“Yeah.”
“Why can’t I remember?”
“Bumped your head. Couple of times.”
“There a light?”
“Gonna reach for it, okay? Don’t cut my throat out in the dark.”
Right. Much better to do that in the cold light of day.
“Easy,” she finally conceded. What choice did she have? She could only assume they were trapped here together. Who the hell had she wrapped her thighs around? “Any fast moves and I do it.”
The shape beneath her shifted, something scuffled at their side, and a light came on, blinding her. In the split second before her eyes slammed shut, she recognized him—not who he was, exactly, but that she knew him.
And she liked him.
She released the pressure on her push knife, let herself feel the width of him, hot and thick between her legs. Before she’d finished inhaling, he’d rolled them and she was trapped.
Chapter 10
In a perfect turnabout, the man’s bulk weighed her down, anchoring her in her body, though she wouldn’t have minded leaving it and succumbing to blessed oblivion right about now.
“Remember me, Leo?” Before she got her hand out from between their bodies, he grasped it and disarmed her, chucking the knife to the side, where it landed with a clang.
The sound of her name on his lips was familiar. Not unpleasant.
Slowly, as if approaching a bull elk in the wild, she put her hand on his shoulder, ran her fingers over the tight muscle, trying to extricate the memory from a skull that felt like Humpty Dumpty after the big fall.
Her gaze stuttered on her hand.Why do I have gloves on?
She shut her eyes for a few seconds, trying to figure this whole thing out. All she saw on the back of her eyelids was that intense, shadowed gaze and—oddly—the skin of the man’s neck where she’d just touched it. Pale and warm looking.
Alaska. The crash. The virus.
“Campbell Turner.” She mumbled the name before she’d consciously thought it. That was wrong, though.
“Shit, you forget everything?” She grunted in surprise and tried to bat him off when he pried open first one eyelid, then the other, blinding her with his flashlight. “You were hit on the head. Pretty sure memory loss means concussion.” His big hand probed at her head, then moved to her face, cradled it for a few seconds, and finally released her. “You okay?”
“Yes,Elias.”
“You remember my name.”
She groaned, shielding her eyes. “Turn those off.”
“Those what?”
“The lights. All the lights.” She nudged at him until he rolled off her, then she turned over and hung her head, wobbling on all fours as she waited for the wave of nausea to pass.
“Only one light, Leo.” The man’s voice was a rumble, each sound purling out measured and slow.
Slowly, she pulled in a deep breath, finally allowing herself to notice that it wasn’t just her brain that hurt. Her chest, arms, back, neck—everything she flexed ached.
“Okay.” She did her best to parse out the memories her brain threw at her—the little plane, being shot at by a helicopter. Relief flooded her, loosening her limbs. “Okay. Okay, it’s coming back.”
His response was a rumble, low in his chest. She guessed that passed as an affirmative in his book.
“Could you put the light back on?” She slowly lowered herself to her butt. “Just…don’t shine it in my face this time.”
