talked him into things.”
J’shel? I glance up where the two men are. It looks as if they’re digging up the first layer of snow on the cache and are heavily into discussion, with Taushen being the one to do most of the talking. I know J’shel has spent a lot of time at camp, too, so I wonder if this is a learning trip for him as well. That makes me feel better. “I’m surprised I talked him into it, too. All I seem to do is argue with him.”
“It’s all those resonance hormones,” Brooke agrees cheerily. “They’re both fun and awful.”
I haven’t encountered the “fun” part yet. My face gets red and I pretend to sip my tea as I study J’shel. He’s taken his cloak off and now there’s nothing obscuring my sight of intensely broad shoulders and thick, muscular arms. I don’t even mind that he’s got four of them. He just looks…delicious. Oh man.
My cootie pounds a drumbeat of agreement in my chest. It’s so loud and distracting that it practically sends ripples through my tea and I worry that Taushen and J’shel will hear it despite the fact that they’re a good distance away.
“Soooo…” Brooke says. “I’m being nosy, I know. But are you two going to give resonance a go?”
I can feel my face flush. So I wasn’t the only one that noticed just how loud my cootie is. “I don’t get a choice, remember?”
“I know. I’ve been there. But as a friend, I’m just going to point out that there are far worse things than hooking up with a hot guy.”
“To him it’s not just a hookup,” I point out. “To him, it’s forever.”
“But it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be anything long term, really. The society that all these guys are used to? It’s changing because of humans, and because there’s no more island. Everything’s changing on a daily basis. Why not the whole ‘resonance means permanent’ thing? We can rewrite the rules as we go. J’shel seems like a nice guy. Maybe talk to him, figure out what you both want and see if you can meet somewhere in the middle.”
I don’t point out that resonance also means a baby. Brooke knows that. Heck, she’s pregnant by her own mate. But I do need to talk to J’shel and come to some sort of understanding. Maybe now without an entire tribe of people around us to make me feel like we’re on center stage it’ll be easier to talk.
I watch J’shel’s broad shoulders ripple as he digs, and think about the time he touched me. How he pressed his mouth to my skin and nipped at my ear. Hot shivers race up my body. The few times I’ve had a boyfriend—and even fewer times I’ve slept with someone—I was never very good at things. I tend to get bossy when I get nervous or worried, and that usually makes the men in my life run for the hills.
But maybe he and I can work something out…
I shake my head. I don’t even know why I’m thinking that. Haven’t I said to myself all along that I’m going to find a way to get home, somehow? That I’m not staying here because I have book tours and a movie deal and a million other exciting things going on at home and I can’t stay?
As more time passes, though, I get more and more worried that I’m accepting the reality of my situation—that I really am stranded here—and that worries me. If I give up on my life back on Earth, what’s the point in fighting any of this?
We set off again a short time later, and Taushen has a small, dead, frozen animal hanging from his belt, fresh from the cache. “We will not reach the cave tonight,” he tells Brooke. “Best to ensure we have food if we cannot reach the nearest hunter cave before it gets dark.”
“We’ll do our best to keep up,” she tells him, and glances at me.
I nod. “I won’t slow you down.”
God, I hope I’m not lying.
So we set off again, and the afternoon is utterly miserable. The snow is just deep enough to make walking a chore, but not so deep that we need to stop and make snowshoes. The valley itself isn’t fun to walk, but then we have to go over a series of hills that are challenging, to say the least. Then there’s another valley, and more hills, and