Megan Hart - An Erotic Collection Volume 2

Thunder in the snow.

The noise came first, followed a bare second later by the bright white flash of lightning, fierce enough to outline the entire backyard. Blinking, Lilly paused, match in hand, to stare through the glass.

Weird.

With the lights on in the kitchen, all she could see was her reflection, two dark eyes in a pale face surrounded by a mass of dark curls, and beyond that, the cascading sheet of snow coming down as fast and thick as rain. The blizzard had been going on since that morning.

The match burned her fingers and with a hiss she blew it out and dropped it in the sink. Lilly stuck her fingertip in her mouth, sucking gently at the sting, as another boom rattled the window. A second later, another flash of light, so bright this time it seared her eyes and left her blinking away spots.

Wasn’t the lightning supposed to come first?

She gripped the sink’s metal edge, leaning forward to look out the kitchen window but unable to get close enough to press her face to the glass. She could hear the shush-shush of the snow against the house. Could feel the chill seeping through the glass. No more thunder, no more lightning. Lilly pushed back from the counter and lit another match, this time managing to get the shamash , the helper candle, lit before the match burned too low.

She said the blessings and used the shamash to light the other one for the first night of Hanukkah. Then she stepped back to admire the menorah of silver and brass. Her grandmother Lillian had given it to her. It was the most beautiful thing Lilly owned.

She set it in the kitchen window because it had no curtains and was close to the sink, which therefore meant nothing would be likely to catch on fire. Lilly had learned that lesson already, in her old apartment. Sure, by the time the super-hot fireman had arrived she’d managed to put out the flames and clear out most of the smoke, and yes, she’d gained a date out of it, but she didn’t want anything like that happening here in her new house.

Her house, hers alone. The one she’d bought and paid for all on her own, and in which she was spending her very first holiday.

Alone.

Hugging herself, Lilly stepped back to admire the tiny kitchen. Her appliances weren’t old enough to be retro-chic, they were just old, and the cabinets and linoleum would definitely need to be replaced, but all that would have to wait. For now, she was just happy to be making the mortgage payments by herself.

She’d lit that menorah every year since her grandma had given it to her just before dying. Five years. It looked different in Lilly’s kitchen window than it had looked in any other place, and Lilly couldn’t stop the grin from teasing her mouth as she watched the flames flicker.

She turned out the lights to get the full effect. The candle flames reflecting in the kitchen window looked twice as beautiful, but she wanted to see them from outside. That was the whole point of putting the menorah in the window, to share the light with the world. Grandma Lillian had always said it was a mitzvah , a good deed, to share the beauty of Hanukkah candles with people outside who might not have menorahs of their own to light. According to Grandma Lillian, when the world was new everything had been light until the vessels of God’s love had been broken, scattering all the sparks across the Earth. Every mitzvah helped gather up a scattered spark and return it. Good deeds were lights in the darkness, each one helping to make the world brighter.

Lilly put her menorah in the window to share her light with the world outside, but she liked to look at it, too, in memory of Grandma Lillian. So, even though at least half a foot of snow had already fallen and it looked like they were going to get another six inches, Lilly opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto her tiny deck.

Right into half a foot of newly fallen snow, all the way up to her shins. Shoot, she ought to have taken the time to slide into a pair of boots, throw on a sweater, at least. Preparation was never her strong point-impulsiveness was Lilly’s forte. With a yelp, dancing in the snow, Lilly pulled the glass door closed behind her and braced herself against the wind.

Uh-oh, what if that weird lightning struck again while she was out here? Danny, her most recent ex, would’ve said it was just like her to get struck by lightning in her backyard in the middle of the blizzard. Well, screw Danny, Lilly thought, eyes squinted against the snow whipping at her face.

She hopped off the deck, meaning to cross the miniscule patch of grass she called a yard to stand in front of the kitchen window. Her ankles were already frozen, her feet numb, so when she suddenly slid she was already bracing herself to end up in a pile of snow.

Heat.

“Huh?” Lilly looked down at the bare circle of earth into which she’d stepped. The snow had…melted? The earth was squishy under her toes and in the faint light from the neighbor’s yard she could see small wisps of steam rising from the bare earth. Even the grass looked…burned?

“What the…?” Lilly stepped back, heart thudding, eyes blinking.

The circle, if she stood in the center, looked to be as wide as her arms stretched out fingertip to fingertip in all directions. Though the snow was still falling heavily from the sky, it melted as soon as it landed on the ground. But she wasn’t in the center, she was still on the edge, because in the center of the strange circle was a man.

A naked man.

Lilly looked immediately into the sky, bracing herself for bright lights, more booming thunder, maybe a tractor beam getting ready to suck her up into the mother ship and probe her ass. Nothing but black sky and more pelting snow. She looked at him again. He crouched on hands and knees, his naked back curved and pale and glittering. Yes, glittering, like Edward from Twilight, only there was no sunshine now and the sparkles faded as she watched.

“Whoa,” Lilly said, awed into less-than-eloquent speech. “Did you just transport here, or what?”

Danny always said Lilly spent too much time believing in the unbelievable, too much effort accepting the strange as ordinary. Well, screw Danny, she thought again. She didn’t step closer, though. Not without seeing the dude’s face, at least. He could have tentacles or something super freaky getting ready to suck out her brains.

Earlier, the thunder had rattled the windows in their frames and pushed at her eardrums. Now outside with nothing between her and the sound, the boom pushed Lilly to her knees. She clapped her hands over her eyes, expecting the light to come next, bracing herself to be fried like an egg by the blast. Nothing came but another roll of noise, softer this time, still throbbing in her eardrums and in her stomach. She understood it this time, though. Words. She took her hands away from her face.

“No,” said the man in front of her, lifting his head.

Face-to-face, she could see he didn’t have tentacles or laser beams for eyes. If anything, he had an ordinary face, the kind designed to never get a second glance. In shadows it was hard to make out his features, but Lilly got a hint of dark brows, dark eyes, a curving mouth.

She was soaked and shuddering from cold, despite the freakish heat of the ground under her now muddy hands. All of this was too surreal, yet she heard herself say, “No what?”

“No, not transported,” the man said. He stood, tall, the sleet and snow parting around him, not even touching him. “Fallen.”

* * *

“So you…fell.” Lilly turned from the microwave with a mug of hot cocoa in her hand and set it on the table in front of him.

The man, still naked beneath the afghan Grandma Lillian had knitted, looked curiously at the mug, then her. “Yes.”