“There! You thought of something. What do you have?”
Trigger sighs.
“I have two reticulated pythons, okay? But I’ve never given them a person before, let alone three.”
Fallow’s hand shoots up like we’re in grade school, and I turn to look at him.
“I would love to see that in real life,” he says, a note of awe in his voice and his eyes bright. “Bet it shits all over watching it on TV.” I’m already shaking my head when he hits me with my own word from earlier. “Please. Colm.”
Jesus. That’s only the second time I think he’s actually said my name out loud, and it’s doing something to me. I crumple like wet paper.
“Fine. Let’s go watch the fucking snakes eat the damn Aryans.”
“Yes!” Fallow fist pumps. “Fucking excellent.”
He’s absolutely glowing with anticipatory joy, and I refuse to admit how much I like the sight of it.
Fuck my life and however I got here.
Chapter Six
Colm
“That was phenomenal,” he says, as if he hasn’t been babbling about it since we left Trigger’s. “Seriously. They swallowed those bodies like I can swallow a cock. Best thing that’s happened to me all week.”
He pauses to look at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Well,” he adds. “Maybe the second-best thing. Snake food or your dick? It’s a tossup. I can’t decide.”
“How flattering,” I mutter, tightening and relaxing my grip on the steering wheel as I focus on the road.
The bodies are gone, at least. And it wasn’tnotfunny watching Trigger and Lucky fish them out of the water. Especially when Lucky slipped, making a splash that attracted the gators’ attention, then fucking shrieked as they came a little closer.
I’ve definitely never seen Trigger laugh, but he came damn close. I did laugh. Watching Lucky flailing and flapping in the water as the biggest gator decided it was hungry after all andsnatched the body out of his hands is a memory I’ll cherish for a while.
That left us with only two to dispose of—one wet, one dry but blood-covered. We threw one to each python, both of them in separate oversized enclosures, and then waited patiently on the other side of the fence to see if they would take to it. Trigger said we were lucky it’s feeding day for them, and we came just in time.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait forever. I didn’t reallyhaveto wait at all, but by that point, I wanted to see it through. It was… grotesque. I have a strong stomach, but watching those things unhinge their jaws and slowly start digesting the bodies got to me a little. I found myself watching Fallow instead, who was taking in the whole scene with an almost religious level of rapture.
“Please tell me wherever we’re going next is going to be as much fun as that,” Fallow says, still thrumming with energy. “What else could eat a human? Piranhas? You should make Trigger start raising piranhas. You can eat piranhas, too, so if you keep feeding them people before you eat them, it could be this weird, niche form of pseudo-cannibalism. Cannibalismlite. That would be pretty sweet.”
He only stops talking when he can feel the force of my gaze boring into the side of his face, when I should be watching the road instead. I think my mouth might be hanging open a little.
How? How am I so attracted to this walking, talking red flag of a human being?
He seems to parse my bewildered expression before giving me this half-smirk that’s unacceptably sexy.
“I’m kidding,” he says, his voice practically a purr. Then he sinks down a little lower and rubs his thigh—salaciously, like he’s thinking about going for his dick, making mine immediatelyperk up in response—before adding, “Well, mostly kidding,” as if I haven’t already forgotten what we were talking about.
The silence sits heavy between us this time, and it doesn’t help that Fallow leaves one hand resting gently over his dick, right where I can see it.
“Where to now, boss?”
As soon as he breaks the silence, I realize I was looking at him more than the road, and my eyes snap back forward.
“More work? Or morewerk?”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” I say, but that only makes him laugh.
