Page 62 of Claiming Sarah

Jac was purple on the side of the moat.

I climbed out and dragged him away from the water and any other lurking danger. Almost reaching the wall I’d jumped from, I turned Jac onto his side, whacking his back the way I was taught in the army. But the water didn’t leave him. I pulled him onto his back, searching my memory for what to do.That CPR thing we did to Sarah, would it work for a Ladrian?

I had to try.

I listened for his heart and heard nothing. So, I pressed his ribs the way he had shown me for her. Ten quick pumps, then I breathed into his mouth twice.Nothing.

His chest didn’t even move up and down, the way Sarah’s had when he had breathed into her. Ten more, two breaths. Nothing, but my bloody handprints on his wet shirt.Don’t do this to me!Ten more pumps, two breaths. Still nothing.

“No, no, no, Jac,” I rambled, battling the fear taking hold. “You can’t die. This isn’t how it happens, you get your ass up now, soldier!”

Tears burned my eyes as I compressed his heart again. When I blew in his mouth, my lips came back salty from my tears.

“No!” I screamed at him. Sheer terror swept over me. I yelled for help, and no one came.

As my heart pumps became clumsier, I had a strange thought, something from Basic Human Anatomy class.Human hearts beat almost twice as fast as Ladrian hearts.I slowed the pump of my hands, still performing ten, but at half-speed. I also slowed the breaths.

Something in his mouth moved, giving me hope.

“Jac, are you—”

But a severed tentacle slithered from his mouth, still twitching.

I flung it across the grass and resumed the breaths. His chest rose and fell this time, now that his airway was unblocked. I did the slower chest compressions, and another breath. His leg twitched. As it did, the faintest sound of air escaped his mouth. Then his eyes popped open as he began to cough and retch into the air.

I turned him onto his side as he came alive, the panic, the horror, the overwhelming joy all hitting me together. He didn’t vomit moat water or any more tentacles. He only coughed and struggled to breathe.

When that stopped, he rolled back against me, almost smiling. “Where am I?”

“Rex’s estate. You were—”

He looked around and scooted backwards until his back was against the palace wall. “We have to get out of here,” he blurted as he stood up and tried to climb the stone wall and failed.

I’d seen him scale a hundred mountains, so I knew it wasn’t a lack of skill that stopped him. It was sheer fright. “Jac, we’re okay—”

“No, no, no,” he tried to run, but his feet didn’t obey him, either. He fell onto his hands and knees but crawled as fast as he could toward the rear of the manor.

I chased after him. “Jac, it’s dead. The tentacle thing is dead. Both of them.”

He didn’t stop. “Both? There aretwo?” he shrieked.

I caught up to him easily enough. I had never seen him so vulnerable and terrified. It shook me to my ghost. I helped him to his feet, but he grabbed onto my bloody hand and wouldn’t let go. The pain made my eyes water. He gave me no choice but to run beside him.

I yelled loudly, trying to out-shout his fear, “They’re dead!”

But his violet eyes burned with horror, all the same. So, I decided to run with him, wherever he went. I didn’t fight it any longer. He needed to run the fear out of himself.

He didn’t slow until we ended up in a garden behind the manor. The moat curved back for a while, until it snaked through a mountain and away from the garden. Jac checked and rechecked that’s where the moat went to, before he let himself collapse on the ground to breathe.

I laid next to him and held his hand, despite the pain from my wounds. “You’re alright now, Jac. I’ve got you, and I’m never letting you go.”

He was quiet for a few minutes until his breathing calmed. His voice was hoarse as he grumbled, “I fucking hate Rex.”

I laughed so hard that I had to sit up. I couldn’t breathe for a much better reason this time. The relief of hearing his voice, seeing him move, knowing my dearest friend and the man I loved was going to be alright, all of it washed over me in a huge wave of emotion.

Jac sat up and kissed me. Had I the energy for more, I would have wanted to take him right then and there, so tight was his grip on my shoulders as he clung to me. But the pain in my hands and the dives and the battle and the horror of losing him a thousand times in my mind during those precious momentsbefore he came around was enough to stop my cock from doing little more than hanging in the wind.

“Gentlemen, perhaps you could limit your salacious activities to your rooms?”

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