Ignited

by Desni Dantone

  I was a walking icicle by the time we stopped for the evening.

  He started a fire and then assembled the tent as I attempted to thaw out. I was shivering too badly to be of much help to Nathan. More than once, I caught him watching me with a trace of concern on his face. He probably figured I was about to slip into a hypothermic coma. Pneumonia was all but unavoidable.

  Once the tent was erected, I slipped inside to strip out of my cold wet clothes, and put on cold dry ones. It helped some, but I didn’t think I would ever stop shaking. I sat as close to the fire as I dared, but it didn’t help much and, after a long miserable hour, I went to bed shivering.

  I was still awake when Nathan came in later.

  I tried not to worry that I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. Mind over matter, I told myself. It didn’t work. My teeth chattered louder. My whole body shook in rebellion.

  I felt Nathan’s eyes on me. His voice cut through the cold black night air between us. “You okay?”

  “F-f-fine,” I lied. I was most definitely not fine as my body convulsed uncontrollably.

  Nathan grumbled something unintelligible as he turned onto his side to face me. I didn’t notice that he had unzipped my sleeping bag until a blast of chilly air hit my skin. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to get colder than I already was. Boy, had I been wrong.

  “What are you doing?” I shrieked.

  I watched as he unzipped his sleeping bag next. He glanced up at me. “You’re cold, right?”

  I wondered about the authenticity of his kind of smart claim. Under normal circumstances, I would have let him have it with the smart-ass quip he deserved. At the moment, I was too miserable to bother.

  He scooted closer to me, opened his sleeping bag wide, and looked at me expectantly, as if he were waiting for me to crawl in there with him. Afraid of getting it wrong and embarrassing myself again, I hesitated.

  “Do you want to get warm, or not?” He held the sleeping bag open and waited. It seemed like a clear-cut invitation to me.

  I eyed him warily. The idea was enticing. A little too intimate, perhaps, considering we could barely stand each other. But in extreme situations, one would do whatever they had to do for survival. Or, at least, to save their toes from needing to be amputated later. In my case, that included cuddling with Nathan.

  I had hesitated long enough. My zipper was still undone, and I was getting colder by the second. With a sigh of relief, and somewhat grudgingly, I slid into his sleeping bag.

  His alone was not big enough for both of us. He pulled the opened ends of our respective bags together to wrap both of us up in one big cocoon. Tucking mine snuggly around my backside, he ensured that no cold air could seep in then, in a move that caught my breath in my throat, slipped his arm inside and wrapped it around my waist to pull me against him.

  My face buried in his chest and our bodies connected in a few strategic places in a way that brought a flush to my skin. Regardless of the unwanted intimacy we were forced into, it wasn’t as awkward as I thought it would be. Either that or I was just that cold.

  It actually felt good. He was warm. Really warm. His hand moved briskly over my back, and I didn’t know if it was heat from the friction or from his touch alone that seared through my shirt. Either way, I welcomed it and, after a few moments, my body started to relax, my teeth stopped chattering, and my breathing steadied.

  “Better?” With the top of my head resting beneath his chin, his breath tickled my ear. The shiver that racked my body this time was not the cold-induced kind. Nor was it the bad kind.

  “Much better. Thank you,” I mumbled into his shirt, grateful I had that to hide in as I tried to convince myself it wasn’t a good kind of shiver either.

  Bad shivers versus good shivers aside, I was warm and not about to move anytime soon. The cold hovered over us, waiting to get me if I drifted too far away from the shelter of Nathan’s body. I was staying right where I was, and he would have to deal with it. Funny thing was he didn’t seem to mind.

  Maybe he realized I would need my toes to keep up with him tomorrow.

  Or maybe he wasn’t as bad as I thought?

  And maybe I didn’t really want to move anyway. As I drifted off to sleep, I was only semi-aware of Nathan’s hand rubbing my back, slower and more as a soothing gesture than a warming one, and the last thing I thought before I found sleep was how nice it felt.