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AUbrEY

I can’t stop shaking.

The cold has worked its way so deep into my bones I’m not sure I’ll ever be warm again. Everything feels distant, muffled. Jensen’s voice reaches me as if through water, urgent but fading until I hear the words “Get naked.”

That would get anyone’s attention.

I stare at him blankly.

“Aubrey.” Jensen’s face appears before mine, his hands framing my face. Even through my numbness, I register his warmth. “Stay with me. I need you to focus.”

I try to nod, but my body doesn’t cooperate.

“I need to get these wet clothes off you. The fire isn’t drying you out fast enough.” His voice is all business, but his eyes betray his fear. He knows how bad this is. “Now.”

Some distant part of me knows I should be embarrassed or resistant, but that part seems very far away. Besides, it’s not as if he hasn’t seen me naked before, not as if he hasn’t touched and tasted me all over.

But my own hands are useless, clumsy appendages that won’t follow commands. Jensen’s fingers work quickly unzipping my coat, peeling away layers of sodden, thawing fabric. My boots. My jeans, plastered to my legs. My shirt. My bra.

Cold air hits newly exposed skin, somehow even worse than the wet clothes. A small sound escapes me—half whimper, half moan.

“I know,” Jensen murmurs. “It’ll get better. Stay with me.”

Jensen has spread out the sleeping bag in front of the fire and stands before it, pulling off his own shirt. He shivers violently, nearly as cold as I am. Both of us are in danger here.

“All of it has to come off,” he says, reaching over and tugging down my underwear over my cold hips, his touch impersonal, clinical, at least compared to how he’s touched me before. Then he strips off his remaining garments with quick efficiency. In my half-frozen state, I register only impressions—the breadth of his shoulders, the heat emanating from his skin, the tattoo on his shoulder.

He gently guides me down to my knees and into the sleeping bag, then slides in behind me, zipping it closed. The shock of his skin, just slightly warmer than mine, draws a gasp from my throat. It hurts—god, it hurts—as blood slowly begins to flow back into extremities gone numb from cold.

“You’re doing good,” he murmurs against my hair, arms wrapping around me, pulling me against the furnace of his chest. “The pain means you’re warming up.”

I don’t feel good. I feel like I’m being burned alive after being frozen solid. Every inch of my skin is hypersensitive, nerve endings coming back online with screaming protests. I bite my lip to keep from crying out.

Jensen’s hands move in slow, firm strokes along my arms, my back, generating friction and heat. The sleeping bag traps it all, creating a cocoon of gradually increasing warmth. Minutes pass, perhaps longer. Time feels strange, elastic and stretching.

Slowly, excruciatingly, the pain begins to ebb. Warmth seeps back into my core. My shivering, which had been violent enough to rattle my teeth, begins to subside. I become aware of my surroundings again—the crackle of the fire, the howl of wind outside, Eli’s steady breath from the cot, and the solid presence of Jensen wrapped around me.

And then, with awareness, comes the rest. The intimacy of our position. The feeling of his skin against mine, every point of contact electric. The way his breath stirs the hair at the nape of my neck. His arm wrapped around my waist, hand splayed against my stomach.

“Better?” he asks, voice low and rough in my ear.

I nod, not trusting my voice. I’m alive. The immediate danger has passed. But a different kind of danger has taken its place—the awareness of him, of us, of everything unresolved between us.

“Thank you,” I manage finally, moving my head to glance back at him.

He gives me a lopsided grin, the flames from the fire dancing in his eyes. “I should be thanking you. You giving me one last piece of heaven before we meet hell.”

We fall silent, the only sounds our breathing and the storm outside. I should pull away. Should rebuild the walls between us. But I’m tired of walls. Tired of fighting—him, myself, the world.

“Jensen…” I don’t know what I’m asking for. Don’t know what I’m offering. It’s different this time.

His hand moves from my waist to my face, fingers tucking my hair behind my ear with unexpected gentleness. “We might not make it out of here,” he says softly. “You know that, right?”

I do know. The odds are stacked impossibly against us—the hungry ones hunting and herding us, no horses, Eli’s condition, which might go one way or the other.

We’re running out of time, out of options.

Out of luck.

“I know,” I whisper.

He moves so that I’m beneath him now, on my back, my breasts pressed up against his chest. He lowers his head so that his forehead touches mine, the gesture startlingly intimate. “If these are our last hours, I don’t want to spend them with lies between us. With hurt feelings and regrets.”

My hand finds his face, mirroring his touch. The beard on his jaw is rough against my palm. “No more lies,” I agree. “No more regrets. I’m done running from them.”

His mouth finds mine, and it’s both familiar and brand new. A softness, a tender exploration, the barest hint of his tongue tracing my lower lip. I open to him, hungry, desperate to feel alive in a way that has nothing to do with survival. His kiss deepens, becomes something ferocious, claiming and giving all at once.

His hand slides from my cheek down my neck, grazing my collarbone before cupping my breast, thumb brushing over my nipple. I arch into the touch with a gasp, heat pooling between my legs.

“God, Aubrey,” he groans against my mouth. “You’re too sweet for me.”

The fire’s warmth and the sleeping bag have coaxed his body back to full temperature. He’s blazing hot now, all firm muscle and hard lines pressing into me. His knee nudges between my legs, opening me for him as his lips leave mine to trace the line of my jaw, the curve of my throat. Every nerve in my body is extra awake now, alive with sensation.

He moves lower still, capturing a nipple between his lips that draws a ragged gasp from my lips, while his hand travels south to the bare skin of my hip. I’m not cold anymore—far from it—but I still shiver as he trails his fingers down my thigh, then back up the sensitive inside until they’re right where I need them most.

I’m already wet for him. The realization is heady after everything: how much I want him, want this. He groans again as he finds what he’s looking for with skilled fingers that circle and stroke and tease until I’m gasping beneath him.

“Jensen,” I breathe, a plea, a prayer, a surrender.

He answers in kind, shifting his weight to align himself at my opening. His eyes meet mine, searching for something—permission, maybe, or forgiveness. I give him both with the lift of my hips and the arch of my back.

He presses into me slowly, an exquisite agony as he fills me inch by inch. I clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin with the intensity of it all. When he’s fully inside me, we both still for a moment that stretches like eternity. It feels too much and not enough all at once.

“Fuck,” he gasps, face buried in my hair. “You’re perfect, darlin’.”

Then he starts to move, deliberate and unhurried at first. The friction is delicious torture; every thrust sends shockwaves through my entire body. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper, harder. He grips me tighter in response, our bodies falling into a rhythm that’s frantic and frenzied and so fucking right.

The world narrows to just us—the feel of him inside me, the sound of our breath mingling, the heat building unbearably between us. The rawness of it is overwhelming. Every nerve ending sparks white-hot as we surge toward the edge together.

He shifts his angle slightly, hitting a spot that makes me cry out and sees stars behind my eyes. I cling to him as if he’s the only real thing left in this collapsing universe.

“Come for me,” he groans against my throat, driving into me with renewed urgency.

And I do—god, I do—my whole body seizing around him, around the moment, everything else falling away. The release is cataclysmic, like breaking the surface and sucking in air after drowning. It’s too much and not enough, and he keeps moving, pulling more from me than I knew possible.

I feel him let go only a heartbeat after I do, his rhythm breaking apart as he shudders through his own release, his deep groan making the whole sleeping bag shake. His mouth finds mine again, swallowing the sounds we make as we come undone together. For a moment, we’re weightless, timeless.

Then reality seeps back in—the storm outside, the waiting monsters, Eli’s steady breath from across the room—and we collapse in a tangle of limbs and heat and exhaustion. The sleeping bag is stifling now, but neither of us makes a move to get out of it. We just lie there, skin damp with sweat, hearts hammering against each other’s chests, breaths slowly syncing.

He shifts slightly so that my head rests on his shoulder. “Hmmm,” he murmurs into my hair. “If I’d known nearly freezing to death would lead to that…”

I laugh softly, nestling closer. There are no walls between us now—only skin and heart and a fragile new understanding that feels even more precious than before. We might not make it out of here. We might not have tomorrow or even the next hour. But for now? For this fleeting moment?

We have each other.

And right now, that’s more than enough.

I think that over as exhaustion tugs at me. I don’t fight it. Jensen presses a kiss to my temple, holding me tight as I drift off into a warm, solid sleep.