Page 66 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I step toward the kitchen, then stop. My groceries.

“Fuck. I hope the food is fine. They’ve been sitting out there in the sun for hours.”

Camille follows my gaze toward the bags outside on the porch. “They are most likely fine. We will bring them with us.” He walks outside, gathers both canvas bags before I can protest, and returns with them hanging from one hand as though they weigh nothing.

“I can carry my own groceries.”

“I know.”

“Then give them to me.”

“No.”

I stare at his back as he turns and begins the walk over to his estate, the set of his shoulders unyielding beneath his shirt.

“What happened to respecting my independence?”

“You are carrying your overnight bag.” His voice drifts back, cool and factual.

“That’s not the point.”

“It is precisely the point. You are capable of carrying both, but I am choosing to carry these so that you do not have to.”

“You’re impossible,” I say, following behind him.

He pauses at the edge of the garden and glances over his shoulder. “And yet, you called me.”

There it is. The truth lay bare between us.

The truth I really don’t want to talk about.

“Don’t,” I say quietly. “Please.”

His expression shifts into something approximating innocence—a failed experiment that leaves his features too still, his eyes too knowing. “I said nothing.”

“You said plenty.”

We pass through the gap in the boundary wall, the stones casting long shadows over the weeds. The memory of him bending me roughly over it, my wrists locked together at the small of my back by an unmoving hand, his voice in my ear telling me to be quiet as his cock pushes past my defenses, forcing me open—

“Shit,” I yelp as I trip over an overgrown root.

Camille looks back at me. “Are you alright?”

“Mhm. Perfect.”

By the time we reach his house, my adrenaline has burned itself down into exhaustion. The place feels weird knowing I’m going to actually stay the night.

I’ve been here enough times now that I know which floorboard near the library doors gives a tiny complaint beneath Camille’s weight, which hallway stays noticeably cooler than the rest of the house, which bathroom downstairs has a faucet that squeaks, but I’ve always arrived knowing I would leave. Generally after a phenomenal orgasm. Or two.

Or three…

Anyways, it feels obscenely intimate to be walking in with an overnight bag.

I continue to follow Camille as he leads us to the kitchen and places the groceries onto the counter. I hover near the island as he begins unloading my things.

“You are sure you’re alright?” he asks, graciously not making eye contact while he sorts out what needs to be refrigerated.

“Yeah, it was just, um… a shock,” I muster, fiddling with the straps of my bag.