The Stories We Whisper at Night

by Sky Corgan

  I'm taking too much time to think. Not enough action. Somehow, I can't seem to force myself away from the tree, though. It might be the only thing keeping me standing at this point.

  There's a sound behind me. Familiar. My adrenaline spikes from the growl. I turn my head to see the reason why I'm down here and lost in the first place. That stupid fucking wolf and his stupid fucking buddies. How long have they been tracking me?

  All sense leaves me. I know I shouldn't run, but I can't climb. In hindsight, passing out in the snow might have been a better death. There's no way I'm going to survive this. I'm too slow. Between my twisted ankle and the snow, I'm an easy target.

  I make a lazy attempt at roaring at them, but they've seen my game once before. They know I'm bluffing. That I'm small and weak and ready for the kill.

  I gather my energy for one last desperate fight for survival and run. Screw everything I read and watched. I run. Run like my life depends on it, because it does. All my pain goes away as I sprint the few feet it takes before they're on me.

  The growls and snarls are deafening as jaws clamp onto my clothing and pull me to the ground. My own scream echoes in my ears as my life flashes before my eyes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KIT

  The most intensely ingrained need that every human being has is to survive. As I sit in the cabin staring down at my arm, the tourniquet wrapped around it to make my veins bulge, I can feel it. That little voice in the back of my mind that's firing off what ifs. The swirling sickness in my gut from wondering what's beyond, from thinking about all the stories I've heard in churches. Will I be condemning myself to worse than I'm suffering now? It could be a very real possibility.

  The needle is primed. There's little more that needs to be done than to shove it in my vein and adjust the IV drip. I'll be asleep before I can count to ten. In a coma before a minute passes. And dead within five. It's kind of crazy to think about how quickly it can all be over.

  My heart should be racing, but it's not. Maybe that's how I know this is still the right thing to do. The world is better off without me, without someone so broken that they can barely function.

  I take in a deep breath and blow it out. Then I seek out the best vein I have and pop the needle in. It's too easy. I've done this so many times before, though only to myself when my buddies and I went out drinking too much and I needed a quick hangover cure.

  I'm about to adjust the drip on the IV when a strange sound cuts through the blustering snowstorm outside. I furrow my brow, wondering if I imagined it—wondering if my mind is playing tricks on me, but then I hear it again. A scream. An unmistakable human voice crying out in sheer terror.

  My body reacts without a second thought. I pull the IV from my arm and rush to the door. The cold hits my face like an icy slap as I step outside. The snow is falling so hard that I can barely see anything. All I have to guide me is the sound of this person screaming. Thankfully, they don't let up.

  I only have to run a few yards before I can make out shapes in the distance. Big gray and black shapes on top of something. I've never seen wolves out here before, much less them attacking prey. But this isn't just any prey.

  I pull my gun from its holster and fire a shot into the air. Startled, all the wolves look up at me at once. When they see the gun in my hand, they run, leaving their prey behind. A mess of torn clothing and dirty blonde hair and blood. I put my gun back in its holster and rush to the person's aid. When I turn them over, I realize it's a woman. She's unconscious.

  I check her vitals, thankful there's still a pulse. Her skin is like ice, and her cheeks are beet red. She's been out here for a while.

  Tending to her wounds is important, but getting her inside and warm seems more so. I pick her up and carry her into the cabin, lying her down in front of the stove. Then I get busy removing her clothing, starting with her gloves. Her fingers are like little Popsicles. I unzip her jacket and am glad to find her well insulated. Despite the snow caked on top of it, not much got through. The long-sleeve shirt she's wearing underneath is dry, which means that her core has been kept relatively warm despite everything. If not for the fact that she has a bite on her arm, I'd leave it on her. But I need to be able to assess her wounds better.

  I pull her shirt over her head. Then I peel off her thermal top. The bra she's wearing is pink and lacy, showing an ample amount of cleavage. I try not to stare, but I'm only a man. My cock twitches to life in my jeans, but I pay it little attention as I pull my eyes away from her tits to examine the wound on her arm. Thanks to all the layers she's wearing, it appears to be superficial. Her jacket took the brunt of the damage.

  The bottom half of her body is in less good shape. I take her shoes and socks off. Her feet are every bit as cold as her fingers. As soon as I get her undressed, I'll put my gloves and socks on her to start warming her extremities.

  Her jeans are wet. Pulling them off of her is a bit of a struggle, and I'm not surprised when I find her thermals also soaked through. She's wearing matching pink panties with a tiny bow at the waist. Again I feel the stirring between my legs. Those panties need to come off, but that can wait. Tending to the bite on her thigh is more important.

  For all of her screaming and the scene that I saw before me, her injuries are minimal. Only two of the bites reached through to her skin despite several wolves being on her. She was beyond lucky. Just the one on her thigh will need stitches.

  I put my gloves and socks on her, then wrap her in a blanket and grab my medical kit. When I return to her, I clean out the wound the best I can, hoping she stays asleep while I stitch her up. This is going to hurt without a local anesthetic.

  I sit on the floor beside her to get to work, all the while thinking about peeling those panties off of her later. They're wet, too. They need to come off. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken the time to remove them, but if she did wake up, I didn't want her thinking I'm some kind of pervert.

  I can't stop the thoughts coming to my mind, though. The ones that have me rock hard, anticipating pressing my body against hers to give her my body heat. It's been years since I've felt the touch of a woman. Completely by choice.

  I'm not bad looking. I've never had issues getting women. Hell, when I was in the military, they threw themselves at me. I could sleep with a different girl every night of the week if I had wanted to, and sometimes I did.

  But ever since that fateful day when everything went wrong, my sex drive has been practically dead. Maybe not so much my sex drive but my desire to connect with another human being on any level. If I don't talk to people, I don't get attached, and the bad things that happen to them can't affect me.

  But maybe me thinking that was all an illusion, because I don't know this girl, and yet here I am, tending to a bad thing that happened to her. I need to focus. I can't get lost in my bullshit thoughts when I'm busy trying to save someone. Everything else is secondary to my one purpose of saving her.

  I push the needle into her skin and start sewing. At first, she doesn't stir. But then her body begins to jerk with every new stitch.

  “Just sleep for me a bit longer, baby,” I say to her as soothingly as possible while I watch her eyes dance beneath her lids. Her being asleep really isn't ideal with the hypothermia, but I don't want her to be awake to feel this pain.

  I'm just two stitches away from being done when she inhales a huge breath like someone has been holding her underwater. Her eyes fly open, and the look in them is every bit as wild as that of the wolves that attacked her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IVY

  I never knew that being dead could be so painful. Maybe I've gone to hell. Doomed to suffer an eternity of torture for...what? I've been good. I've never kicked a puppy or stolen anything or dishonored my parents. Sure, I've sinned before. No one is perfect. But unless God is going to hold minor transgressions against me, then I don't know why I feel this way.

  The growls and snarls of the wolves echo in my ears. They're like dogs fighting ov
er a scrap of meat. And I'm that scrap. One giant living, breathing scrap. Their teeth cut into me like tiny needles. I expect to feel the ripping of flesh. I felt it once before. That's what drove me reeling into unconsciousness. A pain so intense that my brain just couldn't process it.

  But I'm coming back to now. I feel them biting. Biting. Each bite close together. A searing pinch, digging into my flesh. Over and over. Pinching and pulling and stinging. Are they chewing me up and eating me alive? If so, why do I only feel it in one spot? There were so many wolves.

  My eyes fly open, and I suck in a breath like it's my last. Gasping for life. Trying to hold on like I'd so desperately been trying to before the wolves came.

  I see the face of a man. He's too handsome to be real, so I definitely must be dead. Dark hair. Chocolate eyes filled with concern. A hard jaw and a well-manicured beard. He's too young to be Saint Peter, but what do I really know about Heaven other than what I'm seeing of it right now.

  “Are you an angel?” I ask. “Am I dead?” If so, then why am I so damn cold? And shouldn't I be free from all pain? The longer I keep my eyes open, the more pain I feel, the more panic sets over me.

  “Calm down.” He grabs me by my shoulders and lays me back when I try to sit up. His hands are firm, his gaze intense. “You're safe now.”

  “Safe,” I repeat the word as if I've never heard it before.

  “Yes, safe.” He lets me go when I settle and turns his attention to my leg. “I was hoping you wouldn't wake up yet, but I suppose it can't be helped.”

  “What happened? Where am I?” My head turns from side to side, taking in my surroundings. I'm inside a small building. There's not much around me. Just a wood-burning stove, a table, a cabinet, what looks like an IV stand, and this seriously attractive man sitting by my side. Why is he so close to me? What is he doing? My heart is beating so fiercely against my chest I worry it might crack my ribcage. I can't make sense of anything. My mind won't calm down enough to focus.

  “I found you out in the snow. You were being attacked by wolves.” He glances at the door. “I'm stitching up your leg right now, and then we have to work on getting you warm. Don't worry, I'm an army medic. You're going to be fine.”

  His words are reassuring. “An army medic,” I parrot as I begin to relax.

  “Are you in pain? I haven't had time to check if anything was broken?” He looks me over.

  “I'm...” I stutter, my teeth chattering from the cold. I grab the blanket on top of me and pull it closer, covering my neck. “I sprained my ankle when I fell down the cliff.”

  “You...fell down a cliff?” he sounds surprised.

  “It's been a crappy day,” I confess.

  “I would say so.” The tiniest hint of a smirk plays on his lips before it fades. “I don't have any local anesthetic with me...” his voice trails off.

  “How bad is it?” I prop myself up on my elbows to look at the bite.

  “I'm almost done stitching you up.”

  I sigh in relief as I see that it's not as bad as I thought it would be. There's a half moon of stitches on my leg, but no large chunks are missing despite that horrible ripping feeling I remember. Maybe my mind made it into more than what it was. The bites are obviously deep though, or else he wouldn't be sewing me up in the first place.

  But I know what his words mean. No local anesthetic. I'm going to be in pain for the rest of the process. I have to be strong. After everything else I've been through, this should be a cakewalk—something good happening to me instead of something bad, even if it hurts.

  “I could give you some painkillers, but it's not going to help with the immediate pain. Would you like for me to find something for you to bite down on? I only need to make two more stitches.” He begins looking around the room.

  I hold my hand up to stop him from standing. “I'm fine. I think I've got this.” Hope I've got this. The pain was bad in my dreams. I know now that's what I was associating with the attack. It wasn't teeth I was feeling but the needle going in and out of my skin. It was enough to wake me up. Will I really be able to handle it now that I'm fully awake?

  He stares at me for a few seconds, concern in his eyes again. I try not to blush as I think about how handsome he is. There's something sexy about that stern, caring expression. Maybe if I just focus on him, this won't be so bad.

  “What's your name?” I ask as he turns his attention back to my leg.

  “Kit,” he replies absentmindedly, grabbing the suture and pressing it into my skin. My entire body tenses from the sensation. Thankfully, he works quickly. There's a short sting, and I'm able to breathe again.

  “Kit,” I say his name with an upward lilt from the pain. “I'm Ivy. Ivy Coleman.” There's something almost comical about how my voice changes every time he pushes the needle in. But I'm just trying to keep distracted, and talking to him seems like the best way.

  “What were you doing in the woods?” His gaze stays concentrated on the task, allowing me more time to ogle him.

  “I was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Well, trying to at least.” Heaviness sinks into the pit of my stomach from my failure. Considering that I got caught out in the snow, he probably realizes that I'm a novice hiker. I'm not sure why I feel so embarrassed about it. Maybe because I never expected to have to be saved.

  “You don't have any gear on you,” he points out. “Do you live close by?”

  “I lost my gear when I was running from the wolves.”

  “You shouldn't run from wolves,” he chastises me.

  “I know that.” I give him a sarcastic look.

  “Then why did you?”

  “I was on death's door.” It sounds weird to hear myself say it, but it's true. “They had been tracking me for a while. They were going to catch me anyway.”

  “All done.” Kit ties down the final stitch and cuts the string with a small pair of scissors. Then he carefully dresses the wound with gauze bandages.

  “Thanks,” I say shyly.

  “Now we need to get you warm.” He stands to go place the remaining medical supplies on the table. Then he pulls off his shirt, doing the cross-handed thing like something out of a romance movie. My mouth falls agape as tan skin and rippling muscles are revealed to me. All of my pain fades away while I watch him undress down to a pair of tight gray boxer briefs that leave very little to the imagination.

  “Painkillers,” he says to himself as he goes to his backpack to rummage through it for a bottle. Kit pops two pills into his hand, then returns to me with them and a bottle of water. He helps me sit up, and I take the pills from him, eying them warily for a second. Accepting drugs from a stranger is never a good idea. I've made more than my share of mistakes today. I hope this isn't another one. Still, I feel like I can trust this man. He did come to my rescue, after all. If not for him, I'd be dead right now.

  It feels like yet another leap of faith as I swallow the pills down with a gulp of water, my eyes lingering on his face, trying to tell what he's thinking. I know that I need to get warm, and I know that body heat is the best way to do it, but I can't help but wonder if he's some kind of pervert. If he's thinking about drugging and molesting me, he's doing a really good job of hiding it. He seems focused, looking at me like I'm some sort of job. It's almost disappointing, though comforting at the same time when I'm trying to discern whether or not I can trust him.

  “I left your bra and underwear on because I didn't want you waking up and thinking that I was trying to take advantage of you. Your bra is dry, but your underwear is wet. I would advise you to take them off, but I'm not going to force you to,” he tells me.

  My underwear is going to be even wetter with you next to me, I think lecherously, cursing myself as heat creeps up my neck. I feel like I'm too cold to blush, but who knows. At least if he does see it, he'll think I'm blushing because he's telling me to get naked and not because I'm thinking horribly inappropriate things about him.

  Need to play modest. “What happens if I don't take them
off?”

  “Well, they're not going to dry on your body. And the moisture will make it harder to transfer heat, making it take longer to get you warm.”

  Warmth is of the utmost importance right now. There's no doubt in my mind that I have hypothermia. My teeth are chattering, but I'm not shivering, which means it's bad. I peel off my underwear without a second's hesitation.

  Kit averts his eyes as he crawls under the blanket with me, avoiding seeing my nearly naked body. Even though he didn't ask, I take off my bra, too. I know that being completely naked will give me the best transfer of heat.

  “You should take off your boxers,” I tell him, trying not to sound like some lecher. “I need all of your body heat.” Oh my God, did I really just say that?

  He does as I ask, though I'm denied the view beneath the blankets. Then he wraps me in a powerful embrace, sealing our bodies together. My breath hitches as his warmth envelopes me. For all of my pain and coldness and misery, a bolt of electricity zips through me and settles at my core. Everything inside of me seems to melt at once, and I realize for the first time since the wolves started chasing me that I feel safe—that I'm going to survive...because of this man.

  I cuddle back against him, trying to steal more of his heat—trying to bask in the comfort of his embrace. I feel his body begin to react, his flaccid cock filling with blood. I bite my lip to stifle a moan. What's wrong with me? All I should be caring about is trying to survive. Yet my thoughts are on sex. Maybe it's because I've never been with a man before—never been in a situation like this before. Maybe it's because this is the first time I've ever felt like I've met a real hero. This man saved me in the most unlikely of circumstances. He's my Superman, and that's more arousing than anything I've ever experienced before.