Gingerbread Man

arms tightened around her. "Damn. If we don't get dry soon ..."
    "Let me walk for a ways," she said. "Maybe the exertion will help."
    Nodding, he set her on her feet, but held her close to his side. They kept walking, and the activity should have warmed her, but it didn't. She shivered harder with every minute that ticked by, and he did, too, though his worried expression was always on her. They walked for an hour, she figured, though it seemed much longer, before he stopped and turned to face her, shaking his head as he watched her shivering violently.
    "This is no good. We're barely covering any ground at all. We keep on like this we'll be frozen. And once the damn storm hits, we'll really be in trouble." He released her from his side, and shrugged out of his jacket, then his shirt. His fingers were shaking so hard he could barely maneuver the wet cloth over his hands and arms, but somehow he managed.
    "What are you d-d-doing, Vince?"
    "We need to dig in, Red. Just for a little while. An hour, tops. Let the wind dry our clothes at least partially. You're never going to make it back to town like this. Come on, over here." He led her deeper into the trees, until he came to a fallen trunk, surrounded by dead leaves. Then he told her to sit, and hung his shirt from a nearby limb. A moment later, he peeled off his T-shirt and did the same with it, stretching it over limbs. The stiff wind filled it like a balloon and she saw what he was going for. The wind would dry it, to some extent. Vince turned to her, held out a hand. "Strip them off and hand them over, Red. This is no time for shyness."
    Nodding, too cold to refuse any suggestion that might make her warm again, she gripped her shirt with the frozen stumps that used to be fingers and peeled it off over her head. She held it out to him. The icy wind blasted her and she wrapped her arms around her upper body. "We'll f-freeze to death before they ever get dry," she stammered.
    "Jeans, too. They're holding more water than anything else."
    She wriggled the jeans off with difficulty—the wet denim clung to her legs. But she finally got them off, and by the time she did he'd already peeled out of his own, wrung them out, and hung them from another limb. He put hers up beside them, then came toward her in nothing but a pair of wet boxers. Kneeling beside her, he burrowed into the mountain of leaves that had drifted up against the fallen tree, digging a shelter. "There," he said. "Now lie down, right there. It's dry, and there are enough leaves to cover us."
    She stared at him, and she knew her eyes widened but she couldn't help it.
    "It's okay," he said. "You can trust me. I'm a cop." He smiled as he said it, making the words teasing and sweet, somehow. She lay down as he told her, and he curled up beside her, turning her so her back was pressed to his chest. He pulled mounds of leaves and debris around them and over them, and then put his arms around her.
    Miraculously, she began to feel warmth seeping into her, chasing away the chill. Within ten minutes she'd stopped shivering. "Where did you learn this kind of stuff?" she asked.
    "I was a Boy Scout," he said. And she couldn't tell if he was kidding or not.
    He wasn't trembling as much as before, either, though she had a feeling she was getting the lion's share of the body heat. His back couldn't be very well covered. She sighed in contentment and snuggled closer.
    "Hey, Red?"
    "Mmm?"
    "Might not be a good idea to, uh ... push back against me quite so ... much."
    She froze, and knew she'd been wriggling her backside against his groin…and he was responding the way most men would. She could feel him. The blood rushed to her face, but she only pulled away slightly. "Sorry."
    "Me, too."
    "Not your fault."
    His whiskered chin moved against her bare shoulder, and she shivered anew, but not from the cold this time. "Take it as a compliment and forget about it," he suggested.
    "Compliment? I'm not that innocent. You're male. You'd react that way to anyone in this ... situation."
    "No, actually, I wouldn't."
    She lay there, blinking and wondering just what the hell that meant. She said, "Oh." He didn't say anything. She waited, but he didn't elaborate. Finally, she had to break the silence, because just lying there against him, in his arms, feeling his breath on the back of her neck, was too much to bear in the silence. "Do you think our clothes are dry yet?"
    "It's only been twenty minutes."
    "Yes, but with the way the wind's