Page 22 of Preying Game

Chapter 9

The sensation of Jonah’s strong arms encircling Alice was intoxicating, but she needed more.

Still with her eyes closed, she raised her head, marveling that she could feel his breath on her face.

She wasn’t sure who moved first, but all at once his lips were on hers. Maybe he had meant it to be a reassuring kiss. And at first she let it add to the perception of being safe in his arms. But too many emotions had been pent up inside her for too long. She’d been frightened. Despairing. Defiant. Resigned. But mostly she’d been so alone. Now a man who cared had come to rescue her. With all her heart, she wanted to believe that he could tip the balance of power with Hayward.

As he moved his lips against hers, she quickened to him on a primal level. All at once it was impossible for her to hold back a heated response to the light touch of his mouth on hers.

She sensed the urgency was the same for him. In the hours when they’d been apart, he must have spent a lot of time thinking about her. He could have walked away from a woman in distress, but he’d put forth an enormous effort to get here.

That knowledge helped fuel her need as he stroked his hands up and down her back, then slid lower and cupped her bottom.

Glorying in his response to her, she opened her mouth for him, inviting even more intimacies.

Still with her eyes closed, she stroked her fingertips against his face, tracing his eyebrows, then the swirl of his ears. As their kisses turned hotter, she pressed her breasts against his chest and slid her hands down his back to his hips, trying to get as close to him as she could.

Her bed was only a few feet away, and she wanted to lie down with him. But when she took a step back, instead of following, he dropped his hands to his sides and stayed where he was. As her eyes blinked open she drew in a quick breath. After that heated exchange, she had expected to see him standing in front of her—a wholly solid figure. But he looked just as he had when he first appeared in her room.

I’m sorry. We have to stop, he whispered in her mind.

Why? Kissing him and stroking him, feeling his arms around her had been the first comfort she had experienced since she’d arrived in this awful place.

We have work to do. We have to figure out how to get you away from here.

In Jonah’s arms, Alice had forgotten all about reality. But he was right, of course.

She swallowed hard, forcing herself not to reach for him again.

I’m going to see if I can find out anything useful.

How?

I’m not sure. What’s outside the cell?

There’s a hallway.

Right. When I came here that first time, I walked down it.

It leads to a gym and an exercise room. And there’s a stairway that goes up to the main part of the house. The door at the bottom is locked.

Okay.

oOo

As Jonah turned toward the door, he suppressed a surge of rage at the bastard who had done this to Alice—who was still doing it. The guy thought he knew how this drama was going to end, but Jonah was going for a surprise change in the rules.

He touched the door. He’d walked through it once. He could do it again, he told himself as he pressed his hand against the vertical surface. It felt solid, but it also felt spongy—as though he could feel through the molecules that made up its mass.

He rocked his hand, and to his satisfaction, he saw his fingers go through.

When he pressed forward, there was a feeling of resistance, and then he was on the other side and standing in the corridor he’d seen the night before.

The walls were made of gray-painted cinder blocks, like a school or other public building where cost cutting was a major consideration. In this case, the windowless hallway gave the feeling of being underground.

The floor under his feet was cheap tile. In fact, it looked like vinyl asbestos, which nobody used any more. That must mean it had been here for a while, or the guy didn’t want to go to the expense of having asbestos abatement when it was removed.

There were light fixtures above him, each holding an old-fashioned low watt incandescent bulb—like the kind home improvement stores still sold in big packs. Each was enclosed by a wire cage which made it impossible to get to the fixtures.

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