by Rae Renzi
“Great,” she muttered. “Hypothermia and a concussion.”
Continuing her survey downward, Casey suddenly remembered the river guide saying the arms and legs should not be warmed before the body, although she couldn’t remember exactly why. She groped around under the sleeping bag, pulled out one unresisting arm and arranged it by his side. Scooting around, she lifted out the other arm and paused.
Tattoos. Not a clumsy remnant of youthful bravado tucked away in a discreet place, but a whole parade of tattoos marching up the back of the man’s left arm and onto his shoulder blade. She rocked back on her heels and chewed on her knuckles, staring at the offending limb. Tattoos brought to mind things like gangs, prisons, drugs—things she’d kept far, far away from her life. Tattoos were practically emblematic of chaos and passion, anathema to a quiet life of reason.
Her eyes drifted to his face. It wasn’t scary but, again, his eyes were closed. Not much to go on. Frowning, she rolled his arm inward so she could inspect it closely. With the tiniest bit of relief, she noted the tattoos were not of swastikas, or death-heads, or naked women, but rather some kind of complicated graphic design that looked vaguely Celtic. If it were on paper, it would be pretty. But on skin? The people she usually hung out with didn’t sport big tattoos. Of course, they were scientists—not really into social display of any kind.
A necklace of leather and gold looped around his neck and disappeared down his chest under the sleeping bag. He also wore two rings. One was an intricate depiction of an animal—a panther or dragon or some sinuous thing—carved in jade and worn on his right ring finger, the other, on his little finger, was a hammered band of gold with a spray of tiny inset sapphires spiraling around the band like a miniature constellation.
A drug dealer. They had tattoos and wore a lot of jewelry, didn’t they? But what would a drug dealer be doing on the river? Healthy outdoor activity didn’t mesh with her idea of your basic drug-dealer lifestyle. If he was a drug dealer, he was darned healthy one—not an altogether comforting thought. A brief memory flashed through her head of a television show commenting on how prison inmates spent all their time pumping iron.
She rolled his arm outward to inspect the inner surface for track marks, or needle tracks, or needle marks—whatever they were called. No. His inner arms were without blemish.
Good. That was good. Maybe he wasn’t a drug dealer.
She again checked his temperature by laying her cheek against his forehead. He was still icy cold. Starting to feel anxious—a strange mix of worrying about his survival, and what that might mean to hers—Casey turned her mind back to the river guide’s lecture on treating hypothermia. The idea was to get warmth into the middle of the body where all those important organs lived. Warm liquids would be good—if he weren’t unconscious, and if there were warm liquids handy.
She stared down at his still face, her mind skirting around two other methods for getting warmth into the body—mouth-to-mouth air exchange and getting naked right up against the hypothermic person.
Her mind slammed shut on the latter. She gingerly considered the former. She looked at him, weighed her discomfort, looked away. Twisted a lock of her hair around her finger. Looked at him again.
“The real question is, do I want to have a corpse on my beach?” she asked herself. “Or on my conscience?” Right. Nothing like a healthy dose of pre-emptive guilt to clarify the mind.
Overcoming her squeamishness, she took a deep breath, opened his mouth slightly with her hands, incidentally checking to see if he at least had good dental hygiene—he did, thank God—closed her eyes and attached her lips to his.
Chapter Three
A sharp noise, a cry, broke through the rushing sound, dragged him into awareness, up from the dreamless black into somewhere cold and brittle—nowhere he wanted to be. He sank back into the comforting darkness…
…Something tugged at him again. Annoying but easy to ignore. Easier still to close his mind and roll back into the void…
…What was jerking him around? Scraping his legs, moving his arms, like a fucking puppet. He tried to open his eyes, to get his mouth to say “Leave me the fuck alone,” but the grayness was too heavy…
…A touch like a feather on his face…tantalizing scent…warm, soft lips floating over him, begging to be tasted, then touching his…Sweet lips awakened his hunger. He tasted deeper, the memory of stirrings from long ago—
“Hey!” A voice pierced his reverie.
He cracked his eyes open, let in the light. An angel bent over him, damp curls tumbling around her face like burnished gold, amber-and-olive eyes widened in surprise, luscious lips parted. He wanted to pull her closer, taste her again, smell her fragrance… This was heaven, right?
Except…
He licked his lips.
Chocolate?
Chapter Four
Casey jerked back from the man, her lips tingling. He had kissed her! The guy was practically a corpse, and he had kissed her.
He blinked at her and squinted, as if trying to bring the world into focus. “Wha’ th’ fuck…? Who’re you? Why’m I all wrapped up?”
He sounded drunk, but Casey hadn’t tasted any alcohol on him. This was not a good sign. The slurred words meant his brain was slowing down from the cold. Not good at all.
He tried to sit up, but Casey pushed him down again.
“Look, you were in a flash flood, and were in the water for a while. I think you have hypothermia.” She held him down, her hands splayed across his chest. She tried not to notice the muscles flexing under her fingers.
“Hypo…thermia?” he whispered. “No…fuckin’ way.” He closed his eyes. “Too…warm.”
“No, you’re not. Trust me. You’re very cold. Your brain is also cold, so it’s not working very well, especially the part that tells your body that you’re hot or cold.” Casey kept her hands squared on his chest, acutely aware that with his kind of musculature, her efforts were purely symbolic. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. Probably he was concussed, after all.
“Will…you…move? I need t’ get up.” An edge had crept into his voice.
“Oh,” Casey said, with sudden understanding. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
He turned his head and looked at her as if she were mentally deficient. His eyes were chocolate brown.
“No…” Irritation made his words more distinct. “I’m hot. I want t’ take off this fucking wrap.”
“No, listen. You have to believe me.” Somehow, he didn’t look like a believer. She tried a different approach. “You look like an intelligent man,” she wheedled. “Just put the facts together. You’ve been in the river for a while. The river is very, very cold. Therefore, you are very cold. If you jump up and start running around before you’re warm, you’ll have a stroke and drop dead.”
He stared at her, his eyes unblinking.
Casey kept talking. “You might not have noticed yet, but there’s no one here but you and me, and I am not a doctor. So prevention is the way to go here. I need to get warm air into your lungs. Unless you’re suicidal.”
He sighed and closed his eyes again. “You’re really annoying.”
Casey’s patience was nearly exhausted. She was tired, she was bruised, she’d saved this guy’s life, and she was annoying? “Look, buster, I couldn’t care less if you drop dead, if you’d just do it somewhere else. I do not want a corpse on my beach. It would attract all kinds of wildlife I’d prefer to avoid. And the smell…”
He turned his head and gave her an odd look. “Oh. Yeah, that would be pretty damn unpleasant.”
“Okay, then. How about if we make a deal? Let me get some warm air into you. If you do have hypothermia, when your brain warms up and starts working again—which, at the moment, it obviously is not—you’ll start to feel cold. If you don’t feel cold in about twenty minutes, then I’ll agree that you do not have hypothermia, and I’ll back off, and you can do whatever you want. But right now, could you please, please, please
just do as I ask? I mean, what do you have to lose? Other than your life.”
“Christ.” He gazed at her for a few heartbeats. “Okay. Are you going to kiss me again?”
“I did not kiss you.”
He looked at her, raising one eyebrow.
“That was only a reflex. Look, I’m going to blow warm air into your cold lungs. Just like blowing up a balloon. That’s all.”
“Whatever.” His smile was infuriating.
Air exchange with the stranger was more akin to whispering secrets than blowing up balloons. She expected it to be distasteful, an unpleasant necessity, but, oddly, it wasn’t. Faces close, lips touching softly, Casey breathed into his mouth, held the air, and then he breathed out. She tried to make it as mechanical as possible but soon found herself wanting to feel more of his mouth and his cool lips than was necessary. Catching herself, she focused on repeating the in-and-out procedure over and again, until little by little his breath lost its chill.
She could smell his skin, faintly sweaty, overlaid with the muddy smell of the river. When her mop of hair fell forward onto his face, he reached up and brushed it back, leaving his fingers intertwined in the hair at the nape of her neck as they continued the shared breathing. His touch sent a shiver up her spine and, unless it was her imagination, his grasp tightened to pull her toward him. She tried to ignore the quickening of her heartbeat.
This kind of proximity with a total stranger would make anyone nervous. Surely that was what she was reacting to, just nervousness.
But the heat grew between them, something more than warm breath, until she couldn’t bear it any longer. She abruptly pulled back from him, sitting on her heels. “How do you feel now?”
No response. His eyes were on hers, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere.
“Your lips aren’t blue anymore.” The distance helped her composure. A little.
He grunted. “I’m cold and my head is fucking killing me.”
“Ah. But other than that you feel great, right?”
He gazed at her with that same odd look on his face. “Could be worse.”
Shadows had crept up the canyon walls, and the sun had tipped toward the horizon. Its downward path made deep shadows on the stranger’s symmetrical features, creating an illusion that his face was an amalgam of golden light and the darkest dark, with nothing between except deep brown eyes. It was fascinating. So fascinating that Casey forgot to talk.
A loose tarp on the raft snapped in the breeze, reminding Casey of where she was, and why. She gave her head a quick shake.
“We should try to get up to higher ground where there’s some shelter. Can you walk?” She stood and brushed sand from her hands.
“Yeah.” He struggled to his feet and wrapped the sleeping bag around his shoulders. His hands, gripping the bag against the tugging of the wind, trembled hard.
Casey tried to convince herself the shivers meant he was out of immediate danger from hypothermia. “Are you okay?”
“Just…fucking…peachy,” he ground out through chattering teeth.
She nodded, then scurried over to grab a few things from the raft—a bag containing a flashlight, a tiny backpacking stove and gas cartridges, a pair of aluminum cups, a small cooking pan, some bottles of water—and jammed them into her pack. The food locker on the near side of the raft was undamaged and full of food and water. She added as much cheese, crackers, sausage, dried fruit as her backpack would hold. She found her gear, including her tent, still in its dry bag, snug in the hold. Taking a deep breath, she threaded her arms through the straps of the pack, picked up her gear bag and struggled back to the beach.
Casey wanted the stranger where she could see him, so she pointed the way to the path and followed him, not even stopping to shake the pebbles from her shoes. The path felt as though it had doubled in length, and they were both stumbling by the time they reached the rock terrace.
“Hang on one more minute while I put up the tent.” She dropped her burden on the cavern floor. The hollow clatter echoed back, sounding too sharp.
He didn’t reply, just leaned against the cavern wall, watching and shivering. She spread a ground cloth, weighted the corners with rocks so it wouldn’t blow away, and pulled out her tent. Like magic, the tent flew open with a feeble pop and a musty gust of air, then settled with a soughing noise onto the cave surface. She closed her eyes in relief. Hurray engineering.
The man observed silently through half-closed eyes, a frown drawing his eyebrows down. His shivering intensified; he clutched the sleeping bag closer. His face was drawn and pale.
“Hold on just a little longer. Almost done,” Casey reassured him.
Gathering up sleeping gear and arranging it in the tent was a matter of a minute or so, but even in so short a time, he had deteriorated. She hastily lit a small camp lantern and set it inside the tent. It glowed with the appearance of warmth, if not the actuality.
He shuffled to the tent entry, then stopped and looked down at himself. Dropping the sleeping bag, he removed his sandals and, without so much as a backward glance at Casey, dropped his wet shorts and nudged them aside. Naked, he picked up the sleeping bag and ducked into the tent.
Casey felt a jolt of alarm. She tried to avert her eyes, but they got stuck like an ant in honey. His body was like a drawing from Leonardo’s sketchbooks. It didn’t seem quite right—that beautiful body housing such a snarly personality. Maybe it was fair, though. Yin and yang. She shrugged and turned away.
By the time she got the stove lit and water heating, the sun was balanced on the horizon, its fiery rays flattening out like a molten puddle around it. Lining up the food supplies, Casey did the math. There wasn’t enough for the two of them. She called on her last reserves of energy and marched down the path to the raft to revisit the food locker. Racing against the deep shadows crawling along the river, she loaded up a spare gear bag with more cheese, crackers, sausage, some dried packets of soup, a couple cans of beans and a jar of peanut butter. She also tucked in one of the boxes of wine the river-rafting company had thoughtfully provided. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet.
The man, wrapped head-to-toe in a blanket with the sleeping bag layered on top, turned his head when she entered the tent. His eyes locked on to hers, not warily, but with disquieting intensity.
“I made some hot soup,” she said, offering him a cup. “It might make you feel better. I have some other food here, too, if you’re hungry. Only cheese and crackers, but it’s better than nothing. That is, if you’re hungry.”
He lifted his chin briefly and sat up. The blanket slid off his shoulders and pooled around his hips. By act of will alone, Casey kept her eyes on his northern parts. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. The lantern light spilled across his chest and shoulders, which looked as though they were sculpted in marble. Would his skin feel like it looked? Cool and smooth, firm to the touch?
His fingers lingered on hers as he took the cup. She withdrew her hand quickly and shifted away from him, a gesture he did not miss. His eyes mocked her. Oh, yeah, they seemed to say, like those few inches are going to make a difference.
They drank their soup in silence, letting the hot liquid spread warmth from the inside. Although the man kept an unwavering gaze on her over the rim of the cup while he drank, he didn’t seem to want to talk. Casey stifled the urge to chatter about the weather, the tent, the color of the sky.
“What’s your name?” he asked in a soft growl.
“What?”
“Your name?” He upturned his cup, taking a sip. “I like to know the names of women I exchange bodily fluids with.”
“Exchange bodily fluids…” She rolled her eyes. “Saliva? Please.”
He said nothing but a sardonic smile played on his lips. His eyes, half-closed, flicked over her lazily. He took the last bit of soup into his mouth and licked his lips.
“I have to put stuff away.” Casey scooted through the door, escaping into the open air.
She huffed across t
o the pile of goods she’d ferried from the raft. Bodily fluids. Her initial relief at not being stranded alone was eroding. She didn’t like the suggestion and hoped there was no implied threat. He could have used an innocuous phrase to acknowledge the incidental intimacy they’d shared…they’d been forced to share. But no. He couldn’t say something bland like “I know it was uncomfortable, so thanks, and, by the way, it seems odd to have lip-locked someone without exchanging names.” Oh no. No, he had to instill a little menace into his words.
Jerk.
She grabbed the cans of beans from the pile of food she’d made in the middle of the cavern and thunked them onto the protruding shelves at the back wall. Packets of noodles were scooped up and dumped beside the cans. After a few more minutes of effort, her irritation began to dull.
He’s trying to get back some control. She’d encountered that often enough in her interactions with young, and not-so-young, men. Machismo had strange requirements. Being macho and forced to accept help—serious help—would bring out the worst.
In spite of her exhaustion, the mindless activity of stowing the food calmed her. Her focus shifted from the irritating stranger to the peace and beauty of the surroundings. The sun was almost gone. Its last rays ignited the clouds from underneath and slid across the vast blue sky to dust the cliffs with gold. The sunset was impossibly beautiful, an extravagant gift to soften a thorny day.
When she finished unpacking the food, Casey opened the box of wine and, deciding she’d earned it, filled a mug to the top. A comfortable spot on the edge of the rock terrace offered her a place to sit and look out over the still-raging river.
Once she stopped moving, bone-deep weariness found her and settled in. She lapsed into a long moment of insensibility, scarcely able to bring her cup to her lips. The twilight was calm, surreal, completely at odds with the agitated waters below and the catastrophic event that landed her in this place.