by Kim Knox
Martina gulped cool air and resisted the urge to fan herself. Good God, had he been as hot as she was when he’d pushed her body against the wall?
She’d convinced herself that she imagined feeling his erection pressing into her thigh. “Horny?”
“Yeah.” Calder leaned his weight into the wall and looked up at the indentations that fit his big hands like steel gloves. “I was thinking how I’d like to photograph you. I don’t normally do portraits, but God, you’d look good nude, lying on a bed of red sand to contrast your skin tone. With your hair flowing over your shoulders, your lips parted and one hand covering your breasts…”
Martina sank to the cot. She should have been offended. How dare this man she’d just met imagine her naked, spread before him, her body on display? Why did the image excite her? Her mind raced to a dangerous place. What would it feel like with the sun beating down on her, the hot desert air stealing the moisture that formed between her legs? She pictured Calder looming over her, urging her to lick her lips for him and arch her back while he snapped shot after shot. His lens would travel up her body, pausing to capture the flare of her hips, the gentle valley of her navel…he’d touch her, pose her—
“We have to get out of here, now. Come on.”
Chase watched her with a mixture of shock and fascination as she slid her ID badge through the security lock inside the cell.
“Whoa, wait a minute. We’re just going to walk out of here?” He nodded toward the windowless door that led out of the observation area.
Martina stopped, one delicate, slippered foot in the airlock. “We’re going to have to hide for a little while. We need to get off the base by sunrise.”
Chase swallowed the cold lump of doubt lodged in his throat. Besides being locked in a windowless cell for God knows how long, the last thing he wanted was to get caught trying to escape from the most secure air force base in the lower forty-eight. There was no question in his mind that anyone who saw them would shoot first and worry about red tape and paperwork later.
He touched her arm, and the look she gave him made his heart race. “How are you going to do this?”
“I have a plan, but I need you to trust me.”
At that moment, looking into her bottomless brown eyes, he’d have followed her anywhere.
She ducked through the airlock, and Chase followed her. A second later they emerged into the observation room where the air was warmer, not as crisp and certainly not as sterile as his cell. The place smelled like stale coffee and military sweat.
Martina hushed him with a gesture. “We’re going to go two doors down this hallway to the left and into the supply closet. I’m going to leave you there and go around to a work room on the other side. We’ll work our way toward the mess hall. That’s the least secure area.”
Chase nodded as if the plan made a rat’s ass worth of sense to him. Cold steel seemed more comforting at this point than hot lead. Somewhere on this base was a bullet with his name on it, and he had a bad feeling he was going to meet it all too soon.
The inner corridor was empty, stark white and way too bright. Martina felt completely exposed as they slithered along the wall, trying to stay in the blind spot of the security camera that swept the corridor every two minutes.
Ten nerve wracking steps brought them to the supply closet. They ducked inside, and when the heavy door shut behind Calder, blackness closed around them like a shroud.
His breath heated the back of her neck, and his body was warm and solid behind her. She wanted to press against him and absorb his strength, but there wasn’t time. She thrust her arms out in front of her and felt around for the handle of the opposite door. Something rattled behind her, and his swift movement startled her. “Shh!”
“Sorry. Broom.”
“Stand still.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m sick of everyone calling me ‘ma’am’. It makes me feel a hundred years old.”
“What about ‘babe’?”
She heard the smirk this time and clucked her tongue. “Mr. Calder.”
“Sorry, Doc. You realize you’re going to get us both killed, right?”
Martina stiffened as her hand closed over the door knob in the dark. “Do you want to go back? They’ll keep you in that cell until you die, which could be pretty soon if Dobbs has his way. Then they’ll probably move you to a medical testing facility and take you apart cell by cell until they find out why you survived.”
Again, his breath heated the nape of her neck. The fine hairs there prickled, and her body sparked with desire when his lips brushed her ear. “If we get out of here in one piece, Doc, you’re going to tell me every gory detail of what’s going on here.”
“I will. I promise.” She twisted the door knob, and a sliver of light illuminated the closet. “Just stay here until I come for you.”
“Why can’t we go together?”
“I have to sign out of the containment area. If I don’t, they’ll start to wonder why I’m taking so long.”
“All right.”
She slipped by him, sucking in her breath to avoid brushing against his chest in the tight space. “I won’t be long,” she said, not daring to glance at him in the dim light. She wanted to add a hundred different things. Sit tight. Be careful. Don’t move. Everything that came to mind seemed so lame. Ultimately she left the storage area without another word, took a deep breath and marched down the corridor, rehearsing the casual lie she’d tell the check point guard on her way out of containment.
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