Page 50 of Lady and the Hitman

The thrill wasn’t in the chase. It was in the certainty. I would be caught. I would be claimed. But until then, I got to savor the stretch of this wild place. The power in my legs. The sweat on my skin. The heat blooming between them.

And with every step, something shifted.

I was still running, but not just from him. I was running into something. Into myself. With each curve I rounded, each shadow I ducked into, I felt more in command—not of the hunt, but of my own desire. I wasn’t just the girl who wrote a desperate, filthy plea to a stranger. I was the woman living it. Breathing it.Lovingit.

This was mine.

I felt it in my bones, in the boldness of my movements. The confidence curled low in my belly, winding tighter the longer I stayed free. Not because I wanted to win—but because I wanted to be worthy of losing. Of surrendering. Of collapsing beneath him not in fear, but in victory.

And maybe … maybe this wasn’t just about what I needed.

Maybe I wanted to give something, too.

To be the kind of woman who could make a man like Ronan come undone. Not with control, but with the loss of it. I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him—ruthlessly. Recklessly. With hunger so sharp it bordered on reverence.

Because giving him pleasure—watching his mouth fall open, hearing that first involuntary groan when I finally dropped to my knees—suddenly mattered as much as chasing my own.

I wanted to earn the moment he couldn’t hold back.

I wanted to be the reason he shattered.

He spoke to me again once—when I was crouched beneath a canopy near the Africa loop, tucked behind a set of artificial rocks where a zebra enclosure shimmered in the distance.

“I see you,” Ronan said in my ear.

My breath hitched. “No, you don’t.”

His laugh crackled through the line. “You think hiding behind a boulder makes you safe?”

“I think I like that you’re looking.”

A pause.

Then: “I’m not the only one.”

That did something to me. Twisted the heat in my belly into something feral.

Because if someone else touched me first …

He would lose control.

And I wanted that. Almost more than I wanted to be found.

My fingers drifted down again, pressing the inside of my thigh through the bodysuit as I crouched lower. A tease. A warning.

He must’ve seen. The thought drove me wild.

“You touch yourself again,” he growled, “and I’ll make you come in front of them.”

Them.

I didn’t know who he meant.

Other hunters? Orchestrators? Observers?

I didn’t care.

I wanted them to watch.