“No it doesn’t, Stryker, we don’t even know each other. It doesn’t feel right. What we feel now might not be what we feel when we’re safe.” It scared her.
“So you feel it too.” His hand came up and caressed her wet cheek. Norah closed her eyes. “It’s okay, babe, when I get you back to my ship, we’ll talk. Rest your heart and take a deep breath, I don’t want you getting sick again.”
She guffawed. “You seem so sure of yourself. We’re not even out of the jungle yet.”
“I sense the ship. Even a Cyborg can feel good when the end of a successful mission is on the horizon.”
Norah felt a laugh rise up her own belly. “I’ve never been called a mission before, or love; you take a lot of liberties, Cyborg.” She smiled to herself. “What’s your payout for completion?”
She felt the giddy little beginnings of tingles in her stomach, her heart, her throat. She fed off of the Cyborg’s cocky self-assurance. He had enough for the two of them.
“You, Norah Lee. How can you even ask that?” Stryker scolded her and tangled his fingers into the mess of her hair.
“So now I’m aprizetoo?”
She couldn’t rest her heart, it raced in her chest, running toward a finish line that was nowhere in sight. She slipped back down his back and settled back into the restraints that kept her safe. The half-eaten bar was plucked out of her hands and deposited into the pack.
“You’re perfection.”
Perfection.
Norah didn’t notice when Stryker cocked his head and stiffened, or that his nostrils flared and his eyes flashed. She couldn’t imagine the possibility that what they felt for each other could ever last when they were off Axone. But for the first time since her feelings exploded for him, she feltgood. Hopeful.
She didn’t notice the crackle in the air.
She felt happy.
Nor the curse, the scream, the sudden jerk to the side.
It wasn’t until the smell of burnt flesh and the snap of rope that she realized she was falling.
A scream tore out of her throat just as her back hit the water and she was submerged.
Chapter Thirteen:
***
Her pack saved her from the stab of hitting the water. She screamed only to inhale the liquid. Norah choked and hacked only to take in more of the flood around her. The current picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her over the jungle floor.
Water. I need to get out of the water!
She opened her eyes to the burn of the dirty swamp. Norah flailed as she tried to right herself and find air only to have her body slam up against a tree. Once again, saved by the crash with her pack.
Drowning wasn’t her first concern–the shriekers were. And if anyone were to ask her why at that moment, she would tell him that it was her fear that trumped all else. The fear flooded her veins despite the restriction of her lungs.
Norah struggled to find the surface, her legs kicking beneath her, her arms flailing everywhere, anywhere, to lift herself above the rush or to find something to latch on to.
She couldn’t see. She could only feel the pain as she sucked in water and her mind clouded. The pain crushed her senses and yet her fear remained.
I need to get out of the water.
Her body slammed into a rock, jerking her in her last moments of consciousness. Norah slipped her pack off of her shoulders and grasped for a handhold on the surface that her body continued to scrape across. Each muscle screamed as her nails grappled at the hard barrier until she found a piece to clutch.
Darkness descended around her and the fear vanished. She pictured Stryker’s eyes.
She trembled as she fought against the current with her last ounce of strength. Her fingers slipped.
Something grabbed her hair and yanked her above the water and away from the undercurrent. Norah felt her back slice across the jagged edge until she was lifted completely out of the water. The hand in her hair continued to haul her over the slick, muddy ground.
