"I'm not cold."
He frowns. The silver-streaked beard framing his mouth twitches. "You’re trembling."
"Because of you."
The words hang in the freezing air between us. The truth is sharp and undeniable. My independence has been my onlyarmor since I lost my father. When my father died, I learned a brutal lesson: the only person who will save you is yourself. Relying on someone else is a liability. Needing someone else is a death sentence.
I have survived alone for years. I chart my own flight paths. I maintain my own engines. I don't let men with dangerous eyes back me into corners.
But Santi Costa is not just a man. He is a fortress. He took charge when the helicopter went over the cliff. He stood guard all night. He just stared down a pack of wolves without blinking. And right before the wolves arrived, he pushed me against this wall and made me come so hard I saw stars, denying himself just to keep me safe and warm.
He thinks he can just be a stoic, unfeeling shadow and I will accept it. He thinks his emotional detachment is a shield.
I am tired of surviving without living.
I reach up and grab the thick lapels of his jacket. My fists twist into the canvas.
Santi goes still.
"Reese." My name on his lips is a warning.
"Shut up, Santi."
I pull him down and crash my mouth against his.
Teeth clash. Noses bump. It is not sweet, and it is not careful. I kiss him with all the pent-up frustration and desperate need burning through my blood. My tongue sweeps into his mouth, tasting the sharp flavor of black coffee from yesterday, adrenaline, and pure male dominance.
Santi freezes for one second. The breath goes out of him.
Then he moves.
A raw groan tears out of him. His hands drop from my face and grip my waist with bruising force. He lifts me off the frozen ground. My boots dangle in the air. He slams me back against the rough bark wall, the impact knocking the air from my lungs.
He devours my mouth. His tongue meets mine, dominant and ruthless. He kisses me like a man who hasn’t let himself feel in decades. His restraint fractures, and what bleeds through is something quiet and devastating.
My hands tangle in his hair. The strands are thick. I pull hard. He groans into my mouth, the sound rolling straight down my spine and pooling directly between my legs.
"I have you," he says against my lips. "Only me."
He doesn't ask. He doesn't negotiate. He states it as a permanent fact of the universe.
"I'm getting you out of this jacket," he says, his voice a lethal pulse against my skin. His hands fly to the zipper of my canvas jacket, the material that's kept me alive since the wreck. He opens it with a sharp metallic sound that echoes in the shelter. He finds my bra beneath the thermal—thin cotton that's a joke against the cold, but it's holding my breasts for him.
"Santi!" I scream his name, my voice raw with a need that eclipses the freezing air. I want him naked in the dirt. I want his thick, rigid cock stretching me wide until I can't breathe. I want to feel him bury himself so deep inside my pussy that he leaves a mark on my soul.
"Take it all off," I demand, breathless.
He drags my wool sweater up, pulling it over my head in one swift motion. The thermal shirt beneath follows. The freezing temperature of the shelter hits my bare skin, making my nipples pebble instantly into tight, aching points.
Santi stares at my chest. His eyes turn black. The stillness is gone. He looks at my heavy, curved breasts spilling over the cotton of my practical bra like they are religious artifacts.
"Beautiful," he whispers, the word raw. "Fucking perfect."
He tears his own jacket off, tossing it onto the dirt. His sweater follows. Beneath it, his chest is a map of violence and survival. Lean muscle cords across his frame, the ridges of oldscars pale against his skin. A long, faded line tracks down his left side from rib to hip. The sheer power in his frame is undeniable.
I press my bare chest against his. The shock of skin-on-skin contact in the sub-zero air is pure electricity. He is burning up. A human furnace. The cold stops reaching me.
His hands unhook my bra. He tosses it aside. The weight of my breasts falls into his calloused palms. He groans, squeezing the soft flesh, his thumbs brushing roughly over my tight nipples.
