Bad Nights by REBECCA YORK Page A

awareness arcing between them.
    A few moments ago, she’d been out of it. Now she was as focused on him as he was on her.
    Grimly, he finished removing the shirt, then turned his attention to her injury. The animal had left teeth marks in her forearm, above her elbow.
    She dragged her gaze away from him to look at her arm.
    â€œIt bled a lot.”
    â€œThat’s good. With bites.”
    â€œUm.”
    He poured on more water, then opened the first aid kit, relieved to find antiseptic, which he soaked onto a gauze pad that he used to wipe the wound.
    She winced, then took her lower lip between her teeth.
    â€œSorry.”
    She gave the same answer as before. When he had finished cleaning the area, he wrapped strips of gauze around her arm and tied it off, before reaching for her pack and pulling out a dry shirt.
    â€œCan you get into this?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œAn analgesic will help.”
    â€œThere’s some in the first aid kit, right?”
    He looked in the kit again and found the tablets. He hadn’t even been thinking about them, but they’d also help the sprained ankle.
    They both took two, washing them down with water.
    When they’d finished, she started pulling on her dry shirt, and he started unbuttoning his wet one.
    Like hers, it was stiff with blood. Carefully, he wet the fabric and worked it off his shoulder so that he could look at his own injury.
    More bite marks.
    Morgan sat up and scooted closer, inspecting the wound. “You need antiseptic too.”
    He nodded.
    This time she was the one who washed his wound with water and gauze, then poured pungent liquid on more gauze and stroked it onto the wounds. She also put more salve on the burn marks from the torture session.
    â€œWe should be on antibiotics,” she said.
    â€œYeah, if we had any,” he answered as he pulled on a dry flannel shirt.
    Her teeth had started to chatter in reaction to the cold.
    So had his. “We’ve got to get warm.”
    She looked toward the cave entrance. “And we can’t light a fire, right?”
    â€œI think that might lead Trainer to us.” He looked from her jeans to his and back again. “Get out of your wet pants.”
    â€œI didn’t bring any more.”
    â€œNeither did I.”
    Standing up, he pulled off his wet jeans and laid them out on the cave floor, glad that the tails of his shirt reached to his thighs.
    â€œYou too,” he said, making his voice firm as he fought to keep his teeth from clacking together.
    She lay back, unbuttoning the wet pants, then working the zipper and lifting her hips so that she could wiggle out of the garment.
    He took it from her and spread it on the cave floor beside his.
    â€œWe both need to get into the sleeping bag,” he said.
    He expected her to protest, but apparently she understood the practicalities of the situation. And perhaps she had stopped being revolted that he’d murdered a man in cold blood. He didn’t discuss that with her. He simply unzipped the side of the bag so that she could slip inside.
    â€œMove over so you’ve got the closed edge.”
    Again she did as he asked, and he slipped in after her, pulling the top ground cloth over the bag as an extra covering. He thought about turning so that his back was to her front. But that would expose his chest to the cold. Instead, he took her in his arms.
    He was bone weary and in pain from everything he’d endured. Which should have made him numb, but he couldn’t stop from reacting.
    As he pulled her against the length of his body, he tried not to think about her tempting breasts, her narrow waist, the curve of her thigh. The position was much too intimate, with Morgan at his front and cool air at his back where the zipper of the sleeping bag was open.
    She said nothing, even though she couldn’t fail to be aware of his erection rising between them.
    He didn’t apologize.
    â€œWe’ve both