Chapter 5
Somewhere, Somehow
Raised voices jerk me out of a restless sleep.
The bed is narrow and short and the mattress hard as a board yet lumpier than barely-mashed potatoes, but it's a significant step up from the bare metal I've been sleeping on for so long.
Feels downright luxurious. I was starting to forget what my life was like before the dark and the metal and the stench and the roll of the waves.
Story is passed out on me; we started out sitting up, but at some point slid down and now she's on her side, curled up mostly on top of me, her cheek on my chest, one hand curled up in the hollow of my throat like a delicate little baby bird.
The way she falls asleep on me so easily makes my heart crack and swell at the same time. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and nuzzle the top of her head, letting my eyes fall closed again.
If only we were alone.
But we aren't.
The raised voices grow louder—but it doesn't sound like an argument.
I listen…they're watching a soccer match, I think.
Despite not understanding what they're saying, the sounds of men watching a sport are a universal language.
Especially when your team is losing or does something stupid, and judging by the tone of their voices, the match isn't going well.
This continues for a good half an hour more—shouts of encouragement, groans of disappointment, an occasional bicker about rules or a certain call.
I've grown up listening to Sasha and the other guards watch soccer, arguing and fighting and all but coming to blows, all of it in a hodgepodge of languages.
The match must end, because the raised voices go quiet. Not long after, the door to this room is kicked open with a loud slam that has Story jerking awake.
The big dude with the bushy beard who met us here has a chipped white ceramic plate in either hand, on which is a messy slop of pasta and red sauce; he sets the plates on the floor, then comes back with a glass bottle of mineral water.
"Eat. Drink." His accent is distinctly Italian. "Mangia. Mangia."
Story sits up, peering at him blearily, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms. "Oh look, real food."
"I make it.”
"Better than the slop those other fucknuts were giving us," I mutter, eying the plate as I wait for the guard to back away. "Thank you. Grazie."
"I am no mama, but you no hungry here, hey?"
Story eyes me as she swings her legs around to sit at the edge of the bed. "Is he being…nice?"
I shrug. "Maybe it's poisoned?"
"Killy, Jesus. What would be the point of all this, only to poison us now?"
The bearded guard is listening intently, frowning. "No, no poison. Mangia tutto. Is good.”
I glance past him—I can see a bit of the living room, and it appears the other three have left.
He doesn't miss this, though, and reaches behind his back and hauls out the .
45 he'd greeted us with. "They return soon.
But I have a friend, hey?" He wiggles the pistol in my direction.
"No funny actions, or you are shooted, sì?”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand." I slip off the bed as he backs up out the doorway. "Hey, wait. Can we get a fork?"
"I do not know this; what is a fork.”
I mime eating. "A fork." I point at the sauce. "Can't eat that with our bare hands."
"Oh, sì, sì. I forget." He returns a moment later with two forks, which he tosses to us from the doorway.
He's no fool, clearly. The forks are plastic, not metal, for one thing.
I might be able to fashion a prison-style shiv out of it, but I wouldn't want to rely on that.
He's a big boy, and the way he handles that pistol tells me he knows what he's doing.
Plus, I don't really want to hurt him. He seems like a decent guy, so far.
For someone involved in a kidnapping plot, at least.
He closes the door, and I hear the snick of a lock, and Story and I are alone once more. She grabs the plate and water, and we sit cross-legged, facing each other knees-to-knees, my back to the headboard, hers to the foot end.
After a hesitant, tentative test bite, we discover that the food is, in fact, fucking delicious. Not in comparison to the vile slop they gave us on the ship, just fucking delicious, full stop.
It's gone in a matter of minutes.
"Pasta for breakfast might be my new thing," I mutter, swiping my finger through the sauce left on the plate.
Story laughs. "I think that's hunger talking." She glances at the window. “And I’m not sure this is breakfast, anyway. More like a late lunch. Looks like we slept quite a while."
"Breakfast is whatever meal you eat after a long break. I don't buy the whole ‘you can only eat certain foods at certain times’ bullshit. If I want to eat a bowl of spaghetti for breakfast, I'm fuckin' gonna."
Story's eyes laugh as she sips from the bottle. "Oh, I'm not picky about what I eat when. You can’t be, in my line of work. You eat what you can when you can. The majority of my meals during a shift come out of a vending machine."
I frown at this. "No meal comes out of a vending machine," I tell her. "A snack at best."
She shrugs. "It's all I’ve got time for, usually. More often than not, it takes me an hour to eat a protein bar or a bag of chips because I keep getting interrupted by patients who, y'know, need to have their lives saved."
"Ah, right. Those pesky patients and their silly little booboos keep getting in the way of your Doritos."
She wrinkles her nose. "Doritos? Ew. No. Sun Chips all the way."
I stick a finger in my mouth and fake a gag. "Sun Chips? Fuck no! It's like eating pottery."
"Okay, but Doritos? The poison dust all over your fingers?"
"Pardon me, madam, but the poison dust is the best part."
She rolls her eyes. "We'll have to agree to disagree on the chip front, I suppose."
"Favorite candy bar?" I ask.
She tips her head to one side. "I don't eat sugar for the most part, actually. If I’m gonna eat chocolate, though, I'll take a Lily's sea salt and caramel. Or a coconut Built Bar."
I frown. "No Snickers? No Three Musketeers?"
"Nah. Never had either." She holds up a hand to forestall my protest of disbelief. "Mom never bought into the average American diet, and you know how Dad is. So no. No candy bars, no pastries, no sugary soda. This," and here she pats the outside of her thigh, "is from my obsession with tacos."
God bless tacos, in that case, I think but don’t say out loud. Instead, I let out a soft laugh. "Tacos?"
She nods. "There's a place around the corner from the hospital, Luis's.
He makes these pulled pork tacos that are to die for.
They're little, like the slider version of tacos, and I don't know how he does it, but the shells are poofy and crispy.
I get a box of half a dozen of them, bring them home after a shift, and eat them all by myself.
They're freaking incredible and so bad for you, but I'm just obsessed.
" She lets out a groan, eyes closing, head tipping back.
"Good lord, why did I have to start talking about Luis's pulled pork tacos?
I'd do any number of dastardly deeds for just one of them right now. "
That groan, lord almighty. It was damn near sexual, and it went right to my dick. I wince, shifting on the bed. "Jesus, Story. You can't make sounds like that. Not nice."
She sets the plate on the floor near the foot of the bed, the water bottle in one hand. "No? Why would that be, Killian?" Her gaze glitters with mischief.
I level a hard look at her. "No reason."
She's amused, smirking at me. "No reason, huh?"
"Nope."
She fakes a soft little moan, biting her lower lip. "No?"
It's fake. I know it's fake. I know she's teasing me. Doesn't change the effect on me, though. As we’ve previously established, penises are stupid, and mine is especially so where this woman is concerned. "No."
Her electric blue eyes drill into mine, amused, teasing. As if we weren't locked in a room somewhere in Italy, waiting to find out our fate. "You don't typically say things without a reason, Killy."
"Mouth ran away from my brain. Forget it."
The teasing gleam is replaced by a weird sort of tenderness, and she wiggles toward me, walking closer by shifting her weight from one buttock to the other, and then her thighs wrap around my waist and she's suddenly sitting on my lap.
She touches her lips to my ear. "Does it affect you, Killy?" She fakes a sexual whimper. "When I make noises like that?"
I don't know what to make of this, what to do, what to think. As Robin Williams once said, "See, the problem is God gave men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." Currently, all of the blood in my body is coursing southward to the stupidest part of my body.
"Yes," I growl. "It fucking does."
Her arms are pythonic around my neck, looped and serpentine, strong and smooth and warm and soft. Her breath on my ear is hot and loud. She nips at my earlobe. "Funny how good it feels to be warm, dry, and fed, huh?"
"Yeah," I answer, confused by the abrupt change in topic.
"A girl could almost forget about being in trouble."
"Is that so?" I ask, my brain going foggy and hazy and slow at the sensual timbre of her whisper.
"Of course, my scrubs are still a little damp."
I rack my brain for a witty repartee. "They feel pretty dry to me." I pair this genius retort with a slide of my hands over her shoulders and down her back.
She grins at me, as if my libido-charged idiocy is endearing. "No, they're still damp in spots. I should probably lay them out to dry."
"Yeah, maybe you should." At least I got that part right.
I definitely like the idea of her scrubs being spread out to dry, because that means they'd be off.
She slides back on my lap and rubs her hands on my thighs. "Your jeans are still pretty wet, too."
This is not a joke—my jeans are still damp and heavy and clingy and uncomfortable. I was just too damn exhausted to care when we were shoved in here.