But I still don’t. Because underneath all my righteous anger and ideological opposition, there’s a part of my brain that’s cataloging all the details... the way his body radiates heat like a personal furnace. The strength in the huge arm around my waist. How good he smells up close. How safe I feel wrapped up in him despite everything.
Slowly, cautiously, I tilt my head back to look at him.
Bad idea.
Terrible idea.
His face is right there. Inches away. Those blue eyes are watching me with an intensity that makes my stomach flip. His hair is messy from sleep, sticking up in ways that make him look even hotter. He doesn’t look like a man who signs off on environmental destruction, just a guy who happens to wake up unfairly attractive.
“Err,” I whisper, because apparently my vocabulary has been reduced to single syllables.
His thumb moves. Just barely. A slow stroke across my hip bone.
I shiver.
Not from cold.
Definitely not from cold.
The air feels charged. We’re talking right before a lightning strike type of charged.
His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second before returning to my eyes.
Kiss me.
Please!
The thoughts appear unbidden and I want to shove them back into whatever rebellious corner of my mind produced them.
Youcannotkiss the man who poisons villages.
I finally pull away, untangling our limbs.
The separation feels like a loss somehow.
Which is ridiculous.
You can’t miss something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
He sits up quickly as well, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up even more. “I’ll build up the fire.”
I practically flee to the bathroom. The cold hits me the second I leave the fireplace’s radius. Like walking into a freezer.
The bathroom itself is absolutely arctic, my breath misting in the air, and I realize I’ve just traded one kind of discomfort for another.
I spot one of the water containers I filled with melted snow yesterday sitting on the counter.
Well, at least it’s not frozen solid.
Even so, the water is ice cold when I splash it on my face. It does nothing to calm my racing heart or cool the heat flooding through my body.
I stare at my reflection. My hair is a disaster. My cheeks are flushed. My lips are slightly swollen from being pressed against his neck for who knows how long.
Get it together.
You woke up cuddling.
People cuddle accidentally all the time in survival situations.
