Page 39 of Nikolai
He sighed and slapped a hand on his chest.He rolled his head toward her and smiled.“You’vegotto marry me.”
Parker laughed.“Over tiramisu?Like I said before, you’re selling yourself cheaply.”
He scowled.“Cheap?You’re calling me cheap?I’ll have you know…” Dust bounced on the ground in a strange dance.Nick stopped suddenly, then threw himself over her.
And the world ended.
ChapterEight
It was pitch black, the world gone in darkness.Parker couldn’t see anything.She couldn’t breathe.She tried to pull air in her lungs but something heavy was over her, crushing her and she couldn’tbreathe!
Parker coughed.Her lungs were filled with dust, and she had to cough to free them.Coughing hurt.Something incredibly heavy was on top of her and something wet was dripping on her.
Nothing made any sense.Her breaths were shallow, rasping—each inhale a struggle through a throat clogged with grit.The air around her was heavy, claustrophobic, thick with the dry sting of pulverized stone.
And the boulder on her back made it almost impossible to breathe.Parker tried to take stock.Something was holding her down from her head to her feet, and she couldn’t move.She tried expanding her lungs against the boulder and…the boulder moved!It shifted and she could feel a faint rhythmic beat against her back as if the stone had a heart that was beating.
Awareness rushed in and she realized she was buried underground.That last moment blossomed in her mind.Laughing with Nick, and then the dust on the ground suddenly dancing, and then Nick throwing himself over her.
An earthquake.A huge one.They were buried alive inside the Roman villa.The utter darkness was suddenly intolerable, suffocating.She moved her right arm with difficulty down her side to her pants and yes!The outline of her cell.She extracted it with difficulty.
The boulder on top of her was Nick.
“Nick!”Parker cried.“Are you okay?”
There was no answer, only a long, deep groan.
Parker brought the cell up to her face and switched it on.Light!Her home screen was a photo of the bay at noon, and it was full of light.She held the cell out and tried to turn her head to see Nick, but she didn’t have any range of movement.His heavy body covered hers completely and now she saw that he was buried in rubble.Heavy stones and bricks on his back, as far up as she could see in the dim light.
She switched to flashlight mode and held the cell up to his face, turning as much as she could.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
He was covered in blood.There was an open gash along his hairline that was still dripping blood.His arm, too, was covered in gashes that were bleeding.His shoulder was wounded.He’d taken the hit, and she was unharmed.She was under the weight of his body, but she wasn’t cut or bleeding or even in pain anywhere.
Nick throwing himself over her before she even realized there was an earthquake had saved her life.
And endangered his?
The thought of an injured or—God!—dying Nick was terrifying.
She placed the cell in flashlight mode on the dusty ground and moved her arm slowly until she could grasp his shoulder.She shook him, gently at first, then more strongly.His muscles were so thick she couldn’t move him.When she pulled her hand away, it was covered in blood.
“Nick!Nick!Can you hear me?Oh God, Nick, answer me!”
He groaned but didn’t open his eyes.
“Nick,” she pleaded.
Nick’s eyelids fluttered.His breathing deepened.
“Come back to me.Please.”
She fumbled in her pocket, remembering she had a packet of tissues.It was hard, one-handed, to extract them but she did, pulling out some tissues, pressing them against the side of his head.Carefully, because that gash looked really ugly.The tissue turned red immediately.It took the whole packet, but finally the bleeding slowed to a trickle.Parker had taken a first aid course a billion years ago but remembered nothing in her panic for Nick.But stopping bleeding was definitely a good thing.Something she should be doing.
She angled her phone’s light beam so she could see his arm better and winced at the torn flesh.Another big gash that wasn’t bleeding so badly but she could see a massive bruise on his shoulder, already swelling.Something had fallen heavily on him.That something would have fallen on her if he hadn’t had such fast reflexes and thrown himself over her.
She panned her flashlight around, heart heavy.They were buried in rubble, heavy blocks of stone and brick and dirt.They were buried at least twenty feet underground, if they were at the street level of the Roman villa.Deeper if they’d fallen into a fissure.
