Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“I see you’re makin’ new friends.”
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the snake. “Isn’t she gorgeous? I found her in the shower.”
Ty squatted down in front of me and dropped two towels next to him. “She ain’t shy, is she?”
“Do you think she’s someone’s pet?”
He shook his head. “Not necessarily. They can be pretty docile in the wild too.”
This one certainly was.
“How are you in the wild, Lane?”
His low murmur made me look up a little too fast, and the snake began making its way off my arm, down my leg, and onto the boardwalk. I swallowed, suddenly caught in Ty’s stare. Was I the only one who could sense his darkness? Or was I imagining it?
His gaze flicked from one point to another across my face. “I’m beginning to believe you prefer the wild over…maybe well-maintained parks.”
“There’s no comparison.” I needed my city life too; I loved DC and Arlington. But out here…? Christ. “I love everything about this,” I admitted. “I love getting my hands dirty, I love the sweat and blood, I love following the laws of nature—how everything is so untamed and powerful.”
He raked his teeth across his bottom lip and tilted his head. “Powerful?”
“Yeah, like…you have natural ranks. You have prey and predators. Eat or be eaten. Nature is…kinda how I want my life to be. Chaos within structure. Wilderness within logic. Some animals are essentially born to be another species’ food. Others are born apex predators. Which gives us the ability to predict outcomes and gather more information. Nature is, in short, a brilliant, powerful system—and here in Florida, especially, we see it so clearly. We see the immense ripples the smallest pebble can cause. Just look at the introduction of cane toads, pythons, and iguanas. Look at what that’s done to the population of the Florida panther and basically everything the Burmese eats. Good or bad, it’s raw power.”
I took a deep breath and threw a glance around me. The corn snake was nowhere to be seen anymore.
That’d been some ramble, but I couldn’t feel embarrassed about it. He’d asked. And I felt so strongly about this.
If I didn’t have other passions, I’d move down and dedicate my life to serving the ecosystems here. I’d spend my days going after the biggest apex predator around.
The Burmese.
Ty cleared his throat quietly and unzipped the medic kit in his hands. “What would your rank be in the wild? Are you prey or predator?”
Bastard. Was he really talking about nature now? It didn’t feel like it. And I was too stupid to go with distance. Because what if… What if I could experience what I’d fantasized about so many times? What if I could find out what he was like? When stripped of social constructs and inhibitions.
My answer was the same for both kink and nature, though. “Everyone’s a predator until a bigger one comes along.”
He spared me a quick glance as he reached for my arm, and there was no mistaking the heat this time. It was me he’d been gathering information about today. He was biding his time. That “what if” didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore, and the realization wreaked havoc within me.
I had the chance to play with Ty, didn’t I?
In what universe could I resist?
I swallowed a ball of nerves and watched in silence as he carefully removed the tee wrapped around my arm.
I was so not telling my grandmother I’d ruined my shirt.
“You wouldn’t go down without a fight,” he stated quietly.
“Hell no.”
He smirked faintly. “Good.” Then his expression promptly changed to one of concentration, and I understood why when I saw the wounds the monitor had left behind. Jesus Christ, I would definitely need stitches.
Two distinct claw marks, about four inches long, and then the lower tip of one that was a messy puncture with blood still trickling out.
“If you want, I can take you to urgent care on Marco Island right now,” he said. “Or you let me take care of it.”
“You do it.” I had no desire to go anywhere, and I believed he could handle things himself. “I don’t care about scarring if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I would have cared if it’d been my tattooed arm. Alas, it wasn’t.
I hadn’t sat in a tattoo artist’s chair for a total of thirty-two hours and gotten my arm covered in scales to have a reptile fuck it up.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, then.” He wrapped a bandage around my arm, presumably just to keep it from bleeding too much, and then he rose up. “I might as well wash up too.”
I mean…
I wasn’t complaining.
He gave me no time to wonder about modesty either. He dropped his clothes, fucking all of them, next to a shower stall, before he turned on the water.
That ass.
That thigh tattoo.
There was something inherently slutty about thigh tats. Ty’s was so sexy too. And now I understood what kind of tail was slithering up his thigh, entwined with the Burmese python. It was a Florida panther. It had to be. Two animals with such violent history in this state. One was making the other go extinct.