Chapter 9

Noah kissed me again. "You know what it"s for." And again. He kept giving me these light, nibbly little kisses meant to tease.

I had a flashback to the moment on the beach when he stood naked with his toga tangled around his ankles. That full-body flush. Could he flush red to his knees?

And if he did, could I lick the path of his blushes?

Taste the salt and the heat?

I kissed him back. "I don"t know what it"s for. That"s why I asked."

"You do know. You just don"t want to say." He nibbled at my lower lip. "I don"t care what anybody says about you, Slate. You"re not such a bad guy."

"Hardy-har." I nipped his ear. "Who says I"m a bad guy?"

"You do." His eyes went briefly serious. "You want people to think you"re a big bad guy, and maybe it works on most of them, but it doesn"t work on me." He kissed my mouth again. Harder this time. With a little flick of tongue. "See, I already know you"re all gooey chocolate sweetness in the center."

"I am not gooey chocolate sweetness in the center or anywhere."

"Mmmm." He used more tongue to probe the seam of my lips. "Oh, yes, you are. I can taste the sugar. Not a doubt in my mind."

"I"m not sweet. Don"t make me kick your ass to prove I"m not sweet."

I appreciated what Noah was doing, but I"m also a contrary fucker. He wanted to make me feel better about my decision not to grab the dugout. Instead, I felt worse.

Now that I couldn"t change my mind, I was certain I"d made a huge mistake.

Pushing suddenly to my feet, I crushed the empty juice carton with a single hard stomp. Noah rocked back on his heels to watch me stash the crushed carton in the backpack.

Kissyface time was over.

"We need to get going." I slung the pack over my shoulder. "We need to make a circuit of the shoreline before it gets too dark." I glanced at those threatening clouds again. Or too wet.

"Um." Noah was startled at how fast I"d broken the kiss. "All right." He gritted out the words.

"There could be a boat hidden somewhere, there could be a lot of stuff. You said it yourself."

He nodded and stood. "Sure." His voice was gentle but his hands were brisk as he brushed at his toga to knock off the worst of the sand. "But, just so you know, you did the right thing. That guy would have been stranded if you snatched his boat."

"He wouldn"t have been stranded. Or not for long. Probably not for more than a few hours. All those surveillance cams...somebody from security is already on their way to see what we"re up to. That"s guaranteed."

Stupid to bark at him like that. Noah hadn"t forgotten about the surveillance cams. I had.

How could I make such a stupid choice? If I was the only person at risk, fine, but I wasn"t.

When I decided not to grab that dugout, I"d decided for Noah too.

We could already be halfway home by now.

"You saw how fast it moved," I said. "We could"ve been out of here so far ahead of the bad guys."

"Not so very far ahead." Noah touched my hand. "Not when they"ve got a motor, and you"ve got paddles." He squeezed, and I couldn"t help but squeeze back. "We"ll take the real boat, and leave the real bad guys stranded. That"s the only real plan."

"Yeah." I couldn"t have sounded very certain. Because I wasn"t.

"You did the only thing you could do, Slate."

"That"s the thing. That"s why I"m kicking myself. If we"re being real, I didn"t do anything. I just stood here and watched him go."

"Sometimes," Noah said. "That"s the hardest thing to do."