Everything was hot. When I forced my eyes open, I saw a wall of fire in front of me and it took my throbbing head a moment to recognize it as my own fireplace, piled high with roaring logs. I was laid out on the rug in front of the hearth, covered in the nastiest blanket I'd ever smelled in my life. My whole body was shivering, but I was so delirious with fever that I kicked the nasty thing off. Underneath I was naked but for a sheen of sweat glistening in the fire light.
I didn't realize the stinky blanket was actually the wildman's pelt coat until he hurried over to put it back on me. Buck naked and clean from the lake water, the young man's body was an incredible thing to behold. He had even more shredded muscle mass than I had at his age, and of course none of the soft layer of fat I'd been letting build up ever since leaving the service. Don't get me wrong, I was still in better shape than probably eighty percent of the world, but a couple years ago I'd have said ninety-nine.
I touched the back of my head and my hand came away covered in tiny flowers sticky with blood. The wildman must have used the yarrow from his pack to staunch my bleeding. Clever savage. He tried to lay his jacket back over me, but in my delirium, I tried to push him away. After a lifetime building my identity around being big and strong, I had a hard time submitting to being cared for in the best of circumstances, so when his huge hand finally pushed me down, my fevered mind made me feel like a skinny kid getting bullied in a locker room again. I was ashamed to be so small and naked next to this atlas in the prime of his life.
I passed out for a while and woke up shivering under the wildman's fur coat. The first thing my eyes focused on was the silhouette of his hairy young balls from behind. Barely a foot in front of my face, his sack was hanging low between his legs as he squatted in front of the fireplace. I knew I had a fever because my first thought was that he must have been chilly as hell back at the lake house. I'd rarely met anyone with bigger balls than me -- literally or figuratively -- but this twenty-something savage had me beat. Dangling warm in the fire's glow, they looked like a pair of eagle eggs stuffed in a wool ankle sock.
As my eyes travelled up the wildman's body, I gasped. The skin on his back was a canvas of nightmares. None of the scars were fresh, but based on the different degrees of healing, it looked like he'd spent a lot of his youth being abused. No wonder he preferred the woods.
The wildman pivoted to check I was okay, then returned to tossing plants and mushrooms from his pack into water simmering in a kitchen pot at the edge of the fireplace. After stirring the foul concoction with a stick for a while, he poured some of it into the World's Best Dad mug I never use any more and drank half of it in a single gulp. When he brought the cup to me it smelled so nasty I pushed his hand away. I had just enough to spill the tea, but the effort took the strength out of me.