Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (9 page)

from the ravine into his valley, the bruises had healed nicely. She now had only a small spot of darkness at her hairline. The rest of her face was pristine, unlined, and young.

“I’m trapped, that’s what’s wrong with me. I am
suffocating
in this cabin on this mountain. The whole world is out there but it
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might as well be another planet. What I wouldn’t give to have a working cell phone. Just for five minutes!”

“There’s a satellite phone down at the hiking station. I think

it works.”

“Where’s that?”

He carefully made another stitch. They were small, evenly

spaced, the work of someone with a lot of patience and an un-

derstanding of making things solid. “About ten miles out.”

“Then let’s go.”

“But no vehicle can make it in to us, even if the phone does

work,” he pointed out.

“What about helicopters?” she asked. “They carry lost hikers

out all the time.”

“You’re not lost, are you?”

That won him another glare.

“We can go to the satellite phone anyway, if you want to try

the hike,” he said. “You can call out if you want to tell someone where you are, and that you’re okay, but nobody will come get

us unless it’s an absolute emergency.”

“This feels like one.”

“It’s not. We’re safe here.”

She sank down on the chair and watched Fletcher’s hands.

Her face was etched with a frown.

“I’m not good company?” Fletcher teased.

Her eyes rose to his. She had a straight-on gaze, the kind of

look that made him very conscious of the fact that she wasn’t

just seeing him, she was probably seeing right through him. She pinned him with that look, made it impossible to turn away.

“On the contrary,” she murmured.

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They stared at each other for the space of several heartbeats.

It was suddenly hard to breathe in the little cabin. He didn’t

move as she stood up, watched him for a few moments longer,

then turned back to the cookstove. The sudden absence of her

gaze made him aware of how furiously he was blushing.

Fletcher very deliberately went back to the stitching, but he

couldn’t stop smiling.

“What the hell is that?” Janine hissed.

Fletcher sat up from his bed on the floor. Janine was already

up and standing at the front door. When another
thump
came, she carefully pulled back the curtain and looked out the window.

“It’s a bear.”

He tossed the covers back and stood up in his long underwear

and flannel shirt. He padded across the floor and looked over

Janine’s shoulder. “A big one, too.”

The bear stood on its hind legs on the porch, looking up at

the rafters, silhouetted by moonlight. It was very thin after hibernating for months, and now that the slightest bit of warmth

was flowing down the mountain, it was not only awake, but

ravenous.

The water barrel made a deep
thud
when she knocked it from the corner of the porch with a powerful paw. She sniffed at the door, certain there was something behind it, but not sure what.

Fletcher was concerned that she had come so close, especially

when there was smoke coming from the chimney and the smell

of humans all around.

His boots were right by the door, and he pushed his feet into

them. He pulled his gun from behind the door and checked the

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chamber. Janine put her hand on the barrel and pushed it down

toward the floor.

“You can’t shoot her! What if she has babies?”

“She probably does.”

Fletcher stood at the window and watched. Janine looked like

she was ready to kill him instead of the bear, and he wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t seen one of them close-up, hadn’t seen what

one could do, especially when it was desperate or sick. Fletcher was pretty sure this bear might be both.

“It’s not normal for a bear to be checking out the cabin like

this,” he said softly. “They are usually more scared of us than we are of them. She’s desperate for food or she’s sick, which means we are in trouble if she decides to come through that door.”

Janine looked at him with wild eyes. “She can’t.”

As if on cue, the bear leaned against the door. The hinges

squealed in protest. The bear stood there for a moment, then

walked away down the porch, turning around when she got to

the steps, still looking things over. Fletcher put two extra shells in his pocket, just in case. Janine watched but said nothing. He put his hand to his lips, admonishing her to stay quiet, as the bear slammed against the door again, this time hard enough to

rattle the pans over the stove.

Silence came after that, but soon they could hear her snuf-

fling breath as she explored the doorway with her nose. Fletcher knew they were in trouble. There was no reason any sane bear

would make a point of going after humans, and he
knew
she could smell them. She knew they were there.

The bear roared. The sound rattled through the valleys,

bounced from the mountaintop, and made her intentions en-

tirely clear.

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He raised the gun and took aim at the door. Janine stood be-

side him for a moment, but at the next blow from the big animal she moved toward the far side of the cabin, where she could see at an angle through the windowpane.

Fletcher kept the gun trained on the door, even as his mind

raced. The responsibility of keeping Janine safe was foremost in his mind. What would she do if the bear got past him? He had

a loaded rifle but that wasn’t a guarantee. Fletcher had learned to never underestimate the power of a wild animal with a hungry

stomach.

Then another sound came from high on the mountain, one

that made the bear pause and turn to stare. Fletcher held his

breath, hoping he was wrong. He stood his ground and listened

as the roar came closer. The bear leaped from the porch, run-

ning and bellowing.

Outside, a tree cracked, snapped clear through by the

pressure.

Fletcher dropped the gun and grabbed Janine, pushed her to

the far corner of the cabin, toward the back door. The whole

building began to shake.

Please be coming from the east
, he thought.
That’s the only chance we’ve
got.

“What’s happening?” Janine screamed into his ear.

His explanation was lost in the unearthly roar. The sound

was impossible, filling everything, erasing thought and steal-

ing breath. He wrapped his arms around Janine and hunkered

down against the door as the whole cabin creaked. Pans and tins fell from shelves, their noise a mere whisper against the sound from outside. Constant
thuds
came from all sides of the cabin.

Snow sifted down through the chimney and the fire went out,

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leaving them in darkness. Janine clung to him, her breath hard

and fast against his neck as he held on tight.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The pounding

stopped. The cabin creaked once more, then seemed to shudder

on its foundation as it settled against the weight of the snow.

“Avalanche,” Fletcher said into Janine’s ear. “That was snow

from the top of the mountain.”

Fletcher pressed his forehead against her shoulder and took

a deep breath. She had no idea how close to death they had

come. He was certain the snow was at least to the roofline, if not covering the cabin. The darkness was absolute, and that scared

Fletcher more than anything else.

“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere. I can’t find you if

you do.”

He moved away from her. Janine’s hands trailed along his

arms as he left, and he squeezed one of her hands, telling her

silently to trust him. He carefully walked through the cabin, occasionally kicking a pan or a sack of something that had fallen from its nail on the wall. He found the door and opened it,

only to be greeted with a wall of snow. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the coldness of it. It cascaded in over his boots. He started to dig with his hands, praying he would find a pocket

of air. There was no telling how much snow was out there, and

how much of it was sitting right on top of them.

Janine’s voice came from right beside his shoulder and scared

him half to death. “What about the bear?”

“The snow carried her away. She won’t come back.”

“How can I help?”

“Start on the back door. Grab a rag, anything to protect your

hands.”

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Janine moved away from him, silent as a mouse. He kept dig-

ging, more snow coming in on him, forcing him to step on

top of it every few minutes. He was working up a sweat, which

meant he was using more oxygen, which might be something

they couldn’t afford. He picked up the pace, though his shoul-

ders burned and his hands had lost all feeling.

Suddenly Janine shouted from the back of the cabin.

“Here!”

Fletcher abandoned his efforts and stumbled toward her

voice. Janine grabbed his arm as soon as he was close, and then he realized he could see a sliver of light. She pushed him toward the opening and he took in a deep breath of air, so cold it burned his lungs, so welcome it made his eyes sting.

“Thank God,” he said.

Together they dug at the tiny hole, making it bigger with

every handful of snow. Finally a huge chunk broke away, and

the air rushed in.

Fletcher couldn’t feel his hands. He squeezed them into fists.

“We’ve got to clear the chimney. We have to get the fire going

again.”

“Not yet. Your hands are frozen solid.”

She took his hands in hers. Fletcher could hardly feel the

warmth of them, and he wondered if that was because she was

cold, too, or because he was really that numb. The narrow beam

of light through the snow was just enough to see her face. She

stared at him with wild, worried eyes as she pulled him closer, pulled his hands up underneath her sweater, and held them

against her warm, flat belly. She slid her hands up underneath

his chin, giving herself the warmth she needed, too.

Long moments passed as they both struggled to catch their

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breath. Suddenly the numbness of his hands turned into a burn-

ing, stinging pain—the warmth of Janine’s body was working,

and the circulation was coming back, blood fighting its way

through with tiny pinpricks of pain. He clenched his teeth

against it, even as Janine pulled his head down to her shoulder, keeping him close.

“We’re going to be all right,” she said, her voice entirely calm, as if nothing like an avalanche had happened here. “We’re going to be just fine. Stay still, let your hands get warm. We’ll start the fire as soon as you can feel again.”

Whether she meant it or not, Fletcher read a double meaning

in her words. He turned his head and nestled deeper into her

shoulder, breathing in the scent of smoke and lye soap and clean clothes, and more than that, the unique smell of a soft, warm

woman.

Janine touched his face. Her fingers were warmer now but

still colder than they should have been, and the sudden touch

made him aware of just how hot his face was, of how hard he

had worked to dig a path through the snow. He lifted his head

and looked into her eyes.

“Fletcher.”

The fear brought on by the bear, the avalanche, the long

nights of sleeping alone on the floor while she lay only a few

feet away—it all finally came down to one moment, when she

said his name in a way she hadn’t before. All his careful caution disappeared.

Fletcher wrapped his arms around her.

The touch of her lips heated him all the way through. Weeks

of pent-up desire, frustration, and helplessness unleashed when

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she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let out a moan

of permission. He was aware of her body pressed against his, her breasts rising with each breath, her hands taking fistfuls of his shirt and holding on hard.

“The bed,” she murmured. “The quilts. We have to stay

warm.”

The world of white snow forgotten, Fletcher led her through

the darkness to the bed.

It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. He

knew all the tricks to make a woman arch and sigh, but it had

been so long since he had done any of it, he was afraid he would be too fast to please her. He told her as much, while his hands shook as he undressed her. With every article of clothing that

disappeared, they pulled another quilt up, until they were in

their own little cocoon of warmth.

He paused when the final piece of clothing was kicked away,

and buried his face in her shoulder again, suddenly shy. “I’m not sure . . .”

“You’ll do fine,” she murmured into his hair. He bent his