Chapter 41

"Wake up." A soft, sweet, urgent whisper. "Slate. Wake up." Nobody in this world owned a whisper that beautiful.

Except for one man.

Noah.

I felt warmth and softness. Smelled spring-fresh laundry and freshly washed man. We were together in a big wide bed. Oh, I could so get used to this. The two of us together floating in the dark.

"Slate." A hand on my bare shoulder, warm and strong where it squeezed. "Wake up now."

I slowly blinked open my eyes. The room was as dark as before. "What?" I murmured. "Where are we?"

"We"re all right. It"s safe here." Noah nuzzled at the back of my neck. "But do you really want to sleep the morning away?"

My body didn"t ache anymore. We must have already slept for a long time. After all those endless hours and days of too little sleep, a night of deep rest was an intoxicating luxury.

"Mmmm." As I shifted within clean sheets, I realized that our clothes were gone again.

His morning wood nuzzled pleasantly against the small of my back. Flipping in his arms, I nudged him with my own morning wood. Soon we"d have to take care of that. But first...

"Sword fight," I murmured.

When life was this dreamy, who wanted to wake up?

He laughed softly as he dick-nudged me back. "We should talk."

"Talk. That what the kids are calling it these days?" I wrapped a hand around both of our cocks where they were pressed together. Squeezed.

We were so firm. So strong. The blood in the swollen veins was running so hot.

Noah half-swallowed a squeal of pleasure.

Then, suddenly, I did wake up. With a jerk, without letting go of our cocks, I sat up in the bed.

Oh, fuck. We"ve been tranked again. That"s why we"re naked and alone. The doors are locked. The windows... I don"t even see any windows.

A thrill of fear zinged through me. All that we"d gone through, only to end up somewhere else where somebody was holding us captive for unknown purposes?

My hand uncurled from our throbbing cocks. The moment of delicious desire was drowned in the sudden panic.

We"ve got to get out of here. Got to get away.

My heart pounded as I jerked fully awake to jet-propel my way out of bed. It was a very soft bed—the kind that makes it hard for you to escape its pull.

Noah"s arms were open to cuddle me when I bounced back down without meaning to. It was still utterly dark, but I could feel him catch me.

His laugh was gentle. "I didn"t mean to startle you. Maybe I should have let you sleep a little longer." We tumbled so that we were on our sides, face to face, Noah"s arms and legs clutching at my naked body. "It"s all right. We"re all right. We"re safe. It really is all right."

"I know," I said. "I think I was still asleep for a minute there..."

"Maybe I shouldn"t have woken you." He embraced me tightly. Our warm bodies fit together. When he guided us into a gentle flip to put himself on the bottom, his sinuous body felt sleek and hard and ready beneath my bulkier form. "I just needed a few minutes just for us."

"No, it"s all right. I"m glad you did. We"ve never had enough time just for us."

It was all flooding back to me. The exchange. Yeah, that was a thing that was real. The men in the Zodiac surrendered us to the men in the chopper in exchange for their freedom. An odd deal, since I thought the helicopter could take all four of us. Arrest the kidnappers. Take us home.

But nothing"s ever simple when you"re mixed up with international terror investigators.

Noah and I were flown from one unknown place in the middle of the sea to another unknown place on a dark continent that seemed to have a lot of forest. Nobody asked us where we needed to go. They took us where they wanted.

And now we were there. Doctors. Sleep. Food. More sleep.

Bill Mitchell"s team hadn"t dropped the ball after all. Or not completely. They"d picked up the trail in time to scoop us out of the sea. We hadn"t been told how or why.

"You could have come a lot sooner," I"d said. "Like, at any time whatsoever. We were lost for days. The semester"s about to start soon. Do you realize what would happen if the quarterback didn"t show?"

The expression on Mitchell"s face suggested he knew very well what would happen. That was probably the only reason we"d been picked up. Otherwise, he"d let the baddies take us so they could follow us deeper and deeper.

Now I supposed somebody was following the Zodiac to see where it led. But did they really need to?

"Did you get what you were looking for?" I"d asked. "I hope all this fuckery was good for something."

"You don"t have a need to know that." And then Mitchell had nodded at Noah. "And for sure that one doesn"t have a need to know that."

That"s when I knew Noah was still in trouble. Even if I wasn"t.