His scowl darkens his face and makes him look all the hotter. A man shouldn’t look so beautiful when he’s scowling. “Do I look like I’m tipping it?”
“No. Just…be careful.”
“You want me to piece it together and turn it on?”
“No—we’ll make sure it’s fully dry first. Take the pieces out carefully, let the water run out of them, and set them out on rocks with the plastic housing up. You know what I mean?”
He gives me a dark look that tells me he does. He takes the pieces out like they’re precious jewels and sets them on the rock, not too near the fire, but not so far. Because I want him to. Need him to.
“Your precious phone. You want to make sure it’s dry and warm even before you are.”
“I just need it.”
He grunts as he wipes the battery and sets it out. My only connection. My only lifeline.
In a weird way, I think this phone thing is more painful to him than the wasp incident. It makes me love him a little.
“Thank you, Kiro.”
He comes and stands over me, fierce and fucking glorious. “I’ll always take care of you, whether you like it or not.”
My blood races as he reaches down to where I hold the sleeping bag around my chest. He fits the sides together even more snugly. His abs are face level, lightly furred, but it’s his cock that’s consuming my attention. His cock is beautiful like him—dusky and rough, but probably soft to the touch.
He takes my hair in his fingers. He grows harder as he touches me. Harder and huger. “You should make yourself ready for me.”
“Wh-what?”
“I want you to spend this time touching yourself and making yourself ready for me to fuck you instead of running this time. You understand?”
“We’re back to that plan? The feeding and fucking bit?”
He regards me as if I’ve lost my mind. Like, what else are we going to do?
He disappears. I pull the sleeping bag around me. Is he fishing again? Were the wasps just another day at the office?
I shiver in front of the fire, surrounded by our wet things draped over trees, covered in wasp-sting-curing mud, and Kiro is down there fishing naked with his bare hands.
I’m a journalist who started life as a nurse. Not a lot of things surprise me. But Kiro does. No, scratch that—he doesn’t surprise me. He fills me with awe.
I’ve never truly respected what he is—actually wild.
A few minutes later, he stalks back with a fish in each hand. He’ll feed me, and then he’ll fuck me. That’s the plan here.
He crouches in front of the fire, working the fish with his knife, chopping off the head and tail and carefully slicing it in half. He places it on the grate I’d made him buy, and then he turns to me with his usual dark scowl. And I get butterflies in my stomach.
Butterflies.
“You like it cooked a great deal, I suppose,” he grumbles.
“Don’t you? Aren’t you glad we got that grate?” I say inanely.
He crouches there, naked and powerful and gorgeous, arranging the fish over the fire.
“Right? How would you cook it otherwise?”
Casually, he shifts the fish, poking at it. He pulls up the whole network of bones and tosses it aside, then does the same for the other.
“I wouldn’t cook it,” he says finally.