Closing the space between them, he looped his armaround her waist. He barely registered her thighs brushing against his. The cold was numbing his legs, and his feet were aching, but Vanessa was beaming up at him like she’d finished climbing Everest. He’d stay in the water forever if it meant keeping that smile on her face.
“You’re incredible,” he yelled so she could hear him over the noise of the waves.
“Incredibly reckless,” she replied with a laugh.
“Sometimes.” He tugged her closer, wrapping her legs around his waist so she was anchored to him.
“Incredibly stupid.” She draped her arms around his shoulders.
“Never,” he told her immediately.
She met his stare, like she hadn’t expected his vehemence. Then she lowered her gaze. “Incredibly brave?” Her tone was questioning, not a statement as the others had been.
“Always,” he hummed against her cheek. He hadn’t meant to say more than that, but when she tilted her head and stared up at him, eyes bright with relief, he let the rest slip out in a quiet murmur. “My brave, smart, incredible girl.” He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him, but she hugged him closer, resting her chin on his shoulder.
A few more seconds passed, the ocean roaring around them. Her body stiffened, a violent shiver coursing through, and he nudged her chin back so he could see her face. Her lips were chalky blue, ghostly against the gleam of the snow-muted waves.
That was all the warning he needed. As much as he loved her smiling, he’d never risk her to hypothermia. He carried her slowly and carefully toward the shore.
“I-I’m s-so c-cold,” she stammered, teeth chattering so hard he worried she might bite her lip. The thought spurredhim to move faster, even though his stiff muscles screamed in protest.
“I d-didn’t th-think it would b-bethisc-cold,” she managed.
He let out a short, incredulous laugh. That was one hell of an understatement. The Pacific Northwest wasn’t known for its warmth. In February or any month. Hell, if his balls shrank any more, they’d retreat into his spine.
“This isn’t exactly Hawaii, princess.”
She punched him half-heartedly in the shoulder, and burrowed her face against his neck. “I r-read th-that cold dips help you s-sleep b-better and l-live longer.”
When a tremor wracked her entire body, he picked up his pace across the sand, snow swirling around them.
“What you said about cold dips is true. They clear your head. Strip everything away leaving only what really matters.” Like his feelings for her. They now had to be so painfully obvious he half-expected emoji hearts to pulse out of his damn eye sockets. He’d be shocked if she hadn’t already figured it out.
“Y-you’ve done cold dips before?”
“A few times.” He didn’t tell her that it had begun as self-punishment. That he’d spent years brutalizing himself as a kind of penance. Punishing his body at the gym, in the ring, at the tattoo parlor, in the prison’s courtyard, chasing some sense of atonement.
But the first time he’d plunged beneath the sea’s frigid waters, it had been more like a baptism. Instead of castigation, he’d found renewal, like he’d been peeled down to his rawest, most exposed form. When the blood rushed back to his extremities after that first dip, he’d had a sense of resurgence. Then he’d felt unworthy again and still desperate for more.
He’d never experienced anything like it before. Or since. Until her.
Deciding to deal with their discarded clothing in the morning, he headed straight for the cottage. What she needed was to warm up, and fast.
Cutting around the deck to the side of the cottage, he fought his rising panic over how her entire body shuddered with cold. “Almost there,” he murmured, then unlatched the barn-style door, tugging it wide, to reveal a shower on the other side.
Slowly, he set her on her feet, but she curled against him, wrapping her shivering arms around his torso. He twisted the shower’s jets to hot, then guided her under the stream. When the rain-shower head he installed poured a wide flow over her head, she closed her eyes and sighed, tipping her face up to the water.
The sound melted something in his heart.
As the water continued to heat, she gradually peeled herself off him.
Standing at the edge, water streaming off his shoulder, he took a moment to admire her. Stripped nearly bare like this, her beauty was on full display. Her long, toned body called to him, every curve stirring something deep and urgent. Heat surged through him. He’d never warmed up faster from a cold dip.
After a minute, her shivering subsided to a tremble, and she opened her eyes. Water droplets clung to her lashes, and her soaked hair stuck to her shoulders. “You have an outdoor shower?”
She truly never did say what he expected.
“Outdoor and indoor. It connects to the inside. I don’t like tracking sand into the house. I built two entrances, so I can rinse off before coming in.”
