James Axler – The Mars Arena

He threw a leg over her, trying to keep her from squirming off the bed. It was a miracle, he decided, how that blanket stayed in place.

Without warning, she brought a small hand out from under the blanket, curled it tight into a fist, then slammed him on the nose with it.

Dean stifled a curse and grabbed his nose. It hurt like hell. He held out his free hand to ward off another blow. He didn’t know which hurt worsehis bitten hand or his nose.

“Stop!” he said in a forced whisper. “I’m sorry!” He was fully expecting the girl to bash him again and start to scream bloody murder.

Instead, she gripped the blanket with one hand and kept it tucked under her chin, maintained a fist poised to strike and scooted away from him. She looked at him, blinking, her nose flaring. “Dean?”

Looking at her face, Dean wondered why he’d never noticed what a cute nose she had. He took his hand away from his face and checked his fingers for blood. Only a few crimson stains colored his fingertips. “Damn, that hurt!” he said.

“Quiet!” Phaedra insisted in a whisper.

Dean blinked at her. “Quiet?”

“Yes, you jackass. You’ll wake Bitha.” She gave him a look that informed him he should have known that.

“I will?” Dean was confused.

“Whisper!”

He lowered his voice. “Sorry.”

“That’s better.”

He looked at her, scrunched up against the headboard as if she were afraid he was going to jump at her again. He felt bad about that. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What did you think you were going to do creeping around in my room like that?”

Across the room, Bitha rolled over in bed, talking in her sleep.

“Shh!” Phaedra hissed.

Bitha reached out to the small bedside table and took up a glass there. She drank deeply, then crumpled back into her pillow all without looking at them for an instant.

“She’s a heavy sleeper,” Phaedra whispered, “but she gets dry at night.”

Since she was turned to face him, Dean knew Phaedra didn’t see Calgary Ventnor hanging upside down from the eaves. He nodded, not knowing what else to do, wondering how the hell it was that he was having a conversation with the girl when she should have been yelling her head off. And there was still the mystery of what lay beneath the blanket. The heady aroma of vanilla surrounded him.

“Now,” she whispered in a harder voice, “you were going to tell me what you’re doing in my bedroom.”

TEARS GLINTED in Krysty’s eyes as she watched Ryan hang from the rocky lip above her. She wouldn’t let him see her cry, not because she was afraid.

“J.B.,” Ryan called out.

“You’re tied on,” the Armorer called back.

Krysty’s arms shook from the effort of hanging on, the muscles burning as they writhed under her skin. Gaia, if she’d only fallen before Ryan had reached her, he wouldn’t be here putting his life on the line.

“You look at me,” Ryan ordered, putting steel in his voice.

She lifted her head and looked into the volcanic blue of his eye. The scars on his face were part of the man, not artificial things at all. She couldn’t imagine him without them. He was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

“We’ve been through too many things, me and you,” he told her as he gripped his way around the fissure mouth for a more feasible purchase point, “for you to just give up on me now.”

“You and I,” she corrected automatically. The fissure behind her shook again, opening another three or four feet.

“You and me,” he repeated. “That’s how it’s going to be. You and me getting out of here.”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Hardly before the words were out of her mouth, the helicopter finally shrugged itself free of its subterranean tomb and came skidding at her. There was nothing she could do to avoid it. The aircraft gained speed and grew larger, sparks jumping out from under it as the metal skin scraped across stone.

And Ryan leaped from his hold on the fissure’s edge, falling.