Page 39 of Brawler
The world lurched, gravity yanking her into open air until his hand clamped around her arm, iron-strong, pulling her against a chest as solid as the stone itself. Beast pressed close against her calf, steadying her other side, as if the dog and handler had become one wall around her.
Her first instinct was to wrench free, to insist she had it. Independence had been her armor for years, the only way to silence the guilt gnawing her insides. But the vise of his grip, thesteadiness in it, struck deeper. He wasn’t trying to cage her. He was holding. Anchoring.
Her pulse roared in her ears as she let her weight settle against him, just for a beat. Her voice came quietly, surprising even herself. “Thank you. You really are there when I need you.”
The look on his face nearly undid her.
He beamed. Pure, unguarded, a flash of warmth so at odds with the lethal man braced against the stone. Like she’d just handed him the rarest gift in the world. “Even master climbers like you and me need a hand every so often.”
Something cracked in her chest. Ben had never smiled like that when she offered him a compliment. None of the men in her past ever had. Too busy, too distant, too disinterested. Here was this bruiser of a man, eyes softening, lit from the inside by nothing more than her saying she was grateful.
It rattled her more than the slip.
She felt the give before she heard it, stone sloughing off under his boots with the slow crumble of weathered rock, the cliff edge breaking like brittle bread. One second Brawler had a stance, broad and solid, the next, the world dropped out from under him, and the breath that left her throat was not a scream so much as a torn prayer.
“Christian!”
His body vanished to the hips, gravel and vines and powdered earth sliding with him, the cliff face sheering away in a soft rush. He dragged her with him, the rope around her waist binding them as one. His hands slammed out, forearms curved over the lip, muscles flaring, jaw cut tight. He caught for a heartbeat.
In that desperate window of opportunity, Emily moved. No hesitation. No calculation. Just motion learned on every scramble in the wilds of New York’s hiking paths. She tossed her weight backward and fell to her knees, palm skidding, grabbingfor the nearest thing that might hold. A strangler fig root. Thick as her wrist, knotted through the dirt like an old artery.
“Hang on!”She thought fast. Need more leverage…anchor. The leash! She grabbed it off her belt, looped the K9 leash once around the root, then again, a quick clumsy figure of eight that tightened when she yanked. Not enough. She threw the free length around her hips, sat into it hard, heels digging, butt braced on stone, spine leaning away from the cliff so the leash crossed her pelvis and bit into her weight instead of her hands.
The heartbeat failed. “Em,” he ground out, the sound raw, boots scrabbling for anything. His fingers carved trenches. “Do not?—”
“Shut up and climb.”
He sagged another inch and the leash took her whole body like a blow, the rope taut. If he fell, he would take her with him. Pain flared across her bones as if the jungle had smacked her, but the root held, and the friction around her hips turned his drop into a stubborn drag. The leash burned. She bared her teeth and leaned harder, eyes stinging, every tiny muscle firing to keep the line tight. The slope below him fell into green and shadow, a lace of ferns stirred by a wind that did not touch the top. Somewhere down there, water spoke in a quiet rush. It sounded like a place that swallowed what fell into it.
Beast barked once, sharp, as if he understood the stakes. She turned to look at him and her mind burned with an idea. The dog’s harness! “Come here, boy,” she said. Beast was quivering, wanting to help. “Brace yourself,” she said. Brawler was looking at her his mouth grim, his muscles thick and distended. She removed one hand for precious seconds, grabbed one of the carabiners she had dangling from her pack.
Her fingers found the drag handle on his vest, the reinforced strap sewn into the backplate. She snapped a carabiner through it, locking herself to him. Now every move he made draggedthrough her hips, through the roots, through Beast’s harness, the three of them straining together against gravity.
“Pull,” she ordered, muttered through pain and strain, echoed at the same time by Brawler’s commanding voice. Beast took steps back, all sixty-five pounds of strong puppy.
Some of the pain lifted as she pressed her boots against the earth, toes seeking a lip of rock, an edge to counter the pull. He hung from her now, not by hands and hope, but by angles.
She wasn’t going to let go. If he went over, then they all went over.
9
“Again,”she ordered, breath thin, anchoring herself with all her might.
Below, Brawler’s body heaved, shoulders and arms swollen with effort, every inch of him the kind of relentless training she’d only ever watched from afar. Her stomach flipped, half awe, half terror, because if he slipped, the line dragging across her hips meant they both went down. He wasn’t dangling anymore. He was climbing. Each surge tightened the ropes across her hips until she felt like they were fused, the three of them bound by leather, steel, and will.
“Yes, Christian. You’ve got this.” The name tore from her like a secret. He heard it. His eyes flicked up, storm bright in the jungle green, not smoke now but granite with a vein of heat that made something low in Emily’s chest trip. He did not argue. His face set into that lethal calm, all that always, and he moved.
It wasn’t pretty. His right boot slipped off a root stub, his left knee cracked against the edge, blood making a quick, slick mouth where rock bit skin. She bit down hard on her lip, helpless but to watch him climb anyway.
He climbed anyway. His forearms bunched, shoulders rolled, a slow pull against the line that made her teeth vibrate. The leash creaked. The fig root sang a low groan through the dirt. Beast never faltered. She sank another inch and locked, breath counting in fours the way she did when she crossed Prospect Park in July and the paths turned to heat. Four in. Hold. Four out. Again.
“Emily.” Low. Not a plea. A warning.
“I said climb.”
He did. A hand. Then another. He got a knee over the edge and the edge tried to leave him again, a handful of crumbly rock ripping free under his weight. She flung the line tighter, hips twisting, sharp pain cutting through her side as the leash ground into muscle. She did not care. He made a sound that was almost a curse, then his palm shot past the lip and closed on the leash where it bit her hip.
“Don’t you dare let go of me,” she said, voice shaking now, furious and terrified and weirdly clear. “I will never forgive you.”
