He tried to remember the thing in the round room, tried to remind himself that it might still be behind them, slowed, but not stopped. Right now it could be charging down that tunnel after them, but it seemed to matter less and less with each stroke of Brandy’s slender fingers.
He wanted to open his eyes so badly. He wanted to see the statues. He wanted to see Brandy. He wanted to look at her, to see her in the throes of ecstasy. He grabbed her wrist, but he didn’t have the will to actually make her stop what she was doing. God help him, he wanted to let her do it. He wanted to take her right there, and he knew he would not last much longer. If they lost control inside this room, they might never get out. They might just go on and on until their hearts gave out from exhaustion. Inside this room, there would be no regaining control.
That was it!
He opened his eyes, let in the world around him and snatched the flashlight from Brandy’s trembling hand. Immediately that hand dropped to her groin, to that part of her that needed so badly. He yanked her wrist from his manhood so hard that she scratched him with her nails, but he hardly noticed the pain through the pleasure. He bolted for the door, dragging her along, and did not stop until they burst from the mouth of the sex room door.
When he was clear of the chamber, he turned and kissed Brandy hard on the mouth, savoring the feel of her lips, the taste of her tongue, attacking her with the full drive of the sex room. She moaned with want and as they dropped to the floor she kissed him again and again, begging him between each one to take her.
They shared sweet, quick intercourse on the cold, stone floor as the erect sentinels watched with apparent delight. He ran his hands over her body, thrusting with forceful passion that began to quickly melt into a gentler, lovelier thing. Brandy’s orgasmic panting also slowed, becoming a softer, smoother sound, less a moan than a purr.
The orgasm was intense, but it was not the same as those they’d experienced inside the sex room. No longer did only the next one matter. Now they both savored just the one and it seemed to last and last as the world around them slowed to a stop. For Albert, this was his first time. The last time was meaningless, but this…this was perfect.
After they finished, Albert lay atop her for a moment, listening to her breathing, feeling the rise and the fall of her chest, the warmth of her skin, the hot wetness of her sex, her hair against his face. He could smell her. She was like apples and perfume. At last, he lifted his head and gazed at her, embarrassed.
She was smiling back at him. That was a good sign.
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely.
She shook her head. “That was a good idea.”
“I thought maybe if I could just make myself wait until we got out here, we’d be okay. Even if we did it, maybe once would be enough.”
“I think if you hadn’t taken me here, I’d have gone back in.”
Albert was still on top of her, still inside her even. God she was warm down there. “I guess I should get off of you now.”
She smiled, but did not speak.
Albert rose and they both gasped a little when he slipped out of her. He then knelt beside her, looking at her. She was lying with her arms and legs spread apart as though she were in the middle of making a snow angel, her breasts flattened against her chest, her soft eyes gazing back at him. She was so beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, not sure what else to say, and picked up the flashlight he’d dropped when he gave in to the lust.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. It was that room. We can’t expect not to want each other like that.”
Albert felt relief that she was not angry with him this time, but at the same time his heart was torn in half. She was taking it all as a result of this place, of this strange underground temple. Whatever happened down here, as terrifying or as wonderful as it may be, was all just illusions from a temple full of faceless sentinels.
Brandy sat up and dug her glasses out of her purse. She was visibly calmer somehow, despite their near run in with the thing in the round room and the terrors they’d faced all through the night.
Albert also felt better, but only in some ways. Now he felt like his whole world was bending into an orbit around Brandy Rudman and he was terrified of what may lie ahead for him. What they just did had merely intensified a feeling he’d been trying very hard to suppress, a feeling that admittedly began even before they set foot in the first tunnel. “I guess we should keep moving,” he said, trying not to think about the loneliness of the life he’d left behind at midnight, the same life to which he would soon be returning. Would they go back to being nothing more than lab partners again? “I guess that thing didn’t follow us or we wouldn’t have gotten this far, but we don’t know that for sure.”
Brandy nodded. She stood up and took his hand. Together they walked out of the room. It seemed fitting to them both, after what they’d just done, that the sentinels along the walls were slowly wilting, their excitement dying away.
Ahead of them lay the first room of this strange, underground labyrinth. Beyond that awaited the tunnels that would lead them back up to the city.
Chapter 22
Somehow the tunnel leading back to Briar Hills was more frightening than those they were leaving behind. Behind them was the thief who stole their clothes and a vast labyrinth that was home to a pack of ferocious creatures they had no way of even imagining. Yet those tunnels were smooth and clean, of polished stone, like a well-kept palace. In contrast, these walls were of raw earth and rocks, less like a temple than a catacomb. Albert could almost imagine the walls falling away around them and revealing chamber after chamber of human remains, some of them still glistening with rot.
“Do you think that thing could still be following us?” asked Brandy as Albert paused to examine the first fork in the tunnel.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t think so. I haven’t heard anything out of it since we went in the water. It seems like it would’ve caught up by now. Maybe we lost it in the water. Maybe it can’t swim.”
“Maybe. What do you think it was?”
Albert shook his head. “I can’t even imagine.” As far as he could see in all three directions, the tunnels were empty, so he continued on, leading the way.
“Are there any animals that could make that noise, do you think? Anything known?”
“I don’t know. I sure as hell couldn’t recognize it.”
“It sounded sort of like a rattlesnake, didn’t it? A little bit? Do you think it could be a new species? Something nobody’s ever seen before?”
Albert shook his head. Somebody might have seen them, he thought but didn’t say. He remembered the bones they’d seen as they approached the room with the dying statues and wondered again if they could have been human. Even if they weren’t, even if they were the bones of something native to those dark passages, what he experienced in that tunnel was enough to tell him that they weren’t just a bunch of overly friendly collies. That thing tried to take his leg off. If he’d been just a little slower getting over that wall…
He couldn’t think about that. Not now. Not when there was still so far to go. They reached the place where the newer tunnel was built through this far older one and he paused to peer both ways. He still expected something to jump out at them from the darkness, some dangerous figure unwilling to let them leave these tunnels with what they saw. When nothing stirred in the shadows, he stuffed the backpack into the narrow passage and then climbed in behind it.
When they crawled out of the next tunnel and stood up, Brandy suddenly said, “I feel like we’re not done.”
Albert looked back at her, curious. “What?”
“We’re not done. We didn’t finish.” She was staring down at the floor, her brow furrowed as though she were trying hard to understand her own thoughts. “We were given that box. We were brought together. We were brought down here. But we didn’t finish. We only got so far and we stopped.” She looked up at him. “I feel like it’s very important that we didn’t finish.”