“No, it’s not a skiing cabin.”
Jordan flipped her body around so we were face to face. Our lips were only inches apart as she tucked her arms into my chest and I wrapped mine back around her.
“Is this okay? I think it might keep me a little warmer,” she asked.
“Sure, whatever works for you is fine with me. I’m not cold at all.”
“So it’s not a ski cabin, but you are staying at it in the winter? Why?” Jordan asked wide eyed and ready to hear all about my cabin in the woods.
“I live in my cabin. I stay here all four seasons.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” I laughed. “Just like a normal home. You know the kind you live in, and all the seasons pass you by?”
Jordan furrowed her brow as she looked at me and then at the growing snow pile along the edge of the tent. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to come up with some sort of logical explanation for why I would be living in the woods like I was.
“Are you a murderer?” she asked playfully but with a little trepidation as well.
“No.”
“So you’re just living up here in the woods. How do you make a living?”
“How about we save all the questions for the morning? You’re still shivering; maybe we should consider taking off some of our clothes?” I tried my hardest to keep a straight face as I made the offer, but I knew that having our clothes off was the best possible option for warming Jordan up quickly.
She smiled back at me as if I had some nefarious plan for her once I got her naked. “Okay, but only because I’m freezing. And we are keeping our underwear on,” she ordered.
“Of course.”
I quickly unzipped the sleeping bag and pulled my clothing off. Jordan’s eyes zoomed in on my stomach and then quickly looked away. After spending a couple of years working on my cabin, I certainly had built up a body that I could be proud of. I smiled as I saw her continue to look at me out of the corner of her eyes while she pulled off her pants and then her shirt. She left her bra and panties on and then quickly tucked herself back into my chest as I zipped the sleeping bag up around us.
“No funny business. I’m only naked because I don’t want to freeze to death,” she warned me.
“What makes you think you’re even my type?” I retorted.
“What is your type?” Jordan asked with a smile.
She was tucked into my chest and had finally stopped shivering. I could feel that she was warming up and felt a huge sense of relief that she was going to be alright. But with the danger past, a new sexual tension grew between us. I was glad she was facing me instead of having her ass pressed back against my body. The small space between us was like a safety zone between my now raging hard-on and the delicate fabric that was covering her delicious center.
“I like brunettes. Tall brunettes,” I lied to her as I tried not to look down at her sweet body as it stayed curled up next to me.
“I don’t believe you, but we can go with it for now. Thank you for coming back for me. I probably would have died in here if you hadn’t.”
“You might have.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” she said with a laugh.
“I’m not one for sugar-coating things. What possessed you to come hiking all alone anyway? You were clearly not prepared.”
She yanked her head back and looked up at me. I could tell I was making her angry as her eyes narrowed in on mine and her playful look changed to a serious one. She didn’t strike me as the sort of girl who liked to be told that she wasn’t prepared.
“I have a tent, sleeping bag, food, and everything else I thought I would need. I just wasn’t prepared for the snow. If it hadn’t gotten so cold, I would have been just fine. And how do you know I’m not a trained hiker?”
I laughed at her question. There were so many clues to the fact that she had no idea what she was doing. Her giant backpack was the first sign. The size and quality of her tent. The weather rating on her sleeping bag and the fact that she hadn’t been able to successfully operate her own portable stove. I could have mentioned any one of these things or all of them, but I chose not to. One thing my father told me a very long time ago was that arguing with a beautiful woman was never a good idea. He was referencing my mother at the time, but I’d always remembered his advice.
“I’m sorry,” I said and smiled down at her.
“Don’t look at me like that. I was prepared.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You’re smiling at me. You don’t think I was actually prepared. You think I’m some sort of amateur who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Well, you didn’t know it was going to snow either. Look at you out here in the middle of the snow. So you’re not someone who should be making fun of me for being out here.”
“You are right. I didn’t think it was going to snow last night,” I admitted.
It was funny how being around Jordan made me want not to be a total asshole. It had been a long time since I had a woman in my arms, and she felt good. Her soft skin was now warm under my fingers, and the color had returned to her cheeks. As much as I wanted to scold her for venturing out into the woods so unprepared, I just couldn’t bring myself to argue with this woman. Not when I had her in my arms like I did.
“How much snow do you think we will get?” Jordan asked as she looked at the rising shadow of snow around the tent.
“No way to know for sure. If it’s an inch per hour all night long, we could have a foot of snow by the morning.”
“Can I get back down the mountain in that?”
“Maybe.”
Jordan did something then that I was utterly unprepared for. Her big blue eyes looked up at me and tears burst through. She was sobbing uncontrollably as she tried to talk, but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. I rubbed her back and looked around the tent for something for her to blow her nose on. She was clearly very upset, but I had no idea what was troubling her so much. If she couldn’t get down the mountain in the morning, I was positive we could get back to my cabin. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, and I knew I’d keep her safe.
She cried for a good twenty minutes before she started to regain her composure, and I could understand what she was trying to say.
“I was just trying to prove that I could do it alone. I wanted my boyfriend to come up with me, but I broke up with him. Then I had to pretend like I had another boyfriend to make him jealous. Then I told everyone I was coming hiking. Now I look like a total idiot getting stuck up here, and everyone is going to know I am stupid.”
She was babbling on and on, and some of it wasn’t making sense, but I figured out the gist of it all.
“My cabin isn’t far from here. We can make it there in the morning. You won’t die up here,” I offered.
“I can’t do anything right. I can’t even go hiking without screwing it up.”
She wasn’t crying anymore, but Jordan was wrapped up in her own thoughts and not listening to me at all. Instead of trying to explain to her that things like this were a learning experience and not a failure, I just held onto her as I felt her starting to get tired.
I glanced at my watch to see that it was nearly three in the morning when Jordan finally fell asleep. She was my type of girl; of course, I wasn’t about to admit that to her, but as I looked at her I couldn’t help thinking that I would have dated her if the situation had been different.
Chapter 7
Jordan
I was warm. My first thought as I started to wake up was that I wasn’t cold at all. I wanted to stay right there in this stranger’s arms and not climb out of that tent and not feel the blistering cold of the reality we were dealing with.
We had slept with my face tucked into his chest and his arms around me, but the top part of his body was exposed to the cold. Caleb had tucked the sleeping bag tightly around my shoulders to keep me warm even though it left his upper chest and shoulders to freeze.
As I started to move around, Caleb opened his eyes, and I realized that he hadn’t slept much at all. His gaze was dazed and fogged over like that of someone who had tried to sleep but didn’t have any such luck.
“You slept well,” he said in his husky velvet voice.
His words sent a shiver throughout my body, not because I was cold, but because the sound of his voice vibrated deep within me. My center was instantly awake and tingling with the tone of his voice. There was no denying that my body had a primal urge to be with his, but I wasn’t about to have sex with this stranger. In fact, in the light of day, I wasn’t even sure about how I was going to navigate getting out of the sleeping bag without Caleb seeing my mostly naked body.
“I did get some sleep, thank you.”
“It looks like we got at least a foot of snow. You should come with me to my cabin; I don’t think you’ll make it back down the mountain.”
“I wouldn’t mind trying to get down.”
“Let’s get dressed and see how it looks,” he said.
I knew he meant that I wasn’t going to get down the mountain, and I just needed to look at the trail for myself to admit it. From the shadow on the side of the tent, I already knew I was in for a rough morning. My hiking boots weren’t meant for snow. I was going to have soaking wet feet, and there was absolutely no way I could manage the six to eight-hour hike with freezing toes.
“Close your eyes,” I ordered as I pulled away from him and unzipped the sleeping bag.
He did as I asked, and instantly the cold of the morning stunned every nerve in my body. I hurried to put my shirt and pants on and then tapped Caleb on the shoulder so he could open his eyes and get dressed as well. My layers of clothing consisted only of a sweatshirt and a coat with some light work gloves. I was totally unprepared, as much as I hated to admit it.
We didn’t talk as the two of us finished getting dressed and putting our boots back on. I wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to get out of the tent and gather my camping supplies. I’d practiced rolling my tent up a few times, but never in the midst of a foot of snow.
Caleb pushed the snow away from the door before he crawled out, and then he brushed off his backpack and put his sleeping bag in it. He had his bag on his back and was standing at the edge of the tree line before I had even managed to climb out of the tent. I had my bulky sleeping bag in my hand and was about to try and tie it to my backpack before Caleb said, “Stop, just throw it back into the tent.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s no way we can get those folded up and back into your bag and really no reason to do it. It’s just going to add extra weight; we have a few miles to get to my cabin still.”
“You want me to just leave them here?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Caleb and then at my tent and sleeping bag. He was right. It was too cold and snowy out for me to even care about leaving them behind. I threw my sleeping bag back into the tent and zipped it up for good measure. When the snow stopped, I could always hike back to this spot and gather them if I really wanted to, although after the night I had just had, I wasn’t sure I’d be up for camping or hiking again anytime soon.
“If your cabin is a couple of miles away, couldn’t we make it back down the mountain in the same amount of time?” I asked.
“No, my cabin is horizontal to us. Once we hike down just a little, we can walk down the dirt road and the tree line to my cabin. I know the way and know it’s safe. I don’t know a safe way back down the mountain. Going down would take us the whole day and my cabin will only take a couple hours.”
“Okay.”
The snow continued to fall as I followed Caleb down the trail. We were moving much slower than I’d expected, and the snow was filling my boots with each step. My toes were freezing, but I wasn’t about to complain or ask to stop because I knew the best thing to do was get to his cabin as quickly as possible. With the sun shining on us, we climbed slowly down the trail. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot of wind, and the 30-degree weather was warmer than it had been overnight. Caleb didn’t talk, but he did go slow enough for me to keep up with him. He stopped every now and again to look at me and seemed to be assessing how I was doing, although he never asked me as much.
When we finally made it to the road, it was one hundred percent apparent to me that we wouldn’t have made it down the mountain that day. It had already taken us two hours just to hike down to that point. The dirt road was more like a blanket of white snow than a road, pristine and smooth as far as I could see.
“How are your toes?” Caleb asked looking down at my boots before turning back to the path and continuing to walk.
“Cold. How about you?”
“Yeah, I just hope it’s warm enough out that we don’t end up with frostbite. Try to walk in my steps; it might help you a little.”
It was a nice gesture, and I knew by looking at Caleb’s boots that he too was getting a lot of snow in his shoes. The flat road made it easier to walk right in his footsteps, and I avoided getting too much more snow into my boots.
“How much longer on this road?” I asked as we took a slight curve.
“Another half a mile, and we will be there.”
“Do you think it’s going to snow all day today too?”
“I have no idea. I’ll run the weather radio when we get to the cabin and see what they are predicting. But obviously, the weathermen can’t be trusted because none of this sounded like it was arriving last night.”
“Damn weathermen,” I joked as we continued to trudge along.
Caleb didn’t turn back around. He was quiet the rest of the way to his cabin, and I stayed right behind him and just tried to keep up. He wasn’t going as slow as before, and I suspected it was because his feet were freezing.
I hustled to keep up with him and kept all my complaining to myself. We were both miserable and cold; there was no way around it. The only thing we could do was get back to his cabin as fast as we could and get out of these wet clothes.
“That’s it,” Caleb said as he pointed to a beautiful new-looking cabin in the distance. There was a pickup truck parked out back and a small building just to the side. The roof was steep as if it had been made for the snow, and a lot of it had fallen right off; there was only a small ridge of snow left along the gutters.
“Thank God,” I said as we walked down the steep driveway to his house.
“I’m not sure I have much firewood inside. I’ll grab some, but it might be a little bit before we can get a fire going.”
“That’s fine. Let’s get our fingers and toes warmed up, then we can figure it out,” I offered. At this point, I couldn’t think of anything besides getting my socks and shoes off and putting my feet into a nice pair of wool socks. Surely a man like Caleb had some wool socks around.
We walked up the snow-covered steps to his front porch, and I followed his lead as he took his boots off right there. Then he opened the large wooden door, and we stepped in with our soaking wet socks still on.
His cabin looked better than I’d expected an old cabin in the woods to look. But then again, his cabin wasn’t all that old; the wood looked practically brand new. I stood in the entryway and pulled my wet socks off while Caleb ran to grab us some towels and blankets.
I could really go for a nice warm shower, but it dawned on me that a cabin up in the woods probably didn’t have running water and certainly wouldn’t have warm running water. I’d have to settle for some dry clothes and warm blankets.
“Take those wet clothes off, and I’ll draw you a bath.”
“A warm bath?” I asked looking a little confused.
“Sure, the solar panels should still have some power from before the storm hit. It won’t last long, though, so the water will likely be not all that hot.”
“Maybe we should both put our feet in the water?” I offered. “How are your toes doing?”
Both of us had our socks off, and our feet were bright red. I wasn’t sure of the correct pr
otocol in this sort of situation but putting my toes into hot water sounded really painful.
“Let’s wrap up in some warm blankets for a little bit and see how things go. We need to at least have feeling back in our toes before getting into the water. Can you feel your feet?”
“Now that you mention it, I’m not sure I can.”
“Then we definitely need to stay out of the water. We have some pain coming our way when our skin starts to un-thaw. Let’s get out of these clothes and wrap up in some blankets.”
“Would it help if we were in the same blanket?” I offered. “The whole body heat thing again, right?”
“Yes, let’s do that.”
In any other circumstance, I would have thought a guy like Caleb was only trying to get me naked so he could have his way with me. This was not any other circumstance, though, and we were both freezing. We stripped down to our underwear and wrapped up in a blanket together on the couch.
“Let me rub your feet,” Caleb suggested as we readjusted the blanket and I put my head on one side of the couch and his head was on the other.
I reached for his feet just as he reached for mine. Both of us had our hands in gloves for the hike, and even though my gloves weren’t all that great, they had kept my fingers warm enough that I could still feel them.
“I know your hands are on my feet, but I can’t actually feel them.” I laughed.
“It’s not funny, Jordan. If the feeling doesn’t come back soon, we are likely to lose some toes.”
“Sorry, I was just joking around. Can you feel my hands on your feet?”
“I’ve got an idea. You’re going to think it’s really weird, but maybe just go with it, okay?”
“Sure,” I replied a little leery about what this idea of his was going to be.
“The two warmest parts of the body are the groin and the armpits. I’m going to put your toes in my armpit and see if it helps warm them up.” He didn’t wait for me to agree to this new plan and instead tucked my feet up and under his arms.
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