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He set up the tent, which he hadn’t bothered with last night, and built a fire ring. He gathered dead wood and brush. He’d heard birds and suspected there would be other game, but even without meat to cook, he wanted a fire tonight. There had been too many dark, chilly nights lately.
The idea of the coming night, and all the long, idle hours that he and Raider would spend at the oasis, made his stomach knot with unease, so he set himself to work cleaning his weapons and gear. Sand had infiltrated every nook and cranny.
As he polished his sword, knives, and chakram, he thought longingly of his missing multi tool. One of its many features had been a razor. Seth never felt tidy with a beard.
Even with the razor on hand, he probably wouldn’t have used it. Freshly shaven skin was a bad idea in the desert. Still, he missed the useful tool, and it bothered the hell out of him that he’d lost it. A thief had undoubtedly lifted it in Shalaa’s bazaar. Seth was usually too alert for that, but there was no other explanation.
Lastly, he made a close inspection of the arcane scope, hoping no sand had gotten past its brass casing to damage the delicate mechanisms within. Seth held the scope to his right eye and clicked through its focus levels, locking on the treetops then the distant dunes. He was adjusting down to test its microscopic function when he heard a rustling of undergrowth at the campsite edge.
Seth looked up just in time to register that it was Raider—and that he’d hurled a blade straight at Seth.
Seth dove aside, tucking into a roll then bursting to his feet. As he automatically took a fighting stance, his trained eyes took in details from across the range of the potential combat space.
One of those details was Raider’s hands-up surrender.
Another was a wriggling shape at the edge of his vision.
Seth looked back to where he’d been sitting seconds ago under a lime tree. There, mere inches above where his head had been, a five-foot black snake was pinned to the tree trunk with—
“Is that my—”
Seth didn’t bother finishing the question because, quite obviously, it was.
He stalked to the tree and wrapped his hand around the handle of his multi tool and yanked it free. The snake fell twitching to the ground.
Seth wheeled to face Raider across the campsite. Raider, who had dropped a jute sack of what looked like fruit at his feet, had also dropped his posture of surrender. He stood there in his silk pants, bare from the waist up, his body language loose and comfortable as though Seth wasn’t staring murderously at him.
Seth thought, briefly, of that body stretched out before him, arching against him. He thought, briefly, of the sounds Raider had made, of how his cock had felt in Seth’s hand, in his mouth.
“When did you take this?” Seth demanded.
“Are you going to put that snake out of its misery?”
“You stole this from me.”
“I did. Now will you kill that snake? I’m serious, Seth.”
“You’re serious,” Seth shot back. “There’s a fucking joke.”
Seth turned and plunged the blade through the snake’s skull. Then, with the bloody multi tool tight in his fist, he turned to glare at Raider again.
“When did you take this?”
“In the tavern. When you came to my room?”
Raider voiced it like a question—as though Seth could forget how he’d pinned Raider to the wall, how he’d squeezed his throat, how hard they both had been.
Raider must have lifted the multi tool while Seth had been grinding into him—just as Seth had done at the pool a mere hour again, wanting Raider, wanting more.
It was easy, so easy, for Seth to let all his uncomfortable feelings morph into anger. It was a well-worn path inside him. It was a relief, really, to feel that familiar shift.
He stalked toward Raider.
“You think that’s funny? You think this is a toy?” He added blisteringly, “Do you even know how to use this?”
Raider glanced past Seth to the tree where he’d nailed the snake. “I think I used it pretty well.”
“Why did you take this?”
