Free Seduce Me in Flames by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

services.
    This man had just saved her life. Of this she had no doubt. It remained to be seen what his motives were for everything else he had done. But she at least owed him thanks for his rescue of her.
    “You’ll be warm soon,” he promised her.
    “It feels like I’ll never be warm again,” she confessed.
    “Are you calling me a liar?”
    “Oh! No!” She was horrified for a moment until she realized he was teasing her.
How did he do it
, she wondered. How did he remain so calm and at ease given the circumstances?
    “You should be an old pro at this,” he noted as he pushed them through the water.
    “Old pro?”
    “Cold and wet. You’ve been in here for long periodsof time before. I hear that’s what it’s like. So cold and wet that you feel like you’ll never be warm.”
    “Which I suppose makes all of this worse. I wasn’t warm to start with. I’ve been in here at least a week or two.”
    “Much longer than that,” he corrected her. He couldn’t see her surprised look, but he must have somehow sensed it. “Time goes by differently when you’re imprisoned, remember?”
    She didn’t ask him how he knew how long she’d been there, or how he knew she’d been there for long stretches before. He would tell her everything in his own time, she imagined. All she could do was go along for the ride until she decided it was no longer in her best interest.
    “I should think you might want to give me your name. I ought to at least know the name of the man who has come to my rescue.”
    “Everyone calls me Ender.”
    “Ender? Why?”
    “Because I put an end to things. You could say I’m really good at getting the last word.”
    She believed him.
    They began to draw up to Suna, the water level dropping and allowing her to get back on her feet. He gripped Ambrea firmly by her backside and drew her away from himself and onto her feet. He thought nothing of it, whereas Ambrea could only squeak out a sound of surprise and shock. His hand was gone in a second, but the feel of its intimacy was the only warm spot on her body, and it lingered. His hand was so big that his fingers had reached all the way between her legs to her private places, albeit through the layers of her sodden clothes. So why did it feel as though those cold, wet clothes hadn’t even existed? She was so shaken by that and everything else that she almost lost her footing again. Buthe made sure he kept hold of her elbow and set her steady in a second.
    “We’ve been in the water much too long,” he told them brusquely. “Hypothermia is already setting in. You’re already losing control of your limbs and probably your reasoning. We’ve got to get out of here quickly. Besides, there’s still a chance we’re being pursued, although I find it highly unlikely.”
    “Well, where exactly are we supposed to go? It’s not like I see an exit sign,” Suna said with a sarcasm that even overreached what she was usually capable of.
    “In lieu of that, will you accept this?”
    He calmly pointed to a shadow in the upper curve of the tunnel. At this level the tunnels were untouched by man. They were purely part of the aqueduct system that nature had wrought. What he was pointing to looked like a hole, a smaller tunnel perhaps that had once fed water into the one they were in. The duct had since gone dry, or at least as dry as anything down there could get. As she looked up, Ambrea could feel heavy drops like rain falling onto her from the tunnel above them.
    “And how are we supposed to get up there?” Suna wanted to know, her tone surly and tired all at once.
    Ender didn’t take it personally from what Ambrea could see. She watched as he closed his eyes again and tilted his head, as if he were listening to his own thoughts for a moment.
    “Step back,” he instructed Ambrea a moment later, laying a hand on her chest and guiding her gently back a few steps.
    There was a sudden explosion of sparks, and then light from the tunnel. A heavy ladder