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Hunter’s Prey | Ellie Moonwater

“C AN you love me?” Hayden’s voice was husky with longing

and suppressed desire.

Jeremiah thought about it. Could he? Blindfolded and

swinging bare-assed in the breeze, he found it an interesting

question. It might have helped if Hayden hadn’t been the one

to put him in this situation in the first place.

“That was not a rhetorical question.” Some of the

longing left Hayden’s voice, driven out by the hard-edged

tones of a man not used to being disobeyed. Those tones

shivered across Jeremiah’s skin, like steel and leather.

“I’m not sure,” Jeremiah replied, surprised to find it was

the truth—that, after all the energy he’d spent trying to

escape the man, he still found the thought of loving Hayden

attractive.

His answer was met by silence and then an increase in

warmth as his captor stepped closer. Still not touching him,

Hayden made his presence felt nonetheless. Heat spread

down the length of Jeremiah’s back, radiating from Hayden’s

armored body. Hayden’s breath teased the hair curling at

Jeremiah’s nape, making Jeremiah’s cock twitch.

“I climbed the mountain in pursuit of you,” Hayden

whispered, the words caressing his captive’s ear. “I ran the

Valley of Streams. I braved the Ebon Forest. For. You.”

The strength of emotion running through those last few

syllables had the harsh crack of a whiplash. Apprehension

Hunter’s Prey | Ellie Moonwater

curled through Jeremiah’s belly, cut by a curious sense of

anticipation and heightened by the beginnings of desire. He

refused to let it temper his answer. “You would have done

the same for any other.”

Now Hayden did lean close enough to touch, the

hardened leather armor of his hunting jerkin softened only

by the wool and velvet of his over tunic and the cloth of his

breeches brushing Jeremiah’s thigh. His scent, the smell of

sweat and hide and steel, closed around them.

“Oh no,” Hayden murmured, his lips nibbling at

Jeremiah’s ear. “I would have set the dogs on the others. No

possession of mine is left abandoned.”

The bitterness welled in Jeremiah’s throat, choked out

in the next words he spoke. “You’d rather see it torn apart

than lose it? Then why not me?”

Death, for a long moment, seemed more attractive than

the ache in his arms and wrists—infinitely more attractive

than the growing pain in his shoulders and upper back. To

his surprise, Hayden stepped away.

“Why not destroy you?” There was hurt and shock in the

hunter’s voice. The man crossed behind Jeremiah, circled

beneath the spreading branches of the ebon yew in which

he’d hung his prey, and came to stand before him. “Because

from you I want something more.”

Another unexpected emotion stirred in Jeremiah’s gut.

“You’ve a funny way of showing it.”

Hayden sighed. “True, but you ran. Why did you run?”

“I had my reasons.” Jeremiah pushed up on his toes,

trying to ease the slow-burning fire crawling through his

Hunter’s Prey | Ellie Moonwater

muscles. He had his reasons all right. They weren’t many,

but they were his—the dream, for one, then his fear that

Hayden would discover what he truly was, and the third?

The third was a little harder to explain. It was something he

hadn’t wanted to acknowledge even to himself. Now he’d

have to face it and decide.

Hayden reached up, laying the palm of one leather-

gloved hand along Jeremiah’s cheek, brushing a thumb

along Jeremiah’s eyebrow. “I should let you down,” he said.

“I’ll only run again,” Jeremiah told him.

“No. You won’t.” Hayden replied, reaching to his belt

and removing the leather hobbles that hung there. He was

ready when Jeremiah kicked out at him, giving his prisoner

a feral grin as he caught the man’s foot.

“Why, thank you,” he said, locking the hobble’s leather

cuff around Jeremiah’s bare ankle. Putting the foot down, he

stepped on Jeremiah’s toes and had soon completed

securing him. Reaching up, he released the rope holding

Jeremiah aloft, something in the set of his face warning his

captive against trying another attack.

Not that he could have attacked, Jeremiah thought,

fighting to keep his feet as Hayden towed him closer to the

horse and looped the rope through his saddle. Not at all. His

arms were aching from holding most of his weight, his wrists

burned, and he had trouble staying upright when he moved.

The hobbles upset his sense of balance, reducing the

parameters in which he usually moved, and his crushed toes

were still screaming.

Hayden swung into the saddle and nudged the horse

into a walk, leaving his captive to stumble along behind.

Hunter’s Prey | Ellie Moonwater

It was true the hunter had climbed the mountain and

run the Valley of Streams in pursuit of him. It was also true

he had braved the Ebon Forest and set the dogs on every

other slave that had fled his possession. These facts helped

Jeremiah realize that he had, perhaps, not been imagining

what he’d thought he’d seen in his master’s gaze. Perhaps he

had not been overly wishful about the nature of his master’s

touches or the reasons behind the increasing frequency with

which he’d been called to walk at his master’s side.

Stumbling out from under the ebon yew’s shadow and

into the light of a full moon, a hunter’s moon, Jeremiah tried

to push those memories away. What his fate would be now,

he dared not guess. Instead, he focused on putting one foot

in front of the other and not tripping. Easier said than done,

as the path was stony and rocks hid amongst the tufty grass

at its side.

He fell once, grateful when Hayden pulled the horse to a

halt while he righted himself and scrambled back to his feet.

When he fell a second time, he fell hard and only the rope

prevented him from rolling down the mountainside.

Jeremiah lay still, trying to regain his breath, to refocus his

mind through a patterning of stars. What, he wondered, had

he hit his head on?

This time, the cessation of hoofbeats was followed by the

soft thump of Hayden dismounting.

Jeremiah flinched as Hayden’s boots came to stand

beside him and flinched again when a strong arm looped

itself across his shoulders and his captor dragged him

upright. Resisting the urge to melt into the man’s arms,

Jeremiah studied the trail, which curved down around an

Ellie Moonwater - Hunter's Prey.pdf

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