CHAPTER 9
Trinity
Two days later
I pull out my chair and sit down. I take a sip of my chamomile tea and look off into the distance as the night sets in.
The last two days have been an absolute fuckfest. When Ellie’s in the cabin we do it outside. When Ellie’s outside we do it in the cabin.
I can’t believe it’s even possible to do the things we’re doing outside during the winter but we just get each other so hot that it absolutely works. When we sneak in a session inside we have to take logs off the fire or else we’ll overheat. It takes but a second and my body temperature skyrockets.
The way he comes after me. The way he can’t keep those big, strong hands of his off me. The way he ravishes me. It’s like he’s a hungry, wild animal that’s been starving for years.
And that might be the case. And as much as I don’t want to think, that maybe I’m just a woman that’s come along at a time when he needed one most, that is a possibility. But when I see the way he is I know he wouldn’t get into something if he wasn’t truly into it with everything he has.
It’s the way he goes about every part of his life. I mean, even when he just chops down a tree he gives it everything he’s got. When he’s making breakfast he takes it so seriously so he gets it done just perfectly. And when he’s inside me his focus and intensity blow me away.
I never knew I could be so desirable, and in being so I never knew I could desire someone so much. His hunger has turned into my hunger. He’s opened Pandora’s box. I want him all the time now.
“Where’s Ellie’s mother?”
“She’s gone. Hit-and-run,” he says.
“Is that why you moved up here?”
“It was the last straw. Yes. I’d had enough of people and wanted to get away from them all. When someone kills another human and doesn’t even have the decency to stop their damn car…well…I can’t even put my anger about that into words.”
“Do you think—”
“Shhh!” he says. He raises one finger toward me.
A coyote howls out in the distance, but he’s not just admiring the sound. His eyes show a different kind of alertness.
“Mating call?” I ask. I could certainly go another round right about now. Ellie is fast asleep after all so we can be as loud as we want. These thick cabin walls soak up every sound imaginable.
“Call of danger. It’s a much different pitch and frequency.”
I hear a twig snap off in the distance and immediately Elijah is out of his chair jumping from the porch and running off into the darkness like Daniel Day-Lewis on the Last of the Mohicans movie poster.
“Elijah!” I call out to him but it’s already too late.
Seconds later I hear a scuffle in the distance followed by a loud grunt.
The wolf howls again. Now I’m really scared.
What if something happened to him? What will happen to Ellie and I alone out here in the wilderness?
It’s time to get tough. I grab a shovel and stand in front of the door. I’m not letting that monster get inside the house. He can have me, but not without a fight.
I hear something dragging through the grass. I bend my knees and prepare for battle.
This is the way things are out here. It’s only taken me a week and I’ve already gone feral, back to the way humans used to live.
I squint my eyes and watch as I see a shape in the distance. I tighten my grip on the shovel, my knuckles white.
And then I see his beard. “Elijah!”
I release the shovel and run to him. He hugs me tight in one arm as he drags my old boss by the feet with his other hand. He’s got him hogtied.
“Is this the coward?” he says.
I look once just to make sure.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“I can drag him out back and tie him to a tree if you want. The bears will have him finished off by morning. I can even cover him in honey to make the process go faster.”
I can’t believe his words, but then I remember…he’s a mountain man. There’s another kind of justice up here. Nature is the judge and jury, and in this case nature is Elijah. My old boss entered a world he wasn’t prepared for, but Elijah was. And Elijah won.
And when you lose in this world you lose big.
The power Elijah has and what he’s willing to do for me are beyond words. I don’t wish harm on anyone, but I do know that if my old boss had got what he wanted he would have been swift and final in his dealing with me. Elijah has saved me…twice. I owe everything to this man, but he never makes me feel that way.
Everything he does he just shrugs it off like it’s something a real man would do. But I know that’s not the case. Not in 2018. It’s not the kind of times we live in. You can’t even get a man to open the door for you, let alone vanquish your enemies before you.
“Can we turn him in to the police?”
“That’s not how things are done up here,” Elijah says. He pauses. “But if that’s what you want then that’s what we’ll do.”
He’s given me a feeling of control back when I felt I had none. He’s injected a sense of power into me when I was empty.
“There was a phone in your things when I found you. Does it work?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. I step inside and find it, a remnant of my prior existence. This was me just one week ago. How little I need such things now.
“Here it is.”
“Can you see if the battery’s still working?”
I fire it up. There’s about fifteen percent still left.
Elijah steps inside and comes out with…my day pass for the mountain?
He holds out his hand and I hand him the phone.
He hits the speakerphone button and dials the number to the lodge on the pass.
“Breckenridge Resort, Jonathan speaking.”
“Jonathan, there will be a man arriving on a sled in about twenty minutes. He’s tried to kill a woman in the hills. He’s wanted for a whole host of charges.” Elijah reaches inside my boss’ pocket. “He has ID on him so he’ll be easy to identify. The police will be there to get him.”
“Sir? Is this a prank?”
“I don’t play games when it comes to life and death and protecting my women. Just be prepared because he’ll be approaching your backdoor on a sled soon.”
Elijah hangs up and then calls the police, telling them what’s going to happen. He doesn’t ask or make suggestions, he tells them. He gives them the story and I hear the police say they’ve been looking for him and that there’s a reward out for him. Apparently he’s a fugitive now as he skipped his pre-trial hearing. Elijah ignores the reward talk. I guess money doesn’t matter to him anymore. Logs burn better than pieces of paper with dead presidents on them up in these parts.
Elijah hangs up with the police and goes out back and removes an old toboggan. He ties my old boss up to it tight and shoves him off down the hill.
“I thought the resort was that way?” I say pointing to my left and not down the hill.
“It is, but there’s a trail right here that winds around. It’s faster and will run him right by where the wolves hunt. They won’t try and stop him. He’ll be too big and too fast, but it will sure put a scare into him.”
“You sure put a scare into me when you went off running after him like that,” I say.
“Never be scared when I’m here. I’m here to protect you. No one can harm you when I’m by your side. Not now and not ever.”