A protest broke from Jo's throat. "I can't just trash my plane! Do you know how much these things cost? I have to at least try!"
He gave her a very quick smile. "That's your concern? I say we're going out the door and you're worried about crashing the plane?"
"I haven't gotten to the part where we don't have parachutes or the height we need for them anyway!"
"What am I saying," Colton breathed, unbuckling his seat belt. "You fly.I'llget the cold weather gear."
"You buckle right back in right now, mister!"
"I'll help you pay for a new plane," he called over his shoulder as he crawled into the back. "I figure I'll owe you at least that much. But I'm going out the door in ninety seconds."
Jo let go a string of curses the likes of which she pretended she had never heard, and did her damned best to keep the plane level while Colton climbed around getting a variety of cold weather gear. She tried the radio twice in that time, but it was fried, along with most of the other electronics. It felt like forever before Colton squeezed his way back into the cockpit, now laden with a remarkable number of bags which madesqueezed back inthe operative term. Jo couldn't help staring at him. Glaring, maybe. "What are youdoingwith those?"
"Honestly, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. I've never tried this with this muchstuffbefore. Jo," he said more urgently as the wind caught them and nearly flipped the plane, "I can get us out of this alive, if you trust me. Do you?"
That was a ridiculous question to ask somebody he'd known for about an hour, Jo thought. You could like somebody in an hour. You could think they were hot, as Colton Drew undeniably was. Buttrust? Trust took time, or was an active choice that she wasn't sure could exactly be calledtrust.
And yet, looking at Colton's dark eyes and serious face, Jo knew that for some reason, she trusted Colton completely. Literally with her life, as it turned out. She nodded, and a huge smile of relief flashed across his face. "Thank God. Okay. I need you to unbuckle and put your arms around my neck." He turned away from her, so she could grab on from behind, in between the various bags he was carrying. When she had, he turned his head back toward her a little. She could almost see the corner of his mouth crooking in a smile, but she was so close, it was hard to.
Hedidsmell good, just like she'd imagined he would, back at the airport. He smelled wonderful. Which was probably not what she needed to be thinking just then, seconds before theywere apparently going to throw themselves out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute.
Except the airplane wasn't perfectly good: the engines wouldn't start again, the propeller wouldn't catch, and the trees were starting to come up very fast now. "This is going to get very, very weird," Colton said in that same strangely calm voice. "I need you to hold on no matter what, because I won't be able to catch you again if you don't. Okay? Can you do that for me?"
Jo croaked, "Yeah. Yeah, I promise. I'll hold on. Let's do this before I lose my nerve."
"Good plan." Colton shoved the door open against the howling wind and threw himself, with Jo attached, out into the blowing snow.
The plane soared along past them, speeding on its original trajectory toward the trees. Jo swallowed a scream, aware that her mouth was right next to Colton's ear. It was so cold, and they were so high up, and she was, Jo realized, about to die.
Then Colton Drewchangedin her arms, and all of a sudden she was hanging onto the neck of a huge beast whose wings snapped out, catching the updrafts, and banked away from the crashing plane toward safety.
Jo screamed after all.
She didn't let go, which she thought took considerable aplomb, because Colton's—Colton's?—neck was at least three times as big around as it had been, and also very furry. Hairy. She wasn't sure whether a mane was furry or hairy. Either way, her face was full of mane and Colton's neck was much bigger and somehow she managed to think those things while fall-gliding through the air and screaming like a screaming thing.
After what seemed like both a very long time and not very long at all, she stopped screaming, partly because her throat was getting sore and cold, and partly because they weren't reallyfalling. They weren't flying, either, but they definitely weren'tfalling, and that made it somewhat less terrifying.
No less confusing, but less terrifying.
The controlled descent took them through buffeting winds and blinding snow, over treetops in wobbling circles. Tears leaked from Jo's eyes because of the cold and wind, but she didn't dare let go to wipe them away. Instead she buried her face in Colton's mane—in Colton'smane?!?—and waited to land.
The plane crashed before they did, a huge breaking explosive sound that made Jo jerk her head up again. Fire and smoke billowed in the distance, and she wailed at the loss of her livelihood. She could have brought the plane down more smoothly. Probably.Probably,she thought again, and hid her face again as they glided closer to the earth.
A few second later Colton landed. Jo's eyes opened at the gentle impact, and opened wider as Colton opened his mouth in a huge roar of protest as the snow gave way and he sank to his chest. Jo fell off his back, which was harder than it sounded: it turned out that wings on four-legged animals were not conveniently placed for dismounting. She managed anyway, sank into the snow herself, then lurched to her feet as Colton sprang away with light, leonine grace, and landed chest-deep in the snow again. He turned to face her, shaking snow away, then sat, wings folded neatly, and his brown gaze obviously worried as he met her eyes.
Jo swayed, staring across the tiny clearing at him. The very tiny clearing: a big…winged-cat-thing with extremely fancy horns…could land in it with room to spare, but there was no way she could have brought the plane down in it, even if she'd seen it. She wrenched her gaze away from Colton and looked up the mountain: smoke still billowed up there, but the fire seemed to have already gone out, thanks to the heavy snow covering everything and the way it was still coming down. They'd landedquite a long way from the crash site, and she wouldn't know until the weather cleared whether there would have beenanychance of finding a mountainside meadow she might have landed semi-safely in. She doubted it, though. Especially in the time they had, in the weather, in…everything. Which meant…
Her gaze flinched back to Colton. Back to the big, big,verybig actually, winged-cat-thing with fancy horns. Horse-sized. He had a lion's face which was at least at the height of Jo's own, and she was not a short woman. Quite a regal lion face, really. His whole front was very lion-y, down to his feet. Except he had the most magnificenthorns, like a Dall sheep, ridged and curving backward over his pale blond mane. They were ivory, the shadows in them dark gold. And behind them were…wings. Leathery bat-wing type wings of pale gold, just like the fur of his body was. Deadly claws at the wingtips were the same color as his horns. He was altogether fantastic, and altogether impossible.
Jo wet her lips, and hoarsely, said, "You saved my life. Thank you. I…what?"
Colton—it had to be Colton, she'd been hanging on to him when he changed intothat, but it was also hard to imagine it was Colton—Colton exhaled heavily, like he'd been waiting for her to finish examining him, and changed back into an incredibly attractive human man carrying five bags of cold weather stuff. He took a breath, obviously preparing to explain, and Jo said, "Wait!"
Colton froze, eyes wide and questioning.
"Change back."
Colton looked left and right, just with his eyes, and then, without asking why, changed back into the lion-bat-thing.
