It wasn't often that Jo felt the need to rely on all five senses at once as a human. Usually, like most humans, she grew complacent and made use of her vision above all. Right now, since she couldn't see anything as she prepared to step further into the density of the woods proper, she was trying everything else. However, she did not have enough time to focus properly before feeling Sam's urgent grasp in her arm and hearing his plea. Stopping dead in her tracks, the first thing that occurred to her was that this had to be the first time he had touched her. At least that she remembered, and she had a clear and bothersome feeling she would remember such a moment vividly. If not for the worrying tone in his voice Jo might even have allowed the butterflies in her stomach to flutter, but as it was she squashed them immediately and turned around. It was just in time to watch him withdraw his hand so quickly that frailer people would have felt whiplash and possibly injured tendons in the process. He recoiled, going into a perfect picture of submission, and Jo felt her heart fall as her eyes widened from surprise to a deep sense of regret - on his behalf, if anything.
"Sam," she called gently, moving very slowly towards him, going so far as to bend one knee to the ground in order to make herself smaller than him. "It's okay. Ignoring for a moment that there might be some sort of predator out there waiting to rip our heads off, you can touch me-" She grimaced at how the choice of words sounded in her mind. "-I, I mean, you know, like anyone would. Well, not anyone, but um...you know what I mean, right? Ah, what I mean is, we're friends. You can ask me - no, tell me - not to do things if you don't want me to do them."
Now, however, he wasn't the only one deeply concerned. Even before this little outburst (and she only called it that because it was coming from Sam, who didn't do the whole touching or beckoning people to do something thing) she had sensed Sam's fear. Anyone else and she'd be wondering if it was an overreaction, but a wolf was a wolf. Wolves hadn't survived for ages in the wilderness without a keen instinct for this sort of thing, and werewolves were no different. If she trusted anyone else in this world where hunches were concerned, it was another wolf. She looked over her shoulder then back at Sam. "But if there's something out there, I have to check it out."