In hind sight, Georgie thought her teeth chattering loud in the silence of predawn, Plan B sucks.  Rafting on a log down an unfamiliar icy river was a bad idea, especially in fucking September in the Rocky Mountains.  She could not refute that having floated for most of the night she was miles away from the top of the mountain where she had started, and she was still alive, so it had worked.  It was just so fucking cold and her muscles had all stiffened up clinging as she had been to an abrasive log for dear life all night.

Though in defense of her idiotic plan, if she had not seen the lights of a town from her floating log she would never have thrown herself into the current to get to shore.  And before that move her clothes had only been marginally wet.  That she had nearly drowned herself so close to civilization and safety after hours of floating down a dangerous ice-cold river with no more than wet spots, stiff muscles, scratches, and a few bruises to show for her adventures, would have been ironic, if she wasn't so close to freezing to care that her plan had worked.  She had stopped being able to feel her feet and fingers some time ago.  A bad sign that even a city girl could read.  She needed shelter and she needed it now.

She was happy to see the town while small, was a real town, with paved streets and a street light at the one intersection.  In the distance she saw a gas station, a sign for a hardware store, a sign for the "Solitude Library," a church and what had to be at least three bars, or restaurants that served alcohol, if the neon signs were anything to go by.  There were cars parked on the streets and smoke from home fires could be seen in the houses that spanned the side streets and some going up the mountain in the distance. 

True, she had not seen anyone up and about yet, but the sun was barely peaking above the distant mountain, so it could just be too early.  Still, it showed every sign of being civilization and not some crazy secluded township in the mountains.  More importantly than all of that, a bright open sign flickered under a pouring cup of neon coffee.  Yes, please.

Coffee and a phone was all she really wanted, getting out of her wet clothes was a close third, but only because without a phone all the rest would have been for nothing.

"Are you alright?"  The young girl at the counter came running around it, then stopped as if she wasn't sure she should touch.  Georgie couldn't blame her, if she looked as bad as she felt she must be a miserable sight.  "What happened to you?"

"No," Georgie said around chattering teeth, answering the first question but ignoring the second.  "Do you have a phone I can use?"

"Of course."  She pulled out a chair.  "But sit down first.  I'll get you a coffee and call the Doc.  Do you want me to call the Sheriff?"

Georgiana breathed a sigh of relief but kept moving towards the counter and the old fashion rotary phone she could see perched there.  "Yes, please.  But first can I make a call?"

"Of course, honey, help yourself."  The girl looked like she should still be in high school but something about the way she reacted and spoke made Georgie bump her up a few years.

"It's long distance.  I'll call collect."

"Don't worry about that.  You make your call.  I'll get you something warm."  The girl headed around the counter, her long brown ponytail bobbing as she moved fast to the coffee machine sitting there.

Georgiana dialed with shaking hands the only number she had memorized, while she listed to the lovely sound of coffee being poured.  It took her three tries to get the number right, but she finally managed, wondering in her near frozen state such inconsequential things as how old fashioned the phone was.  Before the phone rang twice in her ear there was a steaming cup of black coffee at her fingertips.   She placed her free hand around the cup and tried not to shudder the contents out of the cup with her chills.

"Hello?"  Hearing that familiar, albeit tired voice on the other then of the line nearly had her bawling right there.

"David?"  She barely got the word out, but he heard it and miraculously recognized her cracking voice.

A long silence and then, "Georgie?!"

"Yes."  Georgiana started to cry for real then.

"Where are you? Are you all right?  Are you safe?"  The words tumbled out on top of each other and she almost laughed when they kept coming.  "Girl. Where the hell have you been.  You scared the shit out of me, disappearing like that.  Not showing or calling at work.  No one has seen you.  The police came by asking questions.  Are you alright?"

There was a tinkle of bells as the door behind her opened and closed but she was so intent on trying to form a coherent sentence that she didn't notice.

"Yes.  I'm fine.  I'm in some ..."  There was a click and the phone was pulled out of Georgiana's hand roughly and tossed back onto its cradle.  She turned with a gasp and came face to face with Cooper Hayes and a big built dark-haired man in a Sheriffs uniform.  This was very bad.  Before she could think better of it she hurled her hot coffee at the two of them and took off at a run.  There was cursing and the sound of a scuffle, but she barely had her hand on the door before she was yanked up by an arm around her waist against a hard body.  She struggled as best she could until she felt teeth clamp down on the back of her neck with a warning growl, and she wilted, her body refusing to do as she wanted.  She whimpered, and it sounded so much like surrender she closed her eyes at her own weakness.

He released her in intervals, finally catching her arm, pulling her into his side, and facing the Sheriff.   Georgiana tried to look to the clerk for help, but she had fallen to her knees and was prostrating herself before them.

"I'm so sorry, First.  I had no idea she was your Georgiana."

"That's fine Trista, we were just coming around with the warning that she might show up.  You couldn't have known.  In the future though, make sure to call the Sheriff before you allow a stranger to call out on your phone.

"Yes sir.  Thank you."

"Come along Georgiana, we need to get you out of these wet clothes.  If you catch a cold from this your punishment will be worse."

"Eat shit and die."  The word might have had more bite if her teeth were not chattering so hard, but she was so angry and disheartened it was either snarl at them, or cry.

She heard Trista gasp at her words as she was pulled unceremoniously out of the warm shop and back out into the cold winds of early morning.  Only to be tsked at by the big sheriff who followed.

"Quite a mouth on her," he said in a voice, rough and deep, touched with humor as if he was finding the situation funny.  Georgie refused to look at either man, so mad at being thwarted when she was so close to freedom.  Not to mention she was so fucking cold the heat of her captor was drawing her like a magnet.

"I noticed that myself," was the dry reply that had her gritting her chattering teeth in frustration.

"You own this town too?"  She asked bitterly.

"I own everything on this mountain," he said, the very softness of his voice a warning in itself.  "Including you."

"Why?"  She stopped moving forcing him to drag her the few feet to the waiting limo.  Her eyes latching on to her kidnappers with a will.  Georgie had had enough.  "You kidnap me and then dump me in your crazy cult village and disappear for weeks.  Then you show up and tell me I'm moving in with you.  Why me?  What do you hope to gain by this?"

"I thought to give you time to adjust to your new circumstances."  He said, pushing open the door of the hummer limo idling at the curb and motioning her to proceed him inside.  "But from the reports I have been getting and this latest escapade you are not even trying."

"Trying to do what?" she asked exasperated and frustrated.  "What circumstances?  Why did you take me to begin with and what the hell are you planning to do with me?!"  Her voice got more strident with each question.  She was not getting in to that limo with him.  "Tell me what the hell you want from me!"  Instead he stepped forward with an animalistic growl and shook her, making her gasp and shut up.

Then he buried his nose in her neck and breathed her in.  He growled again, and Georgie could feel the hum all the way to her toes.  She froze.  What the hell was with her body.  Why was it so impossible to fight this man?  He was so warm she had to fight the need to burrow closer. 

For weeks she had wanted nothing more than to escape before he returned, knowing that when he did she would find out exactly why he had brought her here, and there was no possible way she would like what happened next.  Then he was back, and she was out of time.  She had risked her life in the river, faced the possibility of being eaten by wolves, stumbled through the cold forest wet and shaking.  Her resolve had never faltered.  Now here she was pressed up against the man responsible for everything and she didn't even have the strength of mind to push him away.  Worse, she was fucking turned on.

It had been somewhat understandable the first time.  He was six feet plus of twisted steel hard body.  What woman wouldn't be attracted.  His eyes a cool forest stream green, his mink dark hair and sun kissed skin in no way detracting from his dangerous looks.  Plus, at the time she had not known he was crazy.  Added to that he had that deep chocolate voice that vibrated every nerve she had. 

It had been understandable if not expected that she would have been turned on when this completely hot stranger had walked up to her on the street and pulled her into his arms.  O.K. she had stood there like a lemming when he had bent down and buried his nose in her neck and smelled her, just as he was doing now.  Anyone could be excused for not reacting fast enough when he growled, and bit her, making her feel claimed in a way she still did not understand.

It was completely logical that her breasts had swelled, and her vagina contracted.  But that was before he had somehow knocked her out and dumped her in his psycho village where there were no phones, and everyone ignored her pleas to be set free.  A whole village where the people act as if nothing is out of the ordinary to keep a woman hostage.  His village where everything he said was law.  He wanted her kept there.  They kept her, men women and children, all of them had a hand in keeping her where he had decreed she would stay.  It scared her.  These people were people she would have liked in normal circumstances.  He had done something to them, she knew he had, and now she was letting him do it to her.  Why wasn't she fighting this?

"Let me go."  She felt him hesitate before raising his head and meeting her eyes.  The cool green seemed lit from within and she shuddered from the force of them.  "What are you?"  She whispered it before she thought better of it.  At the same time, he was so utterly male she had to fist her hands to keep from touching him.  

"Get in the limo."  His hot chocolate voice reverberated through her body, but she fought the pull of it. 

Instead she put as much pleading in her voice and eyes as she could.  "Please, just let me go."

He bared his teeth and pushed her back until she was trapped between his body and the car.  She felt the hard press of the limo digging into her back and the harder press of his erection digging into her belly.  The only way to go was into the open door beside her. 

"Do not push me farther than you already have, Georgiana.    Not now.  You are freezing, wet and exhausted.  You could have been seriously hurt."  He snapped his teeth just over the pulse point on her neck, his voice going impossibly deeper.  "and you ran from me. Get. In.  Or I will strip you on the street."  He licked a swath of heat up her neck, and she shuddered.  Jerking out of his arms in the only direction he would allow she ducked into the limo and moved as far away from him as she could get.  When he followed behind her, his eyes glowing in the darkened interior, she knew it would not be far enough.  He pulled the door closed and she was, once again, caught.

He pulled his shirt out of his jeans and began to unbutton it.

"What are you going to do?"  Her frightened whisper was loud in the small space.  Her eyes glued to his emerging chest.  The man was a ripped work of art and she wanted to bite him, despite or maybe because of the fear his actions sent deep into her belly.

"Not what I want to do," he answered still nearly growling the words.  "Take off those clothes and put on this shirt."  He tossed it to her with enough force that it hit her in the face.  She could smell him on the shirt.  Forest and man.  Without intending to she closed her eyes and breathed him in.  His scent alone had the power to turn her body traitor.  She clenched her thighs closed but the pressure was not anywhere near enough.

A growl in the darkness had her eyes snapping open and color flooding her face.  She dropped the warm shirt like a hot poker.

"Take off everything and put on that shirt.  I won't tell you again."  She could feel him there ready to pounce at the least further provocation.  She swallowed and turned so that as much of her was hidden as she could manage in the close confines of the limo.  She had to struggle getting the sweater over her head, the wet fabric sticking to her skin.  She hesitated at the bra, but he growled, and she hurried on using his shirt as a cover while she removed it.  She managed not to flash her erect nipples as she carefully pulled on the shirt and buttoned it.  Then she removed shoes, socks, and the damp jeans with an effort. She wadded everything and dropped it to the floor, kicking it closer to the far door.  She pulled the soft warmth down to her knees and tried to rub some warmth back into her hands.

Between one blink and the next he was on his knees in front of her and had a hold of her thighs under the shirt and just above her knees.  She gasped and tried to pull back but instead was pulled forward until her butt rested on the edge of the seat and he had situated himself between her legs, her thighs held firmly under his arms.

"Stop."  Her voice pushed at him as ineffectually as her hands did.

"I told you I wouldn't ask again."  He growled out while his hands followed her outer thighs up under the shirt tails to her hips and found her damp panties.  She tried pulling his hands away, but it was like trying to stop a force of nature.  He let her struggle, holding her hips firmly until with gasping breath and useless tears she gave up.  Then he captured her eyes with his and started to pull the damp cotton down her thighs slowly.  

It was too much, seeing him there with that savage look on his face as he slowly stripped her of any and all defenses.  She felt completely at his mercy and it made her body ache and her mind rage all at the same time.  The hopelessness of going up against his superior strength when she was so physically and mentally depleted had tears of frustration falling.

Seeing it, something in his eyes changed and he released his hold so that she could pull her panties back up and with a sob shift back away from him.  Which she did as quickly as possible.  He watched her huddling away from him, a shadow of remorse in his eyes. 

He pulled a blanket out from under the seat, pulled her struggling into his lap and wrapped her up in the soft wool tucking it around her kicking feet and holding her there. When he did nothing but hold her down across his lap, Georgiana wiped at her eyes and looked up at his averted face.  He seemed intent on watching the mountain outside the window wiz by around them.

"I don't understand you."  She said it calmly, the tears stuck in her throat and on her cheeks.

He looked down at her.  His eye once again a normal cool green.  Then he shocked a gasp out of her when he drank the tears from first one cheek and then the other before meeting her bewildered eyes again.  "Tomorrow, when you're rested, I'll tell you what you need to know.  For now, you are safe and in my arms." He buried his nose right where her shoulder met her neck and breathed.  "It's enough."

Georgia didn't know what to do or say so she sat still in his arms feeling like a rabbit in the clutches of a sleeping wolf, afraid any movement would awaken the beast.  Gradually, when he didn't bite, she fell asleep.