Flaming Desire - Part 4 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (9 page)
Read Flaming Desire - Part 4 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Online
Authors: Helen Grey
“Jesse, I’ve got to pick you up. It’s going to hurt like hell, but we don’t have much time. I’ll try to be as careful as I can, but don’t fight me, okay?”
I managed a nod. Without waiting a second more, he squatted down, placed his hands under my legs and around my shoulders, and stood. Pain shot through me. I clenched my jaws together, careful not to bite down on my tongue. I closed my eyes and tried to keep my breaths short and shallow.
I failed.
Every step he took sent bolts of pain to every part of my body. I uttered an unwilling gasp with each one. My leg felt like it was going to fall off. Despite my attempts not to, I groaned and barely stifled my urge to burst into tears. Crying certainly wouldn’t help my breathing. Would do no good at all.
“Sorry, Jesse. Sorry Jesse,” Matt muttered every few feet. “I know it hurts, honey, but we’re almost there. Another fifteen yards… five more to go… we’re almost there…”
Those black edges were once again creeping up around my consciousness. I didn’t want to faint. I wanted to be conscious. I
needed
to be conscious. I needed to help Matt do whatever he needed to do to save us. I fought against the blackness, forced my eyes open, forced myself to stare at the steady throb of the pulse in his neck.
He sat me down, half leaning against a tree. I couldn’t believe that I could withstand such pain without fainting from it, but I did. I had never been on the receiving end of injuries, and could now imagine how frightened patients who came into the emergency room were. I had never “walked a mile in their shoes” so to speak.
If I survived this, I knew without a doubt that I would become an even better nurse. Now I understood what it was like to be injured, helpless, and rely on someone else to save me.
I watched, fighting the dizziness, the pain, the nausea, as Matt pulled the shelters out of their protective bags. He handled them with care, because a tear in the aluminum would render the shelter pointless. I fought against the lethargy, the pain surging through me with every beat of my heart. I had to use the pain to keep me alive. I could not succumb to the darkness.
Not yet. I refused to.
I watched as Matt quickly tucked one corner of the first shelter tent into a crack in the rocks just above the left side of the crevice, carefully sliding in pieces of shale in an effort to hold it in place. He repeated the process at the bottom, placing heavier stones against the bottom corner of the shelter, about halfway across.
The crevice in the canyon wall barely looked large enough for one body to lie in, let alone two. I realized what he was doing. He would prepare half of the one shelter to cover the opening of the crevice. Then, he would open the other protective shelter and, once he had me situated inside, would place it over me.
It would be a tight squeeze, but I knew that we could both make ourselves fit. Before we hunkered down, he would do his best to attach the other end of the shelter with several rocks he was picking up and placing on the top side of the shelter. It was far from perfect, but if it held, and the wind didn’t rip it away, we might just have a chance.
I glanced around, looked to the north, and saw flames. My mouth went dry. I knew there were plenty of dry brush, undergrowth and trees along the bottom of the box canyon floor to provide plenty of fuel. In fact, the fire would race down through the box canyon as fast as it would through Aspen Valley just on the other side of the canyon wall, like it was going through a tunnel, consuming all the dry pine needles, the trees, everything in its path.
“Okay Jesse, let’s get you inside,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to hurt you again.”
I made a face. I already hurt. I nodded and reached my hand out for him. When he said it was going to hurt, I believed him, but this was even worse than when he carried me up here.
First, he had to pick me up and then lower me into the opening. It was like an inverted V in the wall of the canyon. The mouth of the opening was maybe two feet tall, with the top and bottom of the crevice narrowing down to maybe twelve inches at its base.
He had already opened the fire shelter up against the base of the cleft, and now he positioned me so that my back pressed against the narrow portion of the opening. I tried to help him, tried to move where I could, balance where I could, as he rolled me onto the shelf.
As carefully as possible, he literally shoved me as deep into the opening as he could. I lay on my good side, although the broken leg was beneath me now. He repositioned me slightly so that my weight was not on the fracture, but slightly in front of my left leg.
I was in hell.
Every muscle, every tendon, every fiber in my body screamed in protest. I felt a cold sensation rush through me and I began to tremble, even as the heat built up all around us.
Then I saw flames through what I could still see out of the opening, not fifty yards away.
“Matt!” I gasped.
He heard the alarm in my voice, glanced over his shoulder, and saw the flames racing down, closer, ever closer. The air was choked with smoke, very little oxygen to breathe. I inhaled ash. Coughed. Cried out. Oh my God, the pain!
Matt disappeared for a moment while he did his best to cram more pieces of slate into anything he could find to help attach the top of the protective shelter into the top of the crevice. I could only hope it would hold. Then, much like coming inside a tent flap, he rolled into the crevice, placing more rocks on the bottom edge of the sheet over the opening as he slithered inside.
It was a tight squeeze. His body was pressed up close to mine. The shelter was designed for one person, lying on their stomach, using their body to fasten the edges to the ground. To my surprise, Matt lay on his back, pressed so close to me that I felt there was not a smidgen of space between us. Then, grabbing the edges of the shelter, he abruptly shifted my body so that I lay on top of him, my chest pressed into his. He maneuvered himself, tried to tuck in the shelter under his feet, his hips, under his head, and then his hands.
My head nestled in the crook of his neck, just under his jaw. The pain of the sudden movements nearly shattered my resolve to remain conscious. I felt his pulse pounding in his throat.
“This is the best I could do, Jesse,” he said. “Let’s just pray it works.”
“Matt…” I think lying on my chest actually felt a little better. My head throbbed and my leg… it hurt like hell, but at least, for the moment, we were alive.
“Matt…”
As we listened to the cackle and snap of flames coming ever closer, Matt spoke. I couldn’t see the expression on his face. It was dark. It was hard to breathe. My ears rang with pain and fright. I had never been so scared in my life.
Fire. My nemesis. I had fought fire in one way or another my entire life—emotionally, mentally, and physically. Perhaps it was fitting that fire would end my life, but I couldn’t allow myself to think like that.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life, watching you tumble down that slope,” Matt said.
I felt the timbre of his voice in his chest, the way it rumbled up to his throat. My right arm was down by my side, but my left had ended up cradling his right shoulder. I gave it a squeeze.
“I never thought I’d be scared like that again,” he continued. “Not after seeing my wife and son brought into the emergency room that day.”
Oh my God, he thought we were going to die.
That’s why he was saying these things, wasn’t it?
He was telling me goodbye.
End of Part 4
To Be Continued in Part 5…
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Helen Grey is the author of the hot alpha military romance series "Serving the Soldier".
Her passion is to write steamy erotic romance and she loves hot billionaire bad boys. Lucky for her, these two go perfectly together... Find out how in her books!
This book was a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Helen Grey
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