The Importance of Being Alice Read online

  “I had to.” 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 other than a big wall of nothing.”

  He nodded. “That would be the cave-in 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. 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 quickly 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. 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 his lips brushed mine when he spoke. “If I told you that at this moment the only thing concerning me is whether 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 into 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 the fact 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.”

  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.”

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