He narrows his eyes at me, not believing me. But he doesn’t press further.
“I’m going to build a fire. Unsaddle the horses?” Jax asks.
“We’ll camp here? By the water?”
He looks around. “Not ideal to camp by the water, but the forest is too thick here. We don’t have much of a choice. We’ll do shifts again.”
I nod and he heads to look for dry wood. Quietly, I unsaddle Luna. Once that’s done, I turn to Midnight. He watches me, but doesn’t grunt or express his dislike for me in any other ways.
I lift my palms up. “Can I unsaddle you, Grumpy?”
The stallion watches me. A long moment passes. Finally, he blows out and turns sideways.
Damn. I can’t believe this is happening.
Carefully, still unable to believe Midnight is allowing me to approach him, I come closer. Slowly, I untie the straps and remove the saddle. I check that the horses are tied well to thetrees with enough space to graze. Jax returns with the wood and starts working on building the fire.
I unroll the fur, fill our skins, and set up the meager dinner of stale bread and hard cheese. We ran out of candied dried plums yesterday. Jax did pick some forest berries earlier today, so we have that with our bread and cheese.
“If you’re wrong and they’re poisonous…” I shake my head.
Jax smirks. “I know, I know. I’ll be General Slayer twice. Legendary, if you ask me.”
Smiling, I shove his shoulder. “Not funny. Once is already one too many times. Have you already forgotten how bad the prison was?”
Jax’s gaze darts between me and his bread. The way his mouth curves makes something in my stomach swirl. “It wasn’t all that bad.”
“Really?”
He looks up and our eyes meet. “Yeah. I enjoyed you visiting me in my cell.”
I roll my eyes.
But his admission warms my insides.
Jax lies down on the fur and crosses his arms behind his head. “And in between those visits, I used to daydream of what would happen the next time you visited. Not a bad life.”
This bastard.
Tempting me. Stoking my damn curiosity.
“What exactly would you daydream about?”
Jax runs the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. “There aren’t enough words to describe it.” A pause. “But I could show you. Through our bond, of course.”
I click my tongue. “No, thank you.”
Jax chuckles. “Well, then, don’t ask me questions you don’t want answers for, darling.”
I lie down under the fur blanket. “Lesson learned.”
Jax slips under the same blanket. We know this routine so well by now, we don’t even need to talk. He rolls me over onto my side and pulls my back against his chest. His palm rests on my stomach.
Too low.
I don’t complain, though.
“Get some sleep,” he murmurs against my hair. “I’ll wake you when it’s time for your shift.”
