Jump Zone: Cleo Falls by Wylie Snow

concentrated on lying still. The pain was physical: sharp and urgent. It hurt to want something so bad. So zhanging bad .
    How would she react if he slipped his fingers under the leather and rolled a delicate nipple between his fingers? Would she fight him, or give in? She couldn’t deny that something hot and alive zinged between them when their eyes met. Last night, around the fire, their connection had gotten so intimate that simply looking at each other was practically fucking.
    His thumb twitched, the tiniest movement against the skin of her breast, but it was enough to send another jolt of need straight to his groin.
    This is wrong .
    She was his prisoner, not his lover. He tried to dislike her, distrust her, but she was making his task very difficult. Zhang hell, it didn’t help that she was beautiful, vulnerable, and so fucking hot. He should have used the ampoule.
    In her sleep, Cleo released a breathy, contended sigh. The simple act of her lungs filling with air pushed her chest against his palm. Libra closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. The ache was exquisitely unbearable.
    It would be so easy to nuzzle her neck, caress her, knead her warm flesh. She would murmur mmm, don’t stop , urge him to untie the laces of her pants so he could slip his fingers into her sweet slick folds, make her—
    “You awake?” she whispered.
    Whoa, awkward.
    “Hmm? What?” He pretended to rouse.
    “Must have gotten cold during the night,” she said without turning round.
    Trying carefully not to grope her in the process, Libra pulled his arm from around her middle and pulled his hips back, breaking all physical contact. It was like being doused by a bucket of cold water. No, go back , his body screamed, but he kept rolling until he lay flat on his back.
    “Yeah, must have,” he said, his voice sounding as if he’d swallowed a handful of rocks. He lifted his head, tried to sit up, but the sight of the blanket propped up like a tent over his groin had him quickly rolling onto his other side.
    Worse than zhanging grade school!

    They’d followed a path that ran parallel to the river for six hours, mostly in comfortable silence, when her companion asked, “Are we stopping for lunch anytime soon?”
    She spared him a brief glance over her shoulder before looking up at the sun, now at its apex in the blue, cloudless sky.
    Cleo smiled to herself and pushed on. He wasn’t having any trouble keeping up—an unexpected but very pleasant surprise. She didn’t think her urbanite had the stamina to follow, but he seemed as determined to prove himself as she was.
    “Why? Need a break?”
    She’d lost valuable time already, and the need to get to Jaegar as quickly as possible chased her like a pack of rabid wolves.
    But there was something else driving her at such a frenetic pace.
    Cleo stole another glance back at Libra. His shirt was soaked with sweat, the side of his face smeared with dirt from the back of the arm that he’d been using to wipe the moisture from his face, and his hair was plastered against his skull. He was clearly pushed to maximum output yet, like always, Cleo felt the need to outperform, be the fastest, the most capable, the last one standing. Even with an injured leg, she couldn’t let herself stop first, wouldn’t be the first to suggest she needed a rest.
    She wasn’t trying to provoke the city dweller into declaring defeat, she just simply didn’t know how to turn off her competitive spirit. Cleo thrived on being first at everything, at winning everything.
    The very thought made her stop cold.
    But it was this misplaced sense of competitiveness that ruined Jaegar.
    As guilt snuffed the fire in her heels, she slowed. “There’s a good spot to stop just ahead,” she said as Libra closed the few feet between them. “Can you manage a bit more? I can take the backpack for awhile if you’d like.”
    He narrowed his eyes and gave her a slow half-smile. “Darlin’, I can do another twelve hours if you