A Midsummer Night's Romp (20 page)

I stared at him in horror. “You have got to be kidding!”

“Unfortunately, I'm not.” He tried his cell phone again, shaking his head. “Still not connecting even though it shows it sees the network. Do you have a mobile phone?”

“Not one that is set up to work in England. Maybe if you get right next to the door, you can get the walkie-talkie to work?”

“I'll try.” He sat on the top step and spoke into the radio, but there was no reply.

“Well, that's it,” I said dramatically, taking a lamp and marching down the stairs. “We're doomed.”

“Careful,” he warned, following me at a slower pace. “Those steps are uneven. You could fall and hurt yourself.”

“What does it matter? We're going to die down here anyway! I'd rather have a swift death due to a plummet down ancient steps than I would a slow, lingering death where I sit in the dark and wonder if I should try to eat your corpse, or use it to catch rats and eat them.”

“What makes you think I am going to be the one to die first?” He limped past me back to the part of the passageway where the stone ruins jutted out of the earth. “I've got more body mass than you, so if we're going to starve to death, then logically you will be the one to go first, and I'll have to decide whether to eat your legs first or go for your arms.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, and sank less than gracefully down onto a bit of stone wall. “Oh, I like that! You wouldn't even have a dilemma about whether or not you should eat me over the rats, where I'd be in all sorts of mental hell trying to justify cannibalizing you. Well, fine. If you want to be that way, then I won't even consider the rats—I'll just start in on you. Happy now?”

“Not very, no, but it's not because of your desire to eat me.”

I glanced sharply at him, but there wasn't even the least little bit of a leer about him. That made me sad, and oddly irritated. “If you're going to have that attitude, then you're going to be lucky if I wait until you're dead before I start chomping on you.”

He surveyed the area for a few minutes, then gave a half shrug, got down onto his butt, and with a brush and a trowel, started working at the nearest stretch of archaeology. “I wouldn't eat your legs unless you were almost dead and were paralyzed.”

I gasped. “Oh my god, do you mean you'd seriously eat me while I was still alive?”

“You just said you'd do the same to me.”

“I said you'd be lucky if I waited!” I threw a clod of dirt at him. “I never said I'd actually do it. My god, you're a monster—do you know that? You're just a cannibalizing monster!”

“How is it being a monster to save myself by eating you when you'd be paralyzed and near death?” he asked, brushing the dirt off his leg. (My aim sucks.) “It's not like you'd feel it. You probably wouldn't even know if I waited until you drifted into a coma.”

“I am speechless with appallingness,” I said, heedless of grammar, and stood up. “So speechless that I'm going to leave you to your horrible, foul thoughts, and take my very nonparalyzed legs and try to find a way out of this hellhole.”

“Bolt-hole,” he corrected, and, other than raising an eyebrow at me, didn't say anything more when I shuffled my way past him with one of the lamps.

Ten minutes later, I admitted defeat.

“Back so soon?” he asked, looking up.

“I had to come back.” I held out the lamp. “It ran out of oil.”

“Ah. Yes, that was bound to happen. Luckily, this one seems to be all right.”

“Gunner,” I said, and slumped down next to him. “Hold me.”

He set down the tools he was still using. “Are you still angry with me?”

“No. I can't do anything about the fact that you don't have the moral compass to leave my legs alone even if I wasn't dead yet. We're trapped in here, Gunner, really trapped. There's nothing farther down the passage but a big wall of nothing.”

He nodded. “That would be the cave-in that my father mentioned when Elliott and I were little. There is no more to the bolt-hole.”

I scooted over so that he could put his arms around me properly, and leaned into him, breathing in the now slightly musty scent of him. “What are we going to do? I
wasn't serious about eating you, you know. But I don't want to die down here.”

“You won't,” he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice that did much to ease the panic that had been steadily growing inside me.

“You don't know that for certain.” I swallowed back a lump of what was most likely tears waiting to be shed. “I don't see how we're going to get out of here. No one knows to even look for us here. Why aren't you doing something?”

“I am doing something. I'm holding the most desirable woman in the world.”

“Yes, you are, if by that you consider that your world is limited to this passageway, but that also means I'm the
only
desirable woman in the world, so I'm not too ecstatic over the title.”

He chuckled into my hair, then slid a finger beneath my chin and tipped my head upward so that his lips brushed mine when he spoke. “If I told you that at this moment, the only thing concerning me is whether or not I'm going to be able to keep my hands off you, would you think I was sex-obsessed?”

“No, but that's only because I've been trying all morning not to slide my hands under your shirt.”

“Why would you stop an urge like that?” He kissed me before I could answer, his mouth warm and wonderful, and so exciting that it almost made me forget that we were more or less buried in a tomb beneath the castle.

I swear that every nerve in my body was alight at that moment. I simultaneously didn't want the kiss to end and wanted to fling Gunner to the ground, strip off his clothes, and rub myself all over him.

“Lorina?” He ran his thumb over my lip.

I quivered like a plucked bowstring. “Hmm?”

“If you want to put your hands under my shirt, you
can. I'd even take it off for you, if you like. My shirt, not your hands. Evidently I've lost the ability to grammar.”

“I think that's just my mouth being infectious,” I told him, and started to reach for his chest. I stopped when my brain finally recovered enough from the kiss to remind me of several things.

His eyes narrowed on me. “What are you doing? You're thinking, aren't you? I can see you are. You were about to torment my chest again, and then you thought of something, and stopped. Stop thinking. There's no reason you shouldn't touch my chest. And, for that matter, any other part of me that happens to tempt you. There's nothing to stop you, is there?”

I sat on my hands. “You know, there are times when I really wish I
could
stop thinking. But unfortunately, my brain is annoying and it picks weird moments to remind me of things, and it just reminded me of something important.”

He was silent a moment. “Something to do with Thompson?”

“Yes.”

“It's this secret you have, isn't it? The plan you mentioned this morning.”

Me and my big mouth. “That's right.”

“And that's related to why you are pretending to be a photographer?”

“Boy, you don't forget anything, do you? Elephants could take memory lessons from you. Yes, Mr. Third Degree, it's all part and parcel of that.”

“Do you fancy him?”

I shuddered.

“I thought not. Then, why—no. I take that back. I don't want to know why.”

Now, that surprised me. “You don't?”

“Not in the least. No, I tell a lie—I do want to know,
but at this moment, in this place, I don't care. So long as you aren't interested in Thompson in a romantic way, then I can wait for you to be comfortable with telling me.”

And at that, my heart did a little flip-flop. “I don't want to sleep with him. I wouldn't do that, even if I did want to. He's . . .” I bit my lip, so tempted to tell him the truth that it almost poured out of me. Something held me back, though. The doubting side of my mind pointed out that I had known Gunner for only a few days, and had no idea how he would view my plan. If he thought I was immoral . . . I gave a mental shake of my head. I didn't want to have to address that unless I absolutely had to. “He's not exactly what he seems.”

“Who among us is?” He rubbed his thumb across my lower lip again. I nipped his finger. “I'm not saying I'm not curious as hell, but if it matters this much to you, then consider the subject closed.”

“Thank you,” I said, my conscience yelling at me for not trusting him.

You trust him enough to snog the tongue right out of his head; how can you desire a man if you don't trust him?

It's not my secret to share!
I yelled back at her
. Besides, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to look like an asshat.

My conscience didn't answer that, but she gave me a long, knowing look that made me feel even worse.

“So, shall we have sex?”

I goggled at him for a few seconds before I realized he was teasing me. And then it struck me that he wasn't teasing at all. “I—we're in a passageway, Gunner!”

“Oddly enough, I'm aware of that.” He smiled at me, and my legs quivered, as did several other, more intimate parts of me. “But you fancy me, and I sure as hell want you, and we appear to have some time to kill, so why not?”

“I didn't say I fancied you,” I said, tipping my chin upward, but that was just a little pride talking. That and Dr. Anderson's insistence that I set the terms of my involvement in any relationship.

He just looked at me.

“Oh, all right, I do, but you don't have to assume I do. I am not the sort of a woman who needs a man to be happy in her life. I've got a fulfilling job, and am happy in my own skin. Well, mostly. I would like to drop a few pounds, but I refuse to let society dictate to me what I should look like.”

Gunner looked a little puzzled. Before he could ask me what the hell I was ranting about, I added, “Sorry. That was just a little self-defense thing. I do like touching you and kissing you and all that, but you could have pretended to have a shred of doubt, you know. It's a bit annoying to have it assumed that I'd fall for your gorgeous self.”

“I don't, as a rule, play games like that. I believe in honesty.”

I flinched. “Ouch.”

“Sorry. That wasn't intended to reflect upon our discussion of a few moments ago. I was referring to honesty in emotions. So, how about it?”

I shook my head. “We're trapped in a passage under a castle, with no one knowing we're down here. And you said there are rats.”

He sighed heavily. “I knew that lie would come back to haunt me. There are no rats, Lorina.”

“You're just saying that because you want to get busy with me,” I said suspiciously.

“I want to get busier with you than you've ever busied before—that's true—but I said it because I'd hoped you'd be terrified of them, and want to cling to me.”

“That's a pretty dastardly thing to do, Gunner.”

“I know, but I'm beginning to feel desperate.”

“Just because you say there aren't any rats doesn't mean they aren't here,” I pointed out.

“Look around you. Have you seen any rats since we've been down here?”

I glanced around the passageway. “Well . . . no.”

“Have you heard any sounds of rodents?”

“No,” I said slowly. “But maybe they're just hiding from us.”

“Hiding where?” He gestured at the stones on the floor. “There's nowhere for them to go to remain unseen, not to mention the fact that we'd see droppings if they had been here.”

I rubbed my arms. “It's still a bad idea. We've only known each other less than a week, and for most of that time, you were annoyed with me. I'm not the sort who dashes into relationships, anyway. It took me six months to decide whether or not I wanted my previous boyfriend, and thankfully, it only took me a year to get away from him.”

“Get away from?” His lovely blue eyes were narrowed slightly.

I shook my head. “Not ready to talk about that.”

“Fair enough.” His brows smoothed, and a little smile flirted with his lips, making all my internal organs melt into puddles of goo. “If I told you that my brother married his wife after knowing her for less than a week, what would you say?”

“That your sister-in-law must be one hell of a woman.”

“She is that.” He pulled me into a loose embrace. “Do you know what I think?”

“No, but I have a strong suspicion you're going to tell me.”

“I think that you're suffering mental distress, Lorina. You've let this situation with Thompson—no, don't tense up; I'm not going to question you about it—you've let it
work you into knots, and now you're worried about rats and being trapped down here, and whether or not you're falling in love with me, and that's giving you an immense amount of stress.”

I shoved back on him. “I am not falling in love with you! Didn't you just hear me tell you that it takes me forever to warm up to a man, romantically speaking?”

“Ainslie men are different. My brother proved that. Regardless, you're under tremendous stress, and quite obviously suffering. That's not good. You need something to distract you from your dark and confused thoughts.”

“I do?” The lure of his nearness was too much for me. It wooed me as nothing else could. I watched his mouth move as he spoke, wanting to kiss him again, wanting to touch all that gorgeous warm flesh.

“Yes, you do, and as a caring man, as a man who values you for more than just your delectable body, and enticing breasts, and truly magnificent ass, I will take it upon myself to provide that distraction so that you might be comfortable, mentally speaking.”

“Oh.” Unable to resist, I leaned in and gently bit his lower lip. “That is very thoughtful of you.”