“So you didn’t kiss me because…”

“Because you’re leaving,” I say. “And I don’t know if I can let myself be that vulnerable again.”

Her mouth opens as if she’s going to say something, then quickly closes again, as if she thinks better of it. The silence is so thick it threatens to swallow me, and I stand from the couch before she has the chance to respond.

“I need to get more blankets, I think,” I say. “That floor can be brutal.”

I stalk out of the room like the coward I am, stomping into the next room to gather some blankets from the linens closet as Tess’s delicious scent closes in on me from all sides, permeating the room and beyond. It occurs to me again when I’m bringing back piles of blankets to drop onto the bearskin rug that I will be sleeping in close proximity to this woman, that her scent and the waste of a promised kiss will linger between us intimately for the entire night—and who knows how much longer with the storm—and suddenly the thought of coming out on the other side of this unscathed seems harder than it did before.

I don’t know what it’s like to kiss Tess, even if I’m too afraid to let myself have that, but I know what it’s like to touch her. And I already believe it’s something I’m wholly addicted to. Being forced to share warmth with her for the entire night without doing so seems almost impossible. But this is a game we’re playing here, one that has a certain set of rules. She only wants my touch when she needs it, and wanting it aside from that isn’t something we agreed to. As I try to ignore the subtle way her eyes follow me while I set up our bedding, it hits me just how long of a night I’m in for. Because even if I can’t bring myself to kiss her, despite how much I desperately want to, the urge to touch her is something I’m realizing never really goes away.

And with the recognition of how much I’d like to kiss her, consequences be damned…I’m realizing I really might be utterly fucked.

Going to bed with someone you tried (and failed) to kiss the night before is about as awkward as you might think. I watch with growing nerves as Hunter makes two—yes, two, and my brain can’t decide how to feel about that—makeshift beds on the bearskin rug (a bearskin rug, for goodness’ sake). My thoughts race like it’s Christmas Eve, except Santa is hot, and I really want to kiss him but can’t figure out if he wants to kiss me back. Also, in this horny waking nightmare, Santa is practically six and a half feet tall, with shoulders that stretch his black T-shirt to mind-boggling proportions, and he wears flannel pajama pants (has flannel just become a sexual trigger for me?) and no socks, so my brain has to deal with the oddity of trying to figure out why a man’s bare feet are suddenly attractive.

“Do you need help getting down here?”

I blink back at him from the couch, still thinking about the way his arms flex when he pops a quilt to straighten it out. “What?”

“The floor,” he clarifies. “Do you need me to help you get into bed?”

Logically, I know that what my brain is doing to that sentence is not at all what he intended when he asked the question. My ankle actually feels much better than it did, and if I’m being honest, I can probably get into the little pallet he’s made me on my own with very little trouble if I want to. In fact, part of me is appalled by how much he’s had to coddle me already, but that part of me is effectively silenced by the part that wants him to touch me again.

“If you don’t mind,” I answer sheepishly.

He’s right in front of me, his body looming over mine as he takes my hand to help pull me from the couch, and sure, maybe I lean into him a little more than I need to—but who can blame me, really?

Hunter is careful with me, letting me cling to his arm as I gingerly cross the floor to the bed of quilts he’s laid out for us side by side, never letting go as I lower myself to the floor.

“Easy,” he murmurs. “Don’t hurt yourself again.”

I roll my eyes, my grip moving from his forearm to his hand, which curls around mine as I adjust myself to sit with my (sort of) injured ankle slightly suspended. “I think you’re enjoying that joke.”

“Me?” His lips curl a little at the corners as he tries for an innocent look. “Just concerned for your well-being. You only have so many ankles.”

He keeps hold of my hand as I lower my leg to the blankets, settling in as he steps to the side a bit to make room for me. “Yeah, sure,” I scoff. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—”

Okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve always thought serendipity was bullshit. I mean, divine luck coming together to create happy accidents that seem to right all the wrongs in the world? It always sounded like a hokum informercial to me. But what happens at this exact moment, what causes me to stop short midsentence and lose my train of thought in a matter of seconds…Well. I might be tempted to rethink my stance.

It happens so fast I don’t even realize it is happening at first. It’s not like any of my recent mishaps; things don’t move in slow motion or feel like they drag on forever. No, when Hunter’s foot slips on the edge of one of the quilts, when he loses his balance and tumbles forward, that seems to happen so quickly. He’s upright and standing and perfectly stable one second and simply…there the next. And by there, I mean right over me. I mean his hands are braced on either side of my head to keep himself from completely smothering me. I mean his frame is so close to mine that I can feel every inch of his body heat radiating over me.

I had a lot of thoughts in my head a second ago, but right now I sort of can’t remember how to even form them.

“Now who’s clumsy?” I breathe, feeling dazed.

He’s so close that I can see every little movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallows.

“Maybe…you’re rubbing off on me,” he answers, his voice much rougher than it was a second ago.

He’s looking at me like that again. It’s the same look from the bar, the same one he gave me after I told him the good news about Nate—the one that looks like he’s holding himself back when I don’t want him to. A look like that is enough to make a girl brave.

“I still believe you want to kiss me,” I whisper.

He laughs, I think, but it’s more of a rasp, really. Like it’s choked.

“Only a very, very stupid man wouldn’t want to kiss you, Tess.”

My throat feels like sandpaper, but somehow my tongue is very wet. Heavy, even. Maybe it’s swollen. Maybe that’s why Hunter’s eyes look so transfixed on it when it slips past my teeth to wet my bottom lip. I try swallowing, but it feels useless. Maybe it’s because I’m breathing so hard.

“But you won’t.”

“For a few reasons,” he murmurs.

I wonder if it’s difficult for him to keep himself suspended like he is. He’s so close, and yet somehow there’s still that tiny fraction of space between us, just enough so that he isn’t touching me. I mean, surely his arms must be hurting, right?

If I only slightly move my hand, my fingers can graze the cotton of his T-shirt. “A few?”

“I told you about Chloe.” He makes a strained sound in his throat when the tip of my finger finds the space between the cotton and his bare skin. “That’s a big part of it.”

“But not all of it,” I press, curling my finger around a bit of his T-shirt.

“You also barely know me,” he breathes. “I don’t want you to do anything you might regret. You’ve already had a ton of things out of your control lately.”

“I wouldn’t,” I assure him, an urgency building as I notice he isn’t even looking me in the eye now but at my mouth. Only my mouth. “Regret it.”

“I can smell you, Tess,” he rasps. “Your scent…You smell like…”

His knee is between my legs. I can feel the heat of it against both my thighs. I think his thumb just touched my hair.