Chapter Six
Sylvie
Iwoke up to the sensation of being slowly roasted alive.
The air was thick and humid, filled with the scent of cedar and eucalyptus. Every breath felt like swallowing steam, and my skin was slick with sweat—though I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten wherever I was.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The movement sent a wave of dizziness through my head, followed by a heat that had nothing to do with my surroundings. It started low in my belly and spread outward until every nerve ending felt hypersensitive and electric.
“Easy,” a familiar voice murmured from somewhere to my left. “Don’t move too quickly.”
I turned my head and found myself looking at Kenai—silver eyes, sharp cheekbones, and that distinctive scar running across his face. He was sitting on what appeared to be a wooden bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and an expression of deep concern.
Also, he was shirtless.
I tried to focus on the fact that I was apparently in some kind of sauna with a half-naked stranger, but my brain seemed more interested in cataloging the way the heat made his white hair stick to his forehead, and how the dim light played across the firm muscle of his chest and shoulders.
“Where am I?” I managed to ask, though my voice came out raspier than I’d intended.
“Safe,” he replied, which wasn’t really an answer. Maybe he was a lawyer too. “How are you feeling?”
“Hot,” I groaned, then immediately wanted to take the word back when his eyes darkened. “I mean, temperature-wise. It’s very warm in here.”
“It is a sauna,” drawled another voice, and I turned to see a second man sitting on the opposite bench.
He was broader than Kenai, with dark hair so long it grazed the bottom of his also very bare chest. He had the kind of build that suggested he spent a lot of time doing physical labor.
His eyes were a warm brown instead of silver, and when he smiled, I realized he was probably the most beautiful person I had ever seen—that perfect mix of soft, feminine eyes and lips with a hard, masculine jaw and nose.
And on top of his head rose a very distinct set of dark brown antlers. Just like Kenai.
But even that wasn’t enough to distract thirty-two years of ingrained danger awareness. I was in an unknown location with two strange, half-naked men. My inner negotiator came out immediately.
“A sauna,” I repeated slowly. “Right. And I’m here because…?”
The two men exchanged a look that suggested they’d been having this conversation while I was unconscious.
“You collapsed,” Kenai said carefully. “At the market. I brought you somewhere you could recover safely.”
“So you kidnapped me?” The words came out sharp, but the heat was making it hard to think clearly, and panic was starting to creep in.
“It’s not kidnapping if you’re helping someone,” the broader man remarked. “I’m Taimyr, by the way.”
“Sylvie,” I said automatically—then immediately wondered if I should’ve given a fake name. But no, Kenai knew my name; that would’ve been stupid. “And for the record, it’s still very much kidnapping.”
Taimyr shrugged, clearly unbothered by the accusation.
“Sylvie,” Kenai murmured, and the way he said my name made something flutter low in my chest. “How much do you remember about what happened?”
I tried to think back, but everything after Mrs. Patterson’s hot chocolate was fuzzy around the edges. There had been the market, and the conversation with Kenai, and then…nothing.
“Not much,” I admitted. “I remember talking to you, and then…did I faint?”
“Something like that,” Taimyr answered, shooting Kenai another meaningful look.
I glared at both of them.
“Look, if one of you doesn’t start explaining what’s going on with all these pointed glances soon, I’m a black belt in taekwondo and I will use it.
” Okay, I’d gone to, like, two boxing classes, but they didn’t need to know that.
If I could survive spring break in Belize back in my twenties, I could survive these two unbearably attractive men.
So attractive it had clearly rattled something loose in my brain, because my mind was not behaving right now.
Kenai let out a long sigh. “Of course. But first, let’s get out of here. This doesn’t seem to be working anyway.”
“I told you it wouldn’t,” Taimyr added, unhelpfully. He tossed something at Kenai, who then handed it to me—a pure white terry-cloth robe.
“It’s cold outside. You’re going to want to put that on,” Kenai said with a reassuring smile. A smile that did nothing to quell the physically painful ache still present between my legs.
I pulled it on, and he extended a hand to help me up. My brain screamed danger, but something deeper inside me whispered, He’s safe. He’s home.
I took his hand, and as soon as our skin touched, the ache in every one of my nerves dulled—just a little.