by Evi Asher
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“This is the road to Radcliff.”
“So?”
“So it’s fucking miles away from my village, or anywhere else for that matter.” He looked over his shoulder at her, and then added. “And I hate ghost towns.”
Chapter Three
One foot, next foot, left foot, right foot. One foot, next foot, left foot, right foot.
Angelica chanted the words in her mind as she trudged through the deep snow after Colt. He seemed to have no problems with the snow. Could have been walking on air, and right then, she detested the male who had taken her good deed, and tossed it in her face like a lemon meringue pie thrown by a clown. She used to watch the clowns through the viewing tear and think it was funny. This was the antithesis of funny.
He stopped and turned to look back at her. “Step where I have stepped, it will make the trail easier for you.”
Angelica looked up at him, surprised by his consideration, but he must have realized what he’d said because his face drew into a frown and he faced forward again, his movements jerky like he was mad at himself.
Angelica sighed and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. Despite the exercise of the trudging, she was cold. So cold, she felt she would never get warm. This snow was horrible, and it was hard to believe she’d ever wanted to see it with her own eyes.
Seriously overrated.
They moved deeper into the tree cover where the snow layer wasn’t as deep, and Angelica was grateful it wasn’t such an effort to place one foot in front of the other.
“How much further?” she asked.
He muttered something in response.
“Beg your pardon?”
That had him spinning around and snapping. “As long as it God damn takes!”
Anger stirred in Angelica and she straightened her spine.
“I didn’t ask you to bring me here. I was trying to do something good and you are punishing me for it.”
She should never have opened her mouth because he stalked towards her and grabbed her upper arms in his huge hands.
He shook her once. “Do something nice?” He gritted his teeth as if he would rather kill her than touch her.
“Shut the fuck up, Geli and keep up, or I will kill you were you stand. Got it?”
Angelica nodded, mute, her eyes wide with fear. She kept forgetting how big he was, then he’d invade her space and she was forced to remember.
The problem was that she should be terrified—and she was scared—but there was something else stirring in her.
When he’d put his hands on her, she’d felt a spike of something hot shoot down her body and settle at the apex of her thighs.
How stupid could she be? This man wanted her dead, that was obvious, and Angelica was choosing this moment to feel… desire?
Stupid!
Angelica got angry with herself and strongly pulled his hands off her upper arms. “What is your name, anyway?”
He frowned down at her as if he hadn’t expected her to react that way. “Colt.”
“Well, Colt, keep your hands off me. Okay? Then, we’ll be good.”
His frown deepened. “Listen.” His hands came out to encircle her upper arms again. “I say what is going to or not going to happen, so if I want to shake the hell out of you, I will.”
Angelica shrugged out of his hold a second time and walked around him in the direction they had been going. She was not going to be bullied, no matter how good looking the bully was, and no matter how attractive she might find him.
Ha! We’ll see about that, her inner voice decided to add. “Oh, shut up,” she said out loud with a hiss.
“You know what they say about people who talk to themselves?” Colt walked past her and started breaking the trail again.
“You shut up, too,” she hissed and to her surprise, he didn’t say anything else.
Not until they went through the last of the trees into a town.
Using the word town was pushing it, Angelica admitted to herself. It was a small village and at first glance, she could see it was an abandoned area.
“The ghost town?”
“Radcliff, yes.” Colt’s whole body seemed tense, but then again, he’d been that way from the first moment she’d looked at him. She couldn’t blame him for it.
Angelica let her eyes roam as they walked through the town, most of the structures collapsed. Nature had taken back what was hers.
Snow filled every nook and cranny, like sand would a deserted arid region town.
Only one building seemed to be intact. As intact as a dilapidated unused building left to the elements could be.
Colt made his way right to it, Angelica following him—anything to get out of the snow and cold.
It was a two-storey building, that at one point in its past must have been the jewel of the town.
Intricate trim decorated the outside of the structure and it looked out of place for Alaska. It looked like a building that someone erected somewhere warmer and moved it here, but it was a mansion compared to the rest of the small buildings that had long since given way to nature. There were shutters boarding up the windows, and a porch that wrapped around the house. The railings were rotten and Angelica could see a few places where the weight of snow had broken them.
“Is it safe to go in there?” she asked Colt.
Who was she kidding? She’d go in, safe or not. She wanted to be warm.
“Safe enough,” he grunted a reply as he walked up the porch stepped.
Angelica could see he tested each step before he put his full weight on it. When he reached the front door, he stopped.
It was hanging on one hinge at an angle.
Colt took hold of the door, trying to open it, but it came off the last hinge, finally breaking free in his hands.
“Damn it,” he cursed as he put the door to one side of the open space.
“Walk with care and test your footing. You don’t want to go through any rotten floorboard. It should be okay inside—not as much weathering.”
Angelica nodded and tested her steps up the porch, then followed him into the house.
She moved past Colt into the interior as he moved the door back to block the open space. The house became dark, but Angelica could see fine. There was still light coming in and her night vision was excellent.
Colt moved to the fireplace and muttered something that sounded like good. She followed his gaze and saw some—must be antiquated—logs sitting next to the mantel.
He started clearing out the debris in the stone fireplace. “Let’s hope the flue isn’t blocked.” He leaned down and tilted his head to look up the chimney.
“It looks good.”
Angelica watched, her arms still wrapped around herself for warmth as he picked up a log and broke pieces off it with his bare hands so he could use them as kindling.
Her jaw almost gaped at that scene.
Then, Colt stacked the kindling and the wood. He reached into his pocket and cursed again.
“Stay here. I need to find something to make a fire with.”
He walked past her and up the stairs, each step taken with care.
Angelica stifled the urge to ask him, where exactly she would go.
Sometimes men were dense.
What do you know about men anyway, since this is the first one you’ve met.
Angelica snorted. That was a fact, and he had her plenty confused. One minute, he seemed to care about her welfare, and the next, it looked like he wanted to wring her neck with his own hands.
She took the opportunity to look around the darkened room. Old furniture filled the space, a typical living area set up. The fabrics used to cover the chairs rotted away long ago, everything now covered in a heavy layer of dust and cobwebs.
The place looked spooky and Angelica shuddered. She walked over to one of the chairs and gingerly lowered her weight into it. When it seemed like it would hold, she leaned back and sneezed as
a cloud of dust puffed up from the chair.
She heard Colt coming down the stairs and turned her head to look in his direction. He had a piece of spindly wood in his hands.
“This should do the trick,” he muttered, then went to sit on the floor next to the hearth.
He took a log and some of his hand-made kindling, then holding the piece of wood between his hands, he started to roll it rapidly.
Angelica watched him, fascinated by the speed he managed to work up on the stick of wood in his hands.
“Will that start a fire?”
He looked up at her, not pausing his spinning, and frowned. “You’ve never seen someone make fire like this before?”
“No.”
He looked back down at his hand, then let out a foul curse that had Angelica blushing.
“Isn’t it working?”
“What do you think?”
Angelica may not have seen a stick make fire before, but she knew sarcasm when she heard it.
She chose to ignore the male and look around the room again instead. At one point, she got up intending to go upstairs and explore.
Colt hadn’t looked up, but said, “Sit back down, Geli.”
How had he even known she’d got up?
Angelica sat down in a huff and heard the chair creek an ominous warning.
She chose to sit still after that. The last thing she needed was the mortification of the chair collapsing under her.
Angelica rubbed her arms against the cold.
“Be patient. I’ll get it warm in here now,” Colt said still not looking up.
How the hell is he aware of my every movement?
Twenty minutes later, Colt had worked up a sweat, and Angelica was entranced, watching a small bead of liquid run down his neck. She licked her lips, shifting in the chair.
“For God stake, stop it!” he hissed, his hands stilling on the fire stick.
“What?” Angelica frowned, taken aback by his outburst.
“You are staring at me like you are starving and I’d make a damn fine meal,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I am not!” Angelica protested.
He spun on his haunches and lunged putting his face right up to hers. “Yes. You. Are.”
Angelica’s swallow was audible as she leaned back further in her chair.
He turned back to his attempt to make a fire. “Fuck, now I have to start all over again.” He glared over at her before picking up the stick.
Angelica’s jaw clenched. Why did she let him cow her like that? Not anymore.
She stood and walked over to the grate. A frown of concentration on her face, she bent forward and pointed one finger as it burst into flames. She let a small smile of satisfaction curl her lips as she moved her hand forward and started the wood in the grate roaring with fire. Her little show of power cost her—feeling drained. For some reason, fire was difficult for her right then. Could she have used too much energy opening the tear, or did it have something to do with where she was, but she was still happy to have one-upped Colt.
Her sense of satisfaction grew when she saw his look of surprise and awe.
“So you are one of those phoenixes?”
“That’s a duh,” she quipped, and went to sit on the chair again.
“I didn’t know you could choose a part of your body to light up.”
“There is a lot you don’t know about me, Colt.”
Colt looked at the fire, then to Angelica. “Well, this is embarrassing.”
When she frowned in response, he cleared his throat and said in a gruff tone, “You just out manned me.”
Geli felt a laugh bubble up her throat. It seemed that Colt had a sense of humor, and she liked that.
The room filled with warmth and the fire crackled in the grate within minutes. Colt chose the chair opposite Angelica to sit in. She watched as he sat down with care, testing if it would take his weight before he committed to the seat.
“I know you must be hungry. I’m going to go out and try and find something to eat soon,” Colt said.
Angelica didn’t know how to respond, so she nodded followed it with a, “Thank you.”
She didn’t know where she stood with him. She didn’t understand why he had taken her.
“Colt…about you bringing me with you.”
He bolted upright, his features hardening. “Don’t go there, Geli, not unless you want me pissed off.”
Angelica swallowed. Taking his advice, she clamped her jaw shut.
Colt stalked to the front door. “I’ll be back later.” He turned his head to her with a deep glare, his green eyes mesmerizing her. “Don’t leave this place, Geli, because I will track you down, and when I find you, I will make you sorry you left.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she assured him.
With a nod, Colt moved the door out the way, stepped out and put the door back in place to keep out most of the draft.
He’d been gone five minutes before Angelica decided that the draft coming from the door was still too much. She got up and picked up the chair she’d been sitting on. She moved it as close to the fire as she could dare without setting the piece of furniture alight, and lowered her weight back down into it.
Angelica rubbed her hands together and stretched them out to get the warmth from the fire.
“I’m never going to be warm again,” she muttered, annoyed at the cold. She’d never experienced this kind of cold before and she didn’t like it.
As if her thoughts had made it colder, an icy draft gusted through the room sending its freezing fingers up her spine.
Angelica shuddered and moved closer to the fire. “This is ridiculous.”
She wanted to go exploring, curiosity eating at her, but there was no way she was going to move away from the heat source.
Another cold gust had Angelica gritting her teeth and looking around.
Sure, the place was drafty, but this kind of gust of cold wasn’t from a draft.
The cold hit her again and the hair at the nape of her neck stood up. She could have sworn she heard a whisper that time.
“Who’s there?” Angelica looked around, but saw no one.
The ambient temperature in the room dropped even further and the fire gutted, even though there was plenty of wood on it.
The hissing whisper sounded again. Angelica could hear it, but she couldn’t make out what it was saying.
“Who’s there—tell me now!”
She stood and put her back to the fireplace. Angelica fervently wished that Colt were back.
“Is that you, Colt? Not funny. Are you trying to scare me? Well, it’s not working.”
What a lie? She was so scared, her hands were trembling. She was waiting for her knees to start knocking.
“Waaaaaaarm.”
Angelica made out one word of the whisper. “Who are you?”
“Soooo waaaaaarm.”
Okay, this was going too far. Either Colt was trying to scare the wits out of her, or there was a ghost in the room.
“Who are you?”
Angelica saw a flicker out the corner of her eye and snapped her head to the left to get a better look.
Nothing but the room and the furniture. What the hell was going on?
Chapter Four
Colt worked his way around the outskirts of the town towards the denser trees to the east of the buildings.
He knew this area, but he’d never liked coming here. The ghost town and the story attached to it had always made him uncomfortable.
The good news was that they were a day and a half’s hike from his village and so, he wouldn’t have to be alone with Geli too long. He tried not to think about what would happen if he he had to be alone with Geli.
He climbed over a fallen tree limb and stumbled, catching himself before he did a face plant in the snow.
With a low curse for his distraction, he continued.
He knew what was causing it, and he could sum it up in one word. Angelica.
; He didn’t understand his rollercoaster responses to the woman. He should hate her, should want to kill her each time he looked over at her, but that wasn’t what was happening.
Instead, he was fighting his own body. Every time he got a whiff of her scent, his cock hardened. Every time he saw her looking at him, he had the same response, just like when she’d stared at him in the house while he’d been trying to build a fire…
It felt like her blue eyes were caressing every inch of his skin.
He had restrained himself, but it had been close. He’d wanted to pin her to that rickety chair, explore her milky white skin—her ample breasts—and plunge inside her.
The foot of his boot hooked in an exposed root and Colt went down, his inhuman balance letting him land on his knees.
Yeah, figures, because that phoenix is going to bring me to my knees, too.
He snorted at his stupid thought and got up, dusting the snow off his legs. He would not think anymore about the woman who tasted like sugar. His sweet tooth could go unsatisfied.
The pond wasn’t far now. It was small and iced over this time of year, but it would still have some fish if he broke it in the right spot and got lucky.
He stepped out the last of the trees and smiled at the sight of the pond. This had been one of Colt’s favorite boy-hood fishing spots, and he and his friend, Jericho had spent a lot of time here. They never went near the ghost town. Jericho hated the place as much as Colt did, but they loved this pond.
Because the boys were polar bear shifters, they had never used a pole. It had been a game to see who could catch the most fish with their hands, and it was a good thing he had that skill to fall back on, because he had to feed Angelica, too, now.
The hair on the nape of Colt’s neck stood up without warning, and he looked around for the cause. He could see nothing that would have caused the danger response he’d experienced.
Colt drew in a deep breath of air through his nose to scent, but there was nothing nearby. He could smell nature’s smells all around him, but nothing he should fear.