The snow was relentless, a whirlwind of swirling flakes packing together on the ground as the flurries combined to growing piles that coated the roadways, the preventative salt laid down before the onslaught doing nothing against the frozen downpour that was turning the roads completely impassible without a snow plow.

Even the trucks with snow tires and four wheel drive had ended up in ditches, this blizzard something unheard of in the area without a predicted forecast.

It had only been a few minutes of growing silence as the cold penetrated the cracks in the doors of the vehicle, and already my nose was growing numb along with my hands that I'd placed underneath my dress as I sat on them, the skin keeping them lukewarm in the growing desolation and icy air.

Lachlan was busy on his phone, texting his brother to learn his ETA but still the answer remained the same. The majority of snow plows were reserved for true emergencies, not a couple of semi cold teenagers safe off of the roads underneath a covered awning.

"I'm freezing."

Lachlan threw me a wry glance, almost saying, "You think?" with his eyes, but his mouth did not move and words did not come out. Instead he shirked off his over coat and handed it to me without another glance and I gratefully accepted it, cursing my mother for her semi formal dress code at our family dinners, but I was the daughter ever happy to please her if it meant getting what I wanted- a ticket to California to visit my dying friend.

But of course, that sacrifice had been all for naught as I was currently trapped in a dead car with my childhood crush and subsequent teasing 'enemy' whilst the two of us were freezing our asses off, with a sinking realization that due to his unprecedented kind actions as of late that he wasn't really my 'enemy' after all, but I wasn't ready to face that, yet. I had too many things changing recently, and Lachlan being firmly against me was one of those constants that just made sense, so I didn't overthink it.

At least the cold kept the anger, pain and anguish from radiating from my center and bleeding into my mind, the distraction fluid and taut over my mind.

"Thanks," I said sheepishly, tucking the jacket around my legs like a blanket and his warmth immediately relaxed me and turned me into a puddle of mush all at the same time as his scent wafted up from his jacket and the reality was all too close and intimate for comfort, but still I took solace in that expensive cologne that coated my nostrils, a hoard of buzzing insects taking over my stomach in replace of normal butterflies.

This kind of nervousness and anxiety reserved the locusts, cicadas and wasps; the butterflies were for school girl crushes and meaningless flirtations.

He started shivering beside me after a few silent, tense minutes of the two of us scrolling aimlessly on our phones, doing anything to pass the time other than actually speaking to each other even though the questions and countless curiosities bloomed in my mind that I so desperately wanted to ask, but I didn't dare be the one to speak first.

A sigh etched out of thin air escaped him and I almost flinched, so used to his unnerving stillness.

"My brother got us a snow plow, but it's got two more stops before us, both of them for clearing the way for an ambulance, and my brother will be driving behind it with a gas can with him. Let's just hope another ambulance doesn't need its services before our turn, because they obviously take precedence over us."

"Did he say about how long that would take?"

"Two hours, give or take."

"And we've only been sitting here without the heat for thirty minutes?"

A grim nod.

"You wouldn't happen to have any blankets in the back, would you?"

"Afraid not. There's always the body heat option," he began, those eyebrows taunting while framing those dark eyes that held all seriousness where I expected to find mocking laughter.

I narrowed my own eyes in response.

"I'm sure you'd love that, wouldn't you?"

He merely shrugged, his attention going back to his phone in front of him, though I could tell that he was growing colder and colder without his jacket.

I grabbed it up and out of my lap and handed it back to him, not wanting to have to field the guilt already growing inside of me at having not one but two coats draped across me.

"Here," I said as he looked up with raised eyebrows.

"I gave it to you."

"No shit, Sherlock. I'm giving it back, you're shivering."

"So are you."

I barely even registered that fact, the cold a welcome distraction from my problems.

"You're shivering more."

He sighed in defeat and grasped the jacket between his fingers, one of the digits brushing up against my own and I almost gasped out at their frigid temperature against my own that I'd kept firmly underneath my warm thighs.

As he slipped on his jacket, I settled back into my contemplative realm of escapism, each bite of cool air entering my lungs clearing out the devilishly hot rage and anger that I kept inside of me towards my mother, my father...towards him- the man I hated wasted energy on even thinking about, because it would take more out of me than I ever prepared myself for once the intrusive thoughts actually came on.

It was a brief reprieve from the overwhelming emotions that usually wanted to take over my every waking thought, but not as unsettling as the unfeeling numbness that I'd been encased in after hearing of Ian's accident.

And then, just like the car before it, my phone that had been dangling on a measly three percent, finally faded out and died. I groaned involuntarily and leaned my head back against the headrest, my hands coming up to my eyes about to rub the exhaustion out of them until I remembered that I'd actually put on mascara in order to appear more 'put together' for my mother.

"What? Disgusted of my presence already?"

I huffed out an air of annoyance.

"Phone died. But yeah, 'disgusted of your presence already' works too," I said, my mouth pulling up slightly at the sides.

He shifted slightly in his seat to face me fully, his tall stature straining against the small confines of his car.

He seemed almost amused at the fact that I didn't necessarily enjoy his company, though my body wanted to scream at me at how much of a liar I was about that. As much as I tried, I didn't hate being in his presence whatsoever, quite the opposite, actually...

"Good thing it goes both ways then, Kat."

I rolled my eyes at the nickname as the heat finally seeped from the skin under my legs and my hands no longer had any body heat of my own to tap into, and the encroaching icy air that had forced my nose numb an hour ago set its sights on my ears and fingertips.

"And why is that, exactly? You never did answer my question about why you turned on me after Holden and Sloane a year and a half ago."

He just answered by leaning his seat as far back as it could go with the manual controls and placing his hands behind his head as if he had all the time in the world to annoy me with his silence.

"What happened to an answer for an answer? Or are you too scared with what I'll ask you?"

His eyes fiercely cut to me, then, that unbothered expression replaced with one of not-so-carefully repressed anger, what or whom he was angry at I had no idea, but it was clear that I was getting under his skin, and I wished I wasn't so shameless in taking pleasure that I could rile him up so easily.

"Fine. Answer for an answer. Why did you say you don't consider your mom as your mother anymore?"

Of course he'd start with something like that.

I turned my features stony and neutral, trying to keep up the impression that I was unbothered when in reality I was anything but.

"Let's just say there are quite a few things that she's done that I don't agree with. At all."

"Things like what?" His face was almost hopeful, and I was more than confused at the reason for that.

The deep rumble of his voice met my ears and I almost began to think my shivering was for a completely different reason than the aching cold as his full attention was on me

"My turn. Why'd you quit lacrosse?"

His eyes quirked up in surprise at my question, no doubt I'd try to pepper him with the hard ones first, but really it was to try and get him to get his mind off of the current line of questioning he was pointing at me.

"My father wants me to start taking more responsibility with the companies he owns because I'm going to run everything one day. It's time consuming. Meetings after school, zoom calls at five thirty in the morning, charity events and galas on the weekends. I didn't have time for it anymore."

I'd never given much thought to the companies that his family owned which granted the Brooks' family their fortune.

"You don't regret having to give up lacrosse? Didn't you love it?"

"It was alright. I didn't love it, just loved getting out of school early on Fridays for games. And that's two extra questions so now I get to ask you three in a row."

I rolled my eyes but waited nonetheless for his questions.

"What are the things your mom did that you don't agree with so much that you're pretty much excommunicating her from being your own mother?"

Those flying insects inside my stomach were back with a vengeance.

"I don't...I don't really feel comfortable talking about that with you. I don't know your intentions, what you'd do with that information. Before yesterday you weren't even a decent human being towards me. What gives you the right to know such personal details about me?"

He scrutinized me for a few moments before conceding.

"Fine. What about...Favorite color, movie, and song."

I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding and quickly answered lest he change his mind and push me even further on the subject.

"Blue, 'Pride and Prejudice' and... I don't know...'Somebody To Love'? That's a hard one. No wait, 'Faithfully' by Journey," I answered, my teeth chattering almost uncontrollably at that point, but still I spoke through the shivering.

"Interesting."

I rolled my eyes at his reaction to my favorites and then decided to ask him the same thing.

"You do realize that if you keep asking three questions in a row then I get to ask three too?"

I nodded in answer.

"Fine, favorite color is red. Favorite movie is probably 'Armageddon', favorite song is pretty much anything from 'Aerosmith' or 'Pink Floyd'."

"Interesting," I said, parroting what he'd said in response to my question, but then it was his turn to ask again and I was so unprepared for what he had in mind.

"Are you a virgin?"

I almost choked on my saliva as he spoke the words. Narrowing my eyes at him, I answered him truthfully.

"Not sure why that's any of your business, but no, I'm not."

His eyebrows quirked up in surprise at my answer.

"What, you're surprised at that?"

He didn't answer, only peppered me with two more, I guessed to make up for the three I'd asked him before to make it even.

"With who? That Ian back in California?"

Suddenly my features were stony and closed off and my chattering would have stopped completely if it wasn't involuntary.

"Yeah, actually. Why do you even want to know that?"

A devilish smirk overtook his features and then I just realized he was being dirty to rile me up, which ended up doing the opposite because of the person in question that his inquiries were about, but he quickly hopped over to the next topic before I could linger on my grief.

It was strange to mourn a person who hadn't even died yet...

"That's for me to know and for you to find out. First kiss?"

"That is so cliche. And Holden, but I wish now that I could take that back. Who was yours?"

He began violently rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try and create friction and heat to keep himself somewhat warm.

"Jenna, but it was just a dare in sixth grade. S-so, you did everything with Holden but the real thing huh? Bet you're happy you didn't after what he did with Sloane," he said with a half dark chuckle and my fists clenched on their own underneath my thighs.

"Yeah yeah, laugh at my unfortunate romantic past. Way to k-kick a girl when she's down," I said, but I hadn't really let on just how broken I really was, the only insight into my trauma being the day that I had gone completely catatonic and Lachlan had carried me.

"Why d-did you do that the other day, anyway?" I blurted out, not giving him a chance to respond to what I'd only said a moment earlier.

"When I did what?"

"When you-" I broke off as an aggressive shiver stole my body, the temperature in the car at least in the low twenties.

"When you c-carried me to my mom's car."

There was no denying his look of contemplation, as if he needed to be extremely careful with what he spoke next otherwise there might be dire consequences if he said the wrong thing.

Or his lips could've just frozen shut, but I figured that was just wishful thinking.

"No one else was g-going to pick you up, and you would've gotten hypothermia if we just left you t-there."

His answer was satisfactory, but there were undercurrents of emotions that he tried to conceal, and did a bad job of it. Sadness flickered in his eyes until another shiver worked its way through his body, his breath coming out quicker as fog escaped his mouth and curled up in the air between us like the sizzling and dancing tension I always tried to ignore, ever present that was normally invisible.

I wondered if he felt it, too.

"We're going to get hypothermia if we don't get picked up soon," I said, aware that I was changing the subject but Lachlan seemed relieved that I had, the conversation veering off into a territory that he seemed uncomfortable with.

"I know I was joking, but I think the b-body heat thing might be our only option unless you want to f-freeze to death."

Even though I knew deep in my bones that he was right, the fact that I had to agree with him was still making me sullen.

"I know. Okay, how do you want t-to do this?"

Ever the tease, even in dire situations such as these, he wiggled his eyebrows as he said, "Well, you c-could always come over here and straddle my lap."

My unamused expression to that made him chuckle once more, the sound slithering down my back in a shiver that wasn't at all from the cold.

He got up out of his seat then and climbed into the very back in one fell swoop, and soon he was sitting on the flat surface in the back where the seats would have been if they weren't all laid down for having to make space to transport all of his lacrosse gear.

"Aren't you g-going to put the seats up?" I asked, his eyes on me as he waited for me to follow suit.

"No, now get back here."

Too cold to question him, I carefully placed my hands on the hem of my knee length dress to make sure I didn't accidentally flash him while climbing over the high console in the middle of the car and swung one leg, then the other over the large console and then I was on the floor of the car in the backseat, very ungracefully as I landed half on my back and half on my butt, Lachlan voicing his amusement at my actions.

"You know, y-you're really graceful."

"Bite me."

"If y-you insist," he said, those dark eyes piercing mine in an intense battle of something I couldn't quite comprehend that had a different kind of warmth collecting in my stomach but I shrugged off the annoyingly strong things that his words did to me, rolling my eyes in response to his words.

I readjusted myself until I was sitting back in a kneeling position, both legs squished underneath me because I was so not going to be able to sit like Lachlan, one leg bent at the knee which propped up his lazy arm, the other extended before him in probably the sexiest position that showed off his taut muscles underneath his tight dress shirt, the dark jeans plastered to his legs exposing his toned physique.

I barely had time to elicit a squeak out of me before his hands were on me, pulling me close to him into his body, the swarm of locusts and wasps and bees attacking those damn butterflies in my stomach until my abdomen was a buzzing atrium for winged creatures.

It was basically just a hug, so I took advantage of the immediate warmth he provided and burrowed my hands inside of his large coat, clutching onto him desperately as I shivered over and over, his hands doing the same, grasping my waist underneath my own coat.

I hid my head against his collarbone, his chin coming to rest atop my head and I couldn't control the rapid quickening of my heart as the closeness between the two of us set me on fire, in a completely different way than just mere temperature, but I wasn't about to let him know just how much he affected me.

I was perturbed slightly by the silence, though it stretched out in a yawning expanse until it became comfortable, the sounds of slushing tires and squeaking brakes filling the air along with the howling winds outside the car.

Though my hands were hidden under his coat and his heat was filling me, still we shivered uncontrollably against each other and the cold was creeping in all too soon.

"This isn't even really helping," I complained against him, those arms tightening around me in response and I couldn't help the little whirling tilt my stomach did at the action, almost like my body enjoyed the feel of him against me.

Maybe I did...

He was strong and hard in all the right places, no innuendo intended, and his scent that had once only slightly wafted up from the coat he'd given me earlier suddenly engulfed me in a wave that would have made my knees go weak if I'd been standing.

I was halfway in his lap, between his open legs with one hitched up at the knee and the other stretched out and if this were any ordinary day where we weren't bordering on hypothermia, it would have definitely been considered cuddling.

"Put your fingers under my shirt. Skin to skin," he told me, his voice rumbling his chest in the sexiest way and I couldn't help but chance a peek up at his face which was set in a grim, hard line almost like he couldn't stand the thought of me touching him so intimately.

I didn't argue as my fingers felt like they were about to fall off, and slid my hands underneath his dress shirt and almost sighed as they immediately warmed upon contact with his flushed skin despite the ever still decreasing temperature in the car.

At first I kept them at his sides, but as I flipped my hands over to warm the other side, they skimmed his ab muscles and I immediately felt guilty as he sucked in a sharp breath at the burning cold that must have hit him as I all too greedily sucked up all his warmth.

Guilt gnawed on my conscience and before I even knew what I was doing, I was telling him to do the same so it was fair.

"But you're wearing a dress..."

"So? Just don't touch anything...improper, and we won't have a p-problem."

"Improper? What are we, in eighteenth c-century England?"

I rose my eyebrows into my hairline that told him the offer had an expiration date and before I knew it, his hands were sliding underneath the hem of my dress and slipping up the sides of my thighs before resting on my hips, inevitably raking over the band of my underwear, and the amount of heat that rushed to my cheeks should have been enough to make me completely forget the immediate sting of his cold ass hands, but even Lachlan Brooks semi feeling me up in the back of his car wasn't enough to make me forget just how painful that freezing touch was, even if it burned me from the inside out.

Lachlan's snickering brought me out of whatever rabbit hole I was about to bring myself down.

"What exactly is so funny?" I asked, unsure of how my voice came out steady despite the violent shivering and the fact that he had started absentmindedly kneading the skin of my hips with his knuckles, probably trying to warm that part of his hands, but the effect was mind boggling and so incredibly hot that it was hard to think for a moment.

My old bully and childhood crush, reducing me to a puddle of mush by a few touches.

"Nice underwear. Planning on a fun night? Trying to persuade Holden to come back to you and leave your sister?"

I pulled my head back a bit to gaze into his eyes but he kept his stare forward, that cocky smirk dripping from his mouth.

"Excuse me? This is my normal underwear thank you very much."

"Really?"

And then his head cut down so he met my gaze immediately, and what I found there made me almost gasp.

His eyes were hooded, those dark eyes filled with mirth and barely hidden desire.

"You wear things like these-" he cut himself off, his hands moving down from my hips to the band of my lace thong further down on my hips, closer to my thighs.

"everyday?" he finished, his fingers looping through and underneath the band on either side, forcing me to hold my breath in anticipation of what he was going to do next, my insides flaring and burning a kaleidoscope of different colors and emotions, the strongest of them being lust.

I gulped down and tried to speak.

"Y-yes?"

He blew out a breath.

"What color are they?"

"Black," I answered, because what else could I do? He was being domineering, and careful and all around sexy as hell, and I couldn't control myself as I realized I was dancing to his tune but in that moment I didn't care one bit.

A satisfied smile flitted onto his face.

"I want to see them, when we're not half freezing to death, that is."

"O-okay..." I stuttered out, unsure of what he was doing to me, unsure of everything in that moment despite the desperate ache that was building up inside of me as his hands continued their adventure underneath that band of my thong, his fingers caressing and teasing and only staying strictly on my hips from my earlier warning, but all I wanted to do was throw that out the window to see how far he would take this.

I was curling my fingers around his waist, digging my hands in a little stronger when he did something I particularly liked, and pretty soon his hands abandoned their spot down below and traveled upwards, the skin skimming my rib cage and the strangled breath that I pulled in was desperate and breathy and so, so weak.

I licked my lips as I pulled back to look up at him, but he was staring past me as his hands slid upwards to the band of my bra.

He sucked in a breath of his own, satisfaction there too, as I wore a matching lace set that day.

And then he peered down at me, fire and need shimmering there in those chocolate eyes that seemed more like midnight black in the dark light of his car.

"I want to see this too."

I bit my lip and simply nodded in agreement with him which quirked up one side of his mouth, and for a few damning seconds it was just the feel of his skin against mine, caressing and soothing and far too enticing.

For a few seconds, it was just him and the delectable things that he was doing to my body, barely even touching me inappropriately, but the way he was doing it made it seem more than sinful.

Before I could ask him what we were even doing, headlights shined into the car from the back windshield, and I sprang back from him as if I'd been burned.

The answering blankness and barely covered disappointment flashed in Lachlan's features and I felt the chasm of distance breaking out before us once more.

"Guess that's the calvary. Might need to straighten yourself out real quick, and change those underwear when you get home.  I have that effect on women."

And there was the asshole back in him again, like he was the only one who could have affected me instead of the both of us, but maybe that was just what I wanted to see, because Lachlan was more in the business of making me feel things I'd never felt before and then completely negating them by making it seem like it was all just a big joke to him, just to prove that he could do things to me that I couldn't do in turn to him.

It was humiliating and degrading all at the same time, but I couldn't deny the chemistry and tension that flowed between us, even then in the awkward afterglow of him just simply touching me.

I noticed, though, a certain member straining against his jeans and smirked.

"You should worry about yourself," I said cooly while motioning my head towards the middle of his legs, the shivers slightly dimmed from the warmth I'd gleaned from him as I shimmied back up in the front seat, gracefully this time, as I left him looking down at his pants half swearing and half adjusting himself against his belt.

By the time his older brother, Brandon, arrived to help us, an old classmate of mine who had graduated a year before and who was friendly enough with me, the spitting image of Blythe with blonde, curling locks, I decided to grab a ride back to the dorms with him instead, leaving a very frustrated, and very brooding Lachlan, behind to drive himself back.

All the while I wondered what the hell I'd gotten myself into, and why I had let it go so damn far.