His hands worked fast, looping it around his waist and tying off a hasty knot. He then ran it through the shoulder straps of the pack, securing it with a very short length barely long enough to allow him to get it back onto his back.
The Luzzip were getting closer. They’d picked up the intruders’ scent and were growing braver. This wasn’t their normal prey, but meat was meat, and one of them smelled of blood.
A yelp startled Maria as Zepharos swung his improvised club hard, connecting solidly with the head of the beast that had lunged at him from their flank. A scouting attack to test their resolve, and one he had been able to stop. The next time he might not be so lucky.
Maria couldn’t help but stare at the stunned creature. It was as big as a wolf hound and its snout and teeth looked quite wolfen. Butthere the similarity ended. Its shoulders were bigger and hulking, like a buffalo’s and covered with a dense, wiry fur, for one. Its rear from the midsection down was bare, the skin tough and leathery with myriad scars from countless fights and hunting injuries.
She would have looked further, but they were rapidly approaching the rock wall. It was a dead end.
“To my front!” Zepharos commanded.
“What?”
“Climb on and hold tight.”
“Why not your back?”
“Just do it!”
The sound of their approaching demise was more than enough to make her jump into action. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, pressing right up against his chest. Zepharos dropped the pack from his shoulders and took the remaining cord in his hands, wrapping it around her, binding her to his body as best he could.
“Hang on,” he said, then jumped up hard, grabbing an impossible hand hold and pulling them both up.
His grip was incredible, somehow carrying the weight of both of them up the rock face. Maria felt the stone rub her back, but she didn’t complain. The snapping jaws of the Luzzip pack that had arrived below them made her freeze stock-still, locked around him in a death grip of sorts.
Zepharos just kept moving, steadily climbing, the pack dangling below him just out of reach of the animals as he ascended. Maria glanced up and saw the look of sheer determination in his eyes. The clenched jaw, sweat on his brow from the exertion. But he didn’t complain or utter a word. Zepharos simply climbed. Up, up, up, that was the only option. Anything else would be the end of them both.
Maria pressed her face to his chest, his pounding heartvibrating strong and steady against her cheek. His scent was that of fresh sweat, the enticing smell of a man who ate clean and exercised, and it filled her nostrils, making some animal part in the back of her mind react of its own accord.
She felt his body moving against hers more acutely all of a sudden, her overloaded sensory inputs seeming to focus on one thing and one thing alone. Namely, how he was rubbing against her clit in the most incredible way as he moved.
What the fuck is wrong with me?Maria chided herself, but her body paid no heed. Whatever the elixir had done to elevate her athletic abilities, it had also superchargedotherthings as well. She just hadn’t noticed earlier because she wasn’t pressed up against a hot and sexy man. That, and the huge surge of adrenaline running through her veins at the moment probably only served to amp it up even further.
Zepharos lunged upward to a better handhold, jostling his passenger. Maria’s nipples hardened, the pressure against his chest sending little jolts of panty-soaking joy to her clit, the nerve endings absolutely singing with arousal. It was ridiculous, she realized. Here he was climbing with all his might to save her life, and all she could think about was her raging libido, courtesy of some strange alien brew.
I just hope he doesn’t notice. I wouldn’t want to distract him and get us both killed,she thought with grim amusement as another jolt of pleasure forced her to bite her cheek so as not to audibly moan.
Fortunately for them both, survival washisonly thought at the moment, and he powered ahead, grunting from the exertion in a deliciously distracting way that Maria had to mentally slap herself for enjoying. He was saving her life, not putting on a show, after all.
Finally, he came to a stop, sliding sideways onto a relativelylarge outcropping. He stepped back from the edge and carefully untied the cord.
“You can get off now.”
Oh, if you only knew.
“Thank you. That was amazing.”
“I’m sorry you had to be strapped on like that, but the angle was past vertical at some points, and I needed my center of gravity as close to the wall as possible. If you were dangling off my back, it might have peeled me off easier than having you on my front.”
“Um, yeah. Well, it worked, so thank you for saving my life.Again.”
“I’m glad for the opportunity.”
He leaned out and surveyed the route ahead, scanning both sideways as well as up. Zepharos nodded, satisfied. “This is good. Just ahead there is a large crack running diagonally upward. I know this feature. It will allow us to wedge in and make a relatively easy climb to the summit.”
“But how do we get to it?”
He patted his shoulder and crouched down. “Climb aboard. It’s a much easier ascent from here and you will be fine on my back.”
