He’s right. Any wolf in human form should have hearing sharp enough to catch movement at a quarter mile. Mine used to be. But I haven’t shifted in—I try to remember, and it makes me flinch—over two years. My wolf is awake in there, pressing against my skin harder than she has in years, but staying human has dulled the edges. My hearing is better than a human’s, worse than it should be. My night vision is compromised. My tolerance for cold is shot, which is why I’m shaking like a new recruit on her first winter patrol while he sits there steaming.
I’ve been so focused on healing other wolves that I’ve let my own go quiet. There’ll be time to think about what that means later. If there is a later.
“All right.” I look at the floor, the wall, the lack of anything resembling a blanket. The temperature is dropping. My wet clothes are pulling heat out of me faster than my body can make it, and the shaking has moved from my hands to my core.
He watches me shake. His brow draws down. It’s taking me a while to get used to seeing human expressions on his face.
“You’re cold,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I said I’m fine.”
He looks at me for a moment. Then he pulls his shirt over his head—wincing, because of his side—and drops it on the floor beside him. “Come here.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Body heat.” He says it simply. Like it’s obvious. Like a man who’s been cold before and knows how to survive it.
The healer in me knows he’s right.
Wet fabric against skin steals heat. Direct contact is faster than any blanket we don’t have, any fire I can’t light, any sensible plan currently unavailable to me. I have given this advice before. Calmly. Professionally. To people who were not him.
Rainwater slides down my spine beneath my shirt. My teeth chatter hard enough to hurt.
His chest is bare in the candlelight, scarred and steaming faintly where the cold air touches him. He is injured, exhausted, half-starved, and still giving off heat like a banked fire.
Oh, hell no.
The woman in me knows what she’d be doing. Stripping down to her underwear and pressing her bare skin against the chest of a man whose arms were locked around her just hours ago.
“Don’t—” I stop. Start again. “Don’t get any ideas.”
He looks at me. The confusion that crosses his face is genuine, his brow furrowing, his head tilting slightly. Then something flickers in his eyes. The smallest shift, there and gone, but I catch it.
He’s laughing at me.
“No ideas,” he says. “Right now.”
I almost laugh. It comes out as a breath through my nose, which is close enough.
I strip off my jacket. My shirt. The cold hits my skin, and I grit my teeth. The wet clothes land in a pile on the floor, and I’m down to my bra and panties, my arms wrapped around myself, shaking hard enough that my jaw aches.
I sit beside him, turn my back, and press my shoulder blades against his chest.
The heat is immediate. Intense. His skin is hot, and the contact is so warm after the cold that my body locks up for a second before it remembers how to receive.
His arm comes around me. Carefully. He stops halfway, waiting.
“Go ahead,” I say.
His arm settles across my stomach. He pulls me closer, just enough that my back is flat against his chest, his chin above my head, the heat of him wrapping around me from shoulders to hips.
I feel his heartbeat against my spine. Fast but steady.
And I remember—too clearly—the transport. His arm around my waist, his body curved over mine as we hit the dirt, the fierce certainty of his grip. How it felt to be held by something that strong. How my body responded before my mind caught up. Because I could have fought to get away. Could have turned and bolted when he put me down. But I didn’t.
