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I freeze. It’s actually kinda stunning to see someone so fit in person. I’m so struck by a wave of desire to press my hands against it that he gets the drop on me, pulling off his boots and socks before I’ve gotten my own shirt over my head.
“Too slow,” he teases.
Oh yeah? Well I have weapons of my own.
I turn around and in an utterly shameless act that would make Anna cheer, I bend at the waist, pointing my ass at him as I undo my boots. My ruse works as I can hear him pause, just as mesmerized as I was by his torso. I grin wickedly to myself as I pull my jeans down a bit slower than I normally would.
What in the hell is this man doing to me?
I look over my shoulder, catch him staring. He bites his lip, not embarrassed in the least. I wink and his mouth drops at my brazenness.
Jeans finally off, I toss them into the back of the van. But I don’t run yet.
Rhett’s torso flexes as he works his jeans off. His legs are built, his black underwear full. I remember the taste of him last night and my shiver has nothing to do with the blistering air.
“Cold?” I ask.
“You wish,” he says.
We stare at each other for a solid beat. Then, at the same time, we’re off!
My first thought other than cold air, cold air! is that the surf is much further than it looked from the van. My feet are freezing well before they hit the frigid sand that’s somehow even colder than the snow we were just running on.
But I power through, pushing down the pain, finding it all the easier because Rhett is right beside me, pounding the sand, breath coming loud and strong.
The water approaches slowly and then suddenly all at once. I cringe the moment before my foot hits the water and then there’s no thinking; I have zero brain activity at all. I don’t even need to force myself further in. It’s as if after I made the decision to enter the water everything goes on autopilot and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
All I can feel is cold.
The waves crash against my legs, then my stomach, and because it doesn’t get any deeper, I dive straight in. The frigid water assaults every pinpoint of my body and I’m swept up in the freezing waves, tossed and turned like a piece of flotsam, a mere organism at the total mercy of the powerful, pounding lake.
I surface with a ragged gasp and flail about before finally finding my footing. Rhett comes up beside me, his handsome face pinched and panting.
“Shore,” he sputters.
I’m too cold to even respond. We turn as one and try to make it back to the beach. Immediately a wave hits us in the back and we’re both knocked under again.
The water is shallow, way too shallow to drown in, right? But I don’t have a lot of energy left in my body and my brain is short-circuiting and suddenly I’m scared because what if I can’t make it back to the shore?
A pair of strong arms wrap around my waist and haul me to my feet. The waves hit again, but Rhett hangs onto me and keeps his own balance at the same time. Without a word, he lifts me into his arms and carries me out of the surf. My eyes are glued to his straining face, the taught tendons in his neck, his shoulders firm and rounded. That thick hair is jet black from the water and smoothed against his head. Those blue eyes remain determined and strong.
I’m more clear-headed by the time we get back to the van, but not much. Every part of me is shivering and it feels as if I might never get warm.
Rhett flings the door of the van open and climbs inside without putting me down. He rests me on the blankets and slams the door shut. The heater hasn’t been running very long at this point. It’s probably only been ten minutes since Rhett turned it on and the van is very much still a barely thawed block of frozen steel.
Rhett lays one of the blankets on the floor of the van. Taking another, he gently towels the lake water from my hair, dries my face, and wraps a dry one around my body. I rock back and forth, still shivering as he dries himself as best he can.
Then he grabs the last and thickest blanket and wraps it around the both of us. I cling to him even though he’s just as cold as I am. But there’s something warming about the hardness of his muscles, something about the way his arms wrap around me, my head resting just beneath his chin.
We sit there in freezing silence for about fifteen minutes before either of us has the energy to do more than clutch each other. It’s only then that I finally begin to feel actual heat rising from his body. It’s faint at first but with each passing moment the intensity builds.
I wrap my icy hands closer to those rigid abs. Now that my fingers are starting to become less numb, I can take a guilty pleasure at being able to lay my hands on them.
“A-a-are y-you-” Rhett stammers. He stops and focuses, takes control over his shivering. “Are you feeling me up?” he asks in a pseudo-stern growl.
“Th-th-this is me-me-merely for warmth,” I try to justify. My case is slightly less convincing when I run a finger along one of the indents in his stomach. “H-how are you a-able to keep this fi-figure?”
“I used to like to swim.”
