Valek #2
My head breaks the surface.
"IVY!" I snarl, dragging her up by the arm.
She surfaces beside me, gasping, her hair plastered to her face. The water is only waist-deep but the current is insistent, pulling at our clothes, ripping my jacket free from my shoulders. Her teeth are already chattering.
I grab her under the arms and haul her toward the bank, my boots sliding on the rocks, then the mud and gravel of the bank. My boots slip as I drag us both up it on my hands and knees, pulling her onto the grass before collapsing beside her on my back.
We lie there, soaked and gasping, sputtering water and staring at the starry sky through the trees.
Every inch of my body that hit rock or branch or river bottom is making itself violently known, and the chilly air is turning the river water soaking my clothes into a second skin of ice.
Ivy coughs beside me, spitting water.
"Val?"
"What."
"Do you still have your mask?"
I blink at the canopy above us. Water drips off a branch and lands directly in my left eye, which is still burning from the pepper spray she unloaded into my face.
Twice.
My hand drops to my waistband where I shoved the mask when she blinded me. The wolf mask is still wedged against my hip.
"Somehow," I say hoarsely.
"Good. I like it."
I stare at her in utter bewilderment, and she lifts her head off the grass to stare back at me. Her drenched thermal shirt is stuck to her body, every curve on display, and her coat is gone entirely. Lost to the river, I assume.
And she starts to laugh. Hard.
"You—" She gasps for air. "You look like a—a drowned—"
She can't finish. She's laughing too hard.
I stare at her.
Then I look down at myself.
My turtleneck is torn, hanging off one shoulder. My jacket is, of course, gone. My pants are tattered at both bloodied knees and there's a smear of mud and blood from my hip to my ribs. My nearly white hair is plastered all over my face.
I must look fucking stupid.
And now I'm laughing too, harsh barks, still sputtering water.
This is the most undignified moment of my entire life, and I have been arrested in several countries, and none of them were pleasant experiences.
Ivy rolls toward me, her laughter tapering into breathy hiccups as she props herself up on one elbow.
"So, Val." Her eyes are wild in the moonlight, pupils blown wide with the latent ferality still simmering beneath the surface. "Does this count as you catching me?"
I raise an eyebrow.
"Or did I catch you?"
I exhale through my nose. "Perhaps."
Her grin widens and she pushes her hair back, water dripping down her face and onto the grass. "And so the big bad wolf got taken down by a tiny omega with pepper spray and a duffel bag full of underwear."
"The pepper spray was cheating."
"Not if it wasn't against the rules."
She's right.
This little omega has outmaneuvered me at every turn since the moment she cracked me across the skull with a fire extinguisher, and the fact that I keep being surprised by it says more about me than it does about her.
"You caught me," I concede.
Her grin softens. "But you did save my life."
My lips curve slightly. "I suppose I did."
Her eyes drop to my mouth.
I don't move. I don't let myself, even as she lowers her mouth to mine.
She won.
The prize, if she wants it still, is hers alone.
Her lips are freezing, mine are numb, and we both taste like river water, the blood from where I bit my tongue, and the faintest trace of capsicum from the pepper spray she blasted into my face.
It's everything I ever dreamed it would be.
Her hand finds the side of my jaw and holds it there, her thumb pressing against the hinge of my bone, and the kiss deepens as I open my mouth, my tongue darting out to lick my blood off her lips.
She makes a soft sound against my mouth and my hand finally comes up to cradle the back of her skull, fingers threading through her wet, tangled hair.
The second kiss is warmer than the first.
The third is fire.
She bites my lower lip. I growl at her. She grins against my mouth and does it again, harder.
"Careful," I murmur.
"Or what?"
"This wolf might bite back."
She pulls back just far enough to look at me, her ocean eyes inches from mine, her swollen lips curved in a dare.
I catch her mouth and bite. Just enough to make her gasp and arch into me, her fingers curling in the ruined fabric of my turtleneck.
Her body presses flush against mine on the cold grass, every inch of her soaked and shivering and perfect, and I pull her closer with both arms until there's no space left between us.
My hand slides down the curve of her spine and settles at the small of her back, holding her against me while she kisses me like she's trying to eat me alive.
My other hand tangles deeper in her wet hair, tilting her head to change the angle, and she whimpers against my mouth.
"Val," she breathes.
I kiss the corner of her jaw. The sensitive skin below her ear. The column of her throat where her pulse is hammering, and her fingers dig into my shoulders as her head tips back.
"V-Val…"
I hum against her throat.
"I'm f-fucking freezing."
I stop.
Her teeth are chattering.
I pull back and look at her properly. Her skin is pale and covered in goosebumps, and she's shaking so hard her whole body vibrates against mine.
Still grinning, though, in spite of it all.
"Shit," I mutter, sitting up and pulling her with me.
She curls into my chest immediately, tucking her hands between our bodies. "S-sorry. I was t-trying to ignore it, but—"
"Don't apologize for fucking hypothermia."
I glance around the riverbank, swiping at my still-stinging eyes. A thick stand of pines about twenty feet upstream would block the wind. A rocky outcropping forms a shallow cave. There's plenty of dead wood scattered along the waterline from past floods.
"Did you happen to pack a tent in with your underwear?" I ask dryly.
"N-nope."
"Then I'll build a fire."
"You can d-do that?"
I look down at her. She's blinking up at me through wet eyelashes, her teeth clacking together.
"Ivy."
"Yeah?"
"I can do that."