After the Fade: Volume 1 by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin & Blount
Published: 2025-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

IX

Our breaths bloomed in the tent, white and brilliantly opaque in the lamplight. Austin squirmed a little closer to me in the sleeping bags we had zipped together.

“Your feet are warm,” he said.

“Your feet are cold.”

He stuck them between mine. Two blocks of ice. How could a guy this hot have feet that cold?

Resting his chin on my shoulder, he said, “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“I had bear spray. And Sugar and Jimpson were there.”

“Without me.”

“You were dealing with Emmett.”

Dealing with Emmett. That was the nicest way I could say it. Negotiating with the greedy, miserable, selfish bastard so that he wouldn’t toss us out naked into the cold and let us die. That was a little more accurate. So that he wouldn’t make me wear a blindfold the entire time I was in the cabin. So that I couldn’t even see him, much less talk to him.

“Relax,” Austin said, squeezing my shoulder. “You’re letting him get to you.”

“Ouch.”

“You told me about the crack to the back of your head. And that guy hitting you. What happened to your shoulder?”

“Nothing.”

“You just said ouch.”

“It’s just bruised. It’s nothing.”

Austin’s hand drifted lower and rested on my belly. He scratched the trail of nearly-invisible blond hairs.

I made an interested noise deep in my chest.

“Good thing you found our bags.”

I grunted. He just needed to move his hand a little lower.

“And good thing I packed the lube.”

I grunted again, and I took his wrist lightly and slid his fingers down a few more inches.

He laughed. Then his touch slid up again to my belly. “Don’t jump the gun.”

“You are fucking awful sometimes.”

He kissed my shoulder. His hands teased the blond trail below my navel. Applied pressure. Rubbed, firmly, a circle that didn’t go quite far enough south.

“You’re a fucking monster sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t rush into things.” He kissed higher up my shoulder. “Alone.” Another kiss, sliding toward my neck. “Without even telling me.” His stubble rasped the side of my throat and I trembled. I shook like a fucking leaf.

“Aus, come on.”

“I’m trying to teach you to slow down a little.”

“Fuck,” I moaned.

Then something moved outside of the tent.

I bolted upright, knocking side Austin’s hand, his touch forgotten. Footsteps came toward the tent. A single pair of them, and they were hard to make out, as though the person was trying to keep us from hearing. It was Bud. He’d decided he wanted round two. I slid out of the sleeping bag, laid a finger over Austin’s mouth, and shook my head. Then I squirmed to the tent door and worked the zipper in millimeters, holding my breath, trying to keep the nylon shell from shivering.

The footsteps came closer.

The zipper got hung up somewhere. I swallowed a curse and jerked it. Softly. It came free, but then the zipper rasped loudly along its track, and someone swore out in the night, and footsteps clapped up the canyon floor.

I ripped the zipper open the rest of the way, and night rushed in like a wall of ice.

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