* * * *
Any hope Annika had held out that she might at least get a look at the area where she’d dropped the buoy was dashed as soon as they left the cave. Either by design or chance, it was dusk by the time they’d gathered up Zhor’s belongings and set out, and visibility was limited.
She didn’t dismiss the possibility that Zhor had planned it that way although she was less convinced the decision had anything to do with her. He’d indicated before that it was safer at night, or at least that he thought it was, and that lent a lot of weight to the argument that he had his own reasons for traveling at night that had nothing to do with her suspicion that he was just trying to prevent her from attempting to contact anyone.
Regardless of his motives, he avoided the plateau, diving from the opening in what felt a lot more like a (barely) controlled fall than flight. Despite the safety harness he’d devised to carry her on his back, Annika felt herself slipping, felt like she was about to fall out of the harness and over him head first.
She’d never actually wondered what it must feel like to birds of prey—like the hawk—when they went in to an almost perpendicular dive to capture prey and she was very unhappy to be in a position to find out something she’d never wanted to know in the first place.
Thankfully, the pressure on her brain finally precipitated a swoon.
Or maybe it was the sheer terror?
When she eventually came around, she saw that he’d leveled out just above the tops of the giant trees on the plain below the falls.
An almost overwhelming desire to kill him for nearly scaring her to death washed over her.
Fortunately for him she didn’t have a weapon at hand and she was too weak from fear to wield one if she’d had a hammer to beat his brains in or a dull butter knife or spoon to cut his heart out with.
In any case, he only coasted above the tops of the trees for a matter of moments and then swooped below the canopies and started trying to see just how narrowly he could avoid a collision with the mammoth trunks.
And that instantly diverted her from evil designs on his person.
Eventually, it penetrated Annika’s terrified brain that he/they were being chased, or followed, or they’d been seen and Zhor was trying desperately to elude the threat. Nothing else made sense because Zhor had never behaved in such a way before, never done anything to make trying to scare her to death seem ‘typical’ for him. In vain, she tried twisting her head around far enough to see what was behind them. The harness held her too securely for her to move very far in any direction and, beyond that, the sun had set before they reached the forest. Dusk had already settled over the landscape and the area under the canopy was like a cave.
She didn’t know whether to be grateful Zhor had spotted the threat and was trying to avoid it or more frightened. She couldn’t see what was behind them, perhaps chasing them. She couldn’t see more than a glimpse of the trees they were heading toward at breakneck speed. She didn’t know how Zhor could see well enough to avoid a collision, but she sincerely hoped it wasn’t blind luck.
By the time Zhor finally stopped, she was ready to collapse.
She had no idea where he’d stopped. The light from the moons didn’t penetrate the area where he stopped and then climbed through an opening.
She thought it must be a cave, but the musty smell was more organic/plant-like and she wondered if it wasn’t a hollow in one of the giant trees.
At that moment, she didn’t really care.
She was so weak with residual fear that she simply collapsed when Zhor finally released her from the harness.
She didn’t try to get up. She just curled into a tight ball to try to conserve what little warmth she could generate.
She could hear Zhor moving around, but she was too miserable to have much interest in what he was doing—especially if it didn’t include building a fire for warmth.
Instead, he made up a pallet from the bundle they’d brought and moved her to it and then curled around her and pulled the skin, fur side down, over them.
Slowly, warmth began to invade her.
Most of it seemed to be coming from him and when her back was finally warm and her front still freezing, she wiggled until he loosened his grip on her and turned in his arms to warm the other side.
He tightened his embrace again once she’d settled, plastering her against his length.
It was enough to arouse all sorts of thoughts about getting warm. It almost seemed as if the heated awareness of desire invaded both of them simultaneously. They shifted. Annika lifted her head to stare up at Zhor expectantly/hopefully, holding her breath.
He crushed his mouth down on hers almost as if he expected her to try to escape.
That was the furthest thing from her mind.
His tongue was a welcome invader as he thrust it into her mouth in conquest, laying waste to any barriers with the thrill of his touch, his taste. Like an exotic drug, his essence flowed through her, alerting every nerve ending, every hair follicle until she was buzzing with awareness of him in every pore.
He rolled until she was pressed against a hard surface, half on her back, half on her side, insinuating one of his legs between hers, bringing his knee up until it was resting against her intimately.
