Page 32 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

“See.” I fist my hand in his shirt and try to give him a shake. Mierda, I might as well try to shake a mountain for all he moves. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He grunts, but I can tell it’s his negative grunt. He still blames himself.

When his arms loosen around me, I cling on. “No, please don’t go. The nightmare might come back.” It’s a lie. The nightmare never comes twice in one night. But I don’t feel the tiniest morsel of remorse as Sturrm stays right beside me.

Because it’s not just him holding me and soothing my hurts.

I hold him, too.

Breakfast is quiet, but it’s an easy kind of quiet instead of the awkwardness I worried might happen after we shared so much the night before. I’m still thrilled Sturrm confided in me and don’t want him to feel like it was a mistake, so I reign in my enthusiasm, thanking him quietly when he hands me a cup of mint tea.

I take a sip, and a yawn shivers through me. Coño, I miss Cuban espresso, but a hot drink in the morning is still lovely.

Sturrm tends the fire, his hands competent and sure as he makes something that looks like oatmeal.

I’m getting a little obsessed with those hands—they do everything so well. They’re like all of hissurety and experience made manifest. The way they stroked the leather when he made my jacket made me feel some kind of way. The way they worked the strings and fret board of the guitar! Combined with his voice, it’s positively panty melting.

The glen brightens as the sun rises, and birds start to sing all around us. As glad as I am that Dash’s magic lets us travel much faster than we normally could, I don’t get to see a lot of the landscape. We’re higher in the mountains here. The pines are the same, but the deciduous trees are different. They’re shorter than the blue birch, their purple leaves long and narrow. Clusters of small white flowers show here and there. When I ask what they are, Sturrm says they’re mountain rowan.

Dash crops at some of the bushes, ignoring the little umbrella plants that cover the ground just inside the trees. “Why don’t you eat those?” There sure are a lot of them.

“Mayapples are poisonous.” He uses his horn to push aside one of the wide green leaves to show a bright-green fruit about the size of a walnut. “When the fruit’s this color, it’s also poisonous, but you can safely eat it once it ripens and turns yellow.”

“Got it.” I file the information away. Can I heal poisons? Does my magic do that? Or does it only work on injuries like cuts or muscle tears? There’s still so much I don’t know and no safe way to test things. I’m certainly not going to suggest any of us poison ourselves just so I can check.

Sturrm hands me a bowl of porridge, and his lips twitch as he says, “No mayapple included.”

I grin. He made a joke! I hope it means he feels closer to me—I know I feel closer to him after what we shared last night.

My first bite of the oatmeal is a bit of a shock. It’s salty instead of sweet. There are little chunks of dried meat mixed in, with nuts and dried fruit, too. They can’t be raisins—they’re not as sweet and have a tartness to them. I take another spoonful, trying to evaluate it without any expectations of “cinnamon and brown sugar” or any of the other sugary flavors I’m used to. Peruvian breakfasts aren’t traditionally sweet, but I grew up with Pop-Tarts and Froot Loops and all the other sweet tastes found in America.

This reminds me more of something like a bacon and egg sandwich than cereal. It’s good and hearty, the meat making it taste more substantial.

And it sure doesn’t suck that someone cooked it for me. A girl could get used to this. Sturrm’s so big and strong and a warrior. You’d think he’d be really into the whole “men don’t do this kind of thing.” Instead, he’s doing all the cooking like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t diminish his masculinity one iota.

And it doesn’t—itreallydoesn’t. If anything, it only makes him hotter.

He’s the complete opposite of those pendejos who attacked me in that alley.

His age gives him a maturity, a sureness in himself and who he is that’s sexy as hell.

The more time I spend with him, the more I want him. But last night, for all it brought us closer, also showed me he’s still in love with his childhood sweetheart. Carajo, it’s been twenty years! I can’t even imagine. He’s loved her forabout as long as I’ve been alive, and it’s clear he’s never wavered. Sturrm has the truest, biggest heart of any man I’ve met.

Is there any room left in that big heart for me?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sturrm

The day speeds past, eaten by the gallop of Dash’s hooves as we fly through the world in a blur of his travel magic. Yet everything seems lighter, as if I set down a stone I’ve been carrying for so long I forgot it had weight. I can only recognize it now by its absence.

Perhaps I should have spoken about that long-ago day before now. But how could I have to anyone else? I’m still amazed I did so, a whispered confession in the dark, made to Selena.

Even now, her youthful enthusiasm and love for knowledge pulls words from me, and I answer herendless stream of questions, talking more in a day than I usually do in a week. Yet I cannot deny her curious and clever mind, which skips from topic to topic in leaps of brilliance.

I explain how each orc village has its own standing stone, which produces necessities for us, and how we trade the goods evenly throughout the land so no one goes without. It’s a subject I know well, since much of King Aldronn’s travels among the villages smoothes out any trade issues that might arise. And they always arise. Orcs are headstrong and stubborn and given to settling things with brawling. But settle them, we do.

“How about you?” She pats Dash’s neck. “Do you use the magic of the standing stones?”

---