Airway. Breathing. Circulation.
Becca groaned more loudly and mumbled some incomprehensible words but the attempt to speak was a good indication that her airway was clear. Breathing? Jet put his hands around her ribs, oblivious of the fact that he was cupping her breasts as he concentrated on what was happening below her ribs. Were her lungs filling well? The same amount on each side? Was her breathing too fast or too slow? God, she was so small.
Fragile.
Her breathing seemed OK. Jet ran his hands over the rest of her body. Feeling her abdomen to see if it elicited a pained response. Checking her legs for the deformity of a broken bone or the wetness of major bleeding. Amazingly, he found nothing. Until he checked her arms, anyway. When he felt her left arm below the elbow, Becca cried out and opened her eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ he told her. ‘You’ve hurt your arm.’
Broken it, quite likely, because of how hard she’d been gripping the controls at the point of impact. Her flight suit was ripped and she was bleeding badly. Jet ripped the sleeve farther and tied the strips tightly over the wound. There was no time to do more right now. This first check might have only taken sixty seconds but it was past time to get out of there.
‘Becca? Can you hear me?’
Her eyes opened but she said nothing.
‘Does your neck hurt?’
Her head rolled from side to side but she still made no sound.
‘Can you move your feet?’
He felt rather than saw the attempt at movement because he was busy easing her helmet off and unclipping her harness. The queries had been automatic, anyway. Even if she did have serious neck or spinal injuries, he had to get her out.
The door on the pilot’s side was crunched against solid rock. They were tilted slightly nose down and another huge rock was blocking the door on the passenger side. That left the side door in the cabin and the back hatch under the tail. One of those was bound to provide an escape route but it would take precious seconds to get there. A wave rolled them enough to lift the tail and knock him off balance even as he considered the options.
Becca’s eyes were wide open and well illuminated by the eerie, red glow from the outside. Could she hear the frightening roar of the volcanic eruption that was almost enough to cover the horrible grinding of metal on rock? She was clearly putting the pieces together and starting to realise what had happened and where they were.
He saw the moment that fear kicked in.
A new surge of adrenaline came with the renewed urge to protect Becca. Turning and bracing himself on the back of the seat, Jet used his heavy, steel-capped boots to smash the edges of the hole in the Perspex to make it bigger. Big enough to climb out of with a small woman in his arms.
The world had turned itself inside out. It was threatening to crush her and there was nothing Becca could do about it.
She hadn’t felt this afraid since.
Since the moment she had known Matt was going to die.
Nobody had taken her into his arms back then and held her as though he was capable of keeping the chaos and pain away.
Maybe this was simply an illusion now but if she was going to die, Becca would far rather be cradled in a pair of powerful arms that made it feel like her life was of the utmost importance to someone else than curled up alone in the pilot’s seat of a crashed helicopter.
She’d obviously been knocked out on impact and the memories of her last moments of consciousness were patchy and strange. So was what she could remember about waking up.
Jet’s hands on her breasts. Pressing on her abdomen. Tracing the shape of her whole body.
She’d known they were his hands. She’d always known what it would feel like to have them touching her because it had happened in so many, many dreams. It was muted in reality, however, because in those dreams her skin had always been bare.
The pain of having her arm moved had chased any pleasure away. It had woken her up too much, as well. Enough to make sense of where she was and what was happening. To realise that the weird red light was a reflection that had to be coming from molten lava spewing from a very nearby volcano. To feel how unstable the remains of this helicopter were and that it was seawater splashing inside at regular intervals to pool around her feet.
Fear overrode any pain at that point and only increased as she watched Jet kick the remnants of Perspex from in front of them. He was going to escape, wasn’t he? The way he had when Matt had been lying there dying in the intensive care unit. She would have to cope alone again and she was so horribly, horribly afraid.
But then he bent over and gathered her into his arms. She was rocked wildly as he completed the enormously difficult manoeuvre of climbing through a hole with jagged edges, holding such a large burden, trying not to get them caught or injured. Then there were sharp, slippery rocks to negotiate and Jet had to use one hand to steady himself every few seconds. Somehow, he still managed to hold Becca with one arm. She could feel it across her back and tucked under her thighs like the sturdy branch of a tree. Maybe it was helping that she’d wound her arms around his neck and had her face buried against his shoulder.
A roaring noise surrounded them that was far more than the sound the sea could make against rocks. The ground shook beneath them at intervals, as well. How on earth did Jet manage to keep them moving? Upright enough to avoid a nasty fall on this alien landscape of ancient, volcanic rock. Becca clung to him as tightly as she could. She fought hard when something threatened to prise her arms loose.
‘Let go.’ Jet’s voice was a command. ‘It’s all right. It’s safe now.’
Reluctantly, Becca let him unwind her arms. He was kneeling, she realised with surprise, and she was sitting on a flat area of shingle, having been deposited so carefully she hadn’t noticed.
She looked around cautiously. Good grief … they could be on Mars. A lurid red sky and barren dark rocks were the only things she could see until she lifted her line of sight. And there, well out on the rocks, cradled in a wash of sea foam, she could see the sad wreckage of her beautiful chopper.
‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort as the enormity of the situation became suddenly very real.
‘Give me your arm.’
‘What?’ Becca stared at Jet in confusion. He’d just removed her arms from where she’d been clinging to him like a frightened child.
An eight-year-old, maybe? How did he do it? Strip away all her skills and hard-won strength to make her feel so incredibly vulnerable. And lost now. She couldn’t pretend to be in control any more. She hadn’t protected herself very well, had she?
She hadn’t protected either of them. This was her fault. She could have turned back. She’d risked her life, which was bad enough, but she’d also risked Jet’s life and that was … appalling. And he was hurt. There was blood on his face. Without thinking, Becca reached up to touch. The urge to find out how bad it was … to make it better somehow … was too powerful to resist.
‘No.’ Jet pushed her away. ‘Your left arm.’ He was leaning closer. Frowning. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.
He didn’t want her to touch him. Weird how much that hurt. ‘H-here,’ Becca stammered, confused again. ‘With you.’
‘Fair enough.’ There was a curl happening to one corner of his mouth. Almost a smile. ‘You got knocked out, Becca,’ he said with a curiously gentle note in his voice.