"I heard!" she crowed, voice quiet and throaty, enriched with her own delight. "Didn't envy you fuckers a damn bit; imagined how fast I'd have sunk from solid ground and toasted your mad skills for survival from a safer vantage." Her mouth crimped with a smile she couldn't suppress entirely, eyes darkly and delightedly flashing beneath half-lowered lashes at his 'there's something wrong with me'.

She cleared her throat rather than comment, and toed the ground like a schoolboy at his offer. "Shit, do you think that's wise?" Her fingers fidgeted with her glasses. She lightly kicked a spray of pebbles away with the heel of her boot. "If I were living I'd be sheeting sweat just thinking of it. What if I said the wrong thing, cocked it up, and she didn't approve of me?"