Deep Woods

I heard the whistle of something rushing towards me a split second before it hit. I started to turn away, which may have saved my life. A branch slammed into my arm just above the elbow, making the whole limb light up with pain. I fell sideways, the pain bad enough to make me nauseous. I tried to get to my feet but every movement of my arm made me freeze and grind my teeth as a new wave of agony flashed through me. The wind was howling, now, blasting past my face so fast I couldn’t breathe. I tried again to get up but slipped in the mud and fell back on my ass, jolting my arm again. I cursed, hot tears filling my eyes.

And then suddenly, an arm was slipping under my legs and another under my back and I was being lifted into the air and tipped to rest against a broad, plaid-shirted chest. The final shutter was slammed closed and then we were running, with Rufus a dripping missile next to us. We barreled through the door and then we were in the luxuriously warm, dry air of the cabin.

He set me gently down on the edge of the bed. I blinked through my tears and then I was looking up into cornflower-blue eyes, frightened and angry and gorgeous.

39

Cal

I STARED DOWN AT HER, my heart pounding against my ribs. I’d run all the way home, dodging loose branches and a few times nearly being blown off my feet by gusts coming across a clearing. But when I’d seen her, outside in all the chaos, when she should have been safe in some apartment in the city, that’s when I’d gotten really frightened. Then I’d seen her arm, hanging limply by her side, and my chest ached with guilt. I’d failed to protect her.

“What happened to your arm?” I didn’t mean for it to sound so angry, but I was mad at her for being outside, mad at the men in the club who’d put her in this situation, mad at myself for not being here.

“Branch hit it,” she said through chattering teeth. The cold was starting to hit her, now. The cabin was warm but her thick plaid shirt and jeans were soaked through with rain and mud and they were leeching all the heat from her body. “B—Betsy and Hank are in the barn. A w—window broke.”

She’d run around out there in the middle of a storm saving the damn animals. Did she know how brave she was? I looked over my shoulder at the branch that was sticking through a window. “I’ll nail a tarp over it. We need to get your clothes off.” I grabbed a blanket from the bed and hung it over the stove to warm. Then I started popping buttons on her shirt without really thinking about what I was doing. It was only when I was halfway down and looking at her soaked, translucent t-shirt and her bra-clad breasts beneath that it sunk in that I was undressing her. I felt my face heat, but we didn’t have a choice: she couldn’t do it herself with one good arm.

I kept popping buttons. Her breasts pushed forward through the open shirt, almost brushing my chest. I helped her gently pull the shirt over her shoulders and off her arms, wincing along with her as we worked it past the place that hurt. I reached down and popped the button on her jeans, and now it was impossible not to feel like I was undressing her, scrambling to get her out of her clothes so that I could—

I pushed that thought down and crouched, dragging the mud-soaked jeans off her legs, trying not to look at the long, pale curves of her thighs or the dark shadow visible through her soaked panties. I stood up. “T-shirt,” I ordered. I tried to sound all businesslike and neutral, like a doctor, but it didn’t come out like that.

She tried to struggle out of the t-shirt but she was shaking too much and it turned into a wet tangle around her shoulders. I helped her pull it free. God, her skin was icy, the smooth paleness going goosebumped. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to warm her up the way I wanted to: pull her to my chest and run my hands all over her—

She looked up at me, her eyes huge.

I forced the urge back...just. For her own sake, I had to keep her away from me and I was so nearly there: she’d be gone, tomorrow. I grabbed the warm blanket from the stove and wrapped it around her like a poncho. “Your bra and panties, too,” I told her.

She fumbled beneath the blanket for a few moments. She didn’t always have a hand free to hold the two sides of the blanket together and I kept getting glimpses: a pale breast swinging, a pink nipple, crinkled with cold, a curl of soft hair—I forced my eyes to her feet until I saw her bra and panties hit the floor. “Now give me a look at that arm,” I ordered. I figured if I was terse and gruff, maybe I could cover up how I was aching for her.