by Alisha Rai
He was so heavy, and her home was warm to begin with, so his furnace-like body temperature didn’t help. She shifted just a bit, but froze when the rough hair on his chest abraded her nipples. Would it be possible to get out from under him without moving? She wedged a hand between them to gingerly rest it on his hot chest and gave a slight push, but he remained immobile. She must be tired, she decided, if she was able to notice the resilient, muscular flesh beneath her palm. Shame on you. He’s near death.
Shaking her head, Genevieve pushed harder. He grunted and moved, enough for her to slide her upper body out from underneath him. She shoved her nightgown down until it covered her to at least her upper thighs.
She should move, get the gun, and keep watch on this guy. Try out her old, decrepit radio and see if she could contact someone for help. He could be some sort of career criminal, the bad guy. Genevieve yawned loudly instead. God, she was tired. Maybe she could take just a minute to catch her breath. Then she’d get up. Her state of exhaustion was related to him, so it wasn’t like he would be particularly spry in attacking her if she stayed for a second.
She craned her neck back a bit to study the stranger’s face. When the Lord saw fit to drop a man on her doorstep, He didn’t do it by half measures. This was a Man with a capital letter, the kind who probably choked people with a cloud of testosterone. Beneath bruises and cuts she knew were already healing at ridiculous speeds, the stranger’s face was perfectly formed, with a strong, straight nose, high cheekbones and full sensuous lips.
His skin was a toasty shade of brown. He was Hispanic, she guessed, which was unusual in the overwhelmingly white surrounding communities. She followed along his tanned throat to what she could see of the rest of his body, feeling a tiny twinge of guilt for ogling him while he slept. The twinge got swept away in admiration. His shoulders were broad, his stomach a flat washboard. A dark sprinkling of hair covered his chest, narrowing to a line that disappeared into his boxers. His left hand still lay on her stomach and no amount of calling herself foolish could stop her from noting he wore no wedding ring, had no pale strip of skin on his ring finger.
With her defenses lowered by utter fatigue, she wasn’t able to stop the impulse that had her stroking back the dark lock of hair that fell over his forehead. She lingered, exploring the coarse and curling strands.
His eyes popped open and caught her in the act of fondling his hair. “Sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed, and lowered her hand. His impossibly long lashes drifted closed again, but not before he tightened his hold and pulled her toward him. He gave a satisfied grunt when she pressed against his entire length.
His heat permeated her body. Sleep sucked at her consciousness, and she tried her best to fight it. Get up, get the gun. You can’t just snuggle next to this guy.
She couldn’t trust him, but surely he’d be out for a while. It wouldn’t hurt to give in to her heavy eyelids for a few minutes, right? Just for a bit. Five minutes tops, and then she’d be back in fighting form.
Roll out of bed and doze on the ground, then. She gave a halfhearted jerk to move away, but his fingers caught in her braid. Her exhausted mind gave a shrug, and she couldn’t even pry her eyes open anymore anyway. Sleep rushed over her like a Mack truck. Her last conscious thought was the groggy realization that she hadn’t had a man on top of her in years. Alex was a definite upgrade.
2
Being dead hurt. Why hadn’t the priests or nuns who’d taught at his elementary school ever talked about that?
Apparently, being dead also meant you went blind, because he couldn’t see anything except an inky blackness. Well, that sucked.
No, he wasn’t blind, he realized a split second later. His eyes just wouldn’t cooperate and open. Shit, someone had sewn them shut. His heartbeat accelerated, his breathing soughing in and out of his lungs. Would he have to spend eternity like this?
Calm down, Alejandro.
Papa. Alex relaxed. Okay, if he was hearing his late father’s voice again, which he hadn’t heard since he was twelve, then he must be dead. Maybe that’s what those hours of pain and torture and crawling in the freezing godforsaken mountainous forest had been all about. His father had been whispering to him then, too, in bursts of Spanglish, he recalled woozily. Urging him to keep going, to get to the cabin. He could see it, a tiny little log thing carved out of the wilderness. He could even recall the angel who had greeted him, though she was a bit hazy. The impression of soft arms and a backlit face stayed with him. Maybe everyone who died went through the same journey. Like some metaphorical shit.
Fuck, he probably shouldn’t be swearing in Heaven.
But if he was in Heaven, why did he hurt? His body felt like a massive collection of bruises and cuts. It even hurt to breathe, though did you still need to breathe when you were dead? His right shoulder and arm were the most affected, but his head wasn’t in too good a shape either.
Could he be in Hell? No. The cold had left, he was now toasty warm, but it was a comfortable warmth, not a fire-and-brimstone heat. Besides, he’d done some stuff he wasn’t proud of, but he hadn’t been that bad, and his father wouldn’t be with him if he was. Carlos Rivera had been too fine a man to end up in Hell. Purgatory then? That would explain the pain.
Since he couldn’t open his eyes, he put all of his effort into trying to move his arms. He froze when his hand slipped over something large and soft.
His fingers twitched on the softness. He didn’t need anyone to tell him he was cradling a breast. All straight men loved breasts, but Alex loved breasts. God, this was a gorgeous one. He could tell without even seeing it. Large, pillowy, with a long tight nipple jutting against the cotton fabric that sadly covered the mound. D, maybe even DD, he guessed.
If there was a breast in bed with him, Alex figured there was probably a woman to go along with it. The lure of being able to see her popped his eyes open.
He slammed them shut again when light stung his pupils. Very slowly, he inched them back open, trying to adjust them a little at a time.
Weak sunlight lit the room, creeping in from the curtained-off windows. Alex turned his head and caught his breath, the pain in his body receding. An angel indeed.
She had a face that he’d only seen in the Botticelli paintings an ex-girlfriend had dragged him to see at the Met once. Soft and round, the chin a sweet curve. Her lips were full and naturally pink, her skin a blemish-free expanse of ivory and roses. Her eyes were a startling shade of violet, tipped with long black lashes.
Wait, her eyes? Yes, they were open, staring back at him. They held that silent gaze for a while, neither of them speaking.
When the tension became too high for him, he swallowed his mouthful of cotton. “Dead?” he croaked.
“No. But if you don’t move your hand, you may be.”
His ears were too busy soaking in the rich cadence of her voice to comprehend her. She had a slight drawl that softened and dragged out her syllables and made him think of hot summer nights and cold sweet tea. When he did finally allow the words to sink in, he wanted to jump for joy and whimper with despair. No, he wasn’t dead. Why did he have to move his hand? His hand liked where it was. His hand was very happy.
However, he hadn’t been brought up to molest strange women, and since this wasn’t a very sexually permissive Heaven, he had to abide by the rules of polite society. With a great deal of effort, he released the piece of happiness in his grip and shifted his body.
Agony promptly pierced through his right side. Christ, he hadn’t felt like this since that time last year he’d been…shot. He’d been shot. His brow furrowed, but that caused even more streaks of pain to radiate through his body.
A soft hand slid under his neck, propping up his head. Something cold touched his lips, liquid trickling down his chin. It felt so good he opened his mouth automatically. After a second, he began to gulp, the icy water a relief to his dry and parched throat.
He must have drained the glass because the water stopped coming out, a
nd he was gently lowered back to the pillow. The cool hand passed over his forehead and he turned his head toward it, despite the nagging pain it caused his head. The woman withdrew her hand and he almost cried out for her to return, as if he were a little boy in need of his mommy.
Unconsciousness tugged at his brain, but he fought it long enough to watch her walk away. Her long hair was as black as his own, but it swung in a braid all the way down to her hips, strands sneaking out as if they were too wild to be contained. The sun had risen; more light pierced the room. It surrounded her body in a glowing nimbus, and when she turned in profile, it slipped right through the cotton of her loose gown, highlighting her body.
Like a complete pussy, his breath caught in his throat. Christ, this was a woman. The palm that had been cradling her breast tingled. He wanted her back, only skin to skin so he could feel her nipple and the texture of her flesh. Her hips were wide, the thighs plump. He could see the curve of her belly and he wanted to nuzzle it, lick it, nip at it. Her ass would overflow his hands. He was so affected that despite his lack of general well-being, his cock twitched where it lay soft against his thigh. The slight response thrilled his woozy brain—it proved, more than anything, that he was alive.
“You’re so beautiful.” His words were a croak, but she must have heard because she looked over her shoulder, violet eyes wide and startled. Something clicked into his brain.
You are hers. Take care of her.
Yes, mine.
As he fell asleep, he couldn’t help but thank God he was alive, plus a little extra fervent gratitude. Lord, I’ll take another gunshot. Just don’t let this woman get away before I’m well.
3
Genevieve lay her knitting on her lap, right over the barrel of her gun, and stretched. She relaxed back into the softness of her late mother’s favorite armchair and picked up the two needles again, though she had no real desire to work on the sweater. She just figured it was easier to keep her hands busy and occupied.
Thinking of her hands led to thinking of his hands. Or more specifically, where his hands had been yesterday.
She felt more than a little shame at how long she’d lain motionless as his hand had roved over her body before oh-so-spectacularly squeezing her breast. Logic dictated she should have moved away from the guy as soon as she was conscious. She blamed her punch-drunk state. It wasn’t like she’d instigated it or enjoyed it. After all, what did she know about him? That underneath all of his injuries, he was a devastatingly handsome man?
Genevieve snorted. Yup, that’s all she knew about him.
Certain her powers had returned, she’d given herself a headache yesterday staring at his sleeping body. A person’s aura wasn’t really as woo-woo as so-called psychics made it out to be. Everybody had them, a slight electromagnetic field surrounding the body. Calling it science made her feel less weird.
When Genevieve had been a child, she’d stared at every person she’d come into contact with, mesmerized by the shifting colors. By the time she’d reached ten or so, she’d managed to adjust her brain to where she could choose when and where she was able to view it.
It wasn’t like reading a person’s mind, but over the years with the help of her similarly afflicted mother, she’d learned to comprehend the layers of colors. Genevieve had always figured it was a kind of trade-off for making the women of her family so bizarre. Worried who to trust? Concerned about that neighbor with a pitchfork and stake? Here’s this handy-dandy color chart for the good guys!
The method had a scary accuracy at pinpointing basic personality and emotions. Also, since her particular skill lay in healing, she could tweak certain aspects of the aura to speed good health along. As she’d learned, tragically, she could also do the opposite.
Genevieve shook her head. Maybe that’s why she’d been given only part of her powers back. Perhaps she was deemed too dangerous by whatever cosmos or deity dealt with freaks like her.
In any case, not only did she not have any way of ascertaining Alex’s personality or intentions—except waiting for him to wake up and then trusting whatever he told her, which seemed like such a dangerous thing for someone who had issues to begin with—but she couldn’t even help his healing further along.
Genevieve couldn’t lie; she was worried. She’d certainly never tried to fix someone as badly injured as Alex had been, and her powers had been on a three-year leave of absence. What if she had screwed his body up somewhere inside? Alex had barely stirred over the course of an entire day and night. She’d managed to get him awake enough to drink some water periodically, and she’d changed his bandage twice.
The only thing she was hopeful about was the fact his various wounds did seem to be mending. In the meantime, she was going a bit stir-crazy, clutching her gun and refusing to sleep, terrified she would wake up with a criminal choking her.
With a sigh, she left her chair and walked over to her phone, already knowing the line would be silent when she picked it up. Yup, nothing. It had never been out for this long. Then again, she hadn’t tested it through a record snowfall. The lone fuzzy station coming through her battery-operated radio had confirmed that this was no little hiccup. What had been a few flurries the night she found him had turned into a massive dump of the white stuff that showed no signs of stopping any time soon. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, since she kept plenty of food and firewood on hand, and her backup generator would keep the heat on in case her power went down.
Of course, normally she didn’t have an ill man lying on her ground. Even if her ham radio had been functional, calling for help would be futile. The plows were busy shoveling out the more populated areas before hitting the isolated rural region she lived in. Likewise, even if she did still own a car, she couldn’t bundle the guy up and take him down blocked roads.
Genevieve exhaled in a rough sigh. The snow had never bothered her before. She loved tromping around her land in her boots. Unfortunately, her common sense had rejected that idea. She’d gone out once yesterday, rushing to the barn to feed her horse and chickens before sprinting back inside.
Alex probably hadn’t shot himself. So there was at least one other person out there with a gun. Granted, it would be tough to make it up to her place right now, but who knew when and where Alex had gotten hurt? By the extent of his injuries, it was quite possible he had been in the woods for a couple of days, as he said. However, it didn’t take much to get turned around in these trees. He could have been crawling around for a day or so within a one-mile radius.
She walked over to the window and peered outside into the winter wonderland, straining to see any movement in the trees, a knot of tension and resentment in her belly. Damn it, this was her world. Nobody should dare threaten it. Not again.
Her breathing accelerated faster than she could control it and Genevieve inhaled and exhaled, long and slow, until it steadied, despising the fear and helplessness she had not felt in so many years.
Damn the man and damn her conscience for being unable to stay uninvolved. He stirred behind her. Attuned to his movement, she spun around, but he was only settling into the mattress on the floor. Lucky guy. One night dozing in her chair and she’d kill for her plush mattress. Despite her guilt-induced bare trappings, she appreciated her little luxuries.
She couldn’t wait till he woke up so they could really have a chat. So far his only words had been variations of the same as he gazed at her as if she were a work of art: beautiful, pretty and one very mumbled sweet.
She snorted. Yeah, right. Not that she felt bad about her body, but she was realistic. In high school, she realized that she’d had the full three strikes against her: her mother and the fact they lived way out here, rumors of their bizarre powers and her weight. She’d been home-schooled for elementary school and middle school, too, so perhaps that was a fourth strike.
When she’d attended the University of West Virginia, she’d received her first taste of life away from a canopy of suspicion, and her self-confidence had grow
n a little at least. She’d had a few boyfriends, two who turned into lovers, one worth remembering: a sweet, normal guy named Billy, and they’d continued their relationship after they’d graduated. It had fizzled out and they’d parted amicably. In fact, Genevieve considered Billy one of her best friends. Though he lived two hours away, he’d come down to visit her a few times and called her regularly, though he was obviously puzzled as to why she’d dropped her life and moved back to her rural home three years ago. Particularly since her mother had been dead for two of those years.
Genevieve shook off that thought and concentrated on the man in front of her now. Her first impression had been accurate. He looked like he’d been fashioned to tempt good women into sin. All that tawny skin, the dark coloring, bulging muscles and a full lower lip that just begged to be nibbled…
She inhaled and glanced away. Bad Genevieve. Case in point, a man who tempted her—rational and pragmatic Genevieve—to sink her teeth into his body when he was lying on her bed unconscious, was definitely not a man who would fall in lust with her at first sight. Men who looked like him were invariably attracted to equally muscular and toned blonde bombshells. She was none of the above. Though working the small farm kept her healthy, she loved to eat, and she’d gained more weight since she’d lived here alone in the past couple of years. Sometimes in the winter all she could do was sit around and munch.