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He waltzed over to me, entirely unaffected by his nakedness. That made one of us. “The temperatures plummeted once the sun went down. The snow probably saved you. I tried to get us to a place we could use your phone, but you were…I had to bring you back here.”
Okay, that lined up with my memories. “What else happened last night?”
He tipped my chin up to meet his gaze. I shuddered, remembering him grabbing my face and kissing me last night. Or did that happen at the mating ceremony?
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked.
“Coming here.” I shook my head, remembering him stripping me out of my clothes. Me arguing with him. But something about it felt off. Like it had happened to someone else, and I’d been a spectator. And I’d never felt so jealous in my life. “Everything else after that is fuzzy.”
He nodded, but disappointment flickered in his eyes. That wasn’t the answer he wanted.
“We should try to get back,” he said, jerking his head toward the trail. “We probably never should have done this to begin with.”
No. That was not true. My heart felt like it was tearing in two. We couldn’t come this far, with him all in, to have him walk away.
Because after last night, I knew I couldn’t live without him.
“Bjorn.” I couldn’t run in the snow in these boots, but I had to move in double time to keep up with his long strides. “Just because the rest of it is fuzzy doesn’t mean I don’t remember. I just wasn’t sure if it was real or a dream.”
“Was it a good dream?” he asked.
“The best dream.” I held my breath until his face lit up. “Did we?”
He nodded. “My first instinct to keep you warm was skin-to-skin contact. I had to run my hands all over your body.” He paused. “That sounded like you just growled.”
I laughed nervously. “After a night in the wild with a polar bear, my sexy noises need some work.”
He leaned in close and kissed my forehead. “Your sexy noises are perfect.”
“Thank you.” The snow crunched under our feet as we walked. “Your sexy stuff isn’t so bad, either.”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Why were you mad that I didn’t remember?”
“I wasn’t,” he said softly. “More disappointed than anything else. Every time I’m with you, it’s nothing like what I think it’s gonna be, but it was pretty damn special. If you didn’t remember, and I told you, I didn’t want you to feel like I took advantage of you.”
My own voice rang in my head, begging him to fuck me. Yeah, that happened. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But things got crazy last night. I was scared—” he shook his head. “All I cared about was that you made it through this.”
“Thank you.” To see a big, fierce shifter like Bjorn scared was enough to bring me to the brink of tears. “I’m sure it won’t be the last time you save my ass.”
“Nope. You’re stuck with me.”
“Good.” And I meant it. I wanted to spend forever with this bear, and it had nothing to do with any ancient relic.
The road had come into view. It was covered by a light layer of snow. No tire tracks. I’d grown up in Southern California, so I wasn’t familiar with the concept of winter. But that meant that the avalanche probably hadn’t been cleared, and no one would be able to get to us easily.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“Sore, thirsty. Like, I could probably sleep for a week, but that will never happen because we’re contestants on a reality show. But other than that…” I paused because there were a lot of emotions flowing through me. I wanted to make sure I expressed myself correctly. But then I realized I was making things far more complicated than they needed to be. “Deliriously happy.”
He stopped. “Really?”
I nodded. “A bear will do whatever it takes to keep his mate safe. If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve died last night.”
Bjorn shook his head. “I thought I was gonna lose you.”
