Chapter 16
Pav waited.
Somewhere in the trees beyond the overhang an owl called—two low notes that hung in the silence before the forest swallowed them. The fire crackled and spat, resin popping in the flames, sending up tiny showers of sparks that died in the frigid air.
“Turn around.” Harper had her arms wrapped around herself, the survival blanket clutched against her chest. Her face was flushed, and her eyes landed on him, then moved away with a speed that was almost violent.
Pav turned.
He stripped first because hesitation would make it awkward.
Fleece first, the fabric sopping with river water over his head. Thermal base layer next, peeled from his skin in one cold, clinging pull. He laid each piece across the flat rock he’d positioned near the fire, close enough to steam but not scorch.
The cold hit his bare chest and shoulders like a slap, every nerve firing at once. He unbuckled his holster and set his handgun on the rock beside his knee, grip angled toward his hand.
Boots next. The wet knots fought his stiff fingers as soft sounds reached him. Wet fabric peeling off skin. The dull slap of soaked clothing hitting rock. A sharp breath—involuntary, bitten off.
For half a second his brain blanked on the sound of Harper undressing.
He killed the thought before it took shape and kicked off his sodden boots and socks. Then he straightened and unbuckled his belt. Stripped his pants, the wet fabric dragging against his thighs, and hung them across the branch he’d wedged between two rocks over the fire. He kept his shorts on.
Woodsmoke drifted into his nostrils, sharp and resinous, mixing with the metallic smell of the river still clinging to his skin.
“Okay.” Her voice was steady in a way that sounded like effort.
When he turned to face the fire, Harper was sitting against the rock wall beneath the overhang, the survival blanket wrapped around her from chin to ankle.
The silver foil caught the firelight in dull flashes.
Her wet hair hung in dark strands, and the line of her collarbones was sharp in the shifting glow, shadowed at the hollow of her throat.
The blanket shifted, and a stretch of her bare leg caught the light.
He blinked, stared at the fire for a second.
When he looked back up, her gaze tracked across his chest and found the bruising—mottled purple and black spreading across his left side, the colors deep and livid in the shifting light.
Then moved to the scar on his left shoulder, the old surgical mess of puckered tissue that he’d stopped seeing years ago.
Lower, across his stomach, the ridged muscles tensed against the cold.
Then her gaze came back to his face.
Clinical assessment. She’s a doctor.
He checked the treeline once more before he sat. No voices or rotors. No dogs. Only wind and the river muttering below.
He sat down beside her, leaving a distance between them that was practical and entirely insufficient for what needed to happen next. She let go of one side of the blanket and he pulled it over his shoulders. The blanket stretched between them, barely covering both.
She was still shivering. Deep, bone-level tremors that rattled her jaw and shook the blanket. His body had started answering in kind, muscles jumping without permission.
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “This isn’t working.”
She flicked a sideways glance at him. Her teeth chattered, but her eyes were steady, her medic brain running calculations. “You’re right.”
“Sit here.” He spread his legs and nodded to the ground between them.
Her breath hitched, and she bit down on her lower lip.
“Mmm.” She shifted across the gap between them, into the space between his legs, her back to his chest.
He stilled at the first point of contact. This had been a practical suggestion only. His nervous system clearly hadn’t received the memo.
Cold and warm at once, the shock of another person’s skin touching him after years alone, her spine finding the center of his chest. She fit there far too easily.
He redirected his attention to the fire.
Then pulled the blanket around them both, reaching past her to tuck the edges, seal the gaps, and create the closed space the foil needed to do its work.
His arms came around her to hold the blanket shut, his forearms settling against her stomach—the most neutral surface available.
But neutral became impossible the second she settled against him. The muscles of her abdomen were tight, each tremor transferring through her body into his. His arms locked in place. All the alternative positions were worse.
He closed his eyes as heat built almost immediately. Their combined warmth reflected back from the foil, accumulating in layers until her violent quaking eased.
Her hair was wet against his chest, dark strands clinging to his skin. It smelled like river water and cold rock—and something underneath, a warmth that belonged to her alone.
Hell. He did not need to notice that.
The fire crackled and settled, the larger branches collapsing into a bed of embers that glowed deep orange.
Beyond the overhang, the forest was quiet except for the wind moving through the trees in long, low sighs.
Somewhere downslope, toward the river, a fox screamed—a single, raw sound that split the dark and disappeared.
Harper flinched. He tightened his arms automatically, a fractional increase in pressure, a reassurance. She didn’t protest.
Minutes passed.
He waited until her breathing slowed.
Finally.
Deep and even, in a rhythm that his own breathing matched without permission. Not sleep—he could tell the difference. But the first real stillness since the compound and everything that had come after.
Her weight rested against him.
The survival justification was fading. Their core temperatures were stabilizing, the violent tremors now reduced to occasional ripples that moved through her body and into his. The medical reason for contact was gone.
They were warm enough now. He should pull away, create distance.
The fire sputtered in the dark. The predawn sky beyond the trees was changing—the black softening to deep blue at the edges, the first suggestion of light bleeding through the canopy.
An owl called again, closer this time, answered by another deeper in the forest, the two voices finding each other across the cold.
Fatigue bled through him, and his chin dropped, bumping softly against the top of her head. A fraction of an inch. The barest gravitational pull, his body tipping toward hers. The closest he’d been to another human being in years.
He caught himself and lifted his head.
The light in the east kept coming, and Pav sat with his arms around a woman he’d known less than six hours.
Dawn would be here soon. The excuse had expired.
But he still didn’t move.