“Not yet. But I don’t want to risk it. Can you put the blanket around me, too?”
He loosened the straps that bound the travel blanket to his backpack and carefully wrapped it about her shoulders. “Now get inside it with me,” she said. “Like before. Put your arm around me again.”
He did as she asked, pulling her against him and covering them both with the blanket.
It would have helped if the blanket was bigger, but there was no help for that. They were lucky to have anything at all to warm themselves. “Better?”
She shifted her head until she was looking at him. He could feel her gaze more than see it, could feel strands of her hair brush up against his face as she leaned forward until her forehead was resting against his. “A little.”
He felt her adjust her position slightly, turning toward him. Then her fingers were fumbling at the front of his shirt, working at the buttons, loosening them. He felt a moment of panic, thinking that he needed to stop this, but not wanting to. He tried to think what to say. “Phryne, I don’t …”
“Shhhh,” she said at once. “Don’t say anything. Keep watch for that cat and let me do this.”
When she had all the buttons undone, she slipped her hands inside and pressed them against his skin. They were so cold that he jumped in spite of himself, shivering as they moved from one warm place to the next.
“Much better,” she murmured. “Am I too cold for you?”
He didn’t trust himself to answer, so he simply shook his head no. He closed his eyes as her hands moved around to his back. Pressing harder.
“I’m getting warmer already,” she said, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Here, let’s try this.”
Her hands slipped out again, and he could feel her moving against him once more.
Cocooned by the darkness, he waited to see what she was doing. Then, abruptly, she took hold of his wrists and pulled his hands inside her now open blouse and held them there.
He gasped in shock. “Phryne, this isn’t …”
“Don’t talk,” she said again. “Don’t say anything. Just leave your hands where they are.”
Then she slipped her own hands back inside his shirtfront and moved them up and down his sides.
“Listen to me, Pan. I don’t know what tomorrow or the next day or the next is going to be like, but I know about tonight. So just do what I tell you. I promise it won’t hurt.”
He was not surprised at all when he discovered that she was right.
WHEN PANTERRA QU WOKE THE FOLLOWING morning, it took him a minute to realize that he was alone. He was still rolled up in the blanket, cradling his head on one arm as he looked out from his prone position at the shadowy forms of the trees in the predawn light. Everything was very still, but he could smell the woods and the damp in the air, and when he glanced at the slowly lightening sky he saw a mix of heavy clouds and mist dropped down so low they scraped the treetops. He was warm and drowsy and filled with a sense of happiness and contentment he found hard to believe.
But when he reached back for Phryne, he discovered she was gone and jerked upright at once, the mood broken. He didn’t see her anywhere at first and cast this way and that, trying to make her out through the dimness and the shadows. He dropped the blanket, crawled from beneath their makeshift shelter, and climbed to his feet, ready to go looking.
Then he spied her, well off to one side, sitting quietly on a fallen trunk and looking off into the distance toward which they had been traveling the day before, so still she might have been a part of the forest. He watched her for a moment, waiting to see if she would notice him. When she didn’t, he looked down at himself and, feeling foolish, quickly pulled on his boots and clothing. When that was done and she still didn’t seem to have noticed him, he began rolling up the rumpled blanket so he could strap it to his backpack.
“I thought you might be planning to sleep the day away,” she said suddenly.
He glanced up from his work and saw her looking at him. By now, he was vaguely irritated with her—first, for leaving him alone, and second, for acting so nonchalant about everything. The way she was speaking to him made it sound as if nothing at all of what he so vividly remembered had even happened.
“I didn’t know you were awake. In fact, when I didn’t find you next to me, I thought you might have gone somewhere.”
“Gone somewhere?” She laughed and brushed back her hair with both hands. “Where would I go?”
She rose from her log, walked over to him, and knelt close. “Did you think I might leave you? Is that what you’re saying?”
He shrugged. “No, I guess I didn’t think that.”
She reached up and touched his cheek and then leaned in to kiss him. “You are a terrible liar, Panterra Qu. That is exactly what you thought. But I forgive you.”