Marcus, a somewhat gangly youth who’d only finished his first summer with them last year, turned his card. It showed a stony-faced monarch clad all in black. “It is the queen of spades,” he admitted. He also handed his card back to Sophie, though what good it would do when Derek had already burned up half the deck was beyond any of them. “How did you do that?”

“A good magician never reveals her tricks,” Sophie said with a mysterious air. She promptly ruined it with, “It’s mostly done by counting the cards. I can show you, if you want.”

“Would you really?” Marcus’s eagerness was matched only by his crestfallen expression when he glanced over at Harrison and changed his mind. “Uh, maybe some other time. It’s more fun if you don’t know how the sausage is made, you know?”

Harrison attempted to arrange his features in a more conciliatory pattern of parts. He wasn’t supposed to scare everyone away from the campfire before the ghost stories even started. Besides, Marcus could hardly be blamed for Harrison’s current state of mind.

And body.

Harrison might be emotionally conflicted when it came to his relationship with Sophie, but his body had no qualms about asserting what it wanted.

It wanted to feel her writhing on the ground underneath him again. It wanted to explore the swells and dips of skin that felt like ribbon-wrapped satin. It wanted to enter her so slowly she came screaming before he made it all the way inside.

“I, for one, love sausage and all its incumbent parts.” Derek winked and grinned at Harrison from across the fire. “Tell us, Sophie. Tell us about the meat.”

There was nothing Harrison could do to recoup his position after that. He’d lost his edge. He’d lost his edge, and everyone—with the exception of Marcus, who was still young and new enough to regard him with awe—knew it.

It helped to glance down and check on Bubbles, who was strapped to his chest in what he could only describe as a state of sleepy euphoria. The campfire had been going for a full hour now, with various pots of food-like items bubbling away on top. Other than one scrambling attempt to free herself from the pouch when they first approached, the puppy was doing well. Mostly because her head was burrowed against his chest and she refused to roll her eyes in that direction. As long as she could pretend there were no flames and that her whole world was the steady beat of his heart next to her, she was perfectly fine.