Page 83 of Jump

“Alright. Rory? How’s your neck?”

“I’ll get a collar,” Axel announces. Pushing away from the car, he dashes away in a single beat of my heart, leaving us as flames grow higher, and the snow that settled on the ground overnight melts into a stream that rolls over the edge of the cliff.

“My neck is sore,” Rory answers. She attempts to reach up, but I set my hand on her wrist and keep it down. “Not, like, broken sore,” she amends. “But whiplash.”

“Even still. We’ll take care.”

I turn as Axel sprints back and thrusts a collar at me. He carries rope too. I don’t know what for, until he loops it around my legs and up to my torso.

He creates a saddle and gets entirely too close to my cock, I’ll for sure tease him for it later. But he saves my life—preemptively—by tying a knot so we can both be sure I won’t tumble to my death.

“Just in case,” he murmurs with a smug grin. “I don’t get to hate on you for banging my friend if you’re dead. Once you’re gone, we have to do the whole respecting a hero bullshit.”

“You’re banging his friend?” Rory is bleeding. In shock. Possibly suffering a spinal injury, along with her broken leg, and is yet to have her morning pee. But she still chooses humor in a moment others would panic. “That’s not cool.”

“She’s hardly even his friend,” I huff in response. “She’s his girlfriend’s friend, and his girlfriend isn’t even nice to me.”

I reach into the car, freer in my movements now, since I have a rope keeping me safe, and carefully strap the collar around Rory’s neck. I fix the Velcro tabs at the back, and get her blood on my hands because more is matted in her hair than I realized.

“I’m in love with his girlfriend’s friend,” I tell her conversationally, keeping her attention on me rather than her injuries. “But I don’t consider it his business, because he’s an asshole.”

“You’re in love?” Axel comes around to the passenger side and kneels to take Rory’s shoulders when I tilt her his way. “Like, proper love? Or, I love sexy time with this woman love?”

“Ask about her sex life again, and I’ll remove your teeth, kid.” I smile for Rory and slowly bring her legs up and onto the seat so I can drag her out. “Victim’s femur is broken,” I murmur into my radio for the paramedics arriving on scene. “Twice, I think. Protruding bone. It appears clean.”

A burst of foam hits the flames licking along the hood, making me jump. But my surprise gives way to a bad mood when I find Ivy holding the extinguisher.

No rope.

No helmet.

And not following orders.

“Bringing the victim out,” I grit into my radio.

I open Rory’s legs, somewhat suggestively in any other circumstance, and use my ropes to balance over the edge of the precipice between hill and car. Grabbing her thighs and dragging her closer, I scoop an arm beneath her lower back when she’s close enough, and drag her up until she’s wrapped around me: her good leg wrapped around my torso, and her arms around my neck.

“I just want you to hold on, okay?” I tuck her head by my shoulder, though the collar makes the action stiff and awkward. “Hold on tight, and I’ll get you home.”

“Lieutenant!” Ivy slams the hood with foam, but the flames grow faster than she can put them out. “Move, Lieutenant.”

“I’m retreating,” Axel announces from the other side of the car. “Climbing out now. I’ll come around to you.”

“Alright, it’s just me and you, Rory.” Adrenaline pulses harder in my veins as the car slips, and another tire dangles precariously over the cliff. “You trust me?”

“This is not my usual M.O. for dating,” she nervously chuckles. “Plus, you’re banging that other guy’s girlfriend’s friend. It’s all a bit messy, don’t you think?”

I choke out a laugh, and catch us when the car slips and Rory’s weight becomes entirely mine to hold. “Does it become less messy when I declare my heart to her? I mean, I’m with you right now. But this is just temporary. She’ll understand.”

“As long as you go home to her tonight,” she plays along. “The woman has gotta be happy with that. You seem nice enough.”

“Well, I’m on shift till tomorrow,” I counter. “So I guess that’s strike one. And word on the street is I’m not nice at all. So, strike two. Things aren’t looking good.”

“In which case, you’re a single man,” she snickers. But I don’t miss the wheeze in the back of her throat. The tremor of her body against mine.

She’s weak and scared.

“I recently went through a breakup too,” she whimpers as I push us away from the car and set one foot on the hard-packed earth. “He was a total douchebag.”

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