Bobbie
What the hell just happened?
I’m vaguely aware of Dag’s weight covering me as I blink my eyes open to pitch-dark. The sudden silence is startling after the earsplitting sound from before. All I can hear now is an odd groaning noise and both of our heavy breathing.
His body partially lifts off me.
“You okay?” He sounds breathless and I can feel his heart hammering hard in tandem with mine.
“Did you say avalanche?”
He hums affirmatively as he rolls away. The next moment I’m temporarily blinded by the flashlight from his cell phone.
“Shit,” he mutters, turning my already chilling blood cold, as he shines the light around the bedroom.
I scramble to sit up and take in my surroundings. It doesn’t look good.
The side wall appears to have held up, but the ceiling lists precariously toward the center of the cabin. What is even more concerning is the light reflecting off a pile of snow, right outside the bedroom. The door is hanging off the bottom hinge, wedged open by the collapsed ceiling above. Or maybe the door is the only thing holding it up.
I’m not sure if it’s the shock or the rapidly dropping temperature in here causing the involuntary shiver to travel down my entire body as I stare slack-mouthed at the blocked doorway.
Dag notices and takes my face in his hands, turning it toward him.
“Hey, I need you to get some clothes on. Dress in plenty of layers. Did you take your boots off in here?”
I shake my head, remembering I kicked them off by the front door where I also left the warm winter jacket.
I’m fucked.
No, we’re fucked.
God only knows how much snow has collected on top of us. How long before the ceiling collapses, crushing us underneath its weight?
My heart starts racing out of control and my breathing speeds up, high and shallow, as the still-familiar clasp of anxiety closes around me. I get light-headed and dark spots start encroaching my field of vision. The attack comes on with a force that renders me useless and no amount of cooking could ward it off. Not that there’s going to be any cooking, since it looks like we may no longer have a kitchen.
“Bobbie?”
Dag’s hands tilt my face up, and I realize those strangled sounds are coming from me. “Bobbie. Look at me.”
I try but can’t seem to stop my eyes from darting around the room. I tell myself to focus on slowing my breathing down before I pass out, but my synapses are already firing all over the place, battling with any reason. My fingers dig into his chest, desperately trying to find some stability.
The next instant I have no choice but to focus when his mouth slams down on mine. Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by his taste and the firmness of his lips, and stop breathing altogether.
“Breathe,” he whispers into my mouth, and on command I suck in a lungful of air. “Good,” he mumbles, lifting his head. “Now, I’m going to assess our situation and while I’m doing that, I need you to get dressed. Think you can do that?”
My brain is scattered, overwhelmed with impulses and impressions, and the best I can do is nod my head in response.
“Good.”
He gets to his feet and holds out his hand for me, pulling me up as well. A heavy creak over our heads has both of us duck instinctively.
“Tell me that’s not coming down on us,” I comment breathlessly, the kiss quickly forgotten as panic returns.
“Not if I can help it.” His hand squeezes my shoulder before he moves across the room. “I’m going to have a look,” he says as he starts shoving the dresser toward the bed. “As soon as you’re dressed, I want you to get down in here.” He indicates the narrow space left between the bed and the solid piece of furniture.
My expression must’ve given away how I feel about being stuck in a tight space because Dag shoots me a reassuring wink.
“I’ll be back.”
“You’d better be,” I fire back with a shaky voice, as I open the top drawer and pull out some of my clothes.
Working hard to keep my breathing steady, I watch him slip out the door. Then I focus on getting layered up as instructed.
I’m just about to tuck myself in the gap Dag created when the roof precariously groans again. The next moment the entire room appears to shudder and with a loud rumble the ceiling comes down.
* * *
Dag
Fuck!
I barely manage to duck out of the way of one of the beams holding what was left of the roof up.
The first thing I noticed when I got out here was the entire front of the cabin gone, replaced by a wall of snow. Devoid of natural light, I had to use the light from my phone to see the rear wall and part of the kitchen intact, but the roof was caving in and a blanket of snow covered the floor.
With a piece of broken wall stud, I was probing the snow looking for soft spots I might be able to dig out when I heard that deep rumble again, seconds before the roof caved in on me.
One end of the beam I narrowly escaped got caught on the fridge, barely keeping the roof from a complete collapse but snow leaks through the gaps, slowly filling the space.
Bobbie.
My eyes dart toward the bedroom door to find the opening I came through is now less than half the size. Sudden panic seizes me as I crawl toward it, shining my cell phone light through the gap.
I can see the dresser is holding up part of the ceiling but there’s no sign of Bobbie. I catch myself before I can yell her name, afraid the vibrations could shift the entire unstable snow mass.
Then I hear it, harsh, erratic breaths, too fast and too shallow.
Shit, she’s having another panic attack.
She does a good job covering her anxiety—I wouldn’t have guessed only a few days ago—but there was something about the way she tried to brush off my comments last night that raised my suspicion she may not be as unflappable as she’d like people to believe. The earlier episode confirmed those suspicions.
Kissing her was the only thing I could think of doing to get her to focus.
Sounds like perhaps I’m going to have to kiss her again. Not that it’s a hardship; despite the rather desperate circumstances, I liked her taste on my lips and the feel of her soft body cushioning mine.
Half of her body is visible in the gap, the rest of her is hidden under the bed, curled up tightly. At first, she doesn’t even react to the hand I press to her spine, but then I see her reaching back with hers. I grab on and help her get out of her hiding space. Then she collapses against me, her shoulders heaving.
“We’re okay. We’ll be okay,” I promise her softly, determined to find a way out.
Statistically I know the likelihood of digging our own way out of the heavy pack of snow is slim, but it won’t be for lack of trying. I can’t count on any help from outside because no one knows we’re here, but I can do something about that.
Right now the avalanche is more of a risk to us than Russians with automatic rifles.
Resolved, I shift Bobbie’s weight to free my right arm and the cell phone still clutched in my hand. One measly bar of reception shows on the screen. Fingers crossed it’s enough.
“Harv—”
The call drops halfway through his greeting and I notice the one bar has now disappeared. Damn.
“Stay here,” I whisper in Bobbie’s hair, easing her away from me so I can move.
I go up on my knees and shuffle around a little, holding the phone up to look for a signal.
There. Two bars.
I quickly dial Bruce’s number again. This time I’m not giving him a chance to speak and quickly rattle off where we are and our current predicament.
“Are you serious?” I can hear him ask through the crackle on the line.
“As a heart attack.”
Before I can even finish my response, the line goes dead again as does the light on my phone.
“What happened?”
I can’t see her in the pitch-dark we’re plunged in, but I can clearly hear the panic in Bobbie’s disembodied voice and find my way back to her by touch alone.
“My phone just died.”
“Oh, no.”
“I’m sure Bruce will send help. All we have to do is hang in there.”
Our cover will be blown, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now we need to get out of here and I’m worried if I make any more attempts at digging out, I’ll end up burying us completely. I might risk it if I were the only one here, but I’m not and it’s my responsibility to keep Bobbie alive. Safer to sit tight and wait for help to come, even though that goes against every instinct.
“For how long?”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll alert local emergency services, but I don’t know what it looks like out there.”
“Great,” she mumbles. “I’m doomed. If Zola Gurin doesn’t get me, the snow will.”
“You’re not doomed.” I reach out until my hand encounters her shoulder and I slide closer, draping my arm around her. “And I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
“You can’t make promises like that.”
She pulls away but I’m not letting go.
“Better fucking believe I can.”
She snorts mockingly but stops resisting and settles her weight into my side.
I’m sitting with my back against the side of the bed, all my senses focused on the woman beside me. It feels like being in a cocoon, unable to see or hear anything from outside. Other than the light rustle of clothes when either of us shifts, and the sound of our breathing, nothing seems to penetrate the heavy blanket of snow covering us. The groaning and creaking has stopped too, which I hope means the snowpack has stabilized.
“Tell me more about your daughters,” Bobbie prompts me after a while.
Oh, what the hell, it’s not like we have anything better to do.
I share a few anecdotes from when the girls were little and they were just starting to grow into their personalities.
“I’m not sure what it looks like yet—it’s not like you actually smile—but I can hear it in your voice when you talk about them,” she comments.
“I smile,” I point out, making Bobbie snort again. “And yes, the girls have been my world for a long time. My reason to smile for many years.”
Jesus, I can’t believe I’m talking about this shit, but there’s something about this woman that makes me want to share.
Just as I feel her hand land in the middle of my chest, I hear a grinding sound. Bobbie hears it too, her fingers curl into the front of my shirt as the noise builds, ending with a loud crash. It’s instantly followed by a deep thunderous boom shaking the floor under my ass.
A blast of cold snow hits my exposed skin and I am convinced the ceiling is going to drop the few feet it remains suspended above us any second now.
But nothing further happens.
Silence returns and if I were to venture a guess, I’d say the metal grinding was the sound of the fridge finally giving way to the weight resting on it. I suspect everything on the other side of the bedroom wall is gone.
Bobbie starts hyperventilating again but before I can turn my attention to her, she slides her hand up and around my neck, pulling me down. Then I feel her lips at the corner of mine, taking me completely by surprise. It doesn’t take me long to react and I shift my head, finding her mouth blindly and I don’t hesitate to slip my tongue inside.
The kiss is combustive, raw, and frantic.
Her blunt nails scratch at the skin of my neck as our tongues duel almost desperately. Fueled by adrenaline and fear, the urge to feel alive is overwhelming. I can’t see her, but my hands hungrily map out her curves and the small hungry sounds she makes when I find the heavy swell of her breast drive me out of my mind.
It’s not smooth or comfortable, nor is it particularly sexy, but neither the hard cold floor nor our bungling hands seem to stem the intense physical and emotional need.
My cock is weeping by the time she manages to get my fly undone, slips her hand inside, and without hesitation wraps her fingers firmly around its length. I almost shoot my load at that first touch and grab for her wrist.
Holy shit.
“Slow down,” I mumble against her lips.
“I don’t want to,” she mutters back.
“It’s gonna be over before we start.”
“I don’t care.”
She slicks the pad of her thumb over the sensitive tip and I groan deeply.
“Easy, sweetheart. You deserve better than a round of groping in the dark,” I try.
I imagine her eyes flash irritation, or perhaps even anger, as she abruptly releases me and pushes away.
“That may be so, but I don’t see a plush hotel room with a comfy, king-sized bed anywhere around. Oh wait, that’s because I can’t see a damn thing, since we have half a mountain on top of us,” she spits out.
I can’t help but grin at the thick sarcasm before I realize she can’t see that either.
Now that her hands and mouth aren’t on me anymore, some sanity starts creeping back. The woman was almost catatonic in the grasp of a mother of an anxiety attack not that long ago, she may not have the best judgment right now.
“Roberta…this may not be the right—”
I’m stopped when she slaps a flat hand on my chest.
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare tell me this isn’t the right time, or do I have to remind you that these may be our last moments alive? If ever there was a right time, this is it. And I, for one, would rather die wearing the satisfied smile I know you’re gonna put on my face.”
Damn. How am I going to argue with that?
I’m not, she makes a valid point.
The next instant my mouth is on hers and my hands are tugging at her pants. I try to get her to lie down on the sleeping bag I discover on the floor, but she waves me off and instead throws one of her narrowly freed legs over my hips.
A moment later she guides me into her hot body, and it no longer matters we’re buried under an avalanche facing certain death.
I’m already in heaven.