“Thank you,” I said, returning to the other side of the fire.
“Lydia,” he said.
“It’s been a long night and day. I’m tired. We should sleep,” I said.
“We should check each others’ toes for frost bite.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow might be too late.”
“What are we going to do about it even if they are damaged? We don’t have enough petticoat left to wrap all four of our feet.”
“If it’s a problem, we’ll figure it out, but we need to check. Now, show me your feet.”
The feeling had come back to my toes a little at a time since we’d been out of the cold, leaving me reasonably certain I had no frostbite, but since I had no desire to lose any limbs, I complied with his request.
When I’d bathed at the hideout, I’d dispensed with my stockings and instead found some warmer and more practical wool socks among the bandits’ laundry. I had figured it was the least they could do to pay me back for kidnapping us.
I peeled the boots and socks from my feet and presented them to Emmett, allowing him to see them from a distance.
“Bring them closer? I can’t see them from the shadows.”
“No touching,” I said, scooting on my bottom just a few inches closer.
To my own eyes, my toes looked fine. The very tips were white, but the majority of them were pink.
“Do they hurt or burn?”
“Not anymore. They still feel a little bit cold, but mostly normal.”
“Well, there’s no swelling or blistering. I think you avoided anything serious. Good thing we found this cave when we did. Now you need to check mine.”
“Are they in pain or burning?” I asked as I put my socks and boots back on. The last thing I wanted to do was touch him again.
“No. They’ve warmed since we got here and aside from a slight stinging cold, they feel fine.”
“Then you’re probably okay,” I said, but before I could retreat and put the fire between us again, he grabbed my ankle.
“You wouldn’t want me to lose any toes, would you?”
I didn’t, of course. I shifted in the small space and went to work unlacing and removing his boots and socks. I figured I’d be fine with his feet since feet were, in my opinion anyway, the least appealing part of the human body. I couldn’t imagine any situation in which seeing or touching his feet would arouse me in any way. Still, where Emmett was concerned, I had little trust in myself.
Once I’d bared his feet, he scrambled up onto his elbows. “How do they look?”
They looked pale and clammy and as unpleasant as I always expected feet to be. “Like feet.”
He rolled his eyes. “Are the toes pink? White? Black? Are there blisters? Are they cold or hot?”
“You want me to touch them?”
“Yes, Lydia, I want you to touch them.”
I hesitated, then touched a finger to the tip of his pink big toe. It wasn’t enough surface-to-surface contact to feel anything, so I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and clasped his entire foot in my hand. At first, I tried not to cringe, but then warmth suffused my skin. I opened my eyes and moved my fingers to his toes, exploring them for cold and blisters. They weren’t scratchy or damp or even cold or blistered. In fact, just like the parts of him I’d seen already, dark hair bristled the top of his foot from under the leg of his pants down onto his toes. I used one finger to trace it, smoothing it with the grain as I went.
“Lydia?”
The humor in his tone made me jerk my hand back and glance, horrified, at his face. He grinned and twitched an eyebrow at me.
“Not one word,” I said.
He nodded, biting his lip. The look on his face said he had more to say, but I was grateful he didn’t. Instead, I left him to put his own socks and shoes back on, not trusting myself to touch him again. I collected the one extra blanket we had and dropped in next to him as a wordless peace offering, then scurried to my place across the fire from him and snuggled into my blanket.
The log had burned down and would dwindle to embers soon. I pulled the blanket closer and tried not to shiver, and tried not to think about Emmett Wilder’s body.
The shivering woke me. Aside from my body shaking from the cold, two things struck me: the fire had gone out, and the low roar and occasional whistle of the wind had disappeared.
I clamped my jaw tight to keep my teeth from clattering together, but the jaw muscles still spasmed.
I couldn’t see Lydia in the dark. I glanced to the mouth of the cave, but only barely saw the outline of the horses, and beyond that, more darkness.
“Lydia,” I said.
She didn’t respond. My body was stiff from laying in the same position for hours, and my side ached, but I needed to be sure she hadn’t frozen. I’d never forgive myself if she had.
“Lydia,” I said louder.
Still no answer. I rolled to my side, and groaned. It was damn cold. Every part of me hurt. All my muscles jerked and quivered, trying to keep me warm.
With supreme effort, I climbed up to my hands and knees, and crawled the short distance to the other side of the fire space. I had to feel my way to her in the darkness. When I found her, I used my hands to see her. The blanket covered her from head to toe, which was good, but her face was cold to the touch. In my mind I could see her blue lips and pale, waxy skin. I worked my fingers into the blanket and under the collar of her dress to find the pulse in her neck. I held my breath until I felt it, then let it out in relief. Her heartbeat was weak and slow, but still there. A shock of real alarm hit when I pulled the blanket from her stiff fingers. Her body had stopped shivering, which was a very bad sign.
I needed to get her—both of us actually—warm again. Working in the dark, and ignoring the pain of both bullet and cold, I restarted the fire. Our one remaining log wouldn’t last very long, so I needed to use the light and heat while it lasted.
She wouldn’t like the next step.
I shook her and called her name. It took longer than I liked, but her eyelids finally fluttered and she muttered something that sounded mildly angry.
“Lydia, you’re freezing. We’re both freezing. We need to heat up.”
She mumbled, but all I caught was “cold.”
“This is what I’m going to do,” I said. “If we don’t share our heat, we’ll freeze. I’m going to remove our clothes then wrap us up together in all the blankets we have.”
She didn’t respond, so I took it as consent. At this point it didn’t matter because if I didn’t do it, we’d both die, and I wasn’t ready for that, nor would I allow her to die if I could do anything to stop it.
I threw my own blanket off and quickly removed my clothes, piling them nearby, then bundled back into the blanket. Next, I went to work on Lydia’s skirt, blouse, and camisole.
She made a weak effort to push me away, but I didn’t think she was really aware of her action.
When I had her undressed, I maneuvered so that her back was to the fire and pulled the blanket over the top of her. I laid down beside her, sliding in close until I folded her up in my arms and cocooned us in the blankets.
Her icy skin and sluggish heartbeat spurred me on. The little bit of heat from the fire warmed her back and with our bellies together, the heat from our cores mingled and began to thaw us. With our legs twined together, my shivering diminished, and Lydia finally started to tremble. She whimpered a few inarticulate, groggy sounds, but nothing coherent.
It took a while, but by the time her muscles trembled violently, she had come awake some. When she opened her eyes and recognized me, I wanted to kiss her just from relief. Once the idea was in my head, though, it triggered a cascade of reactions, most of them out of my control. At least my increased heart beat heated my blood and skin, helping to warm us both. The unfortunate side effect of remembering her lips was that it caused my cock to swell.
Suddenly I was acutely aware of every inch of her skin touching mine.
<
br /> “What…” She said. Her lips moved, but no other words came out. I couldn’t conceive that Lydia Templeton was at a loss for words, but then if any situation could leave her speechless, I imagined waking up naked, with an equally naked man wrapped around her, would do it.
When she finally processed the circumstances, she did her best to shove me away. Her arms and legs scrambled, but I held on tight.
“Lydia, let me explain.”
“What did you do to me?” she asked, her voice a high-pitched squeak.
“If you’ll stop flailing, I’ll tell you.”
All her wiggling to get away and my holding on tight only aggravated my physical reaction. The sensation of her breasts rubbing my chest, her smooth belly against mine, her legs bumping my already-hard cock—it took all the willpower I could muster not to kiss her and move on from there. It occurred to me that sex would warm us up quite nicely, but I banished that idea as best I could, for now.
She finally stopped moving, and I sucked in a labored breath.
“Why are we naked?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and panicked, but the blush on her cheeks didn’t escape my attention.
My cock twitched in response.
Lydia gasped and tried to pull away, but I held her close.
“Hold still,” I said. “I need to adjust. Don’t move.”
She froze, and I reached down between us to adjust myself. Doubtless, it wasn’t a good idea to leave my cock nestled in the warm wet space between her legs, so I moved, but not before making myself a promise to return there at some point.
By now the last log had burned down to embers again, so I only barely saw the sparkle in her eyes.
“I woke up shivering. The fire had gone out. I was worried about you, and when I checked, you were suffering from hypothermia. I had to warm you up, and knew we only had one log left and that wouldn’t last. This was the best way to get you warm.”
She was quiet for a moment. I couldn’t see her, but I could practically hear her thinking: my explanation made sense, and she was grateful I’d saved her life, but we were naked and wrapped up together in the dark. Then her body reacted. Her skin flushed under mine and I cursed the darkness, because I wanted more than anything to see it. Her nipples hardened and I had to grit my teeth to keep from bending down to taste them. I imagined the rest of her body’s reactions, and looked forward to the day when I didn’t have to imagine them. Because I promised myself—and her, even though she didn’t know it yet—that day would come.
“I’m warm now,” she said.
“Yes you are,” I said. Nice and warm.
“You can let go of me. I’d like to get dressed, please.”
She tried to hide behind a wall of dignity, but modesty wasn’t enough excuse to undo the work we’d already done to warm up. Not that it was unpleasant work.
“Sorry, Lydia, I can’t do that. The last log just burned out, and it’s still freezing. As the only doctor here, I insist we stay right where we are to prevent hypothermia.”
She went rigid with indignity. “You’re enjoying this.”
“So are you,” I said, but she didn’t like that truth very much.
“I am not,” she spat.
“You keep telling yourself that,” I said, shifting enough to press myself harder against her, just to needle her a bit more. Despite the storm, the cold, the bullet lodged somewhere in my gut, and being stranded in a cave, I was, indeed, enjoying myself.
I relaxed and settled down. “Go back to sleep. We both need it.”
“But…”
“Shhhh. We can talk in the morning.”
I didn’t sleep right away, and I suspected although Emmett closed his eyes and his breathing became deeper and even, he didn’t sleep either, at least not for a while. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything else. I was already mortified to wake up to find myself naked as the day I was born and wrapped skin to skin in wool blankets with Emmett. Worse, my body reacted as eagerly as his did.
He was right, though, about the necessity of it. I had no recollection of him stripping me and nestling us together, but I had no desire to freeze to death. It surprised me how easy and painless it would have been to slip into death without even knowing it. It was frightening enough to concede that the shame of being naked together was tolerable if it saved our lives. But only barely.
By the time Emmett fell asleep, I still struggled with my morals. I was, of course, humiliated, but what did it say about me that I liked it? I liked the heat of his skin on mine, the contrast of the hair on his body against the smoothness of mine; the planes and angles of him against my softness and curves; and most of all, the hardness of him pressing against me.
Just thinking about it made my female parts clench in unbearable longing. I wasn’t so naive that I didn’t understand the basic mechanics of male-female relations, so I was horrified to realize that my body wanted Emmett and his—
I couldn’t even acknowledge the thought. Remembering it long and hard against my thigh, pushing to get between my legs as if it had a mind of its own made my nethers ache. They felt wet and swollen, and distinctly uncomfortable. I squirmed and squeezed my legs together, trying to ease the need, but the more I thought about Emmett, the worse it got.
Then I remembered Father and his relentless preaching about the sins of the flesh, and how giving in to them was a certain sign of moral weakness. Thoughts of Father went a long way to curing the problems with my nethers, and reminding me that good girls did not enjoy marital relations. The only purpose for it was reproduction, and it should be done only for that reason. And good girls never, ever did it outside of marriage. Only whores and harlots and women of low moral character did that sort of thing.
The difference between people and animals was that people could control their urges. I recognized my body had urges with regard to Emmett, but as a good girl, I would control them, even if I had to sleep naked with the object of my body’s urges. I would get a grip on my morals and rein in my body and its reactions to Emmett, but I would never give in to them.
The next thing I knew I thought I’d drown in my own sweat, and maybe even burst into flame if I didn’t get out of the blankets that insulated us.
I tore the blanket from my face and flung it away, sucking in a long breath of cool air.
A bright beam of sunlight made me squint, but I flopped over onto my back and grinned because sun meant the storm had blown out.
The cool air danced on my skin, crisp and refreshing after the suffocating cocoon, but I really needed to get dressed and wake Emmett. We all needed food, and Emmett needed medical treatment, so we had to be on our way.
A shadow blocked the sunlight just as I got up to start dressing. I popped my eyes open and when I saw an Indian had caused the shadow, I screamed and yanked the blanket over me.
In addition to his height, prominent cheekbones and a proud nose lent authority to his face. He wore buckskins and fur, and feathers and beads adorned his long straight black hair. He looked warm.
He snorted what seemed like a laugh of some sort, then two more similar-looking men in nearly-identical outfits climbed up behind him in the mouth of the cave.
My heart beat so hard I thought it would explode from my chest. I reached over and gave Emmett a shove. “Wake up,” I hissed, but his skin burned with fever when I touched his shoulder. I chanced a glance at him, and noticed his face was red and sheened with sweat. At least that explained what had woken me.
I was left to deal with Indians all by myself.
I didn’t understand a word they said. They spoke amongst themselves and from the way they surveyed the cave, they took an inventory of us and our meager supplies, then discussed their findings.
They unhobbled the horses, and the man who seemed to be the leader said something to me, which of course I didn’t comprehend, but through gestures I understood him to mean I should get dressed.
I was more than happy to do so, and waited for him to turn around, but he and the others j
ust stood there watching. I had no choice if I wanted to get dressed than to do it in front of them. Once clothed, though, I felt better equipped to deal with the situation, but only a bit. I was very far out of my element.
I bent to get Emmett’s clothes and try to dress him, but the leader barked something at me, making me jump. I looked up at him and he waved for me to join them.
“What about Emmett?” I asked, pointing to Emmett.
The leader waved a dismissive hand and pointed at me, gesturing for me to join him.
He meant to leave Emmett.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head so he’d have no doubt what I meant. “No. If I go, Emmett goes. If he stays, I stay.”
I knew he didn’t understand my words, but he clearly understood my determined stance. He said something else to me, his voice loud and commanding, but I stood my ground. We glared at each other and I finally pointed at Emmett, pointed at my own chest, then pointed at him, meaning both of us would go with him.
He finally harrumphed and said something to the other two men, then turned on his heel and left the cave. The other two men approached me and through gesture and awkwardly rolling poor Emmett’s naked body back and forth, we managed to get him dressed and wrapped in a couple of blankets. One of the men heaved Emmett onto his shoulder and carried him to the horses, slinging him belly-first into the saddle. He took the reins and led the horse out of the cave. He gestured for me to climb up onto the other horse and follow him.
I had no choice but to do as he asked. I only hoped we weren’t going from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
I dreamed of Lydia. Her soft, gentle fingers danced over my skin easing my fear and pain, healing my heart and soul.
I lay on a blanket in the green grass, and Lydia sat beside me. The bright sun warmed my skin, and a cool breeze ruffled Lydia’s loose curls tumbling down her back, exactly as beautiful and tempting as I knew they would be. She held my hand and brushed the hair out of my eyes. I enjoyed spending time with her that didn’t require us to run from someone, get shot at, or freeze.
Depending on the Doctor (Nevada Bounty Book 2) Page 12
