Out of the Dark Read online

  Luke ran his hands up her thighs and over her hips. His cock jutted between them, and Celia stroked it slowly, smiling when she felt the lift of his hips under her. When he put his arms up over his head, those big hands gripping the spindles of her headboard, something inside her twisted and tangled. Her throat went just a little dry.

  She leaned forward to kiss him, his cock a warm length against her belly. She opened the drawer of her nightstand, pulled out the box of condoms she’d bought on an admittedly spontaneous whim and was as grateful for now as she’d been for the clean sheets. Luke’s gaze went from hers to the small package in her hand, and a small smile tugged the corner of his mouth.

  “Now’s the time when we assure each other we don’t do this a lot,” Celia told him as she tore the wrapping.

  Luke’s breath hissed between his teeth, and his tongue caught there too. “I don’t do this a lot.”

  “Me neither,” Celia breathed as she eased the condom down his length.

  She moved to slide him inside her before he spoke again, and after that neither of them seemed quite capable of finding more words. She didn’t always love being on top because the angle could sometimes rub her in the wrong places, but tonight it worked just fine. Just as Luke had found the perfect rhythm for her downstairs, Celia found what worked just right now. They moved together, no fumbling, nothing awkward or out of place. It was one of those truly first-rate, effortless fucks, rare like a blue moon, and Celia savored every second of pleasure Luke’s body gave hers.

  And he worked it, those nice white teeth denting his bottom lip as his brow furrowed. He’d let go of the headboard so he could slide a hand between them, his knuckles giving her clit the best and most beautiful pressure every time she slid all the way down his cock. She was going to come again, and it was sweet, it was unexpected and delightful, it was…

  “Fucking gorgeous,” Celia gasped as the first wave washed over her.

  Luke groaned, his last couple thrusts ragged, but that only made them better. His cock nudged her at a different angle in the last moment, sending another wave of pleasure through her and just as perfectly as everything else about this night had been, Celia collapsed onto his chest with a happy, sated sigh.

  When she woke in the morning, she found he’d left a flower in the dent his head had made on her pillow. She recognized it as one of the daisies from her half-assed garden out back. She found another on the dining room table. A third by the front door, and when, hoping against hope she opened the front door, a final flower rested on her front porch.

  But Luke himself was gone.

  “If Lukey hadn’t been so busy getting his winky wet, maybe we’d be out of here by now.” Terry snorted into a hanky before tucking it back into his pocket. His face was black with dust except for the now pale patch around his nose and mouth. It gave him a comical appearance, though Luke felt like doing anything but laughing.

  “We’ve waited longer for you to finish taking a dump than you waited for me this morning,” Luke said. He’d only been about fifteen minutes late, and even then had found the rest of the guys busy chowing down on the egg sandwiches none of them had thought to buy for him.

  “I’m sure it’s this way.” Pete sounded too uncertain for Luke’s comfort. “I’m sure of it. See, I marked the wall right here.”

  He tapped the wall. Luke leaned forward to peer more closely at it. In the light from his flashlight, it was possible to make out what looked like some sort of scratches that might have been the marks Pete claimed he’d left, but after five hours in the dark, Luke wasn’t sure he trusted his eyes. He definitely didn’t trust Pete’s memory.

  “Shit. Shit, shit.” Jeff slid down with his back against the wall to sit with his knees bent up to his chin. He buried his face in his hands. “Shit.”

  It was the first time he’d spoken in the past hour. Always the most taciturn member of the team, he could also always be the one counted on in a crunch. If he was losing it, Luke thought, they should all be worried. The fist of unease punched him in the throat, leaving him sick. He covered it by swigging from his canteen, but the water tasted gritty and made him cough.

  “I left it right here! I swear to Jesus, it was here.” Pete stabbed at the spot on the wall. His headlamp swung wildly, making the shadows dance and turning Luke’s stomach even more. “I left it right there. You can see where it was.”

  “How the hell would it get erased?” Terry honked into his handkerchief again. “We’re the only ones down here!”

  Adam had been lingering a few feet away in the passage they’d just come out of, but now he pushed past Luke to search the wall. He looked hollow-eyed and grim-faced when he turned around. “Someone else is down here. I’ve thought so for about the last hour or two. Someone’s messing with us, guys.”

  “What do you mean, someone’s messing with us?” Luke took off his helmet long enough to rub his forehead with a bandanna. This cave, like every other he’d ever been in, maintained a steady cool temperature year-round, but they’d been pushing themselves hard to get back to the surface and the exertion had made him sweat.

  “Just what I said. I think it’s those bastards from GeoCom.”

  The team had been “lost” for only the past ninety minutes, when one of Pete’s marks had led them in the wrong direction down a corridor they hadn’t explored. Then another. Pete had been the one to notice it when the space got drastically smaller and tighter, leaving room for only one man to get through the tunnel when every other passage they’d been in today had been big enough for at least two of them at a time. All of them had been trained in cave safety, but none of them had been prepared for anything more than the most casual of explorations. They were there to check out the area, take some samples and make a simple map for the survey team that would come later to go deeper, explore more, if it were determined this cave held anything of value.

  “How would they even get down here before us?” Luke asked.

  Terry snorted. “Like I said, if you hadn’t been late—“

  “Terry,” Luke said evenly, “shut up. Okay?”

  “Shh.” Adam whirled, his light sending white flashes across the blackness. “Listen. You hear that?”

  Luke hadn’t heard anything but Terry’s disgusting snot-blowing, but Jeff got to his feet to face the dark corridor they’d all come out of fifteen minutes ago. “I heard it. Shit, Adam. You sure it’s GeoCom?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  “Maybe not who,” Jeff said, voice quivering. “Maybe…what.”

  That busted the rest of them up into guffaws, even Pete, who could be notoriously without a sense of humor.

  “C’mon, Jeff. We’re no more than forty, maybe even thirty, feet under the surface, and I guarantee you once we figure out which tunnel to take, we’ll be out of here in twenty minutes.” Adam shook his head. “It’s the GeoCom guys messing with us, erasing the marks and making the new ones. That’s all. There must be something good down here they’re trying to keep us away from. Hey, assholes!”

  Adam’s shout echoed through the tunnel, loud and sudden enough Luke took a step back with a wince.

  “We know what you’re doing, so cut the shit!”

  No answer, though it seemed like they were all straining for one. Nothing but the trickle of water dripping from one of the cracks in the ceiling and another honk from Terry’s nose. Luke took a few steps forward, his headlamp parting the dark. He put a hand on the wall to guide him and closed his eyes, not wanting the unsteady light to distract him from listening.

  At first he heard only Pete’s mutters and the scrape of someone’s boots against the rocks. But then, yes. Further down, past the tunnel they’d all come out of when they’d turned around after figuring out the chalk marks were wrong. A small scraping noise. Stealthy, sneaky.

  Sly.

  In all the years Luke had been doing this sort of work, he’d been hit on the head with falling rocks, shit on by swarms of startled bats, even been turned around