“Good! Really great! And extremely strong. I don’t really understand why, but I would never lose you if you were in…”
“Smelling distance?”
“Exactly. So if we’re not lighting a fire tonight, we’re…” He looked at the bed.
“Oh hell no!” she said.
“No funny business! But my wolf is extremely warm.”
Her jaw dropped for the second time in this conversation. “You want me to get in bed with a wolf.”
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s actually a good thing. When you’re too cold to shake, that’s when the real trouble starts.”
“Great! Let’s not go there.”
“Not the wolf,” she whispered. She could not get into bed with a carnivore.
“Just me? I will be a perfect gentleman.”
“Gentlemanwolf.”
“Exactly.”
He started picking up around the cabin, undoing her elaborate system of defense that lasted for all of two seconds, and put the quilt back on the bed. It took her all that time to get her feet moving, and she sat on the bed. She pulled off her boots and wiggled her toes, afraid of what she would find, but there was only a little whitening around the edges, the smallest start to frostbite. She dove beneath the quilts and hissed at the iciness.
He lay down next to her, slowly and deliberately. He made no other moves until he finally said, “You’re shaking the bed.”
His muscular arms came around her as he rolled her into him and trapped her feet between his.
He was warm. It was horrifically unfair. He’d been on the edge of hypothermia, and all he had to do was change forms, and he was fine.
He rubbed a hand up and down her back, and she realized he had a scent too, the dregs of a sophisticated cologne that warmed his skin with just the hint of wild mountains beneath it. She melted.
Do not mistake a heat source for your soulmate,she told herself firmly as she drifted off.
5
He was drowning in roses, and he never wanted to smell anything else again. She was perfect in his arms, the lithe, long lines of her slotting against him like she was made for him. He never wanted to leave this bed.
He also knew he was going to have to, and soon. The morning light filtering through the one intact window was still far dimmer than it should have been. Snow was still falling, but the gale-force winds had died off in the early hours of the morning. It was insanely cold in the cabin, possibly more frigid than the night before. Maybe that was because some of him was warm, but every breath hurt his lungs. He could shift again, but she would stay exposed and in trouble, so they had to get a fire going. Hunger was also becoming a deep, insistent drum in the background of all of his thoughts. It was dangerous for a shifter to get this hungry.
She opened her eyes, and he met her blue gaze. In the dim of the cabin, it seemed to be the most intense color in his life. He hadn’t even sensed she had woken. He also never wanted to move again.
“Good morning,” she said, looking flushed and smiling, like they’d had a much more fun night than they did. He wished it were true. His own reaction to her surprised him, starting with that smell.
The smile faltered, and he quickly said, “Good morning.”
She shivered and burrowed into him. “We didn’t freeze to death.”
He blinked. “Were you worried about that?”
She shrugged. “I mean, not once we found the cabin, but depending on the weather…”
“I could have shifted.”
“No! It’s okay,” she said sharply and then forced a smile. “It’s okay.”
