Buck bit back a groan. With hard, stabbing strokes, he added details to his sketch, copying her touch. “Fine. Here. House, door, two windows. Happy now?”
Humming a little tune, Honey started drawing a chimney.
She was trying to kill him. The woman was actually trying to kill him.
At long last, Honey completed her ruthlessly detailed architectural schematic. By that point, Buck had gone into a kind of stoic, upright coma, hand mechanically copying her movements, mind utterly blank. It took him a second to realize that she’d finally stopped tormenting him.
“There,” she said, admiring the result of her handiwork—at least, the resultabovethe clipboard rather than the one hidden below. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now you do me.”
Thankfully, Leonie saved Buck from having to come up with a response to this suggestion that wouldn’t get him thrown out for workplace harassment. The head counselor blew a whistle at the front of the room, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Okay, time’s up!” she announced. “I hope you all enjoyed practicing non-verbal communication and awareness. Let’s move on to the next activity.”
(“Oh, rats,” Honey muttered, as Buck breathed a silent sigh of relief. She shot him an annoyed look, as though it was allhisfault they’d run out of time. “I wanted to see what you’d draw.”)
“Turn your chair so that you’re facing your co-counselor,” Leonie instructed. “Oh, and you can put your clipboards and pencils away now. You won’t need them for this exercise.”
Honey dragged a chair round. Sitting down opposite him, she frowned at the clipboard still in his lap. “Leonie just said you won’t need that.”
Buck tightened his grip on the clipboard. “Believe me, I really, really do.”
The woman was wearing shorts, because fuck his life. She had plump, rounded knees. Buck had never considered women’s knees to be particularly sexy, but he was now at serious risk of developing a fetish. He edged his own chair a little further away.
“Make sure to tuck in nice and close,” Leonie said brightly. She drifted around the room as she spoke, correcting people’s positions. “You should be knee to knee for this one.”
Buck didn’t know Leonie well, but she’d used to turn up at the hotshot base from time to time, since her brother was on the crew. He’d always thought of her as a nice, kind woman, with at least ten times the common sense of most shifters (which, admittedly, was not hard).
This, he now knew, was not the case. She was, in fact, a stone cold sadist.
“Oh no, that won’t do,” Leonie said in honeyed tones. She bore down on the pair of them like a lion spotting a couple of sick zebra, teeth gleaming. “Closer, please, Buck. No, closer than that. Now, both of you, lean forwards. There, that’s much better.”
This, Buck felt, was a matter of opinion. Unfortunately, certain parts of him shared Leonie’s enthusiasm for this new enforced proximity to Honey. If anyone tried to take his clipboard away now, they were going to have to break his damn fingers.
“This next exercise is all about sincerity,” Leonie said. “One of the most important things we do here is build up our campers’ confidence by praising them for their efforts. And by that, I’m not talking about hollow validation. Believe me, kids are all too good at spotting when you don’t mean what you say.”
He heard Honey make a tiny huff of amusement at that. She was nodding along with Leonie, agreeing with every word.
“So let’s practice giving genuine praise,” Leonie continued. “By now, I hope you’ve spent enough time with your co-counselor that you’re starting to appreciate their strengths. So you’re going to look into each other’s eyes and take turns exchanging honest compliments.”
Whenever Buck thought this day could not possibly get any worse, it descended to a fresh and hitherto unsuspected level of horror. He should have stayed on the roof. It had all been downhill from there.
“Well, this is awkward,” Honey said ruefully. She propped her elbows on her knees, looking up at him through thick, dark lashes. “Do you want to go first?”
“Absolutely not.” A much cheerier thought struck him. “And since you can’t, guess we’ll just sit here in silence.”
Honey’s forehead furrowed. “What do you mean, since I can’t?”
“Considering our interactions so far, if you can give me a genuine compliment, I’ll be motherloving amazed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Challenge accepted.”
She looked away for a moment, biting her lower lip. A fresh surge of desire slapped every other thought out of his head. It was all too easy to imagine catching that softness between hisownteeth, nipping and teasing until she gasped, until she opened for him, his tongue sliding into her heat—
Honey abruptly looked up, locking eyes with him. Whatever she saw in his face made her own pupils widen. Her cheeks went pink.
This did not helpat all.
“Buck, I admire your commitment to the kids here.” Despite her flustered blush, sincerity rang behind every word. “You obviously don’t want to be doing any of this, but here you are anyway, because you can’t let them down. It takes real strength to step outside your comfort zone like that. I respect you for it.”
