“I couldn’t get your bedroll—” His eyes grew when he glanced back at her. “Your lips are blue.”
“No shit?” she tried to say, but her words were broken by the clack of her teeth.
“We’ll have to share,” he said.
He started to move beneath the covers, but she stopped him.
“Not with those wet clothes you’re not.”
With a bashful tilt of his eyes, he shed his clothes down to his underwear, which were mostly dry, and got beneath the blankets with her.
Westie felt some reprieve from the cold when she saw Alistair without his shirt. The skin of his chest was smooth on top of layers of muscle, far more than she remembered from when they were kids. He was built much better than she’d imagined in her dreams where he was scantily clothed.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“What? I wasn’t smiling,” she said, clamping her lips together.
Alistair’s teeth chattered when his skin touched hers. His shivering moved the blanket off her shoulders, and she huddled closer to steal his heat.
“Your skin is freezing!” he said.
He wrapped his arms around her without permission, without thought. She knew it was out of concern rather than an excuse to touch her while her clothes were off.
His skin was hot like fever against hers, almost painfully so, but each time she tried to pull away he gripped her tighter, winding his limbs with hers like two trees that had grown together until becoming one. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, but still he held her.
Her eyes closed as her body warmed, exhaustion taking over.
Sleep had just crept over her when she felt the tips of Alistair’s fingers move across her back. Her eyes opened to the wall of his chest, panic and dizziness making her head float. It was a different kind of touch than what she knew from him. And though his fingers remained only on her back, this particular touch she felt all over.
She looked at his face. His eyes met hers, blue and illuminated against the grayness around them. Being there alone with Alistair in the woods, she realized she’d wasted their years together, avoiding her true feelings. If the loss of her family and Alistair’s near death had taught her anything, it was that time with loved ones moved faster than wild horses burning the breeze.
His pupils dilated when she reached out to him. With two snaps she undid his mask and pulled it off. Stubble dotted his jaw around the silver map of scars. Everything seemed to stop. Leaves paused on their way to the ground, birds silenced. It was as though the world held its breath.
She moved to kiss his scars, but he recoiled before her lips could touch them. Fear wrinkled the skin between his eyes. The fold smoothed in an instant.
She pulled back, wondering what she’d done wrong. They’d kissed before, so why in blazes . . .
Then it hit her. She’d tried to kiss his scars. Last time anyone had put their mouth to his cheek, it was to eat his flesh.
“Balls,” she cursed. She leaned away from him, put her hand to her mouth, and talked between her fingers. “I’m so stupid. I should’ve known—”
He put his finger to her mouth to keep her quiet.
She pressed her lips together, tried really hard, but just couldn’t do it. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, don’t you?” she said.
He took her hand, put her palm against his cheek, and nodded. She ran her finger along the raised lines of his scars, read his heartbreaking story down to his neck, and stopped when she reached his breastbone. His body quivered beneath her touch. She felt the bomp-bomp of his heart racing against her own, both rushing to the finish line to connect to each other once more. She breathed him in, the sweat, the rain.
Leaning forward, she put her lips to his chest, tasted the salt of his skin. His breathing became more labored, and his muscles began to twitch.
A confidence like nothing she’d known prior to that moment led her actions. She let her hands slip down to his narrow waist, where she grasped his hips and pulled him toward her. She smiled when she felt the evidence of him wanting her too.
He pressed against her, none too gently. She didn’t want gentle. She wanted the anguish that had been building up inside her for so long to be decimated. His hands moved across her skin and knew exactly where to touch. Each perfect landing made her body shiver.