"Come on, Princess. Get up and don't freak out on me. I'm going to have to touch you," Dane explained.
Her eyes fluttered open. They had almost a dreamy quality to them. God, she was so beautiful. Even in the midst of life or death, he couldn't not notice how fucking gorgeous she was. Especially when she looked so soft and sleepy. Welcoming. That was how she would look after they made love to her, when she'd taken them all and they surrounded her. She'd look happy and exhausted and satisfied.
"You have to touch me? Oh, what a shame. Which part are you going to touch, babe?"
He felt his eyebrows rise. "Babe?"
"You call me baby. I get to call you babe. Or maybe I should go with sweetie pie." Her voice was low and languid. Seductive.
Wow, she was high. Apparently a little wine and some sedatives did wonders for her disposition. "You can call me anything you like, Princess, but right now you're getting on your feet."
She shook her head, her lips pursing in a sweet pout. "No. Need sleep. But you can touch me. You like my breasts? Touch mine. Second base." She giggled before sleep overtook her again.
Oh, what he would do to her if they weren't potentially in a fight for their lives.
"Yes, Princess, we'll get to second base eventually-and way beyond-but right now I need you to stand. Up we go." He lifted her, forcing her to her feet.
Alea groaned and tried to wiggle away from him. "This is mean. I'm having a good dream. Go away."
He needed to get some coffee in her, but even if the hostess suddenly appeared and offered some, he wouldn't trust that it hadn't been drugged either. But damn, where had the flight crew gone? Had they managed to get off the plane somehow? They couldn't have opened the door. Despite what happened in movies, the pressure from the outside would keep the door closed, no matter how hard someone tried to push. They would have to blow the door. If that had happened, there would be nothing between the pressurized cabin and the great outdoors now, and they would all have been sucked out of the plane already.
Since he, Alea, and the guys were still in the plane, it followed that whoever had drugged them was still on board, too.
"You feel nice. So much muscle." Alea sighed as she leaned against him, her fingers running over his torso as if she wanted to touch him all over.
Adrenaline had already given him a hard-on. He did not need her making it worse. "Baby, I need you to focus."
Lan pushed the curtains aside that separated the main cabin from the back. He had his backpack in his hands and tossed it on one of the chairs, rifling through it as he spoke. "The hostess is dead. Someone whacked her over the head with something heavy, maybe a pan. It's not pretty back there. Lots of blood. I doubt she's the one who drugged us. Since I don't think we have a stowaway, that leaves the pilot. He hit her a couple of times. I checked the whole back, but couldn't find the fucker.
Fuck. "Where is he? We need to find him."
"He's in there." Cooper hitched a thumb back toward the cockpit. "He's dead."
That was bad news. Could Cooper fly the plane? He'd only handled small aircraft with propellers before.
"Who's dead?" Alea asked, her head coming up from Dane's chest. "Dead is sad. No one should be dead. Except for Khalil. He was an asshole."
"What's wrong with her?" Lan asked. "Coop, maybe you should have a look at her."
"She's just a lightweight," Dane shot back. "Coop needs to fly the plane."
Alea gasped and tried to step back. "Am I on drugs again? Did I take drugs?"
"It's fine." Dane pulled her closer, unwilling to let her get very far. She raised her arms and gave him an ineffectual push, trying to put distance between them. But the struggle was short-lived, and she finally let him hold her. "Someone drugged the wine. You didn't have much."
"I can't relapse. Can't go back there. Can't." Tears streamed down her face.
She was talking about the shit her captors had addicted her to. "We'll take care of you, baby. Don't worry."
"Dane, we have bigger problems," Cooper said. "The pilot poisoned himself, but not before he also killed the radio and all the electrical equipment, then dumped most of the fuel."
Cooper's words landed like a bomb in the cabin, diving toward the earth even now.
"Are you telling me that we're over the Indian Ocean and we don't have any fuel?" Dane asked.
"I don't know where the fuck we are. I don't know how long we've been in flight. I don't have a fucking longitude or latitude. I don't have a goddamn radio to call for help because that dead fucker made sure that we're going to go down without any hope of sending out a distress signal," Cooper said between clenched teeth.