My body was so on fire I could hardly feel the pain anymore.

“I don’t feel anything wrong, you’re just bruised.”

I huffed loudly when his hands suddenly disappeared from my body. My eyes shot open to see him kneeling over me; his labored breathing matched my own, and there was a look in his eyes that I’d seen plenty of times before. Only before, I hadn’t comprehended what I was seeing. There was heat, and there was passion—and it was scaring the shit out of me.

“We can’t stay in here, Rachel. We have no food, no water . . . there’s no bathroom, and everything I have that can protect us is in my room.”

“I know.”

His eyes searched my face before he sat back and ran a hand through his thick hair. “Leaving this room could be a suicide mission. If we get out of here without anyone seeing us, it won’t be long before they find out. We have to make it to my room, get what we can, and try to escape.”

I knew he was right, but despite all my fantasies of getting out of that place, I had the sudden urge to never try to leave. I didn’t want to know what faced us outside those walls. “I thought you said it would be impossible to escape.”

“It still might be. There’s more ammo and guns in my room, but we just have to hope what I still have in here is enough to get us there,” he said grimly and pulled out his gun, released the magazine, and stared at it for a second before replacing it and setting his gun aside. “I only have four bullets left.”

“You’re thinking . . . that . . . we, uh . . .” I trailed off when I realized his breathing had suddenly spiked. Before I could bring it up, he spoke.

“We’ll have to fight our way out, I have no doubt of that. They’ll either wait us out in here, or they’ll eventually get in. So, Rachel, if you still want to get out of here, then this is what we have to do. I know I gave you an alternate plan yesterday, but after last night, it’s not an option anymore.”

I wanted to get out of here, needed to get out of here. But the risk was proving to be too great; someone was going to get hurt. “I can’t let you get hurt because of me.”

“And I can’t let you die because of me. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t be in this position.”

“But, Trent—”

“I’ll take whatever’s coming for me gladly. I should have never stolen you, and I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me one day. Rachel, meeting you changed my life.”

Tears were sliding down my cheeks, and when he brought a hand up to the uninjured side of my face to wipe them away, I held his hand to me and begged, “Please don’t let anything happen to you.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to get you out of here alive,” he promised, and suddenly his lips were on mine.

Trent

A SURPRISED NOISE SOUNDED in the back of Rachel’s throat, and I pulled back, breaking the kiss almost as soon as it’d started.

“We need to move,” I said before she could protest what I’d just done. “And we need to move fast.”

Her blue eyes found mine, and I hated that I hadn’t gotten enough time to look at them like this. Even wet with tears, they were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. “All right, I’m ready.”

Using my good arm, I forced myself off the mattress and made my way to the door. Moving around the chairs, I put an ear against the metal and held my breath, listening for any sounds until my lungs protested the lack of oxygen. Stepping back, I removed one of the chairs and bit back a curse from the pain that kept shooting through my arm as I went back to the door to listen again. There wasn’t any noise, but that didn’t mean much. The door was solid metal, and they could be waiting.

“Come here, Rachel.”

Turning around, I watched her struggle to stand and flinched when she gasped in pain.

“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

“I’m fine.”

She was lying, but this couldn’t wait. “Stand behind me, and when I say run, run as hard as you can to my bedroom.”

After having her remove the second chair, I stood back and counted to twenty before making sure she was hidden behind my body, and opening the door as quietly as possible. I took three steps forward with Rachel gripping the back of my shirt, my arms shaking so much I was barely able to keep my gun in the air as I prepared for anyone that might meet us in the hall.

When both sides of the hallway came up empty, I put my lips to her ear and whispered, “Walk until I say otherwise.”

We made it to my room without seeing or hearing anything, and as soon as we were inside, I pushed the workout equipment back against the doors.

“If you have to go to the bathroom, go. If anyone gets through that door—”

“Scream, I know.” She ran to the bathroom and I collapsed against the equipment, my breathing heavy and ragged.

Even with the makeshift tourniquet, new blood had made its way through the material, and was steadily dripping down my arm from the use of it just now. Using my shirt, I tried to rub off as much blood as possible before pushing myself up, and making my way to the closet.

After loading the magazine in my gun, I pulled out another handgun and made sure it had a full magazine before pulling out one of my assault rifles. The weight was something I was so used to, but at the moment, it felt like I was lifting a car just to get the strap around my neck.

“We need to get out of here. I have that same bad feeling I had yesterday.”

I turned and nodded as I eyed Rachel warily, trying not to show any pain as I put the shoulder holster on and placed both handguns in there. If I had just listened to her the day before, we wouldn’t be where we were now. She wouldn’t be hurt, and I wouldn’t be about to put us in a situation I thought we wouldn’t make it out of alive.

“Ready, Rachel?”

“No . . . let’s do it.”

In any other situation, that would have made me smile. In any other life, I would give anything to have met her under normal circumstances and made her mine. As it was, I lowered my rifle and wrapped an arm around her body to pull her close.

She wrapped her hands around my neck, letting me hold her, and her voice was shaky when she said, “I don’t know what you did before you came into my life, and I don’t care. You may have done some bad things, but you’re not a bad person. You’re caring and brave, and I will never forget what you’ve done for me.”

My chest tightened and I pulled back enough to look at her face. It took all my restraint not to crush my mouth to hers again right there.

“Get us out of here, Trent,” she said, and the hands around my neck slid down my arms. Her grip wasn’t tight, but it was enough.

I choked out a cry of pain and tried to turn from her, but one of her hands went up to my shoulder and stopped me. The other didn’t leave my bandaged arm.

“Trent . . . what . . . what is this? Are you—are you bleeding? You said they didn’t hurt you!”

“I’m fine, we need to go.”

“No!” she cried, and the tears that had been threatening earlier began falling down her cheeks. “No, you can’t be hurt, tell me what happened! Why would you lie to me?”

“It just grazed me, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine!” she hissed and pulled her hand away from me to inspect it in the dark. “You wouldn’t be bleeding through whatever this is on your arm if it just grazed—” She broke off, and a muffled cry came from where her clean hand was covering most of her face. “Trent . . .” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. I told you, I’ll do anything to keep you safe.”

Before she could stop me, I bent and gritted my teeth through the pain as I shoved the workout machine away from the door. More blood flowed past the bandage, and Rachel’s hand slipped down my arm when she grabbed at it.

“Trent, stop!”

“I’m all right, but we need to get out of here, we need to stay quiet. Okay?” When she didn’t say anything, I grabbed her bloodied hand, and squeezed it once. “I’m going to be fine, Rachel, I swear to you.”

She nodded, and I turned quickly away from her. I hated lying to her, everything about it was wrong. I knew if we could get out of here and find a hospital, I would live and have no problems from the gunshot wound. But while I knew I would go down fighting to make sure she escaped, I didn’t believe for one second that the guys would let me live. If by some miracle we both got out, I would be arrested as soon as I got her to safety. Once I was in prison with Romero and the others, my life would be over. They would already know what I’d done to the rest of the crew; it would all just be a matter of how and when they killed me.

Opening the door, I held up my rifle, my arms so weak I could barely keep it out in front of me. “Stay behind me, Rachel,” I whispered over my shoulder.

I stepped out with Rachel clutching my shirt, and began making my way toward the entrance of the underground building. We made it past the kitchen and the room I’d spent over a month in with Rachel, and had barely gone another dozen feet when the eerie feeling of being watched washed over me.

I stopped and listened for a few seconds before continuing forward—but the closer we got to the door that led upstairs, the worse the feeling got. It was too quiet, even with five of the guys dead. Something was wrong; they wouldn’t have let us come out of both rooms without bombarding us. The guys weren’t calculating enough to be stealthy and to wait for you to come to them. They were impatient and wanted nothing more than to get what they want. Granted, they would have waited for us to come out of the rooms, but they wouldn’t have stayed hidden like this.