I shook the thoughts off, not wanting to go there. It had been over a year ago since the shit storm that became my life once I learned Victoria had been lying to me. Over a year since I moved to Alaska. I loved the unspoiled vistas, the rugged people, the quiet. This time of year, mid-August, the weather was warm, the days were long and near perfect. I spent hours hiking and exploring the woods, some days the breeze was chilly enough for a jacket, but the daylight lasted almost twenty hours.
My mom came to visit about a month after I settled in. Even she loved my little house, the lake, the wind in the trees and the wild animals that made their way to the water’s edge to drink. She hadn’t stayed long, just long enough to make sure I was all right, and long enough to find Anna. My mother insisted that I needed human contact and fresh food, so she hired Anna’s company to make deliveries once a week. I was pretty sure Mother did it because she thought Anna was beautiful and secretly hoped I’d fall for her. The irony was not lost on me.
Anna was beautiful and curvy in all the right places. She was honest and hard-working and tough as nails. Could I fall for Anna? Probably. But Anna didn’t give a shit about me, my money, any of it. Each week she left me with my deliveries and a hard on that seemed to be focused entirely on her.
As I paced the floor, I occasionally checked the window over my kitchen sink and stared out towards the dock. The storm had picked up so much that I couldn’t see that far out; the rain and wind had made the usually stunning view gray. But then I saw it. Her plane, a ghostly orb, about fifty feet up from the water. The streak of white in the gray sky stuck out like a sore thumb, but so did the position of her plane. Holy shit, she’s going to nosedive! I barely spared a thought before I ran out the door, the rain and wind slapping me back as soon as I stepped onto the porch.
I didn’t care, though. She was about to crash her damn plane and I already knew I’d do anything I had to to save her. Even jump into the freezing water cold lake and pull her ass out of that damn plane.
As I hauled my body full-speed towards the dock, I watched as she pulled the nose of her plane up at the last possible second.
Calm down, Top Gun, I thought, even as I felt a swell of appreciation in my chest. The butt of the plane smacked hard enough for me to hear it from where I stood, still hundreds of feet away.
That had to hurt, I thought as I picked up the pace. Anger surged, pissed off that she’d hop in her plane in a storm like this. My stupid delivery wasn’t worth her life.
But she’s a total badass, came a voice from the back of my brain, as I pushed my legs to go faster. I suddenly felt stupid about my “incoming heroics”; Anna didn’t need me. She could handle this shit all by herself. My cock jumped at the thought, but I kept sprinting. She coasted rather roughly into the dock just as I got to the steps. I leapt down them in my hurry to get to her and nearly slipped off the dock for my efforts. I ran up to her door, ripped it open, grabbed her by both arms and roared, “What the hell were you thinking? You could have died!”
She was pale, paler than I’d ever seen her, and her pupils were dilated to near-black. She breathed in a rapid, disjointed rhythm, clearly affected by the rough landing and storm. I loosened my grip on her arms and lifted my hands to the side of her face, to her neck, the only bit of skin I could reach, and stroked her cold, clammy skin. The rain whipped around me and blasted its way into the cockpit. In seconds, Anna was soaked through. But touching her brought me back to my center and I lifted her face to look up at me, focused on ignoring her full, ripe lips.
“Are you okay? Anna?”
She blinked, slowly, as if in a daze before her eyes grew sharp and filled with fire. “What the hell, Jack? You’re soaking the cockpit. My damn console is drenched! Get the hell out of my way.” She undid her harness and leapt down from her seat, slammed the cockpit shut, and moved to the rear of the plane. She was drenched in an instant.
Ignoring the weather, she checked the floaters, probably for damage, and then moved to the anchor, which had wrapped itself around one of the floaters. She struggled for a few seconds and nearly fell into the water before I picked her up with barely any effort and moved her aside. Anna called me something rather colorful, but I pretended not to hear her over the wind. In one swift motion, I untangled the chain and watched the anchor drop into the water.
I turned to her and saw she had opened the cargo hold to pull out coolers.
She’s still trying to deliver my damn groceries!
I moved to jerk her away from the plane. “Get your ass inside, you idiot! In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a wicked storm and you’re soaked. Let’s move!” I was inches away from her face as I shouted and I saw her chin jut out in defiance.