Captive Angel Ch. 07

Hunter stacked wood around the quick start log until he had a nice blaze going.

"You know, if you'd mentioned the flue thingie I could have done this myself," she said.

"I have no doubt," he said, bending and stealing a quick kiss. "The generator is running and we should have hot water soon. I'm going to go out and shut up the shed and finish bringing in the rest of the stuff. You might want to decide which one of those couches we're sleeping on."

"We're sleeping on one of those couches?" she asked, staring at the huge furniture and then back at his equally huge frame.

"Well, I'm not sleeping in the loft with you, it's way too cold up there even with the fire. And I've kinda gotten used to having you next to me, so..." his voice trailed off and he grinned like a little boy.

"I'm kinda like your teddy bear now or something?" she asked. "You can't get to sleep without me?" The thought sent a warm glow inside of her.

"Hmm, I never thought of having sex with my teddy bear when I was a kid. Maybe I'd have kept him longer and treated him better if I had. I seem to recall tying him to a glider Dillon and I made and sending him off the roof of the house. He crashed and burned big time."

"You are a sick man, Hunter. How hard would it be to drag the mattress from the bed in the loft down here?"

"Not hard at all. Sounds kind of romantic, doesn't it, laying in bed and watching the flames at night..."

"While we try not to freeze our butts off?" she asked, tilting her head to the side and sending him an impish smile.

"I promise to do my best to keep your butt warm," he said, holding his hand to his chest as if making a sacred vow.

"Pig," she laughed, shooing him out of the cabin. When he left, she shut the window, preferring the slight smell of smoke in the air to freezing her lungs off. By the time he'd brought the last load in, she'd taken off her coat and hung it up on the hook behind the door.

"See, it's not that bad in here," he said, hanging up his own jacket and standing in front of the fire for a moment to warm his hands.

"Say that after you go and use the bathroom," she laughed.

"Oh, did your butt get cold," he leered at her. "Come on over here and I'll warm it up for you," he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

Angel rolled her eyes. She went to the kitchen, determined to have everything put away before bedtime, and opened a cupboard door. An array of liquor bottles met her eyes, all with different level of liquid inside, filling the cupboard.

"Damn," she said, pulling out and reading the different labels. "Rum, tequila, vodka, whisky, bourbon, I can tell what you guys did while you were up here."

"Oh no, Angel. Those are kept up there strictly for medicinal purposes only. It can get damn cold in the mountains, sometimes you need some liquid warmth to heat up your insides in a hurry."

"That really doesn't work though, Hunter," she began, stopping when she saw his smile. She put the bottles back, closing the cupboard and turning to the next. This one was full of x-rated magazines, and not just the usual either, there was also Manga and a few others she'd never heard of.

"What is Brandon, twelve? Good God," she exclaimed, pulling down the stack.

"Hey, sometimes the liquid warmth just doesn't cut it at getting a man's blood pumping again," Hunter laughed. He picked up the first magazine, opening it to the centerfold and staring at the woman. She had dyed blonde hair, though you couldn't tell from other parts, because those were shaved. Her breasts were huge, her waist tiny and her hips and thighs curvy.

"Those are fake," Angel said, glancing at the picture before starting to stack cans inside the cupboard that had held the magazine.

"How can you tell?" Hunter asked.

"Too round, too full and there's no sag anywhere. Definitely fake," she said, going back to the table for more cans. "So can we use those to keep the fire going if we run out of wood?"

Hunter stared at her as if she were completely nuts. "How can you talk of burning a man's porn collection? That's almost blasphemy."

"Those are almost past the point of decency and into disgusting," she said, staring at the front cover of one of the Manga magazines.

"Manga is an art form," he said, grabbing it up to his chest.

She sighed. "Okay, but how about if they get stored in the loft and not in the kitchen while we're here?"

"Deal," he said, grabbing the stack and heading toward the ladder. He climbed it easily, not even really hearing the creaks and groans it made under the weight of his big body. Before long, she heard moving around and then a creak. Turning she saw him lowering a queen-sized mattress to the floor, bending over the small railing that was built around the loft floor.

Angel ran over to help him but he motioned her back, leaning the mattress against the wall while he shimmied down the ladder.

"I guess all that climbing around as a kid really stood you in good stead," she said as he pushed the couches further apart and away from the fire, laying the mattress on the floor.

She helped him make the bed, watching as he pulled quilt after quilt out of a closet and piled them on top of the mattress. Then they finished in the kitchen and Hunter went out to fill up the wood box from the towering stack next to the cabin while she made them a quick dinner. They ate by firelight and the single light bulb that burned over the sink. By the time dishes were done, Angel was yawning.

"It's the mountain air, it's thinner so you'll tire out easier," Hunter said, rubbing her arms and hugging her to him. "Go get ready for bed, but leave me some hot water."

She was asleep before he even got out of the bathroom, snuggled under a

pile of comforters, her face turned toward the fire. He curled up behind her, drawing her back against his chest and kissing her bare shoulder before watching the way the flames danced off the red highlights in her hair. His thoughts grew dark as he stared at her beautiful face and he wondered if he were doing her any favors, bringing her out into the wilderness as he had. Maybe she would have been safe back in Michigan. Maybe if she'd gone to the cops, she could have gotten back to her own life by now.

No, she would have been accused of something, taken back to Chicago and turned over to Sebastian. She would have disappeared, and no one would have known that it wasn't her that died in that fire. She wasn't the one buried next to her mother under a headstone bearing her name.

She would have been just another Jane Doe, washed up along the banks of Lake Michigan. She would be just a nameless, faceless individual who would turn into a cold case within weeks when no leads were found.

He was keeping her alive.

Yeah, a little voice in his head said. But if you were to admit how you truly felt about her, even to yourself, could you put her through the danger ahead? He angrily hushed the voice, forcing himself to close his eyes, to relax against her. Sleep was a long time coming to halt the thoughts that flowed endlessly through his mind.