LITMIR.BIZ

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muttered, ‘Fine…’ stretched her ability to speak to the limit.

      It was a lie. She wasn’t ‘fine’. Not by any definition of the word.

      The muscles in her shoulders, arms, back were quivering with exhaustion. Forget the ‘burn’. Her calves and thighs were on fire and she couldn’t feel her feet. She was just moving on automatic.

      Then, as her fingers, wet with sweat—or blood—slipped, her forehead came into sharp contact with smooth stone and for a moment everything spun in the dark. As she sucked air into her lungs, hanging on with what felt like the ends of her fingernails, she managed to gasp, ‘If I fall you’re not to climb down.’

      He’d stopped moving. ‘You’re not going to fall.’

      ‘Promise me,’ she demanded. ‘You have to get out. I want my family to know what happened to me.’

      ‘Like I could look them in the eye and tell them I’d left you lying on the floor of the temple, not knowing if you were dead or alive.’ His breath was coming hard too. ‘Stop gassing and move. You’re nearly there.’

      ‘Of course I am,’ she muttered. Did he think she was totally stupid?

      ‘Reach out with your left foot and you’ll find a good ledge. Carefully!’ he warned, as she felt for the ledge, thought she had it, only for it to crumble away, leaving her scrabbling for purchase. What was left of her nails scraped across chiselled-smooth stone as she fought to hang on, suspended by one toe and raw fingertips over a blackness that seemed to be sucking her down.

      She’d been there so many times in her head but this was real. This time she really was going down and never coming up again. All she had to do was let go…

      ‘Stop pussy-footing about and move, woman!’ Jago’s harsh voice echoed around the ruined temple, jerking her back. How dared he?

      Ivo had never shouted at her. He’d been gentle. Coaxing her back from the brink…

      ‘Any time in the next ten seconds will do!’

      But anger was good, too…

      ‘You pig!’ she cried, as her toe finally connected with something solid, but her leg was trembling so much that she couldn’t make the move.

      ‘Come up here and tell me that!’

      ‘What’s the matter, Jago? Are you in a hurry for another kick?’

      ‘Looking forward to it, sweetheart!’

      ‘I’m on my way!’

      ‘Promises, promises. Are you ready for another kiss?’

      The adrenalin rush got her across and she didn’t wait for him to guide her, but reached up, seeking the next move without waiting for guidance. She’d survived her moment of panic. The black moment when falling would have been a relief.

      She’d come through…

      He’d brought her through.

      Jago.

      ‘The next bit is a bit of a stretch,’ he said as she groped in the darkness for a hold in the darkness. ‘Reach up and I’ll pull you over the edge.’

      Edge? She’d been that close?

      And now she was out here alone?

      Without warning, the blackness sucked at her and she made a desperate lunge upwards, seeking his hand. For a moment his fingers brushed tantalisingly against hers.

      She was alone. Out of reach…

      ‘It’s too far…’

      ‘Hold on.’ She was showered with a fine film of dust as he moved closer to the edge above her. ‘Okay. Try again.’

      His palm touched hers. Slipped.

      He grunted as he grabbed for her wrist, his fingers biting hard as he held her.

      ‘Give me your other hand,’ he gasped.

      Let go?

      Put her life entirely in his hands?

      In the millisecond she hesitated, another aftershock ripped through the wall and the ledge on which she was standing gave way beneath her, tearing her hand away from the wall so that she was left hanging over the empty temple.

      Somehow, Jago managed to hang on, his arm practically torn from its socket as he stretched out over the chasm, taking her full weight with one hand as Miranda struggled to find some kind of footing. Slipping closer and closer towards the tipping point when they’d both fall.

      Stone was crashing around them, filling the air with dust. Something—someone—was screaming. Then, mercifully, the shaking stopped, Miranda’s feet connected with something solid and, bracing her feet against the wall, between them they managed to get her over the edge.

      He caught her, rolling away with her from the precipice, holding her, even as the pain exploded in his shoulder, his head. As her voice exploded in his ear.

      ‘Idiot!’

      ‘Without a doubt,’ he managed as she sucked in a breath, presumably to continue berating him. The dust caught in her throat and she began to cough. Not that she let a little thing like that stop her.

      ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’

      ‘I promise.’ He might have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much. Maybe it was hurting so much because he was laughing, he couldn’t tell.

      ‘I mean it! I’m not worth dying for, do you hear me?’

      He heard her, heard a raw pain as the words were wrenched from her. It wasn’t just reaction, he realised. Or shock.

      She truly meant what she’d said and, despite his own physical pain, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close even though she fought him like a tiger. Held her safe until she stopped telling him over and over, ‘I’m not worth it…’

      Until she let go, subsided against his chest and only the slightest movement of her shoulders betrayed that she was weeping.

      It was her struggle to conceal the hot tears soaking into his shirt as they lay huddled together on the earth that finally got to him.

      She had every right to howl, stamp, scream her head off after what she’d been through. She certainly hadn’t shown any reticence when it came to expressing her feelings until now. In truth, he would have welcomed the promised kick, or at least a mouthful of abuse. Anything that would stop him from asking her why she wasn’t worth dying for.

      He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to get that involved.

      But, even as he fought it, he recognised, somewhere, deep down, that it was a forlorn hope. Her life belonged to him, as his belonged to her.

      From the moment he’d reached out in the dark and his hand had connected with this woman, their survival had been inextricably linked. Whatever happened in the future, this day, these few hours would, forever, bind them together.

      And they were not home free yet. Not by a long way.

      ‘Hey, come on. No need for that,’ he said, tugging out the tail of his shirt and using it to wipe her face, as she’d used hers to wipe the dust from his in what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

      Kissing her cheek. Kissing her better.

      ‘Don’t!’

      His kiss was almost more than she could bear. The gentle innocence of it. Almost as if she were a child. It nearly undid all his good work in putting her back together. It took what little remained of Manda’s self-control to stop herself from grasping handfuls of Jago’s shirt, holding on to the solid human warmth of his body. Clinging to the safety net that he seemed to offer.

      ‘Enough,’ she said, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve to eradicate the softness of his shirt against her skin.

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