Page 66 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Bodyguard

The caves were definitely below sea level. There was water flowing inside them and it wasn’t even high tide yet. Were these the caves pirates had used to smuggle goods? The very caves Reynolds had bored the hell out of me with stories about earlier today?

“What are you doing?” I asked. “These caves are flooded,” I said loudly.

“Why are you talking so fucking loud?”

“Sorry. My ears are still ringing from how loud the motorcycle ride was.”

“Well, shut the fuck up. There’s no one around here, but I want you quiet just in case.”

I didn’t say anything else. I had to bide my time and hope Byron, or preferably Reynolds, heard me about the caves. If he knew so much about them, he had to know where they were.

Right?

Skeeter walked down to the first cave and walked in. There was a large, damp path on either side of the river of water that flowed into the cave. The cave seemed huge, and it quickly went from the bright, sunny day outside to being darker and darkerthe further in we went. Skeeter knew where he was going, and he clearly had some sort of plan.

“Where are we going?”

“Deeper into the cave. There’s this large area that’s kind of like a room. It stays mainly dry, even at high tide. I’ve been staying there.”

I followed him. I didn’t want to arouse his suspicions, but I wanted to say more about the caves and really drive home where we were.

Finally, we arrived in a cavernous, dark area. A tiny amount of sunlight came in through a small hole worn in the top of the ‘room.’ It must have a flowing water source above it, because it was dropping a small, but steady stream of water into what had turned into kind of a pond off to one side of the room. It didn’t look like the pond overflowed, though, because the floor of the cave room was dry. It was cool and humid in the room, and I wondered if there were any bats hanging around. Literally. I looked all around the top of the area, but most of it was too dark for me to see anything.

“Sit down.”

I looked at Skeeter, almost startled to remember he was with me. I’d been so busy checking out the surroundings I’d kind of blocked out the fact that I had been, you know, kidnapped by a psycho murderer.

There was a bench-like jut in the cave wall where he was pointing. I sat down. I didn’t want to do anything to piss Skeeter off any more than he already was.

He puttered around the cave room, obviously used to the surroundings. I’d been gone for weeks now. Had he stayed here the whole time? There was a sleeping bag, the remains of some food wrappers, and a few torch-style flashlights that he had placed around the room in a standing position. He turned a couple on now, and it provided a decent amount of light.

I quickly scanned the ceiling, happy to see there weren’t any bats in the area. I liked bats; I just didn’t want to live in the same room with them. Especially if it was a cave where I was being held captive and would have no way to run away from the bats.

Enough about bats.

I tried to make myself calm down and think of a way to give away our exact location to Byron, if he was listening.

“So, you’re never going to believe this, but I actually learned about these caves. Do you want to hear about them?”

I knew I was taking a risk. Sometimes Skeeter just told me to shut up, but a lot of times he actually liked it if I told him useless trivia-type information when we were in the privacy of his rooms in the MC clubhouse. He even enjoyed watchingJeopardy!and shaking his head when I knew most, or all, of the answers.

He rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth quirked up a little. “Sure, Jess. Geek out while I try to get a fire going.”

I told him as much of the pirate lore Reynolds had told me about as I could remember. I’d tuned him out at some point, but I’d gotten the gist of it. I tried to make it sound as interesting as possible to Skeeter.

“No shit. So, pirates used this very cave?”

“Yeah, probably. Did you look in the other caves or just go into the first one you came to?”

He sat back and admired his stack of wood before lighting it. “First one I came to.” He sat on the ground and leaned against the wall opposite me, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “It was high tide when I found this place, and I was tired. I didn’t want to try to climb around and see if the other caves were better. Then when the tide went down, I didn’t care enough to check ‘em out. Now you’ve got me wondering if there could be pirate gold in one of these caves.” He looked around. “Or even in this one. This cave goes way back in more than onedirection. I stopped exploring, though. I was afraid I’d get lost.” He shuddered.

“There could totally be gold,” I said excitedly. I was trying to get him interested enough to go search in the other caves and leave me alone here.

He shook his head. “I always said you were the prettiest nerd I ever knew. Made me wonder how many other pretty girls were actually nerds underneath all that prettiness.”

I shrugged. “Probably a lot.”

“You’re into this pirate shit, huh?”