She looked up at him with her fathomless blue eyes and didn’t say anything.
He cleared his throat. “Or at least without three inches of insulation between us. Can you take it off inside there and push it out the opening for your face?”
She lifted one eyebrow even though her jaw was vibrating, which was impressive. She wormed around inside her mummy bag, but in the end, he had to unzip it about halfway for her to move her arms and legs enough to strip off the ski suit and push it out. She said, “Jeez, the sleeping bag is cold inside.”
He laid down in his unzipped bag and flipped the top over himself. “Okay, wiggle around in your sleeping bag until the zipper is over on this side so we can get the two of them zipped together as quickly. as we can.”
Dree writhed in her sleeping bag, turning the bag sideways. The side of her head was visible through the face-hole at the top, and her blond hair flipped around as she undulated. “Okay. I think I got it.”
The zipper scraped as she unzipped it, and Maxence stared at the top of the zipper, refusing to peep at what she must be wearing or not wearing inside the sleeping bag.
As soon as the end of the zipper came apart. Maxence grabbed the edges of her sleeping bag and fitted them against his, zipping the two sides of the bags together as fast as he could. Part of this was in self-preservation because the air flowing through the seams of the tent was sucking the heat out of him, but he also wanted Dree to get warm as soon as possible.
Part of his hurry was, indeed, practical concerns about hypothermia.
Part of his frantic pace was because he was starving to feel her soft form against his skin.
The zippers connected at the top, leaving only an oblong hole that had been their two face-openings. He reached through the hole into the chilly air and clicked the switch on the flashlight, leaving them in the bare, dimmest of light, just a glowing pinprick in the lamp. He aimed it at the back where the boxes were because the last thing he needed was his stupid silhouette splayed on the walls of the tent.
Maxence was wearing a cotton tee-shirt and form-fitting boxers, leaving his arms and legs bare.
Soft cotton touched his skin as Dree cuddled up to his chest, and her skin was as cold as porcelain against his and rattling with chill.
Maxence grabbed her and pressed her against his body, trying desperately to warm her up as quickly as possible.
Dree tucked her head under his chin and pulled her arms and legs in, and Maxence felt every inch of her soft pliable body twined around the hardness of his.
Dree said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get this cold. I just didn’t know how to stay any warmer.”
“Have you been this cold since we left the town?”
“I warmed up a little bit by the fire, but I was kind of joking to myself that I didn’t need to chew my supper because my teeth were chattering so much.”
“You need to tell somebody when you get this cold.”
“I was sitting as close to the campfire as I could without catching myself on fire. You put me in the warmest spot, and I was too cold to argue.”
Maxence wrapped his arms more tightly around her with one arm around the back of her shoulders and the other around her waist. The softness of her breasts was pushing against his chest, and he rubbed her back with his hand down to her slender waist. “We have to find a way to keep you warmer than this.”
Her breath brushed his throat as she sighed, relaxing against him.
All sorts of ways to warm her up occurred to Maxence, and he knew he couldn’t take advantage of any of them.
Dree’s hands slowly slid up his pectorals and rested on his collarbones, her arms folded against his sides.
Because the mummy bags were not meant to be zipped together the way ordinary, rectangular sleeping bags could be, the opening at the top was irregular. Half his head was sticking out into the darkness.
At the far end of the tent by their feet, the tent-flap door glowed orange from the still-lit campfire outside. Shadows occasionally moved across it as the other men walked around and finished up the evening chores.
At other times in his life, Maxence would have felt a thrill at the possibility of getting caught half-naked with a woman in his tent, their limbs intertwined.
Hell, at other times in his life, Maxence would have made sure to take advantage of the situation, although the women he liked probably would have zipped their sleeping bags together also fully intending to take advantage of it. He’d never been satisfied with mere consent from a woman. He liked sensual women who wanted him, too.
Dree shivered against his chest, and Maxence tightened his arms around her. His hand around her back trailed lower, over the cotton of her underwear to the lace at the top of her thigh. He ran his fingertips over the ruffle and tried not to think about the very thin, stretchy layers of cotton on her body that could be moved aside for his fingers, his tongue, and his cock.
She said, “Your skin is hot. You’re like the surface of the sun. Like, it almost hurts to touch you. You don’t have a fever, do you?”
Maxence chuckled. “No, Nurse Andrea Catherine, I don’t have a fever. I am genuinely concerned you might have hypothermia, though.”
