We stumble back into the cabin, two drowned rats dragging mud across the floorboards.
The door slams shut, sealing out the roar of the storm, but the silence inside is louder. It’s pressurized. The air feels thick, charged with enough static electricity to jump-start a dead battery.
I’m shivering. It’s a violent, rattling tremor that starts in my core and radiates out to my fingers. Being wet in a drafty cabin with the temperature dropping is a recipe for hypothermia, but the cold is only half the problem.
The other half is the heat radiating off the man standing two feet away from me.
Jax is stripping off his boots. He moves with a jerky, agitated rhythm, kicking the heavy leather into the corner. He’s soaked. His jeans cling to his thighs like a second skin, dark with water and grease from the generator. His chest is bare, slick with rain, rising and falling in a tempo that is too fast for a resting heart rate.
I hug myself, trying to contain the shaking. "Well. That's fixed. At least we won't die in the dark."
I try to force a laugh to break the tension. It comes out as a wet, choking sound.
Jax ignores the attempt. He doesn't even look at me. He stalks across the room to the wooden crate nailed to the wall—his makeshift linen closet—and rips out a towel. It’s the only one left. The others are draped over the chairs near the stove from earlier, steaming and smelling of wet wool.
He turns to me. The look in his eyes is feral. The gold is burning so bright it looks radioactive in the low light.
"Come here," he growls.
"I can air dry," I say, backing up until my calves hit the edge of the mattress. "I just need to stand near the stove for like, twenty minutes, and I’ll be fine?—"
He closes the distance in one stride.
He drops the heavy terrycloth over my head, extinguishing the world.
"Shut up, Miranda."
His hands clamp onto my skull through the towel. He starts to rub. It’s not the gentle, salon-style drying I’m used to. It’s rough. Efficient. Like he’s trying to scrub the rain—and the memory of what happened under the cabin—right out of my hair.
My head rocks back and forth with the force of it.
"You're going to rip my scalp off," I mumble into the fabric, trying to keep the mood light. Trying to pretend that he didn't just pin me against a pylon and smell me like I was the last meal on earth. "Is this the deluxe spa package? Because I’d like to speak to a manager about the technique."
"You're freezing," he grates out. "You're vibrating so hard I can hear your teeth rattling."
He rubs harder, the friction generating heat against my scalp. I stand there, paralyzed, letting him manhandle me becausefighting him would require energy reserves I don't have. And because... god help me, it feels grounding.
Then, the rhythm changes.
The frantic scrubbing slows. His hands stop moving back and forth. They just... hold. His fingers tighten on the nape of my neck, the towel bunching in his fists. He pulls the fabric back, draping it around my shoulders like a cape, exposing my face.
He’s looking down at me. Water drips from the ends of his hair, landing on my nose.
We are too close. My chest is inches from his. I feel the heat coming off him in waves, a blast furnace combating the chill in my bones.
"Better?" he asks. His voice is a low rumble, deeper than usual.
"Physically? Yeah," I whisper. "Mentally? The jury's still out."
He doesn't step back. He just stares at me, his amber eyes tracking a droplet of water as it slides down my neck and disappears under the collar of the oversized raincoat I’m still wearing.
"You talk too much," he murmurs.
"It’s a nervous habit. Silence gives my brain too much time to think about how screwed we are."
"Is that what you're doing?" He lifts a hand, his knuckles grazing my cheek. "Thinking?"
I stop breathing. The contact sends a jolt through my nervous system that really has nothing to do with the cold. His skin is rough, calloused from the axe and the ropes, but his touch is terrifyingly gentle.
