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“Or you’re a bad influence.”
“I am certainly that,” he says, dimples prominent in the shadows of the Evergreen Dark Wood. “Do me a favor? When you see Kane again, drop one of your verbal bombs in his lap. I’d love to see how he’d react.”
I scoff. “I’d never curse at him. He’s nice!”
“And I’m not?” He feigns offense with a theatric hand to his chest.
“You’re tolerable.”
Dessin laughs again. His brow arches at a thought. “Runa was nice, hmm?”
My shoulders stiffen. Oh, he’s walking a thin line.
“You think she was nice?” I ask without raising my eyes from the dirt trail.
“Sure, don’t you?”
I grimace. “Not especially. But boy, did she like you. Laughing at your jokes, insinuating she wanted to—do stuff with you.”
“Stuff?”
“Yes. Stuff. Be alone with you. Take my place on your lap.” The heat of that simmering agitation comes back at the memory. She looked at him like a nice, juicy steak. I want to vomit.
“You must have been paying very close attention to her,” he comments. Emotions unreadable.
I shrug, but the movement is stiff, forced, mechanical. “She might as well have been shouting it from the rooftops.”
Dessin thinks for a moment. “Did you picture us together? Is that why you’re this tightly wound?” A wicked smile pours into his deep voice. “Did you imagine her riding in my lap the way you were in the tavern?”
I whip around and glare at him. “You—” I huff. Grinding my teeth together. “You don’t know anything!” I kick the ground, a cloud of dirt surrounds my feet at impact.
Dessin grins. “Did that make you feel better?”
“And another thing,”—I point my finger at him like a mother hen—“I don’t care who you have in your lap. As long as I don’t have to do it again.”
“Is that right?” He smiles wider.
“Yes.”
“So the thought of me with another woman doesn’t get you really angry?” He takes a step closer to me.
I push that angry bubble away but its persistence is overpowering. It wants me to burst. My hands clench into fists. Why does this bother me so much?
“Nope. Because the time in that tavern was just a game. It didn’t mean anything.” Why am I saying this? I’ve been dying to know if he felt it too. If there were any feelings fluttering in his chest the way they were in mine.
But he’s taunting me. He’s dangling the idea of him with another woman in front of me and I won’t entertain it. I won’t be the first to tell him how I feel.
“Is that right?” He tilts his head. “No part of you liked having my fingers in your mouth?”
I visibly shiver. “Nope.” Yes. I couldn’t get enough.
Dessin chuckles as if it’s obvious that I got caught in a lie. But the sound quickly sprinkles into the air and dissolves like a speck of snow hitting the earth. He stops walking, and it’s several moments before he blinks repeatedly, appearing disoriented.
I breathe in and out patiently. I wonder who I’ll see this time. It can’t be Greystone.
The man looks up at me from a lowered head, then takes a quick scan of the forest to adjust to his new surroundings.
“Where are we?” he asks.
