He took a bite and chewed slowly, his throat bouncing as he swallowed. Watching him eat felt strangely suggestive. The flex of his jaw and the groan in his chest conjured images of twisted sheets and whiskers scratching inner thighs.
“It doesn’t need to be washed down. It’s really good.” Martin passed the rice to Ricky.
“Okay, well…” She reached for the door. “If you need anything else—”
“Stay.” Ricky gripped her hand.
“Oh, I—” A tremble hijacked her voice. Damn nerves. “I thought I woke you.”
“We couldn’t sleep.” He tugged her away from the door and removed the blankets from the box.
Within minutes, they had the beds made and the food devoured.
“You guys were starving.” She sat at the end of the mattress, watching Ricky sort and stow the supplies.
“Not anymore, thanks to you.” He grabbed the tequila and three plastic cups. “Let’s drink.”
Ricky projected a smile no woman could refuse. She wanted to feel it against her lips again. And other places. All the places.
She squeezed her thighs together.
“Confession.” He sat beside her on the bed and poured three shots of alcohol. “Before today, I only consumed tequila using the lick-swallow-suck method.”
“How very American of you.”
“That’s not how you drink it in Mexico?”
“No way. We don’t need salt or lime. No licking or sucking. We sip it straight—”
“Say that again.” Martin shot her a good hard stare.
“What?”
“Licking and sucking.” He curled his lips around the words, drawing out each syllable in his sexy American accent.
Her pulse pounded in her throat, and Ricky fell still beside her.
A palpable hum charged the air, skittering along her arms and rousing the tiny hairs on her nape.
“Sip.” She reached for one of the cups and took a deep breath.
Ricky followed suit, holding his up. “One…”
“Two…” She lifted the shot toward her mouth.
“Wait. Martin’s not ready.”
Martin, who sat on the other mattress looking underwhelmed by the prospect of drinking, picked up the third cup.
“One…” Ricky grinned at him. “Two… Three.”
He and Martin threw the tequila down their gullets and gagged.
She sipped hers, and her throat closed in protest. She swallowed the rest and breathed through her nose as the liquid burned all the way to her stomach.
“Shit.” She slammed down the cup and wiped the tears from her eyes. “That’s horrible.”
“What the fuck is this?” Ricky inspected the faded half-torn label on the bottle. “It tastes nothing like what we drank earlier today.”
“What you had earlier is almost gone, so I got a new bottle, which is always hit and miss. Sometimes, it’s watered down. Other times, it’s mixed with something.”
“This one’s laced with paint thinner.” Martin tossed his cup toward Ricky.
As the fiery burn faded from her throat, she breathed a sigh of relief that it was over.
Until Ricky announced, “Another round!”
They repeated the process again and again. With each round, the tequila went down smoother, and their smiles grew bigger.
Innocuous conversation filled the pauses between choking laughter. Embarrassing moments in school, favorite music, theories on dinosaur extinction—they covered a safe and wide range of topics.
As the bottle of turpentine neared its final drop, her memory began to blank, and her skull pounded as if she’d been hit in the back of the head by a shovel.
She remembered tipping into Ricky’s lap, laughing hysterically at something he said. Martin had cut them both off from drinking sometime before that, but not soon enough.
She woke hours later.
Lying face down in the running position, her brain wailed, Why, why, why?
Oh, God, her stomach, her head, her unfortunate split ends… Everything hurt.
Never again.
She cracked open her eyes, immediately blinded by the light bulb over the sink.
Martin lay on the other bed beside her, his oh-so-pretty features void of the tension he carried when awake.
The weight of Ricky’s arm rested across her back. She took up most of his bed, forcing him to squeeze between her and the wall. He pressed so close to her side his soft snores ruffled her hair.
The intimacy of it startled her tequila-addled brain. She did a mental inventory of her body. Still fully clothed. Still armed with the gun in her waistband.
They could’ve forced themselves on her, beaten her, or killed her. But they didn’t.
They still could.
No, they were good people. Except they were convicts. More importantly, they were the sexiest men who ever walked the Earth.
Hang on. What did that have to do with anything? And why was she thinking in English? Wait, that was Spanish.
Shit, she was wasted.
With slow, dizzying movements, she crawled out from between them and swayed on her feet.
The room spun, and saliva rushed over her tongue. She was going to be sick.
Neither man stirred as she opened the door and backed into the dark hallway. No lights. That meant it was sometime before dawn.
Her senses heightened as she stumbled toward the stairway. It wasn’t safe to wander around alone.