“I supposed we should get up and start paddling.” She sighed. “I want to lie here with you all day, though.”
“Me too, Fen. Me too.” He leaned down to kiss her.
Just before their lips could meet, something hard bounced off his head.
Carter lunged to cover her with his own body. Unfortunately, since she was mostly lying on top of him, that involved dumping her onto the ground.
She let out a startled, indignant yell. “Hey!”
“There’s something—” He broke off as he saw the object that had hit him, which was still rolling across the grass. It was a polished steel tube that had come open when it had hit either his head or the ground, spilling out a small flask and… was that a pair of steel shot glasses?
Precious landed with a triumphant trill. She picked up a shot glass in her delicate claws and dropped it beside his face, for all the world like a cat presenting her owner with a freshly killed mouse.
“Never mind.” Carter sat up and helped Fen up as well. “Sorry I dumped you. Precious dropped another present on my head.”
Fen peered at it. “Is that a shot glass?”
“Looks like it. The real question is, what’s in the flask?”
Fen pounced, unscrewing and sniffing at it. “Smells like very nice whiskey to me.”
Carter took and sniffed it. “I’d say the same. Let’s save it for tonight, if we’re not out of the swamp by then.”
She didn’t reply. He glanced at her and caught her with a surprisingly pensive expression. Slowly, she said, “Yesterday morning, I’d have said I couldn’t wait to get out. But now… Oh, I know we’re still in danger, but we haven’t even seen the people who are after us. I think we’ve lost them. And after last night, I kind of don’t want to leave. I know we can keep seeing each other—and I want to—but I can’t help wondering if things will change once we’re out of this weird situation.”
“And that makes you want to stay?”
She nodded. Her deep brown eyes were wells of sincerity.
You’d rather stay in a swamp than risk damaging your relationship with the man you don’t know is a monster.He gritted his teeth against a surge of guilt.
“Nothing will change,” Carter said, shying away from diving deeper into what she was trying to say. “I promise. We’ll eat lobster and steak instead of cattails and pawpaws, that’s all. And we can have sex when we’re actually clean. Won’t that be nice?”
“I could definitely do with a shower,” she admitted. “But if we’re not out by tonight, I’ll settle for another swamp water bath. And after that, my door’s still open.”
“Your ‘door,’” he said, holding up his fingers in a quote gesture.
Fen gave him a smile that made all the blood rush to one particular part, leaving him literally weak at the knees. “My ‘door’ is always open for you, Carter.”
He glanced at the sky, wondering if they had enough time to risk a quickie before they started paddling again. Maybe they did. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. And she was right, they probably had lost their pursuit. From what he’d seen of the wizard-scientists, they wouldn’t have been able to resist fucking with them since long before now.
“How about right—”
There was a tremendous splash, and a wave of swamp water crashed over them both. He grabbed Fen and hauled her away from the shore. She was gasping and spluttering, as was he. A piercing shriek from above and water dripping down on his head told him that Precious had also been drenched.
Carter dashed muddy water out of his eyes and stared out at the swamp. His heart sank right down into his shoes even as his adrenaline spiked.
An armored prehistoric fish loomed up out of the black water. It was so big and the water was so shallow that most of it protruded from above the surface. Its immense toothy jaws gaped wide, then snapped shut.
“What the actual fuck?!” Fen screamed.
The great fish lurched forward, but it was mired in mud and shallow water. It flapped its fins in apparent frustration, once again splattering them with muddy water.
“It can’t get to us,” Carter said, vainly wiping at the mud on his face. “See? It’s too big.”
“But whatisit?”
Carter was so furious that he had to unclench his jaw to speak again. “Remember the wizard-scientists who chased the Defenders around an amusement park? That’s Boris the Dunkleosteus.”
