started, and felt the arm tighten beneath her breasts. The chest against which her back rested heaved. She felt the movements of strong legs kicking beneath hers, saw a brawny arm in a soaked white sleeve, twin to the one that shackled her to him, carve through the dark water in front of her, and again tried to help. But her limbs were numb, and her movements were feeble.
"Fight me, vixen, and I'll knock you unconscious."
The threat was a savage growl in her ear. She felt the rasp of a sandpapery jaw against her cheek as he spoke, and realized that his grip on her had tightened to the point where it was almost painful.
"I'm not fighting." Her voice was almost unrecognizable to her. It was husky, ragged, barely audible above the roar of the sea. She wasn't even sure if he had heard.
She was, she realized with dismal clarity, beyond struggling. Her strength was spent. Breathing took all her energy. He, and he alone, was keeping them afloat. Her arms and legs were numb and all but lifeless. She could not have fought him if she had wanted to. But she didn't want to. The prospect of drowning, which she would surely do if he let her go, terrified her more at the moment than anything else; it terrified her more than he did.
Another wave exploded in her face. Claire choked, gasping, as torrents of water cascaded over her. Forced under, she made her frozen limbs move by sheer force of will. The arm beneath her breasts tightened punishingly as he kicked with her. Seconds later her head once again broke the surface, and she sucked in air.
"Be still, damn you."
He was hungry for air, too. She could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing even as his bristly jaw once again scraped her cheek. His arm around her was so tight that her chest could barely expand to let air in. She squirmed against it in feeble protest.
"I can't breathe. Your arm…"
He made a harsh sound but he must have understood because his hold on her relaxed by the smallest of degrees. She inhaled thankfully. Her heart was still beating at triple time, and her limbs could have been made of lead. Her head, too, suddenly felt amazingly heavy, too heavy for her neck to support. It drooped backward of its own accord and found a resting place on her rescuer's broad shoulder. A sideways glance revealed that his lips were parted as he, like she, struggled to breathe. What she could see of his profile was limned in dull gold. His forehead, nose, and chin, she noted in passing, were well-shaped and unmistakably masculine.
"Master Hugh!"
The cry, louder than before, brought her attention around to her left. There, miraculously, was the longboat, now just a few yards away. Of course, the high-held lantern accounted for the glow that outlined her rescuer's features. They were now within its nimbus of light.
Even as she registered that, a rope, sinuous as a snake, sailed through the air and struck the rippling surface beside them before quickly starting to sink. He grabbed it before it could disappear, a strong male hand latching on ruthlessly to a lifeline, and with a series of deft twists of his wrist wrapped it several times around his palm. Then his fist closed over it, and, whether through his efforts or the efforts of the men in the boat, they were suddenly being propelled through the water with a force and speed that defied the swelling waves.
Thus, she thought bleakly, ended her effort at escape. Claire accepted that even as she realized that the safety the boat represented was nothing more than an illusion. What she was really doing was merely exchanging one horrifying death for another, later, one.
But the prospect of life, for however much longer it was granted her, was suddenly unbearably sweet.
When two of the men reached over the side, grasping her under the arms and hauling her on board, she could not be other than thankful.
"Watch her," her rescuer said as she collapsed in a soaked, shivering heap in the bottom of the boat.
Coughing in shuddering spasms as
Lex Williford, Michael Martone