Angel from Montgomery: Part 3

“A reproducible experiment."

Continued from Angel from Montgomery: Part 2

Created by author with Midjourney

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Embers still glow among the white ashes in the woodstove, made dimmer as the pale light of morning trickles into the tiny cabin. Felix’s eyes crack open. With surprise, he finds that his view is not of the treetops to the East, visible from the window of his loft, but of the Wyoming Range to the West, still gray in the morning light. And he is on the couch, not his bed. Confused, he sits up and looks around. Images of the night before bubble into his consciousness: a dark-haired woman with rope held between cunning fingers, hard nipples pressing through cotton fabric, smooth skin flickering in the firelight. It couldn’t have been real, a suspicion seemingly confirmed by the lack of evidence around him. But the quiet satisfaction within him tells a different story. A kind of satisfaction he hasn’t known in years.

Felix rubs his eyes, then jerks his hands back at a sudden spike of pain. His wrists are rubbed raw, exposing new pink flesh. It wasn’t a dream. The angel was real. His angel. He stares at his wounds, the knowledge flowing over him in a warm lavender tide, his heart drumming a golden tattoo at the memory. He caresses the raw skin lovingly as though the flesh beneath his fingers is hers. He is marked by her, the woman who freed him from himself. A woman who had liberated him by making him her captive. A woman…nowhere to be found, he realizes, looking around as though she might appear from behind the staircase or under the coffee table. Maybe I could have hallucinated all of it, he thinks, like stigmata. This seems a more likely explanation than a strange woman wandering up to his cabin naked, eating his stew, then tying him up and fucking him. Slowly, he rises, feeling the same rawness in his ankles. It all seems far too good to be true - so much more than he deserved, and more than any woman should have been willing to give, especially a stranger. Felix is struck by a need to know for certain. Either his angel is upstairs in his bed, or she left, or she was never here. He takes a deep breath. Tentatively, he mounts the spiral staircase. If she is here, she’s going to think I’m a creep, he tells himself, and almost turns back. But doesn’t. Like a coin rolling inexorably to the center of one of those Whirl-a-Wish vortexes he’d seen at the mall as a child, he is drawn, round and round, up the spiral stairs to the woman he hopes desperately is more than just a fantasy. Peeking over the top of the stairs into the loft, he is met with a beautiful sight.

Long dark hair in disarray, slender fingers dangling over the edge of the bed, lies the petite form of his angel in repose. She stirs, turns over, sleepy eyes fluttering open to meet his. Dianne smiles through the tangle of hair obscuring her face and Felix can’t help but smile back.

“Sorry. I just…I had to make sure this wasn’t all a dream,” he says. Dianne pushes her hair out of her face and stretches under the covers like a cat in a sunbeam. “Really sorry to bother you,” he whispers, turning away to begin his descent.

“Don’t,” murmurs the dark-haired angel in his bed. “You don’t need to go.” Feeling foolish, Felix hesitates then continues his retreat, albeit slowly.

“No, I should, I’m sorry. I’ll see you when you’re up.”

“Stay,” Dianne says, reaching an arm out in his direction. Affection twangs his heart like a guitar string in a bossa nova melody. He hesitates.

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she says with some finality, pawing away the remainder of her hair to look at him. “Felix, come here.”

The command sends a little thrill up his spine. Yes, ma’am, he assents with delight. He makes his way to her, stooping a bit beneath the low ceiling. She catches his hand and tugs him down to the bed.