Page 58 of 72 Hours

“Turn over,” he said.

“We’ve just got to get through this damned thing with Greg.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. He dropped to his knees beside the couch, ran his hand up between my spread legs and cupped my balls.

“Then whatever happens, we can see what we want—”

“What I want,” he snapped, “is your arse. Will you shut the fuck up and let that happen?”

Shit. I didn’t know whether to laugh, whimper or roll over.

He didn’t wait on my bizarre indecision; he just pushed me over onto my belly on the couch cushions. Then he drew me up on to my knees and ran his lips across the soft hairs on my thighs and arse. I nearly came from that alone. His fingertips probed at me, parting my cheeks and finally licking very purposefully—and eagerly—along my crack. I gripped at the tubular arm of the couch and I opened quite shamelessly to him, like I had from the first time I met him. Like I’d decided by now that I always wanted to.

He was almost too careful with me when he pushed in, lying just inside my entrance long enough to let me adapt to the intrusion. He was breathing very heavily. But when he balanced one knee on the cushion and started to move more purposefully inside me, I pressed back to encourage him. We found a rocking rhythm that I was pretty sure would send both of us off some kind of orgasmic cliff, fast and furious.

I tried not to cry out, tried not to shout and babble with the swelling excitement and the rush of ecstasy. Obviously I didn’t succeed; I never had done, not with him. I was briefly glad that none of Junk’s younger kids were around to hear the astonishing variety of swear words and sexual exhortations that I offered up as I came. And, all too quickly, I was shaking with it and my body jerked, and then I’d come. I was limp underneath him and the couch was stickily wet, and I just held him and didn’t want to let go.

The coffee he’d made us earlier lay untouched and forgotten. We had other tastes to satisfy us.

AN HOUR LATER, I STOOD inside my trailer, facing the door. It was slightly ajar, and the furniture had been moved around to allow us better access in the cramped room. I was freshly showered—taking care not to disturb my dressing—and fully dressed in shirt and jeans. So was Niall. We’d even eaten, just some stuff on toast that I hadn’t really noticed because I’d preferred to catch his hand and lick the butter off his fingers and watch the lustful smile creep across his mouth.

We’d stopped talking a while ago. We didn’t need to chat. We wanted to touch, so we kept doing that, and that was enough for anyone.

I intended to stand in this position for as long as it took. I knew Greg was coming.

I was ready for him.

​​​Chapter 22 – Wednesday 21:15

For a second, I didn’t understand what I was hearing. Sounded like feeding time at the zoo and a walk in the Rainforest, all rolled into one. Guess I hadn’t really registered the unusual silence outside my trailer until the parakeets set up their cries.

I must have jumped, because Niall touched at my arm to calm me.

“It means he’s here,” he said quietly.

Dylan wasn’t on the site to bark a warning when anyone approached, of course, and when I’d suggested to Niall that he rig up some string and tin cans across the corridors between the trailers, I’d been treated to a particularly contemptuous glare.

So then he’d told me that he’d negotiated with Zac to leave his pet birds behind him for a few hours. “They’re used to the usual crap that goes on,” Zac had told him. “But if anything different happens around my trailer, without me around, they’ll scream like blue murder.”

And it looked like we were hearing that in action.

GREG’S SHOCKED AND angry expression as he approached my trailer would have been more amusing if it hadn’t been for a couple of things that disturbed me way more than any joke. One was Sheri’s horribly white face as she stumbled along beside him. He must have driven to the park, though there was no sign of a car. But he could have parked it behind any of the nearby trailers and it’d be hidden. The walk to mine was a short one.

I couldn’t see if she’d been seriously hurt, though she was walking okay by herself. He’d tied her arms behind her back and gagged her, and he kept her close to him by means of a belt around her waist. From a distance, the bindings looked simplistic but effective. She wore one of her brilliantly bright, skimpy shirts and cropped jeans, but her shoes were badly scuffed and her legs dirty, as if she’d tried to run away but fallen in the attempt. Her gaze darted from me to Niall, then back again. She was scared and bewildered, and trying very hard to be brave.

I was the one she looked to. She was only nineteen.

The other thing that disturbed me was that there was no sign of Simon Wagner.

I didn’t step right out of the doorway, but I knew Greg could see me quite clearly. He halted about ten feet away. His looks were as young and fresh and keen as ever, but now his eyes were wide and wild and his whole demeanour had changed. He was wearing a heavy jacket, with bulging pockets that hinted at trouble. Sheri wriggled a bit, and he jerked angrily at her belt. He reached inside his jacket with his free hand, and I thought I saw the glint of a knife at his own belt. When he settled her and returned his attention to me, there was a gun in his hand. It rested almost casually against Sheri’s side.

I could feel Niall moving at my shoulder. I stared only at Greg.

“So where’s Simon, Greg?”

He ignored my question. “What the hell’s that noise? If you’re up to something, MacKay—”

“Chill,” I said, as calmly as I could. “It’s only some birds. What, you wanted me to clear every last shred of nature off the site? Be reasonable.” Niall came and stood beside me so that Greg could see both of us framed in the doorway. I lifted my voice a little so that it carried well enough for us all to hear. The birds were quieting down by now, the intruders having passed Zac’s trailer and moved on out of their territory. “Greg, where’s Simon?”