Jake
One second she was there and the next she was gone. It took me a nanosecond to realize what had happened.
“Mackenzie!” I ran onto the pond, slipping and scrambling across the frozen water toward the dark, star-shaped break in the ice. I had to take it easy as I neared the hole, careful not to break the thin ice under me. If I went in, we were both fucked.
The water was black. Luckily Mackenzie was wearing a red coat so I could just make out the tiny ribbon of colour in the deep darkness.
Plunging my arm into the freezing water I felt for her and when my hand touched the fabric of her jacket I pulled her upwards. But she was a heavy weight and slipped right out of my grasp. Her clothes had filled with water, making it a tug of war between me and the lake water. Fear tore through me, second only to the adrenaline firing through every nerve and fiber in my body. She was unresponsive, not struggling against the pull of the water or reaching out for me, and I prayed it was because the cold had stunned her and not because I was too late and she had already drowned.
With one last reach, my frozen fingers clutched the fabric of her coat and launched her upwards. Her head broke the surface but her eyes were closed and her lips were already blue. But as soon as the cold wind hit her face her eyes opened wide and she gasped. I hauled her out, dragging her across the ice to the safety of shore and held her in my arms. Wide eyes blinked up at me and she started to shake. Getting to my feet I ran us across the snow-covered lawn and into the cabin. All the wet parts of me were freezing so I could only imagine how cold she was feeling.
I knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Hypothermia was swift. Removing her coat, I sat her down beside the fire and grabbed a blanket from the sofa and pulled it on top of us. I held her against me and she shook in my arms.
“It’s okay,” I tried my best to sound soothing.
She nodded and clutched my shirt, pressing her face to my chest. But her trembling was getting worse and I knew she had inhaled a lot of water.
“I’m going to run you a bath, okay.”
“N-no,” she stammered, clutching me tighter.
“It’s okay Z, you’re going to be fine. But I need to get you warm and a bath is the best way.” I didn’t tell her about needing to ring for an ambulance. I’d heard about people drowning after being pulled from the water because they had breathed in too much water and later died from it. But I didn’t want to scare her.
I brushed my hand across her face, suddenly aware of how smooth and beautiful her skin felt to touch.
“I’ll only be gone for a moment,” I said gently, not wanting to let her go but knowing how important it was to get her temperature back up.
I left her in front of the fire and went to the small bathroom in the little alcove off from the kitchen. I dropped to my knees by the tub, praying the heating system my granddad had designed to stop the water pipes from freezing over worked, and felt a rush of relief when warm water burst from the tap.
While I waited for it to fill I attempted to phoned the ambulance but at some stage the blizzard had taken out the phone lines.
Fuck.
Okay. We were in this alone but we would be fine because maybe I had miscalculated how long she’d been under and perhaps she hadn’t inhaled as much water as I’d originally thought. And I would bring her body temperature back up and she wouldn’t die from hypothermia.
I knelt down next to her as she shivered by the fire.
We were going to get through this. And we were going to get through this together.
“I need to get you out of your wet clothes and into the bath, okay? It will help get you warm.”
She looked up at me, her eyelashes still dripping with water, and nodded.
“Is this y-your way of getting me n-naked?” she joked weakly, a small grin tugging on her pale lips.
I smiled at her. Relieved she wasn’t as rattled as she could be. Winking, I said, “Well, I’ve already seen your rack.”
She chuckled softly which unfortunately set off a coughing fit. Kneeling next to her I rubbed her back until the coughing subsided and she could catch her breath. Then because her numb legs refused to work, I carried her over to the tub and stripped off her wet clothes until she was in nothing but her bra and . . . damn it, was she wearing a thong?
A lace thong?
I forced all thoughts of her underwear out of my head.
Well, I tried to. But it was kind of hard when her panties were barely there. And to be honest, if I wasn’t so worried about her well-being, I would outwardly groan at how sexy as fuck they were because mentally I was in the midst of a visual orgasm. And don’t even get me started on her ass.
But this wasn’t the time. And I didn’t let my eyes go there as I lifted her up and gently placed her in the warm water, careful to ease her in slowly so it didn’t hurt her skin. Her eyes rolled back and she moaned. “Oh, God, that’s good,” she whispered.
I was relieved. But hell, she needed to stop moaning like that.
I knelt next to the bath keeping my hand in the water to make sure it wasn’t too hot. Mackenzie would be numb so the last thing I wanted was to burn her. Color was returning to her lips and her skin didn’t look so sickly white. But her chin still quivered as she settled into the warm water.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, watching her. Trying to ignore the look of bliss forming across her face.
She nodded and shivered at the same time. “I’m going to be okay. If I can just get warm.”
She sat in the center of the tub, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her head fell back exposing her glorious white throat to me, and she closed her eyes.
“How’s your breathing?”
“It’s good.”
“Are you sure?”
She opened one eye to me and gave me a tired smile. “I know you’re worried. But I’m not going to drown on you, Jake. I didn’t inhale that much water. It stunned me more than anything.”
“When I pulled you out . . . it looked like you weren’t breathing.”
“Maybe it was shock.” She smiled up at me. “Jake, you don’t need to worry about me. I am feeling better by the minute.”
Color had started to return to her complexion and her eyes had their sparkle back.
“You know what would be really good?”
“What?”
“Hot cocoa and sleep.”
I wasn’t sure if sleep was such a good idea. Was I supposed to keep her awake?
But hot cocoa I could do. In fact, I was kind of an expert at it.
While I made hot cocoa in the kitchenette next to the bathroom, Mackenzie added more hot water to the tub and sank lower into the water, resting her head against the porcelain. Again with the moaning. Every time she made those noises I felt them all the way along my dick. What the fuck was wrong with me? The poor girl had fallen into the lake, almost drowned, and all I could think about was what I would do to her to make her moan even louder.
I had officially entered douche territory.
To stop myself from being such an ass I busied myself with the hot cocoa. My mom taught me how to make it as a kid and it was the best hot cocoa this side of the border. But I hadn’t made them in more than two years. In fact, the last time I’d had one had been my last trip to Canada, a couple of weeks before the . . . I shook off the thought just as the tight squeeze of heartache spread across my chest, and grabbing the chocolate flakes from the pantry I finished off the hot cocoa masterpieces.
But when I walked into the bathroom and saw Mackenzie I was stalled by how beautiful she looked, and something in me stirred and tilted, and changed.
Oh, hell. Was this chick getting to me?
It was one thing to think about how hot she was, and maybe how good it would be to feel her underneath me. But beautiful?
What the fuck was happening to me?
I didn’t want to let anyone in. I didn’t deserve it. Not after what I’d done.
But this girl—
“Jake?” Mackenzie’s voice brought me back. “Are you okay?”
It took me a moment to realize I was standing there like a psycho, clutching her hot cocoa in my hand.
I handed her the mug. “Call me if you need anything.” And with that I walked out of the bathroom and sat at the table where I poured myself a stiff bourbon.
Things were changing.
I was changing.
* * *
After her bath and hot cocoa, Mackenzie dried off and slipped on another one of my flannel shirts and a pair of thick, woollen socks. She still shivered and hugged a blanket around her as I helped her from the bathroom to the bed. As she lay down, she trembled.
“It’s so c-cold.” Her fingers curled into the front of my shirt and with a small tug she pulled me down to her.
She said she was okay but I still wanted her to get medical attention.
“Ssssh.” She placed her finger across my lips and it was this simple move that stole my resolve. She blinked up at me. “I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor. I just need you to hold me.”
Such a simple request. Yet my heart banged against the wall of my chest.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my bare chest.
“You’re so warm,” she murmured, her breath a gentle whisper against my skin. My body filled with a crazy amount of need to be closer to her. Which was impossible, because any closer and I’d be inside her.
Damn. I had not just thought that.
Yet, according to the action taking place in my sweatpants, I had.
I squeezed my eyes closed to keep the thoughts out of my head. She needed to be held. Not felt up.
But tell that to my body. While my brain struggled to remain chivalrous, my body had other ideas.
I was a man.
A man who hadn’t been with a woman in almost a year.
And now I was lying next to one of the most attractive—most annoyingly incredible—women I had ever met, and her beautiful body was all pressed up against me. Jesus, this was going to give me a serious case of blue balls.
She shuddered against me again and instinctively I tightened my arms around her.
I ran a hand across her cheek to tangle in her hair, pulling her head tighter against me and she moaned.
I bit back a groan. I wanted her to touch me but at the same time I didn’t. Because I didn’t know how much restraint I had to not touch her back. But her warmth, it engulfed me, and sucked me closer to her until I reached for her. I felt her flinch. Heard her moan as my fingers found her hipbone and tentatively rested against the smooth curve. She pressed the palm of her hand against my chest, her fingers splayed across muscle, and then slid her arm around me as she murmured something inaudible against my chest. I could feel her body waking up against mine, but mine was already wide-awake and screaming at me to touch this woman.
The warmth surrounding us was incredible. Intoxicating. Filling my mind with light. Hope. Peace. My heart was a wild cat in my chest.
She was so warm and her skin was so soft . . . and, Jesus, I hadn’t touched a woman in so long.
“You’re so warm,” she whispered against my chest. And then she pulled back to look at me. Her shivering had stopped and the intimacy of what we were doing crackled between us. Her lips gently parted and she sighed, realizing what was happening.
“Jake,” she whispered.
She didn’t move away and I was seconds away from leaning down and kissing her. Minutes away from climbing between her legs and doing all the things I shouldn’t want to do to her but desperately did. But a log exploded in the fireplace and the noise filled the room, breaking the spell. Our eyes met again, and the red-hot desire I had seen in her beautiful brown eyes a few moments ago eddied like the tide.
“I’m so tired,” she murmured.
I smiled down at her and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her to my chest.
“You should rest.” With one hand I held her to me, while the other tenderly stroked her shoulder. Within minutes her breathing slowed and she was asleep.
While I was wide awake and reeling at how much I wanted this woman.
* * *