Page 122 of Tangled up in You

“My sleeping bag got soaked.”

“We’ll zip ours together and can fit all three of us inside,” Mark said. “As long as you don’t mind sharing.”

JESSE

She’d never felt so cold in her life but she managed a smile for them. “I don’t mind sharing with you as long as I get to be in the middle.”

Fuck professionalism. She’d just barely survived being eaten by a bear and drowning and hypothermia, although the outcome of the third in the unholy hat-trick was still questionable.

Both men laughed. “I’ll be our pleasure,” Chris said.

“Definitely not a hardship,” Mark added. “Unless you stick your cold feet against me.”

“I only did that once,” Chris playfully shot back. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”

Mark leaned in. “It was like having two frozen chicken feet against my legs.” He playfully winked.

Okay, if the men were joking around she couldn’t be dying.

Right?

While the men arranged everything, including repacking their packs and hanging their food and trash from a tree, she pulled off Christopher’s gloves and held her hands out to the fire. They’d put one of the emergency blankets under her to protect her from the damp ground, and at least she was finally starting to feel a little warmer. Her fingers tingled in a nearly painful way, but she’d recovered feeling in them, and in her toes and the men said it looked like she didn’t have frostbite.

They shared a protein bar and a couple of pieces of jerky before the men gathered more wood, cut and set stouter branches to reinforce the campfire reflector, and then joined her after they’d completed those tasks.

“Now what?” she asked.

Mark looked at his watch. “We should get you in the tent. The two of us will take turns keeping watch.”

“For the bear?” she asked.

He looked grim. “Yeah. Hopefully she didn’t follow us, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more. I’ll take first watch.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t mind being in the middle,” she said.

The men exchanged a glance she couldn’t decipher and didn’t have the available brain cells at that time to even try.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said. “We don’t mind you being there.”

The men had her strip and don her own thermal underwear that had survived the dunking before putting her inside the sleeping bags with extra emergency blankets. Christopher also stripped to his thermals and she didn’t think twice about spooning against him. His body felt deliciously warm next to hers.

She wasn’t sure she’d sleep, but the next thing she knew, she lay on her other side, now spooned against Mark’s warmth, so she closed her eyes again. When she finally awakened, she wascomfortably snuggled between both men and dim light filtered through the tent’s fabric.

“What time is it?” she mumbled, processing she also hurt all over.

“Nearly six,” Mark said. “We’re not going anywhere, so you might as well go back to sleep.”

“Okay…”

When she awoke again it was lighter, she was alone in the sleeping bag, but they’d tucked her inside it like a snuggly burrito. Fully dressed, the men sat at the entrance to the tent, in front of the fire, which look recently built-up.

But something felt…wrong.

They turned when she sat up. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why didn’t you wake me up? Shouldn’t we get started?”

They wore identically grim expressions. “We’re not going anywhere right now,” Chris said.

“Why?” she asked.

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