Lion Man's Captive by Kaitlyn O'Connor (read full novel .txt) 📕

“You stupid fucktard!We’ll both bestuck down here if you jum …!”

He slid off the ledge before she couldget the rest of the sentence out of her mouth. She plasteredherself against the wall—for all the good it did! Space wasextremely limited to say the least. He practically landed on top ofher. “Ow! Shit! Damn it! I told you not to jump!” she exclaimedwhen he landed on her, crushing one of her bare feet beneath hishuge boot.

It occurred to her as she glared up athim that he was a lot bigger than she’d realized before, but thenshe’d had other things on her mind.

She didn’t like the things that wentthrough her mind while they stood belly to belly in the narrowshaft. She’d noticed the warmth from his body when she’d put on thejacket he’d given her and she’d noticed his scent clinging toit—neither of which were repellent—far from it, but she’d managedto dismiss it from her mind.

She couldn’tbreathe without rubbingher boobs on him!

And if the stiff thing prodding her inthe belly was any indication, he’d noticed, too.

Or maybe that was somethingelse?

“Uh. There’s something … uh… something …. Never mind! What the hell are we going to donow?”

Aidan grabbed her anddragged her down into a crouch. She caught a glimpse of somethinghuge at the top of the hole as they toppled into one of the drainpipes. Dirt began raining down on their legs and Anyarealized something was after them, trying to dig down to get to them.

As dark as the drainpipe was, despitethe fact that she’d heard something in it earlier, she didn’t needany urging to crawl once they’d untangled themselves.

Aidan stopped Anya oncethey’d put a few yards between them and the beast trying to digthem up. “I think we’re safe enough here …for the moment, anyway,” he said absently,searching the suit for some kind of light. When he didn’t findanything in the pockets of the pants he was wearing, he turned toAnya and began searching the pockets of the jacket.

She began slapping at hishands. “Are you out of your mind! How can you think about sex at a time like this? That thing istrying to get us and eat us, you lunatic!”

“I’m looking for a light,damn it!” Aidan snapped indignantly. He hadto wrestle her to search the pockets. Finally, though, he foundwhat he’d been looking for and extracted it from thepocket.

“Oh,” Anya saiduncomfortably when he produced a small object that turned out to bea flashlight of some kind.

He sent her a sour look and then heldthe light up to examine the pipe they were in.

“Oh don’t even!” shemuttered as she followed Aidan a little deeper into the pipe.“Don’t try to tell me you weren’t happy to see me a few minutesago! Now you want to pretend it never crossed yourmind.”

They stopped again a few yards furtherand sat down, listening to the grunts and digging sounds until,almost as abruptly as it had started, the beast apparently gave upand decided to look somewhere else for an easier dinner.

Relieved, Anya looked at Aidanexpectantly. “What now? I mean, where are we goinganyway?”

Aidan frowned, studying the thing onhis wrist. She couldn’t remember what he’d called it but it lookeda lot like a tiny computer—or maybe a game system. Somehow, shedoubted it was anything like that, though. He looked at her after afew moments. “Were go dis ting?”

Anya gaped at him as he gestured at thepipe. For a few moments, she thought maybe he was just mimickingwhat she’d asked, despite the gesturing.

“Were go dis ting?” herepeated.

Anya gaped at him and glanced up anddown the pipe. She shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

He gave her a look.

She thought a moment, bringing up amental map of the clearing. “I think east and west.”

His lips tightened.

“Roughly.”

“Dis ting what? Gowere?”

It was really hard tofollow what he was asking considering his accent and the way heformed his questions, Anya thought irritably. On the other hand,he was speakingEnglish … sort of. “Oh! You mean what is it used for? Uh … I don’tknow.”

She could tell from his expression thathe didn’t believe her. ““Well, Jesus! I’m not from around here,damn it!” She frowned, considering it. “It’s a … well I guess it’sa drain pipe, but I don’t know a damned thing about sewer systems.A reservoir, maybe?” She thought about it, feeling her throat closewith thirst at the prospect of finding a reservoir full ofwater.

On the other hand, should she lead aninvader to a water source?

One look at his expression was enoughto convince her that a) he hadn’t caught one word out of three andb) it didn’t matter what she said. He was going toinvestigate.

He studied the thing on his arm forseveral moments, frowning. “Big ting no harm here.”

It took Anya several moments totranslate, but she had to agree with his assessment once she had.They were going to be a lot safer underground—well, unless therewere big things that could and would crawl underground withthem.

Of course, there was the fact that thepipe wasn’t big enough for anything really big, but she didn’t wantto meet up with anything that could if it had a lot of really sharpteeth like the things she’d seen so far.

She didn’t understand what washappening. She hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to think about itsince she’d been awakened at daylight by those things eating herclothing and the pipe she’d taken shelter in. She hadn’t had timeto do anything but absorb one shock after another, but she didn’tthink quiet time was going to help a lot.

The monster bugs and then the … Well,they looked like dinosaurs. They didn’t look like any picturesshe’d ever seen of dinosaurs, but they sure as hell weren’t nativesto Georgia! She supposed something similar might have roamed theearth millions of years ago, but she was pretty sure this area hadbeen part of the ocean then.

So she was also pretty sure that ruledout any kind of sci-fi time warp.

Granted, she’d already been shook upwhen she first saw the obelisk, and it was huge, but she didn’tthink these things had crawled out of that