Shiver(63)
“Steady.”
“Hold the room still then.” He blinked a few times, took a few steps, leaning heavily on her.
“Do you want the couch or the bedroom?”
“Gotta lie down.” He shivered. “With lots of blankets.”
“How long do you think you were out?”
“I came here from your place. Got out of the car, walked down the path, and bam…stars.”
“How’d you get into the cabin?”
“Crawled. Can we stop with the questions? My head hurts.”
He was also cold. Raven worried over his shivering. He was wet from crawling through the snow, and she needed to get him out of his clothes…and warmed up.
They reached his old bedroom, and he went to lie down on the bed. “No.” Raven pulled at his arm. “We need to get you out of these wet clothes first.”
He gave her a sardonic look. “Not tonight, honey. I have a headache.”
“Funny.” Relieved if he could joke, he couldn’t be hurt that bad, she reached for the zipper on his coat and pulled it down. He didn’t make any attempt to help her, just watched her with his dark eyes, lids at half-mast. She pushed the parka off his shoulders and the heat in the room seemed to rise. Must be just her, because Aidan continued to shiver. His shirt was dry, thank goodness, but his jeans were wet from his body melting the snow he’d crawled through. She looked at his fly.
“Can you take your pants off?” She raised her gaze to his.
His hands fumbled on the button, slow and clumsy. He hadn’t had gloves on when she’d found him. He’d been in the cold, crawled through the snow, and then laid on the floor with the door open. It was fifteen below.
“Let me see your hands.” She reached for them herself. They were red and frozen, his fingertips white.
She reached for his fly and tried to put out of her mind what she was doing.
“Careful,” he grunted. “I’d like to keep what’s behind there.”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks. She didn’t need to be reminded what lay behind that zipper. Or how she much liked what he could do with that particular appendage.
Get a grip. The man was frozen and probably concussed. Plus, he was mad as hell at her.
She pulled the jeans down to his ankles. “Why aren’t you wearing your medical boot?”
He fell onto the edge of the bed, his hands holding his head. “It got in the way.”
She knelt at his feet and worked at loosening the laces on his boots. Once those were off she discarded his socks. His eyelids lowered as he surveyed her every move. Again she felt heat. Her face was right in line with what had been behind the zipper. From the glint in his eyes, he was thinking about that too.
“Not that I don’t like your current position, but I’m freezing my ass off here.”
She finished yanking off his jeans and flicked her gaze up his body. “Are your boxers wet?”
“You don’t want me to lose those,” his voice was soft and heavy with warning. “And I haven’t wet my shorts in decades.”
She swallowed. “Swing your legs over.” She tucked him into bed and piled him with blankets. “I’ll be right back.”
“Grab one of Earl’s pistols,” Aidan muttered. “I want you armed.”
Not a bad idea. She went to the gun cabinet and helped herself to a thirty-eight special over the shotguns, loading the cylinder and tucking the weapon into the pocket of her jeans.
She boiled water for tea. While the water heated, she opened the cast-iron door to the wood stove and stoked the dying coals. Adding in wood, she blew on the coals until the flames caught, licking greedily at the dry timber. She added more until she was satisfied that it would heat on its own for a few hours. She prepped the tea and carefully walked the mug back to Aidan.
He was shivering, his teeth chattering as he shook in the bed, hands folded under his armpits in an attempt to warm them with what body heat he had.
She set the tea on the end table. Damn, she’d have to crawl in there with him. Shaking like he was, the blankets and tea weren’t going to be enough to warm him. She’d discarded her coat in the other room but now kicked off her mukluks, set the gun on the end table, and edged into the bed with him.
“I don’t want you here,” Aidan said through chattering teeth.
“I know.” Scooting over to him, she took his hands and pulled them under her shirt, catching her breath when the frigidness of them branded her skin.
He moaned and drawn by her heat, snuggled closer. She pulled the covers over them, and her body curved into his with a sigh. The rightness of lying next to him, her arms around him, brought tears to her eyes.