Page 68 of Swamp Kings 2

“Hmm, yes,” Fetch agreed, his hunger not far from Bishop’s. “The punishment that keeps on punishing.”

“Except every man bears a unique filth,” Fathom said.

Bishop eyed him as a north wind slapped against his face. “Tailored torture for every man would take more time than we have.”

“Hmm,” Fin said quietly. “Unless you possess an adaptive evolution in your saliva.”

Bishop paused, locking eyes with the brutal serene-faced warrior. “I have that,” he realized. And the second he did, the rest unfolded—the what, the how, the when, and the why. “Wow,” he muttered. “I can create a code with a set of retributions directly connected to wicked thoughts, infuse it in my saliva and inject it into their blood. The adaptive evolution would react to its environment, changing retributions to fit each individual scum.” He suddenly hit adisgusting snag. “We’d need a method to deliver it, because I’m not putting my mouth on these nasty fucks.”

“There’s forty-six men here,” Fin said, adding the work time to the problem.

“Modify the code to work through the skin,” Fathom said. “Fetch can transmute it through the gate.”

“The gate,” Bishop puzzled.

“The tattoo,” they all said at once. “Let evil serve their deliverance from evil.”

Wow. Bishop’s nods gained momentum. “Now, that’s brilliant.” He eyed Fetch. “What do you need from me?”

He held out his hand and slid a razor-sharp nail over his palm. “Just your sacred saliva bearing that human hell sequence. Nothing more,” he warned, highly aware of all the other power diseases he could pass to him.

Bishop’s vengeance stirred as he watched the line of crimson on his skin bead up while crafting the simple code for this forever sin rehab. He spit in his own palm and held his hand out.

Fetch regarded it with the barest grin and smacked their palms together in a tight bond. “Transaction complete.” His blue eyesblazed on him. “Nice doing business with you. Marsh King.”

Something odd flashed in his gaze and the second his mind reached for it, that privacy wall shot up. Fetch gave him a wink and Bishop nodded. “One day you’ll be too slow,” he said, getting three chuckles from his estranged brothers.

“Not likely, Marsh King,” they all said.

****

Mabel didn’t understand. Why did he make her sleep in his tent for body warmth then keep said body a bloody million miles away? Had he… wanted to do something more and now had to stay away from her because he couldn’t? For some reason?

Pathetically, those answers meant more to her than freezing to death while lying next to a human furnace just out of reach. The other pathetic thing was how desperate she was for him to touch her even if it wasjust to warm her. She would take anything and what on earth did that say about her, what did it mean?

It was the bloody world is what it was, falling apart, she was falling apart with it. But if he didn’t want to touch her for fear of something more happening, then that meant he didn’t want more happening. And bloody wow, she hadn’t felt that kind of pain since her sixteen-year-old crush.

For an agonizingly indiscernible time, she lay there, waiting for any kind of sign that would tell her where his head was. And she finally got her answer. Snoring. Never in her life could she imagine the sound of a snore could break her down. While she was in a prison of desperation, unable to sleep, he was wanting her so much, he couldn’t stay awake. Just wow. Just. Wow. She would freeze to bloody death before taking a single degree of warmth from him now. Because wow. Bloodyfreakingwow.

At least that’s what the wide awake, freezing, pissed part of her felt. But that bloody wench she became after she fell asleep in the middle of the night, oh she was something. All that blusterycome what maywas lifted right off her when the bear skin opened behind her, and he slid his body exactly against hers. There was no stopping the full body shiver that rocked her, and it had very little to do with the cold.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered at her ear, freezing her mind and heart.

“F-for what?”

“I should’ve warmed you before this.”

Right. “Maybe you realized you didn’t need a nurse after all,” she joked, clenching her eyes shut. Bloody hell.

“Or maybe it was something else.”

Her eyes opened at that, heart immediately a frantic hammering. Something else? Like what?! “Maybe you didn’t want me drooling on your arm,” she fished.

“I do not fear your bodily fluids,” he muttered, sounding amused and something else.

“Worried I’d talk in my sleep?”

“No.”

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