Topaz spotted a poker next to the fireplace. “Here, this is better.” She handed it to Onyx.
He gripped it in one hand and the chair leg in the other. “I can use both. There ain’t much here in the way of getting out.”
“Something tells me even Santa uses the front door,” she said trying not to go for the obvious route, as she placed her hand on the small chimney flute that went to a small hole in the roof.
Setting his weapons down, Onyx tried the window, his eyes cautious of the destination. “Where the hell are we?”
Topaz, content in her exam of the door and beginning to feel claustrophobic tried the door, shocked to learn it was locked from the outside.
“Shit, they must have used something to lock it on the outside.”
“I told you—”
“I checked it okay,” she said holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m not dumb.”
“No one ever thought you were dumb,” he countered, the sun setting outside the window, barely cresting the horizon, but still bathing him in light. “What time do you think it is?”
“It’s summer,” she replied. “Could be near ten or so.”
“No sun in the winter, all sun in the summer. My body still hasn’t adjusted to the long and short days,” he admitted.
“We also don’t have a consistent seventy-five degrees or whatever it is in LA.”
“Hey, can’t help it I was raised in the sunshine and happiness.”
“Violence and pollution.”
“That pollution is for temperature regulation,” he joked.
Having unburdened herself to him, she now appreciated the fighting, joking style he had in his banter. Similar to Hollywood in many ways. The guard needed to see what they’d seen, been who they were and do what they do. This past year or so, she had wasted enjoying a man for who he was, she couldn’t go back. Relive those moments and respond better. All she could do was move forward. Push on and hope they had a life to live where she could truly apologize.
“What are we going to do?” Topaz worry trickled through her mind that they weren’t going to get out of this. “The window isn’t that small, we could smash it and—”
Onyx pointed to the corner and she finally saw why he wasn’t taking the second easiest route. Yellow cord, could be a fake, could be real. Either way, neither of them were in the mood to find out.
“What if we tossed something from the other side of the cabin through the window?” she asked.
Onyx cut his eyes to her.
“What?” she asked.
“I wasn’t a quarterback in high school,” he said. A bit of sting in his words.
“Never said you were, but hell even I can hit the broad side of a barn,” she reasoned holding her hand up by the window.
“And the blow back?”
“See now, you’re just being practical,” she mocked.
“Look, I’m not about to sit here and wait.” Onyx moved around the cabin. Four walls, the room no more than fifteen feet by ten and no way to guard against an explosion. The cord may not be real, but that didn’t mean they should press their luck. “They must have secured this cabin before they took us. I didn’t hear them doing any of it. Did you hear them when they came back? Moving things? Disarming it?”
“They were outside for longer than I expected?” Hopelessness washed over her because they couldn’t leave and there was a good chance when they came back what happened before would repeat. Already lack of water shown on Onyx’s cracked lips and ashen skin with no supplies around to mend him. The cut on his head had reopened, but the blood had finally clotted. His left eye had swollen, not to the point of vision loss, but enough to make the lid puff out past his eyebrow. Unable to take in his injuries, she looked out the window and saw they were in the middle of a forest. No cabins or houses around them, at least none she could see as the sun crested behind the pines and a plume of dust floated in the distance.
“Someone’s coming,” she said and Onyx stood behind her, the heat of his body helping warm the ice of fear running through her.
“We’ll have to fight our way out of here?” Onyx tipped her chin up and turned her toward him. “Do you have it in you?”
“Like I said, I’m not that scared girl anymore.”
“You didn’t sound scared in the story you told me,” he said. “Overpowered, that’s not the same.”
She pushed up on her toes, closing the gap between him, no longer able to help herself. This wasn’t the way she wanted it, trapped, beaten, but she feared she may never get the chance to be with him and if she was about to die, she needed the taste of him on her lips. Heart beating wildly as her lips met his, the kiss went long and deep, but not hard. His body was too bruised and damaged for her to push on a physically broken man. Instead, the sensual caress sent her careening over the edge as he wrapped his arms around her, his tongue dangerously invading more than her mouth as they fused together in a single blissful moment that she wanted to freeze because it couldn’t last.
Topaz felt safe for the first time in forever. Standing in Onyx’s arms, the attraction she had suppressed for a year tripled in those few precious moments before the rumble of the diesel engine truck silenced outside their explosive laden prison.
Strength would be Onyx’s way to get out of this. Staring down into Topaz’s eyes, he saw hope. Belief in him in a way he’d never known. She’d tasted so sweet and the hunger inside him grew for the woman he’d only wanted to be civil with. Her body, yes he’d wanted, but not beyond any other woman’s. Not until this very moment and it wasn’t because it
