted to scream then too, but he knocked what little air she had left out of her body. They rolled several times, and Sadie swung her camera at his head. He grunted in surprise from the blow, and grabbed her flailing arms as they continued to roll.
When they finally stopped he was on top of her…and her wrists were being held over her head…and her back was being crushed into the ground…and she had never been so scared in her life.
Sadie thought about really screaming now, but her throat closed tight. She pushed at the ground and tried to buck the man off of her. At the same time she lashed out with her feet.
That was when he shifted from sitting on her to laying on her, trapping her legs with his own.
Sadie instantly stilled. This was going from bad to worse; she now had a naked madman on top of her—
and she was wearing shorts.
Oh, God. Now that she had such a close and personal look at him, he was no longer a demigod. He was a full-blown god, Adonis or Atlas, maybe. Heck. His broad shoulders and amazingly wide chest blocked out the light. His warm breath feathered over her face. Sadie could feel every inch of his long, muscled legs running the length of hers. And she could feel something…something else touching her bare thigh. He was excited, either from the thrill of the chase, their suggestive position, or the anticipation of what he was planning to do. Sadie didn’t want to scream anymore. She wanted to faint.
She did close her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to look at his triumphant, lethal looking, very male face.
Why didn’t he say something?
Sadie opened her eyes to find him staring at her hands, which he still held firmly over her head. Sadie immediately opened her bare left hand and let the camera fall onto the ground.
Still, he kept staring over her head.
He reached up and tugged at the glove on her right hand. Sadie closed it into a fist. Momentarily deterred from his task, he turned his attention back to her face.
She turned her head away.
He pulled her chin back to face him, then gently ran his thumb along her bottom lip, watching it as if fascinated.
Lord save her. This gorgeous, naked man was going to kiss her.
His finger trailed down her face, over her chin, to her neck, and Sadie felt him touch the opening of her blouse. She twisted frantically and tried to bite the arm holding her hands over her head.
He lowered the full force of his weight onto her then, and Sadie fought to breathe. Well, heck. She hadn’t realized he’d been holding himself off her before. She stilled, and he lifted himself slightly, allowing her to gasp for air.
Their gazes locked.
His long blond hair dripped lake water on her chin and throat. The heavy object dangling from his neck nestled against her breasts, causing a disturbing sensation to course all the way down to the pit of her stomach. Sadie could feel her clothes slowly sopping up his sweat, his hairy legs abrasive against hers, his chest pushing into her with every breath he took. The heat from his body scorched her to the point that she couldn’t work up enough moisture in her mouth to speak.
Not that she could think of anything to say.
The silent brute leaned forward and Sadie froze in anticipation of his kiss, but he only picked up her camera. He obviously knew how it worked, because he carefully lifted the rewind and popped it open.
He was not so gentle however, when he ripped the film from it. He tossed the exposed film and the camera on the ground beside them.
He opened her pack next, spilling the contents on the ground. He poked around in the mess he’d made and found her GPS. He turned it over, pushed several buttons, and tossed it back on the ground. He picked up her cell phone, flipped it open, then discarded it like trash to the ground.
And then he picked up the small roll of duct tape she used for emergency repairs.
Now Sadie had heard that victims were often killed with their own guns. She suddenly understood that concept when the man freed a length of her own tape and grabbed her wrists to tape them together. He then slid down her body and started to take hold of her legs.
Sadie kicked him hard enough in the stomach that he grunted, then she rolled and scrambled up to run.
She didn’t even make it past her camera before he grabbed her by the ankles and pushed her back to the ground, on her stomach this time. Sadie looked over her shoulder as he wrapped duct tape around her legs.
The damn crazy man was grinning again.
She kicked out at him again with her bound feet.
Sadie flinched when the brute gave a sharp whistle. She snapped her head around to see what he was doing.
Was he calling a friend?
Sadie looked at the scattered contents of her pack. Where was her knife? She needed something, a weapon, to defend herself. She checked to see that he was still looking off into the forest, watching for someone, while she rolled toward a group of young pine trees. She found a lower limb devoid of bark and wiggled to sit up beside it. She looked up at the man again, only to find him looking over his shoulder at her, still grinning, not at all worried she would get far being trussed up like a turkey ready for cooking.
But this turkey was not going into the pot without a fight.