“I’ve got a flashlight.” As if to annoy Beast more, Laurent turned it on aimed the beam at Beast’s face.
Beast flinched, shielding his eyes when the beam fell on him as if he were a monster in the woods tracing Laurent’s footsteps to take him to his lair. All Laurent needed was a red hood to complete the picture.
Laurent started walking again, and his boots crunched against the dirt and stones. “I’ll be back later.”
Beast’s heart pounded, but he followed Laurent without a word, a slender figure between the shadowy trees. With the long, wavy hair and walking with such grace, he could have been some kind of spirit natural to this region. Instead, he was the prey of a beast, who couldn’t even keep him content.
Laurent walked on for a while, but then slowed down. He turned around so abruptly Beast had to step back to stay out of the beam of the flashlight.
“I can hear you. This is beyond unfair. You barely talked to me all day. This trip was your idea, and now I don’t get to be alone?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” Beast said before slowly dropping the hand he used to shield his eyes from the bright glow. “Am I not scary enough in the dark without the surprise?” he asked, not looking into Laurent’s eyes. He understood his anger perfectly, yet his own resentment was still there, burning holes in his heart.
“You’re not scary at all!” Laurent circled him and started walking back to the camp. Faster this time, but it wasn’t hard to keep up with him.
“No?” asked Beast, finally moving to walk arm in arm. “Am I less scary than King?”
Laurent glared at him. “I’m not as easy to frighten as you might think.”
“I bet. You made an agreement with a monster from hell.”
“I did. And I will see it through whatever it takes, because I won’t be the Laurent Mercier who got sentenced to hang. I killed Fane in self-defense!”
Beast grabbed Laurent’s shoulder, stopping him from going any further. The trees around them cast long shadows, locking them in a bubble that smelled of fungi and fresh air. With the flashlight as the only source of light, Laurent’s face was sculpted by darkness and light. Beast swallowed, studying the one eye he could see well. It looked back at him, inquisitive yet bearing no trace of fear whatsoever.
“This secret... it feels like a wall between us. I see you, but I can’t really touch you. I keep thinking what this is about, especially after today, because whatever it is you’re doing, King doesn’t like it. I can’t have him attack you.”
Laurent glanced toward their tent not far away. “You can’t always know everything. Weren’t you the one to say that we have to be allowed to keep our secrets? I promise that I will tell you the truth one day, but right now, I cannot. I’m handling King.”
“Are you? Because it didn’t look like you were. He’s been a loose cannon lately, so who knows how he’s gonna react when he gets high next time?” Beast said, pulling on Laurent’s shoulders to make their eyes meet.
All it got Beast was a groan. “I don’t know. I take it one day at a time.”
Beast exhaled, unclenching his hands to let them rest on the well-formed shoulders. As if this conversation weren't going bad enough, a drop of rain fell on Beast's head. After a whole day of pushing Laurent away, the urgent need to touch him now came as a surprise, but since Laurent had come into Beast’s life, there were many things he didn’t quite understand about the way he felt.
“Can you promise me at least that you’re not gonna leave? That you’ll stay?” he asked, leaning closer and glancing into Laurent’s eyes as his hands climbed up Laurent’s neck to cup his face. Did he even need to finish the sentence and say with me, or was his meaning clear enough? He could overlook anything and forgive all if Laurent never left. If only he could be there, proving to Beast every day that he was worthy of someone so lovely.
Laurent finally focused all of his attention on Beast, and he put his slender hand over Beast’s, cuddling up his cheek to Beast’s palm as the rain started getting more intense. “To stay in this time, I need to do my duty. I will do everything I can to do so. But there is something I can tell you. The closer we are, the closer we get, the more intense our… lovemaking gets,” Laurent’s cheek became hotter against Beast’s palm, “the angrier King will be, and the better off you will be for it. And I hoped this trip could bring us closer still. Away from everyone’s scrutiny. No tests, no lies, just you and me.”