Free Falling in Love by Dusty Miller

speak English.
    He lifted a palm and beckoned her
forward. Then, as Jayne let go with a quick squeal of surprise, the
fellow stooped a bit, grabbed her in behind the knees and put an
arm behind and under her shoulders.
    When he swept her up off of her feet,
it was a total reflex to sling her right arm over his neck and hang
on for dear life with her left, clutching a veritable thatch of
rugged chest hairs.
    “ Oh, dear me. Goodness,
gracious, me.” Her pulse quickened, but he was gentle and strong
enough to bear the weight.
    She might as well try and put a good
face on it.
    “ Oh, thank you ever so
much.”
    He grunted, taking the stairs two at a
time in the darkness of the passage, his breath strong but
contained. The gentleman certainly was very fit.
    He smelled very manly. He could have
used a bit of a shower, maybe, that and a breath mint. He wasn’t a
smoker and that was good. He wasn’t drunk either. It was all very
visceral all of a sudden, as she acknowledged the sick sense of
fear in the depths of her abdomen.
    Jayne giggled nervously.
    “ Well. I can’t complain
about the service, anyway.”
    The red moon shone down through a hole
in the roof, and her neck prickled with something electric. It was
certainly all very exciting as she breathed through parted lips,
eyes shining and locked on those intent dark eyes only a foot or so
away.
    His face was locked on hers in a kind
of fascination, then he turned and carried her through the
blackness of the vestibule with panther-like grace, taking her down
the front stairs and out of the building as the moon finally died
and the soft evening breeze seemed somehow warmer now, as if an
eclipse of the moon could have anything to do with local weather
patterns on the Earth down below.
    Maybe it was just warmer hanging onto
the guy. Jayne stared in numb disbelief at the gleam of what must
be the hilt of a massive sword slung on a broad leather band over
his back and shoulders. It registered on her tired mind in a kind
of delirious revelation and her jaw really dropped this
time.
    “ Uh, sir? Please? You can
put me down now.”
    He just kept trotting along with more
attention to the path now, all fluid masculine grace but a bit of a
jostle as she clung to his sweaty body with a nice mat of dark and
curly chest hair right there in front of her eyes.
    “ Holy, Kowalski.” She said
it in pure disgust, the reflexive response going back in the family
for generations. “Argh.”
    This just kept getting better and
better all the time.
     
    ***
     
    The fellow had a horse, looming pale
and ghostly in the returning moonlight, and it seemed he was camped
not far from the ruins.
    His blanket was spread on the ground,
and he laid her upon it and then knelt and began going through a
hefty brown bag of some indeterminate fabric.
    She sat, hugging her knees, and she
watched.
    There was a canteen there. She spoke,
more of a rueful grunt than anything, and pointed. He beckoned at
it, and she lifted it up and uncorked the thing after a brief
struggle. The man must have hands of steel to ram that in there so
tight. The water was cool and tasted fine, although she wondered at
the source.
    She’d never seen or heard of anyone
like this in her entire life. You would think the brochures would
have mentioned it. Corking it, she put it down where he could get
at it.
    He offered her something with a few
quiet words.
    With her nostrils catching some scent,
she took the slightly-tacky offering and brought it up to her
face.
    It looked and smelled like dates. It
had to be something like that, a familiar smell from her mother’s
kitchen. These resembled nothing she’d ever seen before, being
fresh and not coming in a rectangular clump, all wrapped in brittle
cellophane and cheap purple corrugated paper, heavy on the glue.
She could almost picture the garish label, and there was a sudden
stab of homesickness.
    They tasted divine, practically
melting in her mouth, and he also had some kind of soft,