Chapter Four
Annika was so shaken both physically and emotionally from the crash that she moved in and out of consciousness for what felt like an endless time—weeks, maybe months—although she knew, logically, that it couldn’t have been more than a few days.
It seemed almost every other time she woke, the man was beside her or curled around her possessively.
At first, each time she discovered he was so close, or felt his skin brushing hers, she tried to put some distance between them, tried to push him away. But he was a source of heat when she was cold and shivering. And he made a protective shelter of his body when he curled around her that began to seem safer to her than when it was absent.
The flicker of light and consciousness and the darkness that proceeded and followed unconsciousness almost seemed like a trip on a maglev bullet train, as if she’d been shot through a tube and was racing through days and nights, through brightly lit countryside, and pitch black tunnels.
He brought her food and water and helped her to eat and drink.
She gagged and threw up the first time he shoved food in her mouth.
And then she wept with humiliation and weakness, both relieved that he’d cleaned up the mess and horribly embarrassed that he’d had to. She kept telling him how sorry she was, but he never responded.
When she staggered off the bed in search of some place to relieve herself, he looped an arm around her shoulders and guided her to a room where there was a crude stone latrine.
And then stood and waited for her in spite of every effort she made to run him off.
“No privacy,” she muttered. “None!”
But he caught her when she almost passed out and did a face plant on the stone floor when she was leaving and she knew he wasn’t a pervert who just enjoyed watching. He had refused to leave because he knew she was too weak to get from the bed to the bathroom and back.
Unreasonable or not, she still hated it.
She couldn’t recall a time in her life when she’d been in such a sorry and weak state that she had to be tended to as if she was a baby. She knew when shehadbeen a baby she’d needed this sort of care, but she didn’t remember that time and she was strong, healthy, and had never even been in even a minor accident before. She was accustomed to being self-sufficient and shehatedhaving to rely on anyone for her most basic needs.
She would’ve hated it if it had been someone closely tied to her—like family. It was a thousand times worse that it was a stranger.
And a man.
A very attractive man.
Could she possibly be anymoreunattractive, she wondered?
And why was she eventhinkingabout that?
It wasn’t as if she wanted toattracthim, she assured herself. It just wounded the ego to appear so veryunattractive to anyone.
Especially if it was an attractive male.
Well any male, really.
That thought circled her mind back to the crash.
She had no idea whether her crewmates had survived the crash or, if they had, whether they continued to live. She recalled that the captain had looked to be unconscious, or dead, before the crash, but she knew she couldn’t trust her impressions of that time.
Were they fatally injured and dying by inches on this hostile world? Worse, were they barely injured, just enough to be helpless, and now dying even more slowly because there was no one to help them?
Or was it just Phillips? Alone? Suffering and terrified because he was alone and in pain?
In vain, she struggled to mentally calculate how long it might take for a rescue party. Phillips had been sending a distress call when they crashed. She remembered that, but had it been received anywhere?
And where was the closest outpost that might have received the signal and might have responded?
Very likely, they would have launched an observation drone immediately.
Would the drone have reported no sign of survivors? Would any rescue operation be called off before they even checked eyes-on?
