Aftershock. Jill Shalvis

      Then the bottom dropped out from beneath his world, and he fell.

      And fell.

      As he did, he heard a scream.

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       D AX LANDED HARD , on his already bruised butt.

      The hit jarred him senseless for a moment, and the all-consuming dark further confused him. He remembered the destruction of the stairwell he’d been on and knew that meant big trouble when it came to getting out.

      He also remembered the scream.

      “Hello! Fire inspector,” he called out roughly. In the blackness, he quickly rose to his knees, then coughed and gagged on a deep breath of dust and dirt.

      Not being able to see, he felt disoriented, but his professional training and innate need to help others quickly cleared his head. “Hello?”

      “Over here!”

      Female. Hell, he thought, scrambling as fast as he could over what felt like mountains of brick and steel. The collapsed stairwell, he realized. “I’m coming!” His lungs burned. “Where are you?”

      “Here.” He heard her choke and sputter on the same dirt he’d inhaled. “Here!” she cried louder, just as he reached out and touched her leg.

      “Oh!” Clearly startled, she pulled back.

      But Dax was determined, and afraid for her. Had any of the falling debris struck her? Gently but firmly, he closed in, and feeling his way, streaked his hands over her.

      She made an unintelligible sound.

      “Where are you hurt?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he carefully and methodically checked her arms, silently cursing his lack of a flashlight. He ran his hands over her legs, during which he had the thought that even a saint’something he most definitely wasn’t’would have recognized what a fine set of legs they were. Long, lean, toned and bare except for a silky pair of stockings.

      “Hey, stop that!” Hands slapped at him, and when he got to her hips, she went wild, scooting back and kicking out.

      He caught a toe on his chin.

      A toe that was covered in a high heel pump, if he wasn’t mistaken. And for the second time in so many minutes, he saw stars. “Stop, I won’t hurt you,” he told her in the same calming, soothing voice he’d used to placate hundreds of victims. No broken bones, thank God.

      “Back off then.”

      “In a minute.” He gripped her narrow waist in his big hands. “Are your ribs okay?”

      “Yes! Now get your paws off me while I find my damn flashlight.” She shifted away from him, and then promptly let out a low, pained gasp at her movement.

      Immediately he was there, reaching for her. “Let me,” he demanded quietly, running his hands up her waist, over each individual rib with precision and care. Nothing broken there, except his own breathing because there was something inexplicably erotic about touching a woman he’d never seen. Though he couldn’t see her, he sure could feel her, and she was something; all feminine curves, soft skin and sweet, enticing scent.

      He felt her cross her arms over her chest, and as a result, the back of his knuckles brushed against the plumped flesh of her breasts.

      At the contact, she made a strangled sound, then shoved him. “Not there!”

      Her shoulders seemed fine, if a little petite, so did both arms, but he could feel the telltale stickiness on one of her elbows, which he’d missed before. Maybe it had just started bleeding.

      Everything else vanished as his training took over. “You’ve cut yourself.” Concern filled him because they were dirty, with no immediate way out, and he had no first-aid kit. Infection was imminent.

      “I’m fine.”

      Her fierce independence made her seem all the more vulnerable, and as all victims seemed to do, she tugged at something deep inside him. So did her cool voice, because in direct contrast to that, he could feel her violent trembling. He ripped a strip of material off his T-shirt and tied it around her arm to protect the cut from more dirt.

      She was still shaking.

      “You okay?” Damn, he wished he could see her. If she went into shock, there was little he could do for her, and the helplessness of it all tore at him.

      “I just want out of here,” she said, slightly less icily then before.

      “Are you cold? Let me’” He reached for her, but she shifted away.

      “I told you, I’m fine.”

      It amazed him how calm she sounded. Dax’s sisters were all equally loved, but also equally spoiled rotten. They were never quiet, never calm. And certainly never in control. If a fingernail broke, if it rained on a new hairstyle, if Brad Pitt got married, the world came to an end.

      It wasn’t a stretch for Dax to admit that the women he dated’and since women were a weak spot for him, he dated a lot’were much the same.

      But this woman in front of him, the one he couldn’t see, could only feel, was an enigma to him.

      Again, she pushed away.

      He heard her struggle to her feet. “Hey, careful,” he urged.

      “I’m not going to faint.”

      The disdain in her voice told him what she thought of that particular weakness.

      “I’m not,” she added to his silence. “I had a flashlight. I want it now.”

      At that queen-to-peasant voice, he had to laugh. “Well, then. By all means, let me help you find it.” Stretching out, he felt his way along the floor, painstakingly searching for the light with his fingers. “You’re a hell of a cool cucumber, you know.”

      “It was just an earthquake.”

      “Yeah well, that was one hell of an earthquake.”

      “Do you always swear?”

      “Yes, but I’ll try to control myself.” His back to her, he closed his fingers over the flashlight. Though the bulb flickered and was nearly dead, it came on.

      Looking at the situation before him, he let out a slow breath and swore again.

      Coming up behind him, she made a sound of impatience. “I thought you were going to control yourself’ Oh. ” She paused. “This isn’t good.”

      “No.” Grim reality settled on his shoulders like a solid weight as he surveyed the situation in the faint light before him. “Not good at all.”

      The stairway was completely destroyed, lying in useless piles around them. There was no other entry into the basement where they stood, except the hole far above them. On the ground, directly beneath that opening, was a huge mountain of fallen brick and steel.

      The pile previously known as the staircase.

      There was no way out. They were literally buried alive.

      “The entire building…it’s gone, isn’t it?” she asked softly, still behind him.

      Dax thought about lying. It would protect her and his first instinct was always to protect and shelter, at any cost. But he already knew she wasn’t a woman to be coddled. “Looks that way.”

      “We’re going to die.”

      So calm, so matter-of-fact, even when he knew she had to be terrified. “We still have oxygen,” he said positively. “And the flashlight.”

      That was when the damn light died.

      In stunned silence, she drew an audible deep breath.

      Reaching behind him, he groped for her hand. Surprisingly, she took it and