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When she stumbled over a tree root, he caught her and righted her before she could fall. When her shirt snagged on a thorn bush, he didn’t waste time undoing the snag; he simply tore it free.

He was Superman.

Only one problem.

She was gasping for air.

She could hear herself panting. Surely the men they were running from would hear her, too. And even if they didn’t, wouldn’t she be able to breathe better without this hideous rag clamped between her jaws?

Alessandra poked her rescuer in the ribs.

“Mmpff!”

He barely glanced at her. “Yeah,” he said, “I know. You need a break.”

Was that what he thought she wanted?

“Mmpff,” she said again.

“Here’s your choice, lady. Keep up with me, or sit down, take a rest and wait for the bozos behind us to wake up and figure out what happened.”

Dammit! She wasn’t asking him to stop or slow down, she was asking him to get the gag out of her mouth, but why would that occur to Superman? He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“The gag,” she said, except what came out was something like “tuh gah.”

“Listen to me, woman…”

Enough.

Alessandra pulled her hand free of his and slapped it against her mouth.

“Tuh gah,” she said fiercely. “Tuh gah!”

He glared at her, and then he cursed, swung her towards him and took his knife from its sheath.

Her eyes widened.

She jerked back, but he spun her around. She felt his big hands push aside her hair. Felt the whisper of the blade as he slid it between the knot at the nape of her neck and her skin. One quick slice and the rag fell to the ground.

He scooped it up and jammed it in his pocket.

“Better?”

She licked her lips. They felt dry and cracked. Her mouth and throat were raw and she wasn’t sure she could speak.

“Much better.”

The words came out a croak, but her rescuer nodded, grabbed her hand again and they took off again.

She, Superman, and ten trillion aches and pains.

Think about something else.

She’d overcome pain before.

Diving from the cliffs near where she’d grown up in Sicily. She’d probably done that a thousand times, despite Mama’s warnings against it, and then, one morning, she’d gone into the sea wrong and ended up dislocating her shoulder.

She’d survived that, hadn’t she?