Rise of the Phoenix novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Barn

I didn't think about it at all.

I dropped to the straw, pulled the blanket back, and lay down along the whole length of him.

His body was a block of ice wrapped in cloth.

I wrapped my arms around his chest and called the coal up slow and gentle.

Heat poured out of me and into him.

His back arched.

A long breath dragged into his lungs, and then another, and the frost on his beard began to bead and drip.

"Emmi," he whispered.

"Don't talk."

"You came."

"You're an idiot."

"Yes."

"You should have told me it was getting worse."

"I didn't want to be a burden." His eyes opened, grey and clouded and slowly coming back into focus.

"I thought if I slept, you'd sleep too."

"You were going to freeze to death in a barn so I could get a good night's rest?"

"It sounds worse when you say it."

"It sounds exactly as bad as it is."

He laughed, a small, cracked sound against my collarbone.

The color was coming back into his face now, a faint flush along his cheekbones.

His hands, which had lain limp on my arms, slid up my back and held on.

His hands were no longer ice.

They were cool.

I had not been touched like that in fourteen months, or maybe ever.

Nobody had ever held on to me like I was the only thing in the world that was real.

I looked at his mouth.

He was already looking at mine.

"Tell me to stop," I said, and my voice came out lower than I meant.

"No," Garth said.

I kissed him.

It wasn't gentle, not after the fire and the road and the dark.

It was a hard, hungry press of mouths, and his beard scratched my chin, and the taste of him was snow and salt.

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