Page 17 of King of Lies (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #6)

Keaton

First light brought pain. The pain of trying to sleep with your arms forced into an unnatural position. Memories hammered at me as I struggled to an upright position to ease the worst of the discomfort.

Rain. Anger and lust. August at the door. Letting me in, but with conditions. Being fastened to the radiator like a dog. Saying things to him I knew in retrospect were awful, even if I couldn’t recall any of the words I’d used. August making me an offer. Stroking me to orgasm.

Jesus! Even thinking about that stoked a fire in my cheeks.

I should have told him no. I hadn’t been in charge, though.

The damn virus particles circulating through my blood had taken temporary control as they were wont to do, and they hadn’t given a damn about what was right.

They’d only cared about getting to come.

“You’re awake then?”

I’d been so busy trying to piece together the events of the previous evening that I hadn’t registered August moving about.

He paused from shoving things in his backpack to study me.

I met his gaze for only a fraction of a second before looking elsewhere, mortification a permanent itch beneath my skin.

“I’m awake.” My voice sounded dull, like all the life had been stripped from it.

“And are you back to being yourself? Or to put it more bluntly, am I safe to release you?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me.”

It took an enormous amount of willpower to turn my head, meet his gaze, and hold it this time. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him. Leaving his backpack, he came over, crouching behind me to untie the knots in the rope. “Not very comfortable sleeping with your arms tied behind your back, is it?”

“You had a bed,” I pointed out, talking to him easier when I couldn’t see him.

“You weren’t face down.”

He finished with the rope, the pain doubling in intensity when I brought my arms to the front.

I was still trying to massage some life into them by the time he’d finished packing the bag and stamped out the fire.

August held out a bottle of water, and I took it.

“Boiled,” he said. “Just in case you think I’m trying to poison you. ”

I took the lid off and downed half of its contents, the familiar smoky taste and tepidity not bothering me as much as it usually did.

In the army, we’d had water purification tablets, but out in the real world, they were in short supply and people relied on more basic methods.

It was wet, and I was thirsty, and that was all that mattered.

“Are you coming?” August asked from his position over by the door. Screwing the lid of the bottle back on, I climbed gingerly to my feet. My crossbow and knife were on the floor to my right, August watching me with an impassive stare as I retrieved both items, along with my bag.

An awkward silence hung between us once we left the house, one that stretched for some time. “We need food,” August eventually said. “If I’ve got my bearings correct, there’s an orchard around here somewhere. I’d kill for something that’s not meat.”

He sounded remarkably chipper. So perhaps the awkwardness was all on my part.

Did that make it more or less awkward? I couldn’t decide.

It took a few wrong turns and doubling back before he located the orchard.

It was worth the extra steps, though, once it came into view.

At this time of year, the fruit weighed the branches down.

Apples bigger than any I’d seen before. Succulent looking pears.

I squinted into the distance, something dark catching my eye. “Is that…?”

“Plums,” August announced with a smirk in his voice. He waved a hand at the orchard. “Breakfast. Have at it.”

“Jesus!” For a moment, I just admired it.

And then I broke into a run. It wasn’t like I’d never had fruit before.

Most communities had carefully tended greenhouses.

But the minuscule amounts produced made it expensive.

Only the rich could afford to have anything more than the occasional piece.

And I’d never seen as much fruit in one place as there was here. And it was free.

It was thrilling enough as I rushed around and collected quite the bounty to forget about the awkwardness between me and August. It came rushing back when he took a seat directly opposite, both of us leaning against a tree trunk.

I concentrated on the pile of fruit between my legs, not looking at him when he was directly in my eyeline taking work.

“How long are you going to be like this?” he asked between bites of an apple.

I wiped pear juice off my chin and studied the shape of a leaf above his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “Right.” He retracted his legs, the bend of his knee making a handy resting place for the hand not holding the apple. “It was just a hand job, Keaton. There’s no need to tie yourself in knots about it. It’s by no means the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“Glad to hear it.” I sounded like a prude. I forced myself to look at him, the amusement on August’s face not helping. “It’s not that. Not just that, anyway.”

August frowned. “Oh?”

“It’s the whole thing. The way I acted. I remember… most of it.”

“Most?”

I took another bite of pear, the taste like nectar. Far better than smoky water for whetting thirst. “I remember saying some stuff to you, and I know it was awful. I just can’t recall what the actual words were.”

“Ah!” August leaned his head back against the tree, his amusement growing. “And that bothers you, does it?”

“Yes.” I finished the pear and started on an apple. I was saving the plums until last. “I can’t take ownership of what I did when I don’t even know how bad it was.”

“Bad is relative,” August commented. “Do I look like I’m bearing a grudge?”

“No.” He licked his fingers to get the juice off, another memory from the previous night returning. If I weren’t worried about you biting, I’d make you lick it off. I fought against the rush of heat and the stirring in my groin. “I’d prefer to know.”

August rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He took another bite of the apple while he contemplated it. “It was mainly name-calling.”

“Such as?”

“Liar. I guess I can’t argue with that one because of the whole name thing.

Thief. Also difficult to contest given I tried to steal your ring.

Prick tease.” He smiled, seeming to find something particularly funny about that one.

“I guess there was the whole dance thing, so…” He dug a little hole in the ground and placed the apple core in it.

“Another tree,” he explained when I frowned.

“What else?”

“Whore. Which at the time was a little unfair, given I hadn’t yet struck a deal for a hand job.

But maybe you were just being forward-thinking.

Although…” He held up a finger. “You said dirty whore, and I would argue that I’m no dirtier than the next man.

” He winked. “Unless it’s a special request.”

I grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” He thought for a moment as he took a bite of the plum. “What else?”

My heart sank. “There was more?”

“Oh, yeah. But most were ridiculous.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

“Inbred. Not true. My mother and father weren’t related.

I know that for a fact. Narcissist. I was just impressed you knew the word.

Same as when you called me a sanctimonious twat.

The sanctimonious bit obviously, not the twat part. I think that was about it.”

“I’m―”

“Don’t say you’re sorry again. You already said that.”

“I am, though. I’m not just saying it.”

“You weren’t in your right mind. The rain is a cruel mistress. Call me inbred now, and we might have a problem. Last night, you were just letting off some steam.” He flashed a smile. “Eat your plums.”

I did, all the while mulling over how difficult August could be to predict.

If there was anyone who should have given me a hard time for throwing out insults, it was him.

There was nothing in our relationship so far that should have earned me such easy forgiveness.

Yet, there it was, and I should be grateful for it.

Once I’d finished my plum, I took a leaf out of August’s book and buried it. “Plum tree,” I said when he smirked.

He clambered to his feet and brushed himself off, both of us setting about filling our backpacks with as much fruit as we could carry.

“Bike parts?” I asked.

“Bike parts,” August confirmed with a nod. He squinted up at the sun to orient himself and then set off in that direction. There was a far nicer atmosphere between us now we’d talked, and with my stomach full of fruit, I was closer to happy than I’d been for some time.

It was mid-morning, and we were making our way through the forest when August stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into him. I’d been lagging behind under the pretense of drinking water. In reality, I’d been checking his arse out, my attraction to him only having grown since the hand job.

Now I knew what it felt like to have his hands on me, I wanted more. I wanted to see his cock. I wanted to know what kissing him felt like. Those things had consumed my thoughts for the past few miles, August seeming happy to walk in silence.

He pointed to the thing that had made him stop, the bizarre sight making me frown. A machete was embedded blade first in the ground. We looked at each other and then back at the machete. “Someone got attacked?” I suggested. “And in the ensuing panic, they left their weapon behind?”

“Like that?”

“Maybe they were going to come back for it, and they wanted to find it again. Only they got turned around, or they haven’t made it back yet.”

August stepped closer, and I followed. “It’s too shiny to have been here long.”

I shrugged, not interested in how shiny it was.

Unlike August, I wasn’t part magpie. I suspected he was already thinking about what he could get for it, while my thoughts were much more practical.

A weapon was a weapon, and I wasn’t about to leave it here for someone who may or may not be coming back for it.

I stepped forward and reached for the handle, August’s “wait” coming a beat too late, my fingers already wrapped around the handle to pull it out of the ground.

And then the world tipped and stopped making sense, the forest floor no longer beneath my feet, and the sky rushing up to meet me. It took a few swings before I grasped what had happened, August and I in a net dangling at least ten feet off the ground.

“Bait,” August said.

We were squashed together, the trap—because there was no calling it anything other than what it was—presumably designed for one. And instead, whoever had set it had gotten themselves a two for the price of one deal.

“Can you get to your knife?” August asked, his voice carrying an urgency that was new to me.

I tried, but all I accomplished was making the ropes dig into me hard enough that breathing, never mind anything else, became difficult. I still had the machete in my right hand, but I couldn’t move that hand. It was trapped down near my feet. “No,” I finally had to admit. “You?”

The ropes dug in more as August wriggled around, trying to force his hand down to where he kept a knife in his boot.

I tried to think of anything but the pain, because if he could get to it, we could cut our way out of here and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

I could handle short-term if it meant long-term gain, especially when the alternative was being stuck in here.

August’s answer came in the string of curses he let out. “No can do.”

“Fuck!” His attempt to rearrange himself had left an elbow digging into my ribs, and now, try as I might, I couldn’t shift it. “Who?” I asked. “And for what purpose?”

The pause before August answered lasted far too long for my liking, and I didn’t much like his answer when it came. “I don’t know. But I’m guessing we’ll find out.”