Growling.

I blink my eyes open and hear it again. Thank goodness it isn’t from some rainforest animal, but rather from a stomach. A stomach that must be behind me because all I see are long male legs stretched in front of me.

I push up on my hands and realize I’m lying on the hard floor, using Gabe’s lap as a pillow. Pulling my hand up to rub my neck, I turn around to find him gazing at me, still slouched against the wall.

“Did you sleep?” I ask.

His blue eyes are piercing and I take a moment to appreciate his messy man-waves as he shakes his head. “Not as well as you. You sleep like the dead.”

I frown. “I do not.”

His eyes widen. “Lillian, it stormed.”

My frown deepens. “It did?”

“Yeah. I laid you on the floor, went out to collect as much rainwater as I could in what few containers I could find. Then I patched a small leak in the roof, so I moved you over a few feet so you weren’t lying in a puddle of water. Later, I put your head in my lap so you didn’t get a neck ache. You don’t remember any of that?”

I lick my dry lips, wondering how much water he collected because I’m not only hungry but also parched. Then I promptly lie, “I remember some of it.”

I sit here amazed as a smirk appears on Gabe Blackburn’s lush lips—the first I’ve ever seen. It does incredible things to his way-past five-o’clock-shadowed face and reminds me of last night in the dark when he was sweet at a time he absolutely didn’t need to be. And how I fell asleep in his arms…

He shakes his head, that smirk deepening as he stands quickly, towering over me. “You’re a liar and you snore.”

I bring my hand up to my mouth. “No. I snored?”

He squats near my feet and touches me again, inspecting my blisters. “Yeah. You snored. It’s quite satisfying to find something about you that isn’t perfect. How are your feet?”

I yank at the hem of my dress. “They’re okay, but I don’t know how fast I’ll be able to walk today. I’d cut off my little toe for a pair of flip-flops.”

“I promise to go slow. There’s no need to go home without all ten of your pink-painted toes. I’ll find some more arrowroot and we’ll pad the blisters with some of your tissues. Maybe that will help.” Gabe stands and holds a hand out for me. He pulls me up and my body complains about sleeping on a wooden floor as I stretch. He hands me a bowl of water. “Here. Drink up.”

I take the old bowl. “I assume this has been deemed safe to drink by Army Ranger training standards?”

“I dropped sand in it and it sunk. Without a water testing kit, that’s the best I could do.”

I look down into the bowl. “Floating sand is bad?”

“Very bad.” He lifts his chin for me to drink. “Come on. We need to make use of the daylight. I doubt we’ll luck out and find shelter in the forest two nights in a row.”

I sigh and put the bowl to my lips. It’s not exactly filtered but it’s refreshing and I gulp it down, not even worrying about the sand at the bottom.

Yesterday I watched six people get killed—five of them by my boss in order to save us. Today must be better, right?