The next time we speak is to argue about the bed.

“I told you, you take it.” Tony leans against the doorway into the bedroom, gaze narrowed at the single, tight-quartered mattress.

“We can both fit,” I protest. “Look, if we sleep on our sides…”

“I know we both can fit. You take it.” He steps back, toward the living room. I glare after him while he stokes the fire for a moment.

Then I raise my voice. “What were you saying earlier tonight about conservation? We need to conserve our body heat most of all. We can’t do that from two different rooms.” I gesture at the couch. “And you barely fit on that anyway.”

He narrows his eyes and shoves another piece of wood into the fire.

“That won’t stay lit all night,” I say. “Sooner or later it will go out. And you’ve seen how cold the kitchen already is. You can’t sleep out there in that.”

He doesn’t reply. But when I finally roll my eyes and curl up on the bed, facing the wall, under the blanket, I hear him sigh. A few moments later, I feel the heavy weight of the couch blanket being draped over me. Then the bed shifts as Tony climbs in beside me. His back digs into mine, curled in the opposite direction. Not the most comfortable way to sleep, but I ignore it. I close my eyes and try to drift off.

All I can hear is his voice. I think about fucking you too, Corina. I think about fucking you right in that front desk you sit in. My heartbeat speeds up just thinking about that. Tony Lakewood, Professor Hardass, my biggest pain in the ass this whole year. He’s been daydreaming about fucking me.

Same way I’ve been fantasizing about him. Ever since the first day I laid eyes on him in class, his perfect body and his sculpted chest and steady, piercing gaze.

I squeeze my eyes tighter.

We did just fuck. He fucked me so hard that if I clench my pussy, I can still feel his cock inside me, the shadow of him there. The sweet, deep ache he left inside me.

The burning throb of my clit, which wants more. I want him to do that again.

In frustration, I pull the pillow up over my eyes and try to slow my breathing. It’s going to be a long night.

* * *

I wake up to the feeling of warm arms wrapped around my waist, and a strong, muscular body curled around mine, holding me close. For a few breaths, I listen to the soft breathing behind me, feel the rise and fall of a chest against my back, and savor the warm, cozy sensation of being tucked under blankets with this warm body, when outside, on my cheek and face, I can tell how cold the ambient air has become.

So warm, so snug… I could almost drift right back to sleep.

Almost.

Until I remember where I am. Until I realize who is wrapped around me in bed.

I startle and roll over. Sure enough, I didn’t dream any of that. Professor Tony Lakewood is curled up beside me in bed, one arm around my waist like a lover’s embrace, eyelids fluttering slightly as he dreams about something. About fucking me again? asks the unhelpful part of my brain.

This is dangerous. My professor isn’t someone I can start hooking up with. And I certainly can’t wake up cuddling him, as if this…

I shake myself internally. As if this is anything more than a freak circumstance. I lever myself up on one elbow and untangle myself from his arm.

He sighs in his sleep, rolls over. I use that momentum to climb across him out of the bed. When I glance back, guilty at how much I made the whole small bed shift, he cracks one eyelid to look at me. For a brief second, our eyes meet. Then he rolls back over under the blankets, and I force myself to walk out of the bedroom. No more talking about that.

The living room is freezing already. I stoke the fire back up—it died down over night. That finished, I dig into my suitcase and pull out a change of clothes. Luckily I packed for the slopes, so I have plenty of warm, long-sleeved clothing. I step into the kitchen to change, since Tony and I both slept in our jeans.

It’s freezing inside the kitchen. So cold I hop from foot to foot, reaching over to turn on the stove just to warm things up a tiny bit. I hop into a pair of long sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt, then fresh socks and a jacket over top. My breath mists in the air as I set about making some breakfast.

Outside, the snow has stopped, but my eyes widen when I peer across the yard—across several yards of blinding white snow, that is—at the shed. Because it’s almost completely buried.

In fact, when I lean forward to check below the window, my mouth drops. The snow reaches all the way up to the kitchen windowsill. If I open the little door beside the kitchen now, I’ll be staring down a chest-high pile of snow.

Great.

I drop the pan onto the stove rather more forcefully than necessary. All the clattering must wake up Tony. I hear shuffling in the other room and feel the cabin creak with his weight as he putters around. A few minutes later, he steps into the kitchen, yawning and stretching, his hair sticking straight up from sleep.

Some wild impulse in me wants to reach out and flatten that hair for him. I tamp it down, and serve him a helping of the same chicken we ate last night for breakfast, along with a side bowl of, you guessed it, mushy porridge.

I expect a snarky comment about my lack of cooking skills. Or something, anything, to break this tension. But Tony only looks at me, then away, as though scared to meet my eye. He sits at the single person table in the kitchen and eats in silence. Then he rises and starts to wash the dishes, all without even acknowledging that I’m in the same room. I roll my eyes and finish my own food, then leave him to his own devices and open the back door.

Sure enough, I was right. The snow glistens right at chest height. Good thing we brought in plenty of wood last night. I have a feeling we’re going to be spending more time in this cabin than either of us would like. We’ll be lucky if they clear the roads by tonight.

Tony glances over at me, but if he’s going to tell me not to venture out there in the snow, he must think better of it when he catches a glimpse of the determined, narrow-eyed glare on my face. He just turns back to scrubbing the dishes with the minimal amount of bottled water we have left, because to judge by the lack of anything from the sink, the pipes are already frozen solid.

As for me, I’m on a mission. Because I’ve been thinking about something all morning—anything, really, to distract myself from the awkward reality of being trapped in a cabin with the teacher I hate. The teacher I hate and who I just fucked.

And the conclusion I’ve come to, in my search for a distraction, is this—where is the shower?

There’s a tiny little water closet off the kitchen, little more than a toilet and a sink that no longer functions without the pipes working. But there’s no shower. No bath either. Which leads me to believe it must be elsewhere. And there’s only one elsewhere in this tiny little homestead.

So I shoulder my way out the door into the chest-deep snow, grope around in it until I feel the handle of the shovel we brought over last night from the shed, and start digging.

It takes me the better part of the morning to make a little path for myself from the back door all the way out to the shed. At least it gives me something to do beside stand around the cabin with Tony in awkward silence. And at least, while I’m doing it, I work up enough of a sweat that I’m not cold, despite not currently being curled up in the cozy little living room around the fireplace.

The living room where he fucked me last night. The living room where I screamed my professor’s name while he came.

My shoulders bunch with the dual effort of forcing out those thoughts and focusing on the task at hand.

Finally, after what feels like a couple of hours—and probably was, come to think of it—I make it across the yard to the little shed. Once there, I open the door yet again and face down the far wall. The locked door is still there, and, to judge by the dimensions of this shed, it should lead to a much bigger space than it’s letting on.

With the bright morning sun reflecting off all the freshly fallen snow outside, it’s plenty light in here. Light enough that it doesn’t take me long to find the fake rock stuck obtrusively in the corner of the shed, and then to work the fake bottom off it to grab the key to this mystery door. I stick the key into the lock, turn it, and grin with self-satisfaction when the door swings open wide to reveal exactly what I expected beyond it…