I gasped when I saw it. I had seen guns before on T.V, or on a policeman’s belt, but I had never been this close to one.
James pointed the gun at me and told me not to move as he released me so he could unlock the door. Once the door was unlocked, he told me to open it. I twisted the knob at the same time that James pushed me through the door. He kept the gun pointed at my head.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot her,” he said as he backed out of the door.
My eyes met Mark’s as James backed up out of the door. Mark looked ready to spring, but stayed put when he spotted the gun pointed at my head. James cleared the doorway and slammed the door behind him, engaging the lock.
Mark rushed over to my side and dragged me into his arms. He buried his face in my hair and ran his hands over my arms and down my back looking for injuries.
“Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.
“Yes, I’m fine, believe it or not, except for sores from the sensors, I feel kind of great.”
Mark pulled back slightly, looking confused.
“You do look good. I have been so worried about you. We’ve been here for over forty eight hours. I expected you to be as ill as you were where when your mom kept us apart.”
“I was, but last night in the dream when the wall disappeared, I felt a lot of the sickness leave me. At first I thought the feeling would disappear when I woke, but it didn’t, in fact I started to regain all of the strength I had lost. We did something in the dream. I think it happened when I talked about us opening our minds. It’s like we opened a locked cabinet, we took control over our dreams. I think if we survive this, we will not be pulled apart anymore. It was like our dreams were trying to give us a warning that something bad was going to happen to us.”
“You mean that our dreams somehow saw the future?” Mark asked skeptically.
I laughed at his tone. “You’re going to doubt that when all of this has happened? We defy the norm on everything. I have found out so much in the last two days. Like the fact that some kind of celestial beings sent us here to protect humanity. Dreams that could tell us our future seemed like small potatoes in comparison.”
Mark looked at me, intrigued.
I became self-conscious with him looking at me like that.
“What?” I said.
“You seem almost energized like you’re riding high or almost happy about something, you’re glowing. You look absolutely beautiful.”
I assessed his words, he was right, I did feel energized. Maybe it could be left over from the adrenaline rush from earlier, but even though we were locked up and facing a threat, I felt oddly happy, almost like everything was okay.
“I think it’s because I’m with you. Even though I know we probably won’t make it through the night, I’m okay with it as long as I am with you. It’s only when I’m away from you that I feel so lost. The only thing that would make this better is if I had a chocolate candy bar,” I said playfully.
Mark smiled at my comment.
He pulled me even tighter into his arms; it would have been painful if it didn’t feel so right. I felt him brush a kiss across the top of my head. “I’m glad you’re with me too.”
I looked around the room for the first time and laughed. Mark must have had many fits of rage. The bed, which was no longer sitting normal, had countless restraints still hanging off it. It looked more like it had been tossed in a trash compactor. The metal was bent at odd angles that made it look more like a jungle gym than a cot.
“Rearranging your room?” I asked with another giggle in my voice.
Mark smiled slightly embarrassed. “That’s why James pointed the gun at your head. They don’t trust me; he thought I would rush him even with him holding a gun. They have tried to weaken me, but the more time that passes, the more frequent the rage comes on. I think I scare them,” he said with a smile as he bent the metal of the bed as close as he could back to its original position.
I sat on the edge of the now rickety bed as he held my hand. I filled him in on my morning excursion; making it outside of the building and discovering that we were being held at some kind of storage hangar for airplanes. I then told him about finding the phone, but being cut off before I could tell Sam more about our location.
“I’m proud of you, but I can’t believe you put yourself in that kind of danger, you should have fled as soon as you hit daylight.”
I looked at him with disbelief. “You think I would have left without you? I told you before, I can’t live without you. Would you have left me?”
“That’s different. I’m the guy, it’s my job to protect you, and in case you missed it, I’m doing a lousy job of it. You’re out there trying to find a way out for us while I sit in here cooling my heels,” he said with barely controlled frustration.
I placed my hands on his chest to neutralize his anger. “We may only have a few hours left. I don’t want to spend them in anger and frustration. I want us to make the most of our time together,” I said in a pleading voice.
Mark rested his hands on top of mine. I could feel the heat of his body. I felt a light blush approach as I thought of how alone we were. I was suddenly filled with the feeling of wanting to be with him as much as I could be. I had always said I would wait until marriage, but what if they did kill us tonight. We would never discover the true feeling of being together in the fullest sense.
I looked up and could see the same thoughts mirrored in his eyes as he reached the same conclusion as me. He leaned forward and placed his warm lips on mine. It was like being lost in the desert and finding an oasis waiting for you. I locked my arms around his neck and pulled him closer. Drinking greedily, I took everything his kiss had to offer. I felt more in tune with him than ever before. I opened my mind finally finding the key and our thoughts merged. The kiss deepened and without even realizing it I was lying down with Mark sprawled on top of me. My lips parted as he deepened the kiss even further. My thoughts were wrapped around Mark’s as we discovered the joy of each other’s lips. We had never kissed this intensely. I saw his desire in his thoughts mirrored my own.