There was nothing very sexy about it. They’d both donned sweatpants and shirts to try to get warm. He quickly zipped his bag to hers, duck-walking all the way around the shivering woman to create a large double sleeping bag. He left his side open just enough to slide in. His legs brushed hers as he did, but there was no helping it.
He got settled more or less, lying on his back, stiff and still cold. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you for not liking this. We haven’t known each other that long.”
“It’s not that.” She sat up and pulled a green hairpin from her hair, and the waves fell around her like a butterscotch waterfall.
Wolf’s breath escaped all at once and every thought in his head ground to a halt. He’d been wanting to see her hair down ever since he’d met her, which yes, was weird, but he chalked it up to curiosity and an appreciation of natural beauty. Nothing personal about it. Except now he knew better, and especially since that kiss. Whatever was brewing between them wasverypersonal.
Her hair was longer than he’d guessed, and he’d guessed long. It fell, all waves and gentle curls, past her shoulders and halfway down her upper arms. And as she shook it gently, freeing it from its daytime clusters, she said, “Shoot, after that kiss earlier, I’m not sure I trustme.”
He turned his head toward her sharply, not sure he’d heard her right.
“We’ll just have to do the best we can, though.”
Well, what the hell didthatmean?
She rolled toward him and snuggled right up close, resting her head on his chest, draping her arm across his waist, with her legs pressed to his for warmth. He closed his left arm loosely around her shoulders, because with her lying in its crook, there wasn’t much else he could do with it. He prayed he wouldn’t wind up poking her with an erection before dawn and laid perfectly still.
After a few moments, she stopped shivering and released a long, heavy sigh, with a delicate snore at the end. He laughed in spite of himself, but kept it silent and hoped the movement of his chest wouldn’t wake her.
It didn’t. She was sound asleep, and he finally relaxed. As soon as he did, her warmth suffused him, and he found he wasn’t cold anymore. She snuggled a little closer, and he just let it happen. All that glorious hair was on his chest and tickling his chin, and he resented the shirt he’d put on.
Camellia in his arms felt better than anything had in a long time—not counting the kisses, which had felt like pure fire.
By the time morning came, they were tangled around each other like a pair of spider monkeys, but warm, cozy, comfy. She had a leg over one of his and under the other, and he was hugging her like she’d float away if he let go. Dang, he didn’t want to disengage his limbs from hers and get out of their nest to face the chilly morning, but he figured it best he do so before she woke up.
Then she did, and it was too late. She lifted her head off his chest, looked up into his face from within that mass of glorious hair, and beamed him a smile. “Guess we stayed warm enough.”
“Downright snug,” he replied, but he couldn’t roll over and get out, because she was still mostly on top of him—and his blood was heading to places he didn’t need it to be heading just then.
“Okay, easing out now,” he said. He lifted her shoulders off his chest so he could slide out from under her.
She made a sad noise, but she let him go. He rolled out, then turned around, looking for the clothes he’d left close by for quick dressing.
“Oh, wait!” Camellia vanished under the covers entirely. When she came out, she handed him his clothes, which had been a neatly folded stack and now were a wadded-up bundle. “I grabbed them when I got up to pee,” she said. “Figured they’d be nice and warm to put on.”
He must have slept through that. It worried him that he didn’t remember.
He took the bundle from her, and then she vanished beneath the sleeping bags again. “Go ahead and dress,” she called, her voice muffled. “I won’t peek.”
He got dressed, and she was right, the clothes were much warmer than they’d have been had they sat out in the tent all night. When she popped out from the sleeping bags again, she came all the way out, wearing fresh jeans and a T-shirt with an unzipped hoodie over it. She sat on top of their sleeping bags and pulled on a pair of socks, then her hiking boots. And then she said, “So? Was that as hard for you as it was for me?”
He pretended not to understand what she was getting at, because he wasn’t sure he did. He knew what hethoughtshe meant, but that had to be wrong.
“What do you mean?” he asked, pulling on a jacket and moving the grocery bags off to one side of the tent. “Is the coffee in here?” He knelt and dug until he found a pound of ground roast.
She hadn’t replied, so he glanced her way to find her sitting there looking at him oddly. She wore a slight frown and had her head tilted to one side. But she didn’t say anything.
“You think there are still coals in the fire?” he asked.
“Huh,” she said. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
She shrugged. “The fire’ll be dead, but the little two-burner cooktop is out there, and we hooked up a fresh tank of propane, so go for it.”
“Cool.” He grabbed the coffeepot, which was a blue metal percolator with white spots. His mom’s kitchen had a shiny silver percolator that plugged in, and he figured this couldn’t be much different. He headed outside, uneasy. Clearly Camellia had wanted to talk about…what? Their kissing yesterday and then sleeping together without letting anything happen, he guessed. And if she thought for one second that had been harder for her than it had been for him, then she didn’t know much about the male anatomy.
He poured water from a jug into the coffeepot, guessed at the amount of grounds to put into the basket, popped on the lid, and set it on the burner. Easy. He figured he’d let it brew until the color looked right in the clear glass bubble on top. The one at home timed itself.
