Page 12 of Resurgent
He grabs my arm, stopping me. “It’s an electric fence. I’ve disabled it. Hopefully.” He flashes me another grin. “But I’d better make sure.”
He unbuttons his jeans, and in the moonlight, I can see the arc of urine as it hits the fence. I look away. The last thing I need right now is to catch a glimpse of his package. It’s probably not as impressive as I remember anyway.
Nothing happens. “All clear,” Liam says.
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “What if it hadn’t been disabled?”
He grimaces. “Then I wouldn’t have had to worry about what to name my unborn children. But I don’t plan to have any, so it wasn’t too much of a risk. Come on.”
I balk, imagining electricity sizzling through me. “Wait, why don’t we go down the driveway—”
With a sigh of exasperation, he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I’m too busy fuming over his bossy manhandling of me to realize we’ve stepped over the fence, unscathed, until he sets me down on the other side.
“Oh.” We’re standing at the edge of the rock wall. I peer over the edge. I’m terrified of heights, and even in the dark, I can see it’s a good fifty-foot drop to the ground below. I take a step closer to him. “Now what?”
“Now we find a way off the wall.”
Oh hell no.“Wait!” I say quickly. “How did you get here?”
“I swam.”
“Let’s do that then.”
“Sure.” His eyes travel slowly over my body, and he smiles lazily. “It’s a couple of miles, and you’ll have to take your clothes off so they don’t weigh you down. Don’t worry. I have a Ziplock bag to keep them dry.”
Oh God. There is something seriously wrong with me. My stomach is lurching with arousal from the look he’s giving me. I should be thinking about survival instead of how sexy he looks.
“I’m not a strong swimmer,” I admit. And the thought of swimming in the black ocean while God knows what swims beneath me seems almost worse than taking my chances jumping off a fifty-foot wall. Neither option seems great. “What if we—”
“Exactly who’s rescuing whom?” His voice holds a hint of amusement. “Let’s go. We’re doing this my way.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course we are,” I mutter.
He chuckles softly and grabs my hand. We inch carefully along the wall for a few minutes and then he stops. “This will work,” he says. There’s a tall, sturdy palm tree, and I watch as he quickly and expertly starts looping the rope around its trunk.
“Are you sure this is a better plan than mine?” There’s an edge of panic to my voice.
He stops tying the rope long enough to tilt my chin up with his forefinger. “Scared?”
“I…no!”
His gaze softens. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you, baby.”
The words bring back a flood of memories better left forgotten. I don’t say anything else as he continues tying knots and then steps into the makeshift harness he’s fashioned. “You ready?”
I’ve done enough rock climbing at the gym to know you need a belayer, although I don’t know exactly how that’s supposed to work here. “Are you going down first?”
He laughs softly and yanks me to his chest. “No, sweetheart. We’re going down together. I’m not going to lose you now.”
They’re words I once dreamed of him saying. I just never imagined we’d be about to hurdle off a wall to our death in the middle of the night in the jungle when he said them.
He steps off the edge, taking me with him. I can’t decide which is more terrifying—the near freefall down or the reaction to having Liam’s strong arm wrapped around me, holding me tightly against his solid torso as he rappels down the stone wall. I am so not over him. The masculine scent of him pervades my senses, the jolt of that crazy chemistry from our bodies touching making my blood simmer.
At the bottom, he lets go of me, and we make our way through the jungle. Vines and brush scrape against us, but he goes ahead of me, taking the brunt of the jungle’s ruthlessness. Before long, we’re standing at the edge of a dark, paved road that curves along the sheer edge of cliff. A few feet away, hidden away from view by some trees, is an old sedan. He pulls a key out of his pocket and opens the passenger door, making sure I’m all the way in before closing it and walking around to the driver’s side, like we’re on a date. I suppress a slightly hysterical giggle at the ludicrousness of it all. Now isn’t the time to lose it. I’ve got to keep it together. He starts the car and inches out onto the deserted street, driving without headlights until we turn the corner and the mansion disappears from sight.
