“So would a good fuck—want to help me out?”
“Put your fucking boots on.” Shep chuckled and headed for the kitchen, and by the time he came back carrying several bottles of water, my boots were tied and I’d pulled a baseball cap on.
“Happy?” I spread my arms and made a slow circle.
“Ecstatic.” He zipped up the backpack and put it on, but it seemed to me he was missing the most important items for any hike.
As I headed to the weapons safe he’d shown me on our tour last night, he called out, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You said snakes. Not a fan.” I tucked a sheathed knife into the back of my pants and went to shut the safe, then thought twice about what else we might encounter and grabbed one of the Glocks.
Shep snorted as I met him at the door. “Planning on shooting a snake? You killed a man with your bare hands.”
“Maybe I plan on shooting you for waking me up to hike through a jungle.”
He rolled his eyes and gestured for me to go first before locking up. “I seem to rememberyouforcing me to explore Japan. Made me eat fucking octopus balls. Yetnowyou say you’re not up for an adventure?”
“Hey, those balls were delicious.”
“The second best I’ve ever had in my mouth.”
He winked as he walked by me to lead the way, and my jaw hit the dirt-covered ground.
“I’m sorry,” I said, blinking as I stood there staring after him until I realized I needed to catch up and not get lost out here. “Did I hallucinate that, or did you just insinuate that my balls are the best you’ve ever put in your mouth? Because I need to record this moment for posterity.”
“Oh, you think I meant yours?”
“Are you fucking seri—” My words cut off as a teasing glint entered his eyes. “You asshole.”
He began to laugh, a more relaxed sound than I’d heard from him in weeks. “You walked right into it.”
A smartass retort was on the tip of my tongue, but then it hit me: an unwanted image of Shep with King flashing through my mind, and along with it, a seed of doubt that came with wondering if that was whom he meant. King.
Putain. Wasthat whom he meant?
No. I shook off the thought. Of course he wasn’t talking about him. He wouldn’t make a joke like that about King. Shep didn’t usually joke, period, so this side of him was what I brought out of him. Right?
He cocked his head curiously at me as I grunted and batted a wayward limb out of my face. When it came back to slap me again, I whipped out my knife and cut the damn thing in half.
“See?” I said, slicing at a hanging vine in our path. “Told you this would come in handy.”
“Right, for all the trees trying to attack you.”
“Hey, this is a dangerous, unfamiliar place. If something comes at me and I react, it’s not my fault.”
“Well, I don’t think anything we’ll find out here is used to kneeling for royalty, so maybe give them the benefit of the doubt before you start putting bullets in everything.”
That all sounded like a bunch of blah fuckin’ blah except for the part about kneeling. “I couldn’t even get you on your knees for me this morning. I don’t have high hopes for the monkeys.”
The deeper we hiked into the jungle, the hotter it got, to the point where I finally stripped off my hoodie and tied it around my waist. Almost immediately, the mosquitos began their attack, and the sound of my slapping them off one by one was all you could hear as we trekked farther into the middle of nowhere for what had to be miles.
“Theo, watch out for the?—”
Too late. I stepped into about a foot of mud, and it squelched up the length of my boot.Ugh.I guess Shep had been right about one thing: my workout shoes would’ve been goners.
I lifted my boot up out of the mess and shook it off, wrinkling my nose in disgust. “Merde. This is barbaric. I wasn’t made for…mud.”
“Nah, I know you too well. You enjoy getting your hands dirty.” Shep’s gaze wandered down my chest, where I could feel the sweat from all the humidity soaking through my t-shirt. “Among other things.”
