Gift flushed, giggling again, then nodded.
“Nice?” Park said again, digging his fingers into Gift’s sides until he began to squeal. “I’ll show you nice, you little brat.”
“It was good. Great. Amazing,” Gift gasped, thrashing beneath him.
Park gave him a reprieve, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, his nose. “Come take a shower with me,ouen. But then you have to go back to your room. Okay?”
A shadow passed over Gift’s face, but he nodded. After a moment, he asked, “Are you going to pretend this didn’t happen tomorrow?”
Park frowned. “What?”
“Was this a one-time thing? To…placate me? Shut me up?” he asked, all the happiness from seconds ago gone.
Park sighed. “No,ouen. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen, but we need to have a talk about some things before this goes any further. This is all very…complicated.”
“But you don’t regret it, right?” Gift asked, voice small.
Once more, Park’s lips found Gift’s forehead. “No. No, I don’t regret it.”
Not yet, anyway.
“Gift? Gift!”
Gift snapped his head up at the sound of his name reverberating through the gym, startled from his thoughts. He gave a guilty look to the weapons teacher, who stood before them with a knife in hand. “Sorry, yes?”
Aspen—Gift didn’t know if that was his first name or his last or maybe even a code name—gave him a hard once-over, tossing the knife in the air and catching it by the flat of the blade with two fingers, before pivoting on his right leg and throwing it blindly at the target behind him.
It hit the bullseye with a satisfying thunk.
“Would you care to join us?” Aspen asked.
“Sorry, I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Gift said, flushing until his ears were on fire.
“Clearly,” Morgan murmured under her breath.
Aspen went and grabbed the knife from the wooden target then returned to where they all sat on the bleachers of the enormous training facility.
Aspen zeroed in on Gift’s throat, a slow smirk forming. He stared until Gift felt the urge to cover the skin with his hand. Could he see the bruises beneath the make-up? Could they all see?
Gift’s stomach sloshed nervously as the teacher said, “Since it looks like you were recently mauled by a—”
“Sucker fish,” Morgan crowed from her spot beside him, cutting off the teacher.
Aspen snickered. “Yes, a sucker fish. Why don’t you come up here and help me with this demonstration?”
Well, that answered that question. Everyone could see the evidence of his and Park’s steamy and earth-shatteringly hot encounter. Dove had done her best to cover the marks. She’d sat on his bed, BB cream in hand, dabbing at each of the purple bruises as she demanded every salacious detail of their encounter. She had warned him that the concealer might not cover them. Park had seemed pretty determined to mark his territory.
Gift’s heart tripped at the memory of sitting in Park’s lap, his hands on Gift’s ass, guiding him as he rutted against him. The way Park had looked at him, kissed him, had pulled at his hair to bite at his neck. Park’s mouth closing over his aching…
Gift blinked, shaking his head. He was going to get himself worked up in the middle of class. “Uh, okay. Yeah, sure,” he said faintly.
There were several groans from his fellow students, earning them all a glare from Payton, who pointed at each of them like they were now on his list. Their jeers were nothing new. It was no secret what had happened the last time Gift had been handed a weapon.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mos asked. “The last time Archer let him handle a weapon, he ended up with an arrow in his ass.”
Yeah, that.Except, it wasn’t his ass. And it wasn’t Archer. It was so much worse.
“It was his shoulder,” Dove corrected haughtily, then bit her lip like she was already anticipating the chaos that was about to ensue. “And it wasn’t his shoulder. It was Mac’s.”
