Until Midnight by Desiree Holt, Cerise DeLand Page A

breathe. Help me out here.
    After two minutes she still wasn’t making much progress and she worried he might
    be getting worse. What she needed was some way to get a shot of adrenaline flowing through his system, to get his heart rate up and his pulse racing. With nothing else available to her, she did the only thing she could think of to accomplish it. In
    desperation, she opened the button on his jeans and dragged the zipper down. If this didn’t get his pulse pounding she didn’t know what would. She also had the idea that the chemicals, like epinephrine, that the body released during sexual arousal would counteract some of the effects of the drug and certainly kick his heart into gear.
    Slipping her hand into the fly of his boxers she lifted out his penis, cradling it in her hand, and bent to put her mouth over it. Even soft he was a mouthful.
    Cut it out, Welles. This is no time to be admiring his dick.
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    She concentrated on what she was doing, moving her hand in cadence with her
    mouth. Up and down. Up and down. After what seemed like the longest seconds in the world he hardened beneath her touch, then hardened more. Finally she felt the blood pulsing in the thick vein that wound around his cock. A check at the hollow of his neck told her other pulse points were showing signs of life. Placing her hand over his heart she was relieved to feel the slow, steady beat beneath her touch. The groan that rolled up from his chest was possibly the sweetest sound she’d ever heard.
    “Wha—” He lifted a hand slowly, then dropped it back down beside him. “What—
    what—doing?”
    “Oh, thank god. Thank the good lord.” Nicki tucked his now fully aroused shaft
    back into Adam’s jeans and zipped him up.
    “Nicki?” His eyes were still unfocused and he was having trouble moving his
    limbs. “What’s…going on?”
    “We’ve been kidnapped and given a hefty dose of Pleasant Dreams.” She lifted the
    plastic mask she’d yanked from his face. “This is hooked directly into a cylinder next to you. I had the same setup but I have a feeling you were given a much heavier dose.”
    He tried to sit up but his limbs didn’t seem to work and he flopped back onto the
    concrete floor.
    Hell!
    “Adam?” She put her face directly over his. “We have to figure out a way out of
    here. I think they wanted to see if a dose this strong would kill us immediately. If not, it would give them some new parameters to measure its effectiveness. The only reason
    we’re still alive, I think, is because our conditioning makes our bodies more resistant than the average bear.”
    “O-kay.” He wet his lips. “Can’t…seem to move too well.”
    “Do you understand what I just told you?”
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    If she could just get through to him and make him aware of the urgency of the
    situation it might send another shot of adrenaline coursing through his system and help dispel the lingering effects of Pleasant Dreams. In desperation, she clamped her hand over his cock again and squeezed.
    “Can you feel that?” she squeezed harder.
    Adam’s eyes popped wide open. “Jesus, Nicki. Yes. Are you trying to castrate me?”
    But she saw the fog clearing from his eyes and awareness replacing it.
    “I don’t know how long before someone comes to check on us. I’m going to look
    out that window and see if I can open it and if it leads to anything.”
    Adam managed to push himself to an upright position and Nicki took another look
    around the room. She hadn’t noticed it when she first regained consciousness but there was a dampness in the air, a persistent chill. A dankness and smell of salt obviously caused by whatever water they were near. Her best guess was they were in some kind of warehouse, probably one that either Henderson or Calderon owned along the
    Chesapeake. Someplace where small ships could offload without too much fuss or
    muss. She knew from experience that there were only a couple