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I do have to pee, but it's not that. I can ignore the need to pee almost indefinitely, even to the point of giving myself bladder infections. Whee, so fun. I'm warm, but my cheeks are cold.

Oh.

This is complicated.

Jax and I are…tangled up.

My hand is on his junk, which has, um, woken up, shall we say, and rather…expansively at that. For his part, his long arm is draped over my ribs and hip, his hand loosely cupping my ass.

I was woken up—whoa, okay, yup, by that: Jax's hand twitching, fingers digging spasmodically into my ass cheek.

Instead of panicking and bolting, I did a really weird thing, one I've avoided doing like the plague for, well, the last eighteen months: I self-assessed.

His hand on my ass filled me with certain feelings. I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to name them, but they weren’t unpleasant. I didn’t hate it, is what I'm saying. And ever since Luke’s death, I've felt an instant, immediate, and intense revulsion to being touched by a man. Not because I suddenly think men are gross or anything. I just…it's fucking complicated, okay? It's a "if it's not Luke, it's no one" kind of thing. Yet here's Jax, whom I've known for a time that can still be easily measured in hours, with his hand on my ass, and I wasn’t recoiling. That in itself is weird and possibly concerning.

More concerning is the placement of my hand. That is…confusing. Unnerving. I should be halfway across the clearing by now, full of self-loathing, and possibly loathing him for daring to…I don't know—have a beautiful, well-formed dick, I guess?

I have the thick bulge of it cupped in my palm. It’s angled away from his zipper, tenting the front of his jeans and pressing against the fabric with a force fit to burst even the denim.

Let go, I told myself.

My hand will not obey.

LET—GO! It's a mental command, shouted internally.

I forced my hand to open and lift, move away.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

My god, I'm a mess. I’m groping the man in his sleep.

His confession regarding unrequited love was hard to hear. The pain in his voice was still so palpable, so intense. I doubt he recognized it in himself. I got the sense he thinks he's hiding it better than he is, or that he's more over her than he is. Or something. I think part of him is still half in love with her, he’s just trying desperately to convince himself he’s over her.

I wormed my way out from under the layers of blanket without dislodging Jax, then took a few moments to stir the coals, blowing on them till they glow cherry-red, and fed the now-hungry coals a few pieces of kindling. They caught, and tiny yellow flames licked and reached and consumed, and within a few moments, the fire was a palmful of flickering orange flames, giving off at least a little heat to dissipate the sharp predawn chill.

I creep away from the camp and do my business behind a tree, cursing the one-piece flight suit to hell for the difficulty it presents in doing something so simple as taking a piss.

I smell it before I hear or see it: earthy, wet-dog. Then I hear the snuffling. A soft, curious, whuffing groan.

Listen, I'm a combat pilot. We've been over my credentials. I do not panic. In any situation. I just don't. It's sort of the whole job description, you might say.

It's one thing to face a cherry LZ—meaning a landing or extraction zone under heavy fire from enemy forces—in a helicopter with a door gunner firing back with a fifty-caliber machine gun; it's a whole other thing to come face to face with a grizzly bear less than four feet from you, when your flight suit is 80% off, your ass is hanging out, and you're mid-pee.

Yeah, I panicked.

I don't know if the thing even noticed me until I screamed.

Yes, I screamed.

Me.

It was wholly involuntary. One second I was peeing for-freaking-ever, and the next a massive bear ambled out between two bushes, heavy muscles and thick fur shaking with each step. It—she—was so close I could've poked her haunch with a short stick. The scream came when the great, shaggy she-beast scented or heard me as she waddled past me, stopped to look at me, and then startled backward in a comically delayed reaction. I didn’t think it was possible to startle a wild animal, but there we were, me mid-stream with a frightened, thousand-pound grizzly barely an arm’s length away.

It would be comical if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying, that is. She startled backward and then soared to stand a full eight feet tall on her hind legs, paws swiping at me as she bellowed in ursine rage.

So yeah, I fucking screamed.

And the scream only pissed her off even more. She lurched toward me, a paw bigger than both my hands together clawing at me. It was more of a warning than an attack, though, since my head stayed attached.