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“Reina,” he said hoarsely. “Oh, hell. Are you hurt? Did I hurt you? I didn’t know it was you, I swear. I just smelled— Are you hurt?”
“N-no,” I managed through chattering teeth. “J-just c-cold.”
He was trembling, but not because of the temperature. Heat poured off him, and the shaking seemed to come from something deeper, a fine tension running through his entire body. His hands had landed on either side of my head, and he kept leaning closer as though some instinct kept drawing him toward contact.
I remembered the information packet Tamsin had read aloud. There had been an entire section on post-shift skin-hunger, the physical craving for touch that could follow a transformation.
His cock was hard.
Even through my soaked jeans, I could feel the thick pressure of it against my hip, and my body responded before common sense had time to intervene. My pussy clenched around nothing, sudden and involuntary.
Jax realized I had noticed.
Several emotions crossed his face in quick succession before settling on horror.
“That—ignore that,” he said immediately. “That’s the moon. That’s the shift. That is absolutely not—Dios, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll move.”
He started to lift himself away.
The moment his body left mine, the cold rushed back into the space he had been occupying, and my hands caught him before I had consciously decided to move.
“W-wait,” I said. “You’re warm.”
He froze.
His eyes searched my face carefully, checking for hesitation. Whatever he saw seemed to reassure him because he let out a slow, unsteady breath and lowered himself again.
This time, he moved deliberately.
He bent his head toward my neck and breathed in, slowly and deeply, his nose brushing my frozen skin while his lips hovered near the frantic beat of my pulse. My nipples had tightened painfully beneath my wet clothes, and the ache between my thighs was becoming much harder to ignore.
“You smell like…” he whispered, then stopped. “Fuck. You smell like…”
“L-like river?”
A strained laugh escaped him against my throat.
“Like trouble.”
I should have pushed him away. I knew that. Instead I stayed where I was, lying beneath him in the damp bracken while his heat gradually worked its way through my frozen clothes. My hands were still resting on his back where I had grabbed him, spread over the hot muscles beside his spine.
When my fingers shifted against his skin, he made a low, rough sound and moved closer.
Then he raised his head and really looked at me.
His expression changed at once.
“Your lips are blue.” The teasing disappeared from his voice. “How long were you in that water?”
“On and off for hours. It was a p-plan.”
“It was a terrible plan.”
He moved carefully off my hips and settled beside me, then pulled me against him so that nearly the entire front of my body was pressed to the heat of his. One arm went beneath my head while the other wrapped firmly around my back.
“Don’t argue,” he said. “You’re hypothermic. I’m running at about forty degrees right now. Let me help.”
I did not argue.
