Dane's Storm(51)

I let out a long exhale, realizing that my knees were shaking and I hadn’t even dared speak for fear the vibration of my voice would alter the stability of the plane.

Dane took two steps toward me, and when I met his eyes, I blinked. The look on his face was so intense it alarmed me for a moment. He stepped closer and tipped my chin so I was staring into his eyes from only a few inches away. His breath was a ghost of white fog in the space between us. “You should have left me there, Audra. Jesus, from that cockpit, it looks like the plane’s hanging right over the edge.” His eyes moved over my face, and he wore an intense expression of something that resembled panic that I didn’t understand. “You should have left me there. If I had been conscious, it’s what I would have insisted you do. But”—his gaze filled with both pain and tenderness—“thank God you didn’t.” His voice was gravelly. With one quick movement, he pulled the shirt down so my mouth was exposed and kissed me, hard and quick, returning the shirt to where it’d been and stepping back.

Despite the quickness of the kiss and the material being replaced over my mouth, I could still feel the pressure of his lips on mine like a tender bruise. I wanted to press on it with my fingers, to create the sensation again. I shook my head. “I couldn’t leave you there,” I whispered.

He stared at me for another moment, his eyes full of both warmth and softness, before he broke eye contact, reaching into his pocket. My gaze followed his movement and when he opened his palm, there were five squares wrapped in gold foil. I looked at him in confusion, and he grinned.

“Is that . . . chocolate?”

“Sure is.” His grin grew and he reached into his other pocket, bringing out a piece of beef jerky, wrapped in clear plastic.

I gasped. “Oh God, meat.” I wanted to grab it from his hands and stuff it in my mouth, but then what he’d just done hit me. He’d potentially put his life in danger for . . . beef jerky and chocolate. I wanted it with a hungry desperation I’d never known before, but we did still have food. It wasn’t like we were going to die of starvation today. I felt a small spear of ire as I considered the fear I’d just experienced for the past thirty minutes. “As much as I’m thrilled that we have chocolate and beef, and . . . reading material, do you really think it was worth the risk at this point?” I put my hands on my hips, letting him know I definitely did not.

He unwrapped a piece of the chocolate and handed it to me. Despite my irritation, I only looked at it for a moment before snatching it from his hand. I bit it in half and then offered him one of the pieces. He shook his head. “Eat the whole thing. I’m going to eat one too. We’ll ration the other three pieces if we have to.”

I hesitated, but decided he was right. We could use the sugar and, God, please, we’d been up here for three days. Surely now that the sky was a little clearer, rescue was imminent. I pulled the material down, placed the chocolate in my mouth and moaned, my eyes practically rolling back in my head, when the sweet richness hit my tongue. “Oh, dear God,” I said between small sucks, the chocolate melting away far too quickly. Dane grinned again as he watched me, using his thumb to wipe what must have amounted to the most miniscule chocolate flake ever. But I wasn’t wasting a single flake and I sucked at his thumb, causing his smile to fade and his eyes to darken. I paused, time slowing as we stared at each other, that ever-present physical awareness flowing between us.

Even here, on an icy mountain, where we might slowly starve to death.

How is that possible?

He unwrapped his own thick square of chocolate, smoothing out the wrapper and putting the candy in his mouth. As he chewed, his eyes glazed over like I was sure mine had done, and I laughed softly. He smiled as his mouth simultaneously worked the chocolate until it had melted, reaching out to me and taking the wrapper in my hand. “I didn’t take the risk for chocolate, although holy fuck, nothing ever tasted so good.” He held up the two small squares of gold foil. “I took the risk for fire.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Dane



We crested the hill, and though my head felt better, the ache in my leg had intensified with the strenuous use. I figured my stitches had probably torn a little—not enough that they’d opened up, but enough that I could feel a small trickle of blood under my loose pants. Walking through heavy snow felt like moving in quicksand.

Seeing the burned-out shell of the cockpit and knowing I’d been trapped in it, helpless and unconscious, had made me feel sick. If not for Audra . . . But I stayed focused on the purpose of the trip: chocolate and beef jerky.

Dustin had offered me some of his junk food stash the last time we’d flown to Tahoe, and I’d declined as he’d laughed and tossed it in the compartment on the door. The chocolate looked as if it’d melted in the heat of the fire, but the small space in the door panel had saved it from melting completely. It was only a bit misshapen. But it wasn’t really the chocolate I’d been after, though that was certainly a bonus. It had been the wrappers I’d wanted, and if this worked . . . Fuck, I didn’t want to hope too hard. But I was going to give it my best damn shot.

Audra came to a stop, her chest rising and falling as she caught her breath, and I did the same.

Now that we were out of the valley, the wind felt sharper. I looked at the jagged peaks of the mountain high above us, where I could hear the brutal sound of the lashing wind and see the swirling gusts of frost. Thank God we hadn’t crash-landed at a higher elevation, where the high-altitude wind would be deadly and unforgiving, where there were no patches of forest in which to find shelter, only vast deserts of snow and sheer, icy rock walls. Yeah, things were bad, but they definitely could have been worse.