Holden was the first through the door, then trailed by Sloane and Jenna and the school nurse, all of their eyes taking in the scene with varying levels of surprise.

Holden grew serious and withdrawn, with Sloane seeming like steam and fire was coming out of her ears.  Jenna looked downright surprised and almost disgusted, while the nurse and adopted an all knowing and smirking look.

My shaking had subsided, and I could finally feel my fingers and toes.

"Alright, all of you out except for you," the nurse said, pointing her older, wrinkled and nicely manicured finger directly at me, which in turn meant Lachlan too.  The others did as she said when Lachlan stood from the chair and made sure I was okay before shrugging his shirt back on.

"Care to tell me why there are two half naked teenagers unsupervised in a cabin out here on school grounds?"

"This is where I stay when I'm at school.  We went ice skating on the pond and she fell through, so I brought her back here since we were closer to my cabin than the school while the others went for help.  I had to get her out of her wet clothes and was using my body heat to get her warm."

The nurse stepped forward in front of us, calculating and watching him as if he were lying but finally released a breath.

"You're never one to shy away from trouble, are you?  Alright well let's have a look at you."

And then she was taking my temperature, checking all my extremities for frostbite, checking my pulse and my pupils with a light, white hair falling into her eyes as she did so.  My vitals were taken with a portable blood pressure cuff, my heart and lungs listened to by her stethoscope that should've been cold but was really just numb against my skin.

"Your vitals seem great, your breathing is a little elevated along with your pulse though," she began but Lachlan quickly butted in.

"She has anxiety and panic attacks, could that be the reason for that?"

"Yes that's most likely it.  I don't see a reason to have you go to the hospital but I do want to check back in with you tomorrow.  You're very lucky.  How long were you under the water?"

I didn't know how to answer her question.  My mind was swimming and going a million miles a minute when I had been sucked under, and it had felt like one second and a hundred years all at the same time.

"I don't know," I said, voice scratchy, but Lachlan quickly supplied an answer.

"Almost a minute, if that.  I was able to break through the ice and pull her up pretty quickly."

A minute?  It had felt so much longer than that, a minute didn't feel like long enough for my life to flash before my eyes, for my mindset to change so drastically.

"Well, I'll leave you two then, it seems like this was just a near miss.  I'm glad you're alright," she said, walking over to Lachlan and patting his cheek affectionately, like she was his grandmother instead of the school nurse.

"Thanks Deb, and you won't say anything to-"

"Do you know who I am?  Of course I won't say anything.  Keep your girlfriend out of trouble mister, and you little lady," she said turning to me with her finger pointed.  "Don't let him talk you into getting into any more trouble.  I know he might seem charming but don't fall for it, you look like a smart girl."

"Yeah yeah Deb, she gets it.  Thank you again."

"No problem sweetie.  And feel free to stop by my office and grab some of the condoms I have.  They are free, you know, and you wouldn't want-"

"Thank you so much Deb, we sure will," Lachlan responded with a twinkling mischief in his eyes, the contrast so striking from the abject terror that had stricken his features in the moments after he'd pulled me from the water.

And then she was gone, and it was just me siting in my underwear wrapped in a blanket in front of the crackling fire with Lachlan standing over me protectively.

"Well, no more ice skating for us, huh?"

The need to break the awkward silence had grown to a fever pitch, and that was the best I could come up with.

He cracked his signature lopsided smirk that was filled to the brim with ego, a surefire sign that told me he knew just how nervous his presence made me, but didn't make light of my brimming embarrassment.

"Its a wonder Deb didn't force you back to her office on sight. You're lucky she let you stay."

"How do you know the school nurse anyway? She acted like she was a cool aunt or something," I voiced. With every word that escaped me, my voice got stronger and my throat less scratchy.

His lips tipped up before he responded, taking a seat on the edge of his bed and cradled a hand to his chest.

"She used to be my nanny when I was younger. My mom put her through school and became a Registered Nurse, and my mom got her a job at the school. I've known her my entire life, so I guess you could say she's like a cool aunt."

"Your mom sounds awesome," I told him, watching as he uncurled his fingers from his palm and winced. My breath stuck in my throat as I realized that he'd been hurt.

"She really is."

"How did you do that to your hand," I asked, standing up and wrapping the blanket around my body like a cloak.

"My hand slipped on the skate earlier when I was trying to break through the ice to get you. It's nothing-"

"No, let me look at it," I demanded, inching closer to his spot on the bed.

Obeying my command, he straightened his hand out and I gasped at the long diagonal slash that decorated the inside of his palm.

It wasn't bleeding, but I could also tell that he'd been putting pressure against his cut the entire time so no one would notice how bad it was, but it didn't look terribly deep, thankfully.

"Do you have a first aid kit in here or something?"

"In the bathroom, but honestly its fine-"

He cut himself off because I was already moving, my legs wobbly as I reached the bathroom and searched the cabinet below the vanity, finding the small red first aid kit equipped with bandages, gauze, antiseptic spray and some Neosporin.

Keeping the blanket firmly wrapped around my shoulders, I made a mental note to ask for some of Lachlan's clothes once I attended to his injury, which he got from trying to save me.

I didn't try to stop the warmth that spread through my chest when I thought of everything he'd done for me, the things he'd said, how he'd acted when he finally got me out of the water...

And our friends finally knew that something was up with us, and I didn't know if that made me feel dread over the judgements and unwanted opinions or sheer excitement that we could finally be however we wanted to in public without fear of someone finding out about us, whatever 'us' meant. We still hadn't defined anything, but I wasn't in a rush to do that.

I came to a stop before him on the bed, sitting beside him gently and pulled his hand onto my lap while I laid the supplies out before me. I was aware of the blanket sliding off of my skin but I wasn't paying too much attention to that, only to the cut he'd sustained because of me.

He hissed out a breath as I dabbed at the cut gingerly, spraying the antiseptic quickly and then adding the cream before wrapping the gauze tightly across his skin.

His other hand came to rest on my wrist once I was finished, and my eyes flicked up to find him watching me with his hooded dark eyes, the look in his gaze unreadable aside from the hunger that floated desperately inside of the irises decorated in a dark brown coloration that before seemed plain, the color easily disregarded, but the intensity with which he emoted through those eyes brought a whole new level of uniqueness to his seemingly ordinary eyes.

I wondered what he thought when he looked back at me like that, what my eyes must have shone at him, the emotions I was portraying back to Lachlan just like he was doing to me.

It was like the air had been sucked out of my lungs, but unlike the first time that had happened earlier in the day, this wasn't due to the lack of oxygen, but because of something else entirely.

Something intangible that swirled around the two of us like smoke forming a shapeless cloud around us, wafting in and out of our consciousnesses like tempting us to close the distance between us, as if we needed any more encouragement.

We didn't.

His mouth descended upon mine and I closed my eyes upon contact, my heart fluttering a raucous, staccato beat in my chest while his lips worked magic against mine.

My chest tensed as heat blossomed low in my stomach, muscles clenching of their own accord as his good hand traveled up the wrist he'd previously been holding, his touch dragging a wave of heat after it as it reached up and grabbed ahold of the back of my head and the side of my neck to get a better hold on me.

His mouth moved against mine as if he were starved of my touch, and I responded tenfold, his tongue slipping past my lips and I groaned at the instant he invaded my mouth, the sensations ricocheting and exploding inside of me as that dangerous heat coiled and struck deep inside of me, pooling between my legs.

He was an expert in kissing, and the soft love bite he placed on my bottom lip that caused me to gasp out in pure pleasure was only one of the examples of that.

Shifting on the bed so that I was suddenly underneath him and he hovered on top of me, his mouth was on my neck, leaving irresistibly warm and frantic kisses down the side of my shoulder, then finally to the side of my chest where I was only dressed in my black lace bra.

"You weren't lying when you said you wore these lacy things everyday," he commented as fire licked its way up my cheeks in response.

I arched into his touch as his fingers traced the lines of my bra, barely touching the edge of my skin but it was enough to almost drive me insane. The blanket was completely gone, and I was pretty much bare in front of him, but I didn't care.

My hands were desperate, moving over every inch of his body that I could touch as he stayed there in that position propped up on his elbows while biting his lower lip and studying my body in excruciatingly slow detail.

His tongue dipped low, tracing the edges of my skin where his fingertips had once been, and the stark contrast was absolutely, tantalizingly potent.

His tongue continued its slow assault on my skin until his hands deftly unclasped my bra from behind me and then my chest was bare to him, the skin peppered with tiny bumps from the cold as he stared at me. Maybe the goosebumps weren't all from the cold...

"You are so fucking beautiful," he commented, his eyes turned almost completely midnight black in the soft flickering firelight that illuminated the shadows of his face, those angular features and dark eyelashes making him seem ethereal, almost otherworldly.

I reached out and traced his high cheekbones like he'd done with my skin just moments before, and then his mouth was on me again, but not on my lips.

The sensations were so pure and powerful, I could feel a beginning to something just from what he was doing to my skin. I had never felt something so absolutely and irrevocably intense, not with any boy that came before Lachlan, and I almost wished that there'd been no one before Lachlan, because even thinking of doing something like this with anyone other than him just felt plain wrong.

He ceased his assault of my chest with his tongue and dipped his mouth lower, kissing his way down my stomach. I broke out of my lust filled reverie as his tongue traced the circle of my belly button and a laugh escaped me out of reflex.

"Ticklish? I'll have to remember that," he said huskily and any giggles dried up immediately on my tongue.

His tongue, however, was very busy as he situated himself lower, between my legs. My thighs were thrown haphazardly over his shoulders and I couldn't breathe, like I literally couldn't draw in a single breath as I waited for what he was about to do.

There was a barrier between myself and his tongue as my underwear was still on, but he didn't care as his tongue met my center and I breathed out a moan that I would undoubtedly be embarrassed about later, but in that moment my mind could only focus on the sensations he was giving me and how damn excited I was for him to move my underwear out of the way.

Once he was convinced that he'd teased me long enough, his fingers caught the waistband of my black lacy thong and began tugging it down.

"We're going to be doing a lot less studying and schoolwork if you really wear lingerie every single day," he said and it was all I could do to keep my breathing steady once it finally returned to my lungs, the butterflies that I thought had all been killed off returning to my stomach with a fierce battle of wings erupting while my heart thundered, prepared for what was coming next.

His mouth was doing all kinds of ungodly things to me, things that no one else had done, not even Ian, and I was glad that at least one of my firsts were being shared with Lachlan.

My legs shuddered and shook against his shoulders, but he kept a firm grip on them, my skin singing wherever his skin and mine touched.

The pressure and sensations were all too much and not enough at the same time, and as I felt it come on, I arched my back and shoved my hands in his hair, pulling the locks as I tumbled and cascaded around him, the soul shattering and blissful release a fracture of energy around us.

He looked up at me from his spot between my legs, amusement and achievement shining in his eyes as I panted from the exertion that he'd put me through and his glistening lips reflecting from the fire only turned me on even more.

He stood and pulled his shirt off in one smooth motion and I couldn't stop my mouth from salivating at the glorious sight of his chiseled and cut body, of the intricate detailing from his tattoos decorating his skin. I thought I knew exactly where this was going, but he surprised me yet again.

He gathered the clothes and kneeled beside the bed close to my head. He grabbed my arms and put them up in the air, bringing his shirt down on top of my head in a gesture that twisted my heart so painfully that I had to blink back tears.

He strode to his dresser and grabbed a pair of black boxers and stopped again at the bed, his fingers sweeping across my ankles, calves and thighs as he pulled the material up and over my hips.

The lamp next to his bed was shut off and then I was tugged into the front of his hard body, his arms going around me almost possessively like he couldn't let go of me, otherwise I would be back underneath that water and drowning.

"You almost died today," he said out of nowhere. I turned to face him but his eyes were guarded in the fire light.

"I know. You saved my life."

"I know...I don't know what I would have done if you-

"But I didn't. Because you saved me," I said, my hand tracing the light stubble that dotted across his cheeks.

When my hands moved across his lips, he pressed a light kiss to my fingers and I shuddered in response.

"So now that your friends know, are you going to pull away from me?"

"No. I'm done doing that. I'm going to tell Vera everything that I've told you, and I'm going to tell you both the whole truth. But not right now," I said through a yawn.

"No, that can wait. You need rest, you've been through a lot tonight," he said and I couldn't agree more.

My eyes drifted closed and his heartbeat thundered steadily against my back.

I could have sworn that I heard him whisper something but sleep was pulling me under and I couldn't fight it, but I did mumble something in my incoherence, and I didn't know if I would be mortified or empowered by what I remembered in the morning after the words left my mouth.

"I wish I waited for you..."