He grabbed her sister, jerked her against his chest, and then wrapped his arm around her back in a tight hug. She heard a click as the stranger unfastened her sister’s seat belt, and then he clamped a hand around Bat’s thigh. He yanked it up until her knee was bent enough to nearly touch her shoulder, then used that arm to hug around Bat’s back, too.

He had totally covered her body with his, smashing her against the seat.

Bat’s cry of alarm jostled Dusti from her stupor. She recovered enough to find her voice. “Let her go!” They weren’t muggers. They seemed to be rapists.

Like they didn’t have enough to be afraid of before?!

Dusti lunged to attack the bastard assaulting her sister. She tried to claw at his arm but two big hands grabbed her wrists. Her full attention returned to the huge bastard who quickly slid to his knees between her legs, his hips pressing against her inner thighs. The move pushed the bottom of her skirt high up on her lap.

He moved fast for such a beefy guy. Dusti screamed but it didn’t stop his attack. He held her wrists together with one of his hands, shackling them, while he used the other to shove her feet up on the seat. It kept her legs spread wide apart to make room for his hips. His body nearly crushed her to the seat when he collapsed against her.

Her mind instantly filled with horrified thoughts. Am I really going to be raped before I die? Is this asshole serious? I’ve heard men joke about wanting to go out nailing a woman but this can’t be happening. These assholes are really going for it.

Screams suddenly filled the cabin that hadn’t come from Dusti, the noise so piercing it made her remember the plane was about to crash into the rugged Alaskan wilderness.

The man assaulting her shoved her hands at his crotch to pin them there when he pressed more of his weight down, trapping them between the seat and his jeans. He let go of her wrists and it gave him the freedom to grip both of her legs near the knees and force them up against her chest until she sympathized with a pretzel. His jeans were rough against her inner thighs and his belt buckle painfully dug into her panties.

His two strong arms locked against the sides of her thighs as he reached around her body too. He adjusted her under him in a way that made her comprehend her seat belt had been unfastened as well. He wouldn’t have been able to yank her to the edge of the seat otherwise.

He gripped one of her ass cheeks and tucked his head down on top of hers, to force her chin lower, until her forehead smashed against the cool leather of his jacket. She struggled but he effectively held her in a tight ball, his bulky body keeping hers trapped between him and the seat.

All hell broke loose in the next instant.

Dusti screamed when she felt both of them being violently flung forward. The plane must have hit the trees. Shrieks rose in the confined cabin and air blasted through it, whipping around as though they’d been tossed into a wind tunnel.

The sick feeling of being thrown rolled through her as the plane bounced before it brutally slammed into something again. The belly of the plane hit hard enough to toss their entwined bodies back against the seat.

His heavy weight crushed down on her until breathing became impossible. She swore she heard an animal growl next to her ear when the screams in the plane cut off after the horror of the initial impact. Maybe everyone has died, her dismayed mind considered.

The strong arms around her tightened even more as the plane violently bumped over the earth. An image flashed through her mind of them skidding across the ground, mimicking a sled from hell.

An explosion ripped through the cabin, deafening her with its intensity, a second before they were thrown sideways.

The man holding her didn’t let go, and his body must have hit something solid and unforgiving. The force of the impact reverberated through his body right into hers. He grunted loudly, as if he’d had the air forced from his lungs.

She didn’t know which direction was up or down anymore, just continued to experience swift movement and blinding terror until everything came to a lurching stop. Her back hit something soft before the man’s heavy weight squashed her once more.

Dusti couldn’t move. She was too stunned to do anything but wish for air while it sank in that she’d survived.

The stranger’s hand on her ass eased its bruising hold when he lifted off her a little. She heard him gasp in a breath and his upper chest pressed tight to hers when his lungs expanded. The second the pressure eased as he expelled the air, she gasped in her own lungful.

She slowly became aware of sensations. Her ass hurt from the man’s near-sadistic grip on it and her chest ached a little, probably from him crushing her a few times. She also realized one of her knees painfully throbbed.

Dusti took another deep breath and smelled the leather of the jacket under her nose. The texture of hair on her tongue made it apparent that either some of her long blonde hair or some of his shoulder-length black mane had ended up inside her mouth. She promptly spit it out, not caring who it belonged to, but just wanting it gone. His head lifted off hers.

Panic shot through her instantly as things came into focus and she glanced to the right. They were actually still in her seat—but the one next to hers no longer contained her sister or the spike-haired stranger.

Her mind refused to accept that Bat’s disappearance meant she hadn’t survived.

Her gaze lifted more to stare beyond that empty seat. She gaped as she saw the other side of the plane.

The cabin wall across the aisle had been torn completely open to reveal trees and blue sky, in place of windows and overhead bins with stored luggage. The jagged, torn metal of the fuselage was splayed obscenely to reveal the scenic view. Something had demolished that side of the plane.

The guy who still held Dusti slowly eased more of his weight off her when he leaned back a bit to look around too. Distress made her focus on him instead of the certainty that her sister had been thrown from the plane.

Blood marred the man’s face from a cut on one of his pronounced cheekbones, an injury a good inch long. He wasn’t classically handsome, too rugged and masculine to ever be considered a pretty boy with those dominant features. He needed a shave too, since stubble showed on his lower jawline, his chin, and shadowed his cheeks. His dark gaze swept across more of the plane than she could see while scrunched down inside the seat, where he still kept her pinned.

“KRAVEN?” He roared the word, his voice harsh.

“Fuck,” an equally cavernous male voice responded, sounding close. “We’re alive. Did yours make it?”