Page 182 of Tell Me Lies

“Don’t call me that,” snapped that sultry voice.

He sighed. Whoever lay next to him knew exactly who he was, and it drove him slightly frustrated that he couldn’t say the same. She seemed to want to keep her identity a secret which led him to suspect they were most likely involved in putting him in this box or room. So they were part of the test … or game.

She shifted against him, her back pressing to his front, not to get closer but as if she were doing something else on her side.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Feeling around to see if there’s a hinge or a key, a weapon. You said you wanted to take in our surroundings so that’s what I’m doing.”

“Good point.” He felt above their heads, stretching into her body as she moved around. There was about a foot of free space before his hands hit what felt like a solid wall made of engineered wood. Same was at his back but he had no wiggle room there. He adjusted to his back and felt the air above them, was able to sit up slightly before his hands encountered the same.

“I think we’re in a box of some sort,” he said, fighting to push down a rising panic at the image that popped into his head.

Panting breaths sounded next to him. “Jesus,” she said.

“Hey now.” He lay down again. She had shifted slightly to her back and her shoulder dug into his chest, but despite the darkness surrounding them, he could feel and practically see her rising panic. “Breathe. We just need to think, and we’ll find a way out.”

“Someone will die before dawn.”

Motherfucker.

Chapter Three

The blackness pressed in on Violet, suffocating and thick. And the voice she kept hearing above her head drove her to an insanity level. She blindly reached out and encountered the small plastic speaker. It didn’t look to have any cords attached which meant whoever was talking either had a Wi-Fi connection or was physically nearby.

She fought to catch her breath, found her chest squeezing tighter and tighter as her grip on that speaker tensed.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, breathe. With me.”

She was half-tempted to scream at him again, tell him to stop using that damn nickname, but he chose that moment to touch her. Sure, their bodies had been in constant contact but now his fingers fluttered over the skin of her face. Then his breath caressed her cheek with the slightest of whispers.

That hand on her face traced along her arm, up and up. Goose bumps rose along her skin unwelcoming, and in their wake, the panic receded a bit and confusion set in. His hand wrapped around hers holding the speaker before pulling her grip gently down until their hands lay over her stomach with the speaker sitting there.

Several moments went by before she noticed her breathing had matched his. He crooned softly in her ear.

“Good girl,” he said, his voice close. While they’d been stuck in the box this entire time, now she noticed other things, too. Things she shouldn’t be noticing on a man who’d made her life hell in high school, from someone she once considered a mortal enemy. But one she had also considered her childhood best friend. They had played on the playgrounds together, exchanged snacks at lunchtime in elementary school.

She’d known he was afraid of the monster in his closet at six years old, just as he knew she couldn’t stand to eat meat for much of her childhood.

So these things she started to notice being locked in here with him … things that caused her eyebrows to draw down.

His scent was still familiar and surrounded her, a woodsy pine that reminded her of the deep forest she used to spend so much time in back home. There was a hint of sweat beneath that, too. The combination of the two should have had her recoiling back but instead she found herself taking it deep into her lungs, leaning closer to take more in.

His thumb moved in circles against her skin, and his hand over hers felt strong. There were calluses against her skin that told her he used them a lot. Whether it was lifting weights or doing hard work elsewhere, she didn’t know. But they didn’t feel like the hands of a spoiled man raised under Daddy’s cushioning.

His voice didn’t sound like the pompous ass he’d been in high school, one spoiled rotten and filled with hatred every time he turned her way. Instead, the low timbre rolled across her exposed skin as if phantom fingers, bringing her body alive.

What the hell was happening?

“Doing better?” he asked, his thumb still moving against her hand in a soothing motion.

Her back arched slightly under his words as her breasts ached to feel the touch of his lips, the brush of his hands against them.

She scissored her legs, which caused her to shift against him.

He swallowed hard, his mouth brushing against her ear.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

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