Page 44 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“This isn’t necessary,” Jack said, although his voice cracked in the middle, betraying him.

“It’s not going to improve my survival chances if I let you die.”

She needed something useful to do to keep her mind off what she’d just found. Jack lay back and let her do it. A memory came to him from nowhere: his mother, after his father’s death, frantically cleaning the kitchen, over and over, then the bathrooms, the entire house, until everything gleamed and not a single toy or dishcloth was out of place. But still she scrubbed it. Scrubbed everything. He hadn’t thought of that in years.

There was a similar controlled desperation in Casey’s rapid back-and-forth progress, from the bed of moss to the far reaches of the cave. He watched her do it until he couldn’t take it anymore; he could see, when she came back to drop off her burden, how much she was shivering, how blue her fingertips had become.

“Come in here with me.”

She didn’t resist. There was enough moss for both of them. It was dry enough to burn, Jack thought, but even if he’d been able to get a fire going—he could probably strike a spark off the handcuffs—he didn’t dare give them away to their pursuers with the smoke.

Instead, he piled moss over Casey as she’d been doing for him. Her bare hip rested against his, her skin cold to the touch. If she’d wanted to pull away, he would have let her, but instead she pressed closer to him. He put an arm over her, carefully, trying not to snag his healing skin, and held her until the shivering began to subside.

It was oddly peaceful in the cave, but maybe that was just his exhaustion. Outside, it was still raining. The thunder and lightning had subsided, though, and the rain’s patter was softer now. Water ran off the top of the cave, dripping and splashing outside its mouth, an entire orchestral movement of drips and drops.

With the storm slackening, the lions would be on the move. They were going to have to move soon, too. But not now. Not yet.

“You did good down there,” Jack told Casey quietly. “You saved my life.”

She made a soft sound, maybe a laugh. “I’d say we’re even, but I’ve lost track of how many times you’ve saved mine.”

“Did you get stung?”

“A little,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Jack turned his head to the side and brought up a hand, with bits of moss clinging to it, to brush along the side of her face. A scattering of welts marred the smooth beauty of her skin.

“There might be stingers left in. Feel better if we get them out.”

“I’m willing to wait until we get back to the land of tweezers and antibiotics.”

Instead of taking his hand away, he smoothed back her dark, damp hair.

Casey didn’t pull away; instead she turned into the touch of his hand. “So, we finally get the cuffs off, and here we are, joined at the hip again.”

“Guess habits are hard to break.”

“I guess so.”

Nestled beneath the moss, with her body heat added to his, he was finally starting to feel a little better. Still achy, shocky, sick. But not quite like he was courting a lethal case of hypothermia.

And now his lightheadedness had a very different cause. Like a blind man, he traced the contours of her heart-shaped face with his fingertips: the wide jaw tapering to a small, pointed chin; the full, parted lips moving slightly as his fingertips brushed them. Her eyes were open, the glittering gold of the lynx lurking somewhere in their depths.

“You don’t want this,” he said quietly, “all you gotta do is say so,” and he moved that tiny distance separating them, and kissed her lightly, gently.

She opened her mouth for him, and what he’d meant to be a sweet, short kiss, testing the waters so to speak, turned into something deeper and hotter. Her tongue flicked into his mouth, and the pain of his injuries faded into the background of his mind, lost in the heat of her mouth and the need to be closer to her.

—only to be brought rudely back to earth by a flare of pain in his ribs and all down his arm as he rolled toward her. He flinched, breaking the kiss. Casey pulled away, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

“Moved wrong. Sorry.” He could tell by the faint, warm trickle of blood down his side that he’d torn open the fragile skin starting to grow together over the wounds from Mara’s claws.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t?—”

Jack touched her lips. “No. Don’t. Just got over-eager, that’s all.”

Casey smiled against his finger, and kissed its tip. “This is ... I can’t figure out if this is completely unexpected, or terribly predictable.”

“Maybe a little of both.”

---