Chapter 5

I"ll never know what alerted me. I reacted fast and from instinct, leaving memory with nothing to record but a blur.

That"s why we need team video, after all. You gotta record the play. Slow it way down. See what you can"t see in the fog of war.

Stopping cold, I snatched out for Noah with my left hand, momentarily pulling at the lumpy pillowcase before I adjusted my aim to grab him at the hip. The fabric was soft under my fingers, but the flesh was firm.

He could have walked out of my grip. Shaken it off.

He had better sense.

Silent and unresisting, he allowed me to pull him deeper into the shade.

It was also a move that pulled him tight against my body. As a football player, I"m comfortable with full-body contact. Or should be.

But Noah was different. My distractable dick couldn"t help but respond to his lithe backside pressing urgently into my tense front. His pillowcase had swung around to the side, which allowed us to slot together like two puzzle pieces.

His toga wasn"t much of a barrier between us. It felt like a thin sheet was the only thing stopping the firm globes of his perfect ass from grabbing hard at my bulging equipment. Felt like? That was literally what was actually happening here.

So, yeah, the dick was eager to lift its curious head.

"Stop this. We"ve got bigger issues, boy."

"Bigger than me?"

The struggle, as they say, was real.

I held Noah still, but it didn"t stop him from making an owlish head spin to look at me over his shoulder. His eyes were big with questions he dared not voice. Not letting go of his hip, I cupped my right hand to my ear to signal listening.

He nodded the world"s tiniest nod.

We both listened.

The song of the surf. A sandpiper"s high, sad cry.

His hair tickled my face as I pressed my mouth to his ear. "Can"t see from here, but we need to go slow. Don"t make a sound."

He nodded. The hair tickled my face some more. It felt wrong to notice, but how could I not?

We inched forward a bit at a time. My dick kept merrily jabbing into his buttocks. I should stop doing that, but I couldn"t risk releasing my grip on him.

If he ran ahead again...

If he made too much noise...

If he got hurt rushing in when I was the bigger guy who should have been the one taking point...

I refused to lose him again. That wasn"t going to be allowed to happen.

As soil became sand, the trees thinned out. The beach was getting more visible.

And so were we.

There wasn"t any help for it. Not if we intended to find out what was out there.

We hadn"t abandoned our luxurious bed and hiked down a mountain to turn back now.

Noah"s toga shifted under my grasp as I clutched him even tighter. We were blind for a moment in the blare of beachy sunlight. Blinking, we were forced to pause to let our eyes adjust.

And then the beauty of the place hit hard. It was too much beauty. Too untouched.

A beach like this anywhere near civilization would already be lined with condos. Only a bad location could explain so much nothing.

No signs. No lights. No marina. No wooden fishing pier or any pier. No boats on a far horizon.

No beer stands.

Just an achingly beautiful crescent-shaped beach that cupped a turquoise bay—a natural harbor so perfect it took your breath away. The sand was the pure white kind most beaches truck in every year.

The trouble was if you had no roads, you had no trucks. So the sugar sand was natural too.

Noah trembled against me and not from cold.

A sandpiper that no doubt considered itself all very picturesque ran along the shoreline. Its cry was as achingly lonely as anything I"d ever heard.

"Creepy as fuck." I wasn"t sure I needed to whisper into Noah"s ear. There was nobody here. "If the developers can"t find this place, who can?"

"That guy, I guess." Noah lifted his gaze beyond a broken line of stones that acted like a natural breakwater.

Unbelievable. And the sense of unreality only grew stronger as the shirtless man in the straw hat paddled around a large rock to come fully into view.

What was that? Seriously?

"Is that a freaking dugout?" I asked.

Noah nodded against me. His toga shifted again. It was loosening on his body with every small gesture. I might have tugged at it too roughly too many times. I made a mental note to help him re-tie the knots before I accidentally pulled it off.

Not that it would be a tragedy if...

Incoming was a fast, graceful canoeist. Had I ever seen a dugout canoe anywhere outside the movies? They seemed like primitive relics of a long-lost era. Modern materials like fiberglass and Kevlar seemed like better, lighter choices for the modern man.

On the other hand, the price of a fallen log was right. They"d probably pay you to take it away.

In any case, the shirtless man—now well within the breakwater—was gliding with ease through the protected harbor. He"d be here in minutes.

Seconds.

It was decision time.

"Let"s agree we don"t need to be afraid of a guy in a dugout," I said softly.

"One hundred percent," Noah said.

When our incoming glanced ahead to his final destination, he easily spotted us in our togas.

Even from here, even half-dazzled by whitecaps on bright water, we could see him crack up laughing.