Thin Air Page 0,4

to run, to hide, and I couldn't stop the way I flinched when he slid his arms under my shoulder blades and my knees. Unlike Lewis, he didn't smell like a guy who'd been living rough. He smelled like fresh wind and sunlight and rain, and against my will I buried my face in the hollow where his neck flowed into strong shoulders. He felt solid and real, and he picked me up as if I weighed less than an empty plastic bottle. Heat cascaded out of him, crashed into me, flooded me in a drunken tsunami of warmth. Oh, so good. I clung to him, my hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and shuddered in sheer animal pleasure.

"I'm going to need to touch you," Lewis said. I glanced up into David's face.

"I'll hold you," he said. "I won't let go."

I nodded. Lewis's hands pressed against me, palms flat, this time against my shoulders, and jolts of electric fire began to flood through me. I might have resisted, but if I did, David was more than enough to keep me still.

When it was over, I felt nerves still firing in white-hot jerks, but as it passed a sense of numbing exhaustion took over, and I felt myself going limp.

"That'll do it," I heard Lewis say in carefully colorless tones. "Better get her dressed. It's going to get colder out here tonight, and she's still very weak."

David's voice seemed to be moving away from me, growing thinner and fainter. "Wait. What did you find?"

"Nothing," came Lewis's faint, smeared whisper. "Apart from nearly freezing to death, there's nothing wrong with her. Physically, anyway."

"Then what happened?" David's question came as a ghost, lost in darkness, and then I was gone.

I didn't sleep for long, but when I woke up, I was dressed-blue jeans and a denim shirt over a thermal tee-and wrapped up in a sleeping bag next to the fire. I tried to figure out which one of them might have taken the liberties, but gave up. Either way, it was a deeply unsettling question.

"I can carry her," David's low voice was saying from somewhere on the other side of the crackling fire. Night had fallen, and with it an absolutely deathly chill. Even in the sleeping bag, fully clothed, I could feel it nipping at me. "I don't like keeping her out here longer than necessary."

"I know," Lewis replied. He sounded agitated. Exasperated. "Dammit, I know! But it's more than a day's hike to the closest rendezvous point, and no matter what I do, the temperature just keeps falling. You think she's strong enough to make the trip? Like this?"

"She won't be any stronger tomorrow."

"Okay, I give. It's not just her I'm worried about. If I don't get some sleep, I could collapse on you, too."

"You think I couldn't carry you both?" David asked. He sounded amused. "All the way back, if necessary?"

"I'm pretty sure you could, but my pride's already taking a serious beating, and you know I love you, man, but I'm not ready for us to be quite that close." Lewis's voice was as dry as old paper. "And besides, if I start losing it, we start losing the weather. If you start messing with things, they'll find you, and us, and her."

"Ah." Evidently a convincing argument.

"I'll put up the tent," Lewis said. "Won't take long."

I peered out from under half-closed eyelids and saw David walking toward me around the fire. Something different about him now-oh, he was wearing a coat. Not a modern hiking accessory; this one was a long olive-drab affair, like something out of the First World War, and it came down almost to his boots. He looked antique. Out of place.

Beautiful.

He noticed me. "You're awake," he said, and crouched down beside me. "Thirsty?"

I nodded and pushed myself up on my elbows. He unscrewed a plastic bottle and handed it over. I guzzled cool, sterile water, almost moaning with ecstasy as the moisture flooded into me. I had no idea how long I'd been without a drink. Too long.

He leaned forward to move hair back from my face, and I instinctively jerked back, putting air between us. He froze. Oh, God, I thought. We're lovers. There was no other explanation for the ease of his gesture, and the look on his face, as if I'd stuck a knife in his guts and broken it off. The expression came and went in a flicker, and then he was back to safely neutral.

I took another