His arms closed around her. She felt the rumble of his breath, the steady drum of his heart against her spine.
"Better?" His voice was low, close to her ear.
"Yes."
They sat like that for a while, watching the fire. His hands rested on her stomach, fingers spread wide, palms warm through the layers of wool. Verity leaned back into him, letting his heat seep deeper. The cave's chill still nipped at her edges, but here, pressed against the solid wall of his body, it dulled to something bearable.
"You know," she said, "I read something once. In a military field manual, I think. Or perhaps it was a healer's treatise on exposure injuries." She tilted her head back against his shoulder. "The recommended treatment for severe cold was skin-to-skin contact. Something about heat transfer being more efficient without barriers."
His chest moved against her back. "Is that so."
"Apparently the body loses a significant amount of warmth through fabric. Even wool. Something about air pockets andmoisture retention." She was aware that her voice had taken on the slightly too-casual tone of someone constructing an argument. "It was quite detailed. There were diagrams."
"Diagrams."
"Very thorough ones."
"Verity." His voice was amused. "Are you citing academic sources to get me to undress you?"
"I am citing academic sources to suggest a medically sound approach to our current situation." She kept her voice prim. "The fact that it would require undressing is incidental."
"Incidental."
"Entirely."
His hands moved to the hem of her tunic, and he pulled the garment over her head. The cold air hit her skin immediately, raising gooseflesh across her arms and shoulders, but his hands were there before she could shiver, spreading warmth across her stomach, her ribs, the undersides of her breasts.
"The diagrams," he said against her ear. "Did they specify positioning?"
"Several variations." She was having difficulty maintaining her scholarly tone. His thumbs had found her nipples, already peaked from the cold, and were tracing slow circles that made her breath catch. "The most efficient involved maximum surface contact."
He pulled her back against him, and she felt the hard length of him through his trousers, pressing against the curve of her backside. "Like this?"
"There are still barriers."
"There are." His hands left her breasts, moving to the laces of her trousers. "We should address that."
She lifted her hips to help him work the fabric down. The ground cloth was rough against her bare skin, but his handswere rougher, and warmer, and she found she did not care about the ground cloth at all.
He stripped her efficiently, each layer removed and set aside. When she was bare, he turned her in his arms so she faced him, her knees bracketing his hips, her hands braced on his shoulders.
"Your turn," she said.
He pulled his tunic over his head. The firelight caught the planes of his chest, the scars that mapped his history, the dark hair that trailed down his stomach. She had seen him before, touched him before, but here in the cave with the storm raging outside, he looked different. Elemental. Like something the mountain had made.
She helped with his trousers, her fingers clumsy with cold. When he was bare beneath her, she pressed herself against him, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, the length of him trapped between their bodies.
The heat was immediate and overwhelming. She gasped against his throat.
"Better?" His hands spread across her back, pulling her closer.
"The treatise was right."
His mouth found hers, the kiss deep and unhurried, his tusks pressing against her cheeks as his hands roamed her back, fingers digging into the soft flesh at her hips, pulling her down harder against him. The ridges along its shaft pulsed faintly against her belly, a promise of friction she already knew by heart.
Verity shifted, grinding against him, the slickness between her thighs spreading as her body responded. The cave's chill nipped at her exposed skin, but where they touched, it was fire, his skin fever-hot, orc blood running like molten iron.
She broke the kiss to breathe, her forehead against his, and felt the low rumble start in his chest, vibrating through her breasts where they pressed heavy against him.
