I nodded, not having the strength to speak.
He held me tighter to him and as we approached an upcoming bend, he yelled in my ear, “Now kick to the left with all you’ve got! Go! Kick, Perry, kick!”
I did what I could, bringing up the last reserves of strength and soon I felt pebbles underneath my feet. Dex got out first then pulled me up and along, my legs weak and shaking. Out of the water, my boots and coat were as heavy as sin and soaking me to the bone with a cold that only increased with each second that passed. I made it a few feet onto the grassy riverbank before my knees gave out and I collapsed to the ground.
“Hang in there,” Dex said. “We’ve dealt with this before. We’ll be fine.”
The first part was true. On D’Arcy Island we had both been in the ocean for an extended period of time. The last part was unknown. I didn’t understand how we’d even begin to be fine. The sun at the moment was strong because of the elevation and it was warm but it was still March, still Canada, still the mountains, and we were totally alone, with no shelter or dry clothes, soaked in glacier water. How could we be fine?
Dex took my backpack off, as well as his, and started emptying the contents. Most of the items, including the extra clothing, were soaked. He quickly laid them all out on the grass, then started ripping open the packets of space blankets.
“Take off your clothes,” he said without humor.
I tried to make a joke but shivers rocked my body from the core. In seconds he was at my side and quickly pulling my clothes off.
“Please baby,” he said quietly, trying to quell his own chattering teeth. “Try.”
I did, finding my boots too intricate to undo with numb fingers, but my sweater came easily.
I stole a quick glance at Dex. He was throwing his jacket out on the grass, spreading it wide for the sun to warm and ripping open the remaining space blankets with shaking hands. There were five of them in total and he spread out two on the bottom and three on the top, like a makeshift sleeping bag.
When he was done, he slipped off his boots in a hurry and came over to me, making sure I could get mine off.
“Get in under the space blankets as soon you’re nak*d,” he ordered. “Don’t go in there with wet clothes; it’ll stop you from retaining heat.
I nodded and pulled off my wet jeans, wincing at the feeling of the legs being rolled down over icy blue thighs.
Soon, both of us were nak*d and as blue and mottled as a newborn baby. I didn’t have time for modesty, didn’t have the chance or strength to care. I just crawled onto the reflective silver blanket, noticing that the silver sheets on the ground were thicker than the ones above us.
Dex joined me, wrapping his body around mine and pulling in the sides of the blankets, tucking their crinkled edges beneath our bodies until we were entirely encased in them, like butterflies in metallic cocoons.
We held each other, limb around limb, blocks of ice against blocks of ice. From time to time the shivers would rock us, and then they’d slowly increase until we were both shaking. But with the shaking came the feeling as our skin tingled and nerves became alive again. Our heart beats returned to normal, I could feel the pulse of his neck as it pressed against mine, our heads against each other. Our breathing became less labored and more natural. If the grey morning hadn’t burned away to bright sunshine, it might have been a different story. But after a long time of our skin on skin, I knew we were going to be all right. We weren’t out of the woods – in fact it was all around us as we lay entwined on the grass together – but we escaped the beast and we would live to see another day. Or at least see the moon rise.
“How are you?” Dex whispered into my ear, his breath reassuringly hot and tickling my ear.
“Warm,” I answered, my lips grazing his earlobe. “Dry. Safe.”
“Good.” He pulled his head back and kept the tip of his nose grazing the tip of mine, peering down at me with vibrant eyes. “Good.”
A lock of dark hair fell down on his forehead and I reached up with my hand to push it out of the way. It was still wet but drying quickly. I knew my own hair was spread out the side of me like a spilled can of black paint.
The muscles in his face tightened for a moment while a wash of darkness spread across his eyes. “Did you see it?”
I nodded slowly, enjoying the feeling of the side of his nose against mine. It contrasted with the horrific image I was desperately trying to keep out of my head. I closed my eyes and his fingers trailed down the side of my bruised cheek.
“Don’t tell me now,” he said. “Later. There’s always later.”
I swallowed hard, keeping my eyes shut. The monster wasn’t the only thing I was afraid of seeing. If I opened my eyes again, I know I’d see the thing I feared the most. Dex’s face, above my nak*d body. The man who saved me twice today. The man I couldn’t figure out how to forgive. The one who broke my heart yet seemed to offer up his in exchange.
“Baby, look at me,” he coaxed.
And that was the other thing. He had been calling me baby and I hadn’t been saying anything to stop it. Because, against everything my head was telling me, deep in my heart, in my loins, it felt right. All of this felt right. How did something so wrong get turned on its head?
“Please,” he whispered. I felt his nose slide closer and his lips touch mine. They were soft and light. They didn’t assume, they didn’t ask anything from me. They lightly kissed my own, a brush so bare it almost didn’t exist.
My eyes flew open and I only saw him. It didn’t matter where we were, what had happened now or what had happened in the past. It was just Dex and Perry in this moment, in this now, in this rush of hearts that were speeding up their beat, in our breaths that were catching in our throats in anticipation. We both knew what was happening and neither of us was going to lift a finger to stop it. Because it needed to happen. Because we both wanted it like we wanted oxygen to breathe and water to drink. Like we needed it in every cell in our body, some driving mechanism of our evolution. It wasn’t until that moment I realized how starved for him I had become.
Our eyes only met for that brief second and in that brief second we said everything we could. That drive, that need, that want, took over after that. There was nothing that words could say. Only eyes, lips and hands.
He brought his lips down hard against mine, crushing my head against the silver ground. Our tongues fought for each other, gently at first then harder as the needs became more insistent. He kissed me like I represented another plane of life, another existence to live on. I returned the favor, my feelings deepening with each soft caress of lips and skin and wet.
Then any memory of being cold was banished out of my mind. My body felt ripe and alive, refreshed and clean from the water and burning hot from unrequited desire, a lust I had tried so hard to bury. Unlike the other night, I was sober to the point of being spiritual, every sense awakened and ready.
Dex’s hands found their way off my face and down the soft curves of my body, my skin shivering from his touch, even though I was warming beneath his gentle fingers as they trailed along from my ribcage, into the thin of my waist and out along my hips.
Suddenly he leaned back, sitting upright, and I got a full view of his softly rippled abs and taught, wide chest, those infamous words inked on them, before he grabbed me by the arms and hoisted me up like I was made of feathers. He pulled me on him as he leaned back on his legs in a kneeling position and positioned my legs in either side of his torso so I was straddling him. He was in charge and I was prepared to do pretty much anything he asked.
He brought his arms around me and pressed my br**sts against his chest. I could feel his erection pressing hard against my slit, the heat vibrating off of him.
“Are you all right?” he whispered with a wicked grin on his face.
“I’m feeling no pain,” I said.
His grin faltered as he put his hand past my ears, burying them in to the depths of my hair. “Are you having doubts about this?”
There it was. There was no question about what was happening. About what this was.
“What if I said I was?” I challenged softly, keeping my lids heavy, my eyes focused on the heaving of his chest.
“I’d keep going,” he said huskily. “Because I know I can change your mind. You think you want to say no – baby, I see those wheels turning in the back of your skull – but you won’t want to say no. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Is this you trying?”
“This is me. I’m just me. And I’m right here.”
I licked my lips and found the only words I could say. “I’m right here too.”
That grin wiped the graveness from his eyes and in seconds, his lips were back on mine, kissing me so hard I thought we were going to draw blood.
His fingers found their way out of my hair and slinked their way down my collarbone toward my br**sts where he caressed them like they were precious gems he’d been searching forever for. A few moans escaped his lips as both hands were there now, cupping them, holding their weight, relishing them. I leaned back slightly, my neck open, my hair trailing down my back. He went at my neck first, licking and sucking down the windpipe, then swirling down the bones of my breastplate until his tongue found my n**ples. Now it was my turn to moan, letting out days of pent-up frustration.
“That’s my girl,” he said between sucking.
Those words, those lips, that tongue. There was no turning back.
I took my hands and ran them up and down the planes of his back, tracing the hard muscles that ran along each side of his spine. I felt his strength between his fingers, felt the urges rippling through him. The silver thermal blankets fell away from him and we were just us, nak*d and wrapped around each other, beneath a sunny mountain afternoon. We could have been anywhere. All I felt was his heat on my heat, his needs and my wants, both of us trying to find a compromise of pleasure.
He reached down and began positioning himself. I couldn’t help but steal a look at his c*ck while he wrapped his fingers around it. Nothing turned me on more than that.
I raised my brow at him, my hair sticking to the new-found sweat at my back.
“No time for foreplay?” I teased breathlessly.
His smile was sly. “Oh, we’ve had nothing but foreplay from the day we first met.”
He slipped his hand between my legs and bit his lip before speaking. “Besides, you’re more wet now than when I dragged you out of that river.”
I felt a flush creep up my neck and onto my cheeks, turning them hot and tight.
“Keep blushing baby, that only turns me on more.”
And naturally my skin went to the level of an inferno but Dex was quick to make me forget about it. With one hand he stroked himself and with the other he stroked me, rubbing and pressing my bud until I was starting to lose the inclination to stay upright.
So I lay back, my sweat sticking to the blanket beneath, while he guided himself in. I couldn’t have asked for a more magnificent sight; him towering over me in fine form, his black hair in messy strands across his forehead, his eyes deep and searching every part of me, his lips parted and full, ready for anything. Below, his chest, his tattoo, was wide like a beacon and every muscle in his arm grew as he placed his hand at the curve of my waist and with the other hand, made sure he was going in straight and going in slow.