Page 19 of Bound to the Orc Guardian

He’s going to protect me all night.

As tired as I am, the strange quiet still wakes me a few times. I’m used to a city, with all its traffic and noise. Even the couple of times we took family trips to visit Peru were the same. If anything, Lima’s even louder than Miami, since everyone drives while constantly using their horns.

Here, the only background noise is wind occasionally broken by the flutter of wings or the call of something that sounds like an owl.

Every time I stir, Sturrm shifts too, his bulk a comforting presence that soon lets me settle enough to go back to sleep.

Until it happens—the thing I dread. The dream.

I’m a small child, my eyeline barely cresting the unfamiliar bed. I can just make out the shape of Papi’s feet, two pointed peaks under a thin hospital blanket. I walk, my gaze sliding up his covered legs. It’s always like this, everything in slow motion. As much as I try to fight what’s about to happen, nothing ever stops this slow creep. Finally, I reach his hand, but it’s a stranger’s hand, all thin, with bruised veins and a big plastic thing strapped to the top. I don’t like the plastic thing—it shouldn’t be there.

The air smells funny, kind of sour with a layer of bleach overtop. Beeps and whooshes get louder, making me realize I’ve been hearing them for a while. They pull my gaze up, up, up…

Papi lies completely still, his face as thin as his hand. The rich bronze of his skin is bleached to a sickly gray. All around him are machines, with tubes that run to various places on his arms.

“Papi?” I’m afraid to touch him. There’s nowhere clear of the tubes, nowhere that feels safe.

He doesn’t wake up. Why won’t he wake up? I—

Strong hands shake me awake, a deep voice speaking to me. Sturrm.

I bolt upright into his arms, pressing my face to the warm strength of his chest. Coño, I hate that dream, that nightmare. I wasn’t even that little when that hospital visit happened in real life—I was a teenager—but somehow I’m always tiny and helpless in the dream. A shiver runs through me.

Sturrm strokes a soothing hand down my back and does the last thing I ever expect.

He starts to sing.

His rich baritone washes over me, the melody soft and bittersweet. His voice is so lovely I don’t need to know the words to appreciate his song and the gift he offers me by singing it.

Tears prickle my eyes. I’ve never had anyone help like this before. The couple of times I had the nightmare when around a guy, they got uncomfortable and hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Or worse, they tried to initiate sex, like their dick was magic or something.

In wonderful contrast, Sturrm holds me and sings until the last of the tension leaves my body and I drift off again.

CHAPTER TEN

Sturrm

Goddess help me. After holding Selena in my arms, I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to let her go. Yet I must. She can’t be for me. She’s too young. Her personality shines too brightly. Selena deserves someone who can make her happy, not a bitter old man who lost his heart years ago.

But I want her. Oh, how the most selfish part of me wants her.

Not simply for her young, lush body. Not only for the joy she sees in everything. I want her for the way she came into my arms so readily after her nightmare. The trust she showed me in her vulnerable moment. Such trust is heady,filling a need in me I didn’t realize existed. As one of the king’s guard, I protected my liege and my people, but it was always a distant, somewhat impersonal thing.

Soothing Selena’s fears and holding her like this touches my soul. It’s one of the most intimate moments of my life.

She crawled all the way onto my lap, settling with her torso propped against mine, her face pressed into the hollow of my shoulder. Her sweet breaths tickle across my bare skin.

The dawn light gilds her warm skin with a golden glow and picks up touches of red in her dark-brown hair. I can’t wait for her eyes to open, to see the rich copper-infused brown of their depths. Everything about her is warm and welcoming.

I hate that she had a nightmare, that she has something in her life that gives her nightmares. As someone whose dreams play out that fateful day from long ago when I lost Bruna, I don’t wish anything similar on anyone else, let alone Selena.

My arms tighten, and I want to sing to her again in daylight, a happier song. I only know a small handful of such tunes, having been drawn more to poignant ballads of love lost.

Selena makes me want to change all of that.

She stirs, her lips making a little pout of resistance to waking that fades the moment her eyes open. As soon as she sees me, she smiles, soft and open.

That smile goes straight to my heart, making the creaky old thing thump to life.

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