Tomasso was desperate to check the wound and see that she was all right, but at the moment there were more urgent issues to contend with, like the fact that they were plummeting toward the earth at probably two hundred miles an hour.
Shoving the handle of the first aid kit up his arm to leave at least one hand free, Tomasso turned his attention downward, trying to sort out where they were and when he should throw up the pilot chute to get the main parachute to deploy. He’d never skydived before, but had once read the mind of an enthusiastic skydiver. That was the only reason Tomasso knew that rip cords had gone out in the eighties and modern parachutes had a pilot chute tucked into a pocket in the back over your butt that had to be thrown up hard over your head. Once caught by the air, it would force the main parachute to deploy . . . or so the theory went.
The problem was, Tomasso had no idea when he was supposed to pull out and toss the pilot chute. The guy he’d read had apparently counted one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, but Tomasso wasn’t sure what height that fellow had jumped from compared to what height they’d just leapt from. He had no idea what altitude the cargo plane had been flying at either. He did know, however, that they were dropping fast.
They weren’t in the right formation, Tomasso thought, the spread-eagle, flat-out position that would slow their descent. Unfortunately, with his need to hold on to an unconscious Abigail, Tomasso had no idea how to get them in that position. He certainly couldn’t spread his arms out and hold on to her too. That being the case, he decided that throwing out the pilot chute sooner rather than later was probably a good idea.
His gaze shifted again over the darkness below. Tomasso was beginning to be able to see spots of light below. His guess was that they were either towns or resorts on the islands below, and his hope was that once the parachute was up he could somehow direct them toward one of them. He just wasn’t sure how to do that.
“You live and learn,” Tomasso muttered and retrieved the pilot chute from the pocket over his butt to toss it upward as hard as he could. Apparently he did it right, as he could actually feel the parachute being jerked from its packing. When the wind caught and filled it, there was a much larger jerk as they were immediately slowed and Tomasso instinctively tightened his arm around Abigail to keep her from slipping from his grasp. Their descent slowed considerably then. It seemed more like they were floating than dropping now.
With the concern about the parachute out of the way, Tomasso was finally able to turn his attention to Abigail’s head wound. She had dropped a little lower in his hold, but her head was still tilted back, so he used his free hand to tilt it forward and frowned when he saw the blood flowing freely from the wound. The amount of blood itself didn’t worry him so much, head wounds often bled freely, but it obscured his view of the wound and he really needed to see how bad it was. Tomasso didn’t think she’d hit her head too hard, but it had all happened so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. He needed to clean the blood away.
That thought uppermost in his mind, Tomasso started to reach for the first aid kit dangling from his arm, thinking there should be something in there to clean away the blood, but he then paused as he realized how ridiculous he was being. He couldn’t open the damned thing while they were dropping through the air; everything would fly out. But the blood was obstructing the view of her wound and he wanted to know how bad it was. It was also now running down toward her eyes and he didn’t even have a shirtsleeve to wipe it away with.
After the briefest hesitation, he leaned forward and licked away the blood, then pressed his mouth to the wound itself. After sucking gently for a moment to clear away as much blood as he could, he quickly pulled back to see what he’d revealed. The blood was quick to bubble back to the surface, but Tomasso was still able to see that the wound was a small quickly coloring bump and a tiny split in the skin. In truth, as head wounds went, it wasn’t bad at all. At least it didn’t look that bad, but he wouldn’t stop worrying until she woke up and he knew for sure that she was going to be fine.
Shifting his gaze from her wound to her face, Tomasso took a moment to just drink her in. Her face was rounded with high cheekbones, and her hair was a gorgeous chestnut shot through with reds and lighter browns that gave it a depth he found lovely. But it was her mouth he found his eyes constantly drawn to. She had full, pouty lips that made him want to kiss her. Even now, with her unconscious in his arms, just looking at her lips made him want to press his own to them.
Resisting the urge, Tomasso shifted his gaze to her eyes. They were closed now, but he recalled them as a beautiful bright green that sparkled as she talked. He’d noted earlier that they were also a little bloodshot. She obviously hadn’t been getting enough sleep. But the red had actually seemed to make the green brighter. The shadows under her eyes, however, hadn’t done the same.
Wondering what troubles had so exhausted and worn her down, Tomasso brushed a thumb across her soft cheek. It felt so nice that he did it again. Abigail’s complexion was perfect, if quite pale—another sign that life had been hard of late for this woman, but it didn’t detract from her beauty for him. Tomasso found her lovely.
Abigail, he thought and liked the name. His mind had still been foggy from the drugs they’d been giving him when he woke up. That was the only reason Tomasso had gone for her throat when he’d opened his eyes to find himself in the cage with her bending over him causing him pain. He’d immediately assumed she was with his kidnappers. But then good sense had returned and made him try to slip into her mind to be sure of who she was and that she was, indeed, one of the bad guys.
Instead of reading her mind and learning that she was, or even that she wasn’t, Tomasso hadn’t been able to read her at all, and that had been enough to make him stop choking her at once. He’d then fallen back in the cage, his mind awhirl. For immortals, not being able to read someone was a sign that they were a possible life mate, and Abigail was the first mortal female he’d encountered that he couldn’t read. That realization had circled around in his mind, along with the thought that it was just his luck to meet his life mate and find she was one of the bad guys.
He’d been somewhat relieved when she’d assured him that she wasn’t with his kidnappers. However, Tomasso hadn’t dropped all of his suspicions right away. At least, not until she’d started babbling. Five minutes of the woman’s nervous chatter had been enough to convince him that she simply did not have it in her to be running with bad guys. It might be foolish on his part to come to this conclusion so quickly, but he felt quite sure that Abigail was as sweet and innocent as modern society would allow. He suspected she was one of those kindhearted mortals others would take advantage of. He could be wrong of course, Tomasso hadn’t known her long, and part of his judgment might be based as much on a desire to want her to be like that, as a belief that she was, but he was hoping he was right. And if he was, he intended to protect her from her own kindhearted ways as well as the rest of the world in future.
That decision made, Tomasso’s next concern had been escape. He had been quite sure that if they were still on the plane when it landed, they would never get free, so his next step had been to get them both off that plane and away from the kidnappers.
Mission accomplished there, he thought wryly, peering down again to check their progress. They were off the plane. The problem was he suspected they were going to land in the ocean instead of one of those spots of light he could see below. Which meant one hell of a swim to reach shore . . . using one arm as he dragged Abigail behind him. Tomasso could do it. He had to. But it wasn’t going to be easy, and he was worried about the blood from her head wound attracting unwanted attention from predators like sharks. Things could get hairy.
Mouth tightening, he watched the dark water below grow nearer and began planning in his mind. Once low enough he would shrug himself out of the parachute and drop into the water with Abigail. Without their weight, the parachute should continue on past them and set down a distance away where he and Abigail would not get tangled up in either the chute or its lines.
If he had a knife Tomasso would be cutting one of the lines off now to tie Abigail to his back so that he could swim with both hands. Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything as useful as a knife in his pocket. Hell, he didn’t even have clothes, let alone pockets, he thought and then noted how low they had dropped while he thought. At the speed they were descending it would only be seconds before they hit the water.