He cupped her chin, spoke her name sharply, gave that up and went for a light slap across her face.
Still nothing. Time to move on to step two.
“I’m going to undress you,” he told her. “Get you out of those wet clothes. Okay?”
She murmured something he couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter. If he left her like this, wet and chilled, she’d die.
Working quickly, he looped an arm around her shoulders. Sat her up. Her head fell forward; her face tucked itself against his throat, just as when he’d found her on the mountain. Her breath was soft and warm; the whisper of it sent a shudder of awareness through him.
Just a natural reaction, he told himself, what happened when air fanned over your skin.
He slipped his hand under the back of her T-shirt, pushed the wet fabric up as far as it would go. Her skin was cold, almost icy, against his palm.
It was not a good sign.
He should have gotten her into dry clothes right away instead of wasting precious minutes thinking about not wanting this kind of responsibility.
Quickly but carefully, he shifted her in his arms, sat her up, held her there when she started to slip back against the couch cushions. He worked the T-shirt up over her belly. The skin there was slightly warmer: that was good. The natural instinct of a healthy body was to keep vital organs warm.
The skin there was smooth, too. The fact registered somewhere in the back of his mind. It had nothing to do with getting her out of the wet shirt, but he was aware of it. Just part of his head taking inventory of her condition, he told himself briskly, as he dragged the drenched cotton up and over her breasts.
Getting her arms out of the sleeves wasn’t easy, but at last he tugged the shirt over her head and tossed it aside.
And, damn, she was beautiful.
No bra, which he’d already figured. Uptilted nipples, which he’d figured, as well. But not their color. Delicate. Pale. An innocent pink.
A lie. Nothing about her was innocent.
Jesse knotted his jaw, dragged his eyes from her breasts to her jeans. Getting them off would be a walk in the park compared to getting her out of that shirt.
Wrong.
The jeans closed with two small buttons above the fly. The buttons were tough to open because the denim was so wet, but he finally got them through the buttonholes and undid the zipper.
She made a little sound. A murmur. He looked at her face just in time to see her eyelids flicker.
“Miss Cummings? Can you hear me?”
No answer. Okay. Time to finish undressing her. He didn’t know why it was bothering him so much but it was. He’d been trained in first aid. She was probably a victim of hypothermia. He wasn’t a man. She wasn’t a woman.
But when he slipped his hands under her bottom and lifted her hips toward him, a picture flashed through his mind. Him, doing this same thing. Lifting her to him. To strip away her jeans, yes…
As part of making love to her.
His hands stilled.
He could see it all. Her face, flushed with pleasure. Her eyes, opened and hot on his. Her lips forming his name, her arms reaching for him, the jeans coming down, down, down her long legs and revealing…
White cotton underpants.
That was what they revealed. White cotton, as innocent-looking as the sweet pink of her nipples.
God, she was beautiful. Her femininity. Her face. Her hair, a mass of gold-streaked curls. And he, he was…
A groan broke from his throat. He was a no-good SOB, was what he was. What kind of man got a hard-on when he was dealing with an unconscious woman?
Quickly, he laid her back against the cushions. Dumped the now-wet quilt, grabbed another blanket and wrapped it around her. Yeah, but the sofa was damp. No good. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bedroom. There were four other bedrooms in the house, but he hadn’t furnished any of them beyond the basics, not after Linda left.
What was the point?
He lived alone.
No woman. No friends. No guests. He preferred it that way.
His bed was big, covered with a simple black duvet. He folded it back, put the woman beneath it and drew it to her chin. She was starting to stir, her color was back.
Good.
Okay. He’d get her a heating pad. A big mug of tea. But first, he’d take care of himself, if only for long enough to get out of his soaked jeans and put on sweats. He’d stayed active, he wasn’t a likely candidate for hypothermia, but he wouldn’t do his uninvited guest much good if he got sick.
Working fast, he pulled the rawhide from his hair and rubbed a towel over his face, obliterating the stripes of black paint. The eagle talon danced against his chest as he tugged off his wet jeans, then his boxers. He yanked open a drawer, found sweats, stepped into the bottoms, pulled them up—
Sienna Cumming’s eyes shot open. Jesse breathed a sigh of relief.