Page 292 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"Val," she breathes.

I kiss the corner of her jaw. The sensitive skin below her ear. The column of her throat where her pulse is hammering, and her fingers dig into my shoulders as her head tips back.

"V-Val…"

I hum against her throat.

"I'm f-fucking freezing."

I stop.

Her teeth are chattering.

I pull back and look at her properly. Her skin is pale and covered in goosebumps, and she's shaking so hard her whole body vibrates against mine.

Still grinning, though, in spite of it all.

"Shit," I mutter, sitting up and pulling her with me.

She curls into my chest immediately, tucking her hands between our bodies. "S-sorry. I was t-trying to ignore it, but⁠—"

"Don't apologize for fucking hypothermia."

I glance around the riverbank, swiping at my still-stinging eyes. A thick stand of pines about twenty feet upstream would block the wind. A rocky outcropping forms a shallow cave. There's plenty of dead wood scattered along the waterline from past floods.

"Did you happen to pack a tent in with your underwear?" I ask dryly.

"N-nope."

"Then I'll build a fire."

"You can d-do that?"

I look down at her. She's blinking up at me through wet eyelashes, her teeth clacking together.

"Ivy."

"Yeah?"

"I can do that."

Chapter 60

Ivy

Valek wasn't joking when he said he can build a fire.

I'm huddled under the rocky outcropping with my knees pulled to my chest, watching Valek work like he was born in the goddamn wilderness.

Which, for all I know, he was.

He found the dead wood first. Snapped branches over his knee with zero effort and stripped the bark for kindling with a fucking switchblade he apparently keeps in his pocket. He dug a shallow pit in the gravel near the cave mouth and lined it with flat river stones, arranging the whole thing in a pyramid shape.

He had a survival lighter ready to go, too, of course. I'd packed my own, as well as a change of clothes that are currently drying alongside my rescued duffel bag on a makeshift rack made of branches, but he had everything he could ever need and more in those black combat pants.

The bark catches first, then the smaller sticks. Then the bigger ones, and within a few minutes, flames are licking up through the pyramid and lighting up the entire riverbank.

He stretches to his full height, peeling his turtleneck shirt off over his head. There's hardly anything left of it, but he wrings it out anyway and drapes it on the rack next to my change of clothes to dry by the fire.