Chapter 1

Yes. We had time for this. Kisses sweet with blueberry syrup. After so much time apart, we deserved every stolen moment we could take.

"Hate these stupid togas," Noah confessed. "I feel like I should be drinking from a tube attached to a keg like a real frat boy."

"Oh, they"re not so bad." Faking a leer, I slid my hand beneath his hem. "I have to appreciate the easy access. It almost makes me wonder why I passed on Greek life."

I didn"t really wonder. The hothouse environment of fraternity row would"ve busted me out of my closet before I was ready. But Noah didn"t need to hear about the first-world problems of a gay college quarterback.

When he shifted his hips in a sassy tease, the pillowcase lumpy with supplies shifted too. I toyed with the knot that held it over his right flank.

He nuzzled at the side of my jaw. "We"re never going to get out of here at this rate."

"Fair, but consider this." I abandoned the knot to squeeze a more strategic spot. "Isn"t it a little dangerous to go hiking around with that thing sticking out?"

"Hmm."

It was probably another hour before we finally began our descent.

We walked slowly at first as we adjusted to the bounce and sway of the swollen pillowcases. The granola bars were only beating up themselves, but the canned salmon was going to leave a bruise.

Note to self: Turn the pillowcases into backpacks at the next rest stop.

The bare feet motivated us to step carefully. We didn"t want to step on stones, twigs, or bad-tempered snakes who only looked like twigs. That slowed us down.

As you"d expect from a guy who lived in a tree, Noah was an adaptable outdoorsman. After a few hitches and re-ties, he was moving with his usual grace.

I let him get a little ahead of me. Nothing to do with how tasty his firm glutes looked as they pumped beneath the shifting waves of the toga.

Once we were into the trees, we couldn"t see the ocean or much of the sky. We were more closed in, which had the paradoxical effect of making the island feel bigger.

Of course, it didn"t hurt that we already knew we couldn"t see the complete circle of surrounding ocean from the house. The island didn"t even have to be an island. It could be a peninsula, with a guarded gateway to keep out unwanted trespassers.

I was pretty confident of the island theory though. If people can walk in someplace, they will walk in. Also, if we were attached to the mainland, we probably would have seen more aircraft.

As in, we would have seen at least one.

The only way to be this off-grid was to be in the middle of an ocean. Sure would be nice to know which one.

"Why are we doing this?" Noah suddenly asked. "This stupid-ass trail-blazing."

For a minute, I figured it for a rhetorical question. "Mmm?"

"I mean, why do we have to take this stupid-ass deer track? Why isn"t there a road?"

He was right. We"d circled the entire house before our departure. And there just wasn"t one.

It was odd. Made you wonder how long ago the house had been built.

The place looked like new construction, maybe even one of those vacation places built specifically to cater to the vacation rental market. Those places had to sign agreements that they weren"t using spy cameras and baby monitors to peep at their guests during their most intimate moments.

That explained the lack of hidden cameras we otherwise had a right to expect in our bedroom.

"I"ve been thinking about it," I admitted. "But I didn"t want to dive into another paranoid rabbit hole."

"It wasn"t paranoid to go over the house for cameras. It was smart."

Maybe so, but my neck tingled and my skin crawled. Classic signs of paranoia.

Unless it was a horror movie, in which case it was a classic sign of being watched.

If we"re being watched, they know we"re making a break for it. You can"t assume they don"t have monitors in the forest just because they don"t have cameras in the house.

Trail cams were a thing. A cheap thing. Half the hunters on the bayou had hidden them all over the national forest. Ninety percent or more had them installed on their own property.

My skin crawled even more.

What was this place exactly?

The builders would need roads to bring up the materials, the crew, and the equipment. They must have undone the road again. Planted it with tropical shrubs. Artfully landscaped it to blend in with the rest of the wild.

Why?

I hated to say it, but I had to. "They"ve kept other people prisoner here."