Chains of Fire (20 page)

He had done that. He had made her happy.

He smoothed a hand across her shoulder, over her breast, and followed its progress with his gaze as he stroked one of her strong, shapely thighs.

Now that she was naked, he wanted her again.

He wanted her . . . always. “We should have done that sooner, because I’m sure we saved ourselves.”

“How so?” she asked.

“We must have melted all the snow over the locker room.”

She chuckled deep in her throat. “The satellites can see the hot spot from space.”

“We’ve been transported into a James Bond movie.”

“I am quite sure that this”—her hand slid down his hip and grasped his stirring erection—“is not your
Goldfinger
.”

She looked so deliciously naughty he laughed out loud. Leaning close to her ear, he whispered, “Yet I’ve been trapped with Pussy Galore.” And he nipped at her lobe.

“Ouch!” She shoved at his shoulder. At the same time, she stroked his cock, long and slow, and when she found a drop of semen at the tip, she picked it up with her finger. Her gaze challenging his, she lifted that finger to her lips, and sucked it into her mouth.

Isabelle, fragile-looking, well-spoken, gentle and courteous . . .

And no one knew the deeply erotic side of her nature. No one except him . . . and Senator Noah Noble, and whomever else she’d slept with after Samuel had driven her away.

His fault.

Possessive of her, angry at himself, he pulled her on top of him, thrust inside her, gloried in her tight heat, and knew that for this moment, she was his.

Caught by surprise, she arched on top of him. Then she saw the emotions that goaded him, tightened her legs around his hips, and vowed, “I will drive every last thought from your mind.”

When she was done with him and he gasped by her side, he said, “The oxygen must be fading, because if we do that again, I’m going to die.”

Curling up next to him, she put her head on his shoulder. “It’s a good way to go.”

“I don’t want to alarm you. But we’re still alive.”

He opened his eyes.

Isabelle was sitting up in her sleeping bag, a flashlight in one hand and his watch in the other.

She was also naked, and his ability to process information was temporarily impeded by the gleam of her skin, the shadows and peaks of her breasts.

She recognized his problem, because she covered herself with the blanket and repeated, “Samuel, it’s twelve hours since we set off the dynamite, and we’re still here.”

Distraction removed, he was able to think. “There’s air coming from somewhere.”

They looked at each other.

In unison, they pulled on their clothes and scrambled out of the tent.

Samuel halted, hands on his hips, and told her, “Douse the light.”

She turned it off. “Why?”

“I want to think without the distraction of my eyesight.” He took long breaths, trying to feel the draft of oxygen that was keeping them alive. “Where would there be a vent or a passage? Not near the top. I’ve looked. No doors. No windows . . .”

“It’s a castle. It
has
to be a secret passage.”

“The only place we haven’t looked is below us.”

She flipped on the light, blinding him. “There’s a dungeon.” She said it so simply.

Right. It was so obvious.

He picked up the LED lantern. “There’s an overflow drain in the men’s room.”

“And the women’s room.”

They split, heading for different restrooms.

She looked back at him. “The women’s room is going to be cleaner.”

He’d give her that one. He’d already noted that male skiers saved their precision for the slopes.

He followed her.

The drain was set on the floor between the sinks and the toilets, a five-inch round black grate in a seat of gray ceramic tile.

They knelt beside it, leaned over it—and felt the faintest brush of damp, cool air.

Samuel wanted to groan with relief. Instead, he said, “We’re going to have to look down there.”

“I’ll get a screwdriver.”

“What for?”

“To loosen the grate.”

“Never mind that. Bring me the pickax.”

She blinked at him. “On one condition.”

“Sure. What?”

“You let me pound on it for a while.”

The white glare of the LEDs bled the natural gold out of her skin, leaving it flat and lifeless. She had scraped her hair back into a ponytail, she wore no mascara, her lashes were almost nonexistent, and the ski clothes hid every curve and muscle of her glorious body.

Yet never had she looked better to him. “I’ll let you take as many whacks as you want.”

She started to walk away, then returned. “You know what gets me? We could have been running a heater. And a stove. We could have been warm. We could have been cooking.”

“We could have been
out
.”

“That, too.” She disappeared, a single light flashing back and forth in the eternal dark.

He dug his work gloves out of his pockets. He discarded the coat. His hat. Looked up when she came in, pickax over her shoulder.

“Which of the Seven Dwarves am I?” she asked.

“Grumpy,” he said. “And I’m Dopey.”

“Get us out of here, and you can be Happy.”

“Smart-ass.” He grinned. Taking the pickax from her, he set it down, caught her head in his hands, and kissed her. Hard. Passionately. Reminding her of all the things they’d said the night before.

Drawing away, he grabbed the pickax, lifted it high over his head, and smashed the blunt end right on the grille.

It broke through the floor, which crumbled down in a shower of tile and landed . . . down there. Far, far below.

Samuel and Isabelle looked at each other.

He offered her the pickax. “Your turn.”

She took it, gave a few good blows around the hole. She didn’t have his body strength, but she sent chunks of the floor crashing down.

He held out a restraining hand. “Stop. Let’s look.”

She pulled the flashlight off her belt, knelt beside him, and shined it below.

Black rock floor. One black rock wall. A few rusty iron bars.

“I was right,” she said. “It’s the dungeon!”

She looked so pleased, he hated to dampen her enthusiasm, but he was nothing if not ruthlessly practical. “Yes, but the passage—is it an air passage only? Here, we’re below ground level. One floor below . . . that’s a long way down. I don’t think we can excavate our way out of here.”

“Even if that’s true, maybe the tunnel slants up. Or it goes straight, and comes out on a slope near someone’s house or something and we’ll be able to yell at them.” She pushed his shoulder. “Come on, Samuel, this has to work out.”

“It already has. My turn.” He worked the pickax again; then, when he’d opened a hole big enough to work with, he fetched the battery-operated saw and a coil of rope. Using the saw, he cut through the floor deck until he had a hole large enough for his shoulders. Taking the flashlight, he stuck his head in and shined it around. “It’s probably a cave and they used it for their wine cellar and dungeon.”

“There’s wine?”

He lifted his head and looked at her. “No.”

“Oh.”

“No skeletons, either, that I can see.”

“Good,” she said fervently.

“Nor any way out. I’m going to have to go down and scope it out.”

With air, they had hope. Surely they could live long enough to somehow get out of here.

As he looped the rope around the metal toilet stalls, she asked, “Do you want me to go down?”

He dropped the length into the hole. “You’d be easy for me to pull up, but we don’t know what’s down there. Spiders for sure. Snakes, maybe. Roaches? I dunno. Do you want to go?”

She shook her head.

He tested the strength of his knots. “I can climb back up, so you stay close and don’t drop anything on my head.” He grinned at her. “No matter how tempted you are.”

She didn’t smile back. “I won’t.”

He dropped into the darkness, going hand over hand until his feet touched down. “I’m here,” he called, and turned on the flashlight.

Her head popped into the opening, blocking the ambient light from above.

But he didn’t complain. He understood her anxiety; his heart was thumping, too, with hope and anticipation.

The ceiling was about twelve feet above him. The floor beneath his boots was slick and uneven, rough-hewn granite with pockets of soil and dampness. The earthy smell surrounded him, and here and there iron rusted in piles.

“Do you see anything?” she asked. “And by
anything
, I mean a door marked by a blinking green exit sign.”

“I see where stairs used to go up to your level.” He shined the light at the ceiling. “But nobody’s been in or out of here in years.”

“Can you feel a draft?”

“No, but the air is fine, no gases, so there is an outlet.” Slowly he started a circuit of the walls, wandering down one side, taking the corner, exploring the second side, turning the corner—

He stopped. Just stood there.

“Samuel? What’s wrong?” Her voice sounded urgent. “Samuel? Is it a skeleton? A giant spider? Samuel, are you hurt?”

“Not at all.” Even to himself, his voice sounded disembodied. “Far in the distance, at the end of a tunnel . . . I can see sunlight.”