Page 81 of House of Crimson Cloak and Silver Teeth

I hold his gaze, keeping my face carefully blank. “Consider that repayment.”

His brow knits in confusion.

“For what you did to me last time,” I remind him.

“Wolf,” he manages, his voice hoarse and deep.

“We’re square now.”

I turn and walk down the bank to the river without looking back. I can feel his eyes on me with every step.

The water is cold when I wade in waist-deep. I cup handfuls of it and splash it over my face. His taste won’t leave. The memory won’t fade either. I scrub at my mouth and jaw, trying to wash them away. I can still feel myself shamefully hard inside my breeches. My cock hasn’t calmed despite the frigid water.

Fucking deflate, I tell it.

It’s refusing to listen to reason or cold or anything else.

Well, shit. I breathe out slowly through my teeth.

I don’t look back toward the bank because I already know what I’d see. Garrett will still be standing against that rock with his breeches barely pulled up and his hand braced on the stone. If I turn now and see the expression on his face I won’t be able to keep doing this.

So I don’t turn.

I stand in the water until my legs ache from the cold, counting to a hundred and then starting over again.

Eventually, mercifully, my body begins to listen to reason and the shameful hardness starts to fade.

I wade out and pull my breeches back up properly, lacing them with fingers that have gone clumsy from the cold. One more handful of water splashed over my face then I straighten and turn toward the bank.

Garrett is in the river now, waist-deep in the water and washing himself in silence. He doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at him. I walk past him without stopping or slowing, keeping my eyes fixed on the game trail up the slope.

“Do you want a hand with that?” he offers, feigning concern.

This sick fucking bastard.

He knew I was hard and perhaps still am. My foot finds the first root of the trail. Behind me, I hear him move. Water sloshing, footsteps hitting the bank. I quicken my pace.

Ridiculous. I’m a fucking assassin and he’s making me feel like prey.

I start running.

The trail blurs past me, roots and rocks I should be navigating with ease. But I can hear him behind me, gaining.

My lungs pull in sharp cold air. Tree trunks blur past while the forest narrows around the trail. I know this terrain but panic makes me clumsy.

“Wolf.”

I ignore him and push harder. He is getting closer now. His breathing ghosts at my back close enough to raise the hair on my neck. I don’t make it ten more steps.

Something slams into me from behind.

My back hits a tree hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Garrett’s body pins me there, his weight pressing me against the rough bark. One hand braced beside my head, the other gripping my hip.

I throw the entirety of my weight against him. He doesn’t move. We’re pressed so tight that I don’t know the frantic beating in my ears is my own heartbeat or his. His face is inches from mine, eyes burning with something fierce and hungry.

“As I recall,” he says, pausing and taking a breath. “I made you come twice. You still owe me one.”

His voice is rough, wrecked from what I just did to him.