Page 21 of Guardian's Heart

Still, that had been the most exciting sex of my entire life. It was a good thing that I had a bar in my arm to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Could an alien make me pregnant?

That wasn't what was unsettling me so much either though. No, what unsettled me the most was my initial reaction to him. The way I hadneededto be fucked by him. Sure, I had scratched an itch before, so to speak, but whatever it was that had drawn me to him had been so much more than a mereitch. It had been like a frenzy driving me. As if my life had depended on him fucking me. And that was something I really needed to mull over.

I had no clue how to mull this over, though. Aside from him using some kind of aphrodisiac on me, I was all out of ideas. I could have considered that there might have been some kind of aphrodisiac in the air or plants because he had seemed as eager as me. I realized that men usually had a stronger sex urge, and what did I know about aliens? Zero, zilch, nada, other than that they liked to kill and capture humans… anyway! As little as I knew him, he still seemed driven by the same force as me, and besides, aphrodisiac or not, that still didn't explain the freaking tattoos!

So there I was back to… not having any answers.

I sighed.

Alright, let's analyze something else, my mind suggested.

Fine, I mentally shrugged,let's hear it.

How are we feeling about him?

Abruptly, I got up. That wasn't something I wanted to think about right then either. Because thefeelingsI had for him were simply over the top—he had just left to go hunting, and I alreadyfelt bereft. So no, that was definitely not something I wanted to analyze or think about right then.

Well, if he was successful in his hunt, and the two hides wrapped around my feet indicated that he was a decent hunter, I better get a fire ready. An idea my rumbling stomach heartedly agreed to.

I added twigs, dried leaves, and moss to my fireplace and went to work with the same trusty piece of bark and twig I had used before. All my confusion and frustration went into rubbing the twig between my palms, resulting in sparks in record time. Holding my hair back, I blew gently at the sparks and soon had a fire going.

Next, I picked a few leaves that would serve as plates, busied myself boiling more water, and even cleaned out and freshened up my little cave. That's when I caught myself. I was acting like a besotted girlfriend readying her place to have dinner with her lover. The last time I did all this for a man didn't work out so well for either of us on accord of him beating me up and now being most likely dead.

I rolled my eyes. Fuck me.

I kicked a rock and hurt my toe, covered only in the fur, and cursed some more.

The most frustrating part was that I didn't know what I wanted, expected, anticipated…

Before Missy, I had always taken one day at a time; each morning had been a new beginning, a new adventure. But then Missy sent me to school, and besides her constant harping on planning my life; math and computer classes taught me the value of planning. You couldn't design a computer game or program without planning, neither could you hack into a database without a plan. So, the last ten years of my life had been spent planning. Well, maybe eight because for the first two, Ihad pretty much rebelled against Missy, who had taken me away from the only life I had ever known.

It hadn't been exactly Missy's fault that Daddy and Uncle Boone died, but at fourteen, I held her responsible because I couldn't lay blame on Daddy or my uncle. Not only were they dead and gone, but because I had worshipped the two all my life, even when they were mean as a snake.

Their latest enterprise in making meth—not for use, but to get rich—ended in a ball of fire in our camper. The only reason I hadn't been there was because Daddy had told me to check the traps. I liked to think he did so because he knew what he and Boone were doing was dangerous, but most likely, it had only been to get me out of their hair.

Anyway, that's when Missy stepped in.

By all rights, I should have been put into the foster care system, but Missy, a childless widow, decided to take me in when she heard about the drama. Later, I found out that she and Daddy had once been sweethearts and that she, after all these years, still carried a torch for him. It was one of those bad boys meet good girl romances. Anyway, I became her project, and when Missy took on a project, she was like a Pitbull with a bone: she never let go.

My lack of schooling disturbed her so much that for the first two years, she kept me at her house, home-schooling me to get me caught up with the other kids. I hated it. I hated learning; I hated living in her prim house; I hated behaving like a lady, and I hated going shopping with her because the dresses she picked were uncomfortable and impractical.

It wasn't until I entered high school that my rebellious mind turned. Maybe because suddenly I had other enemies besides Missy. The girls at Highland High hated my guts from day one. Never one to say no to a good fight, I fully reciprocated their hate, turning more toward boys as my friends. The problem withthat was girls could never be justfriendswith guys. Every single one of them tried to get into my pants, and a few succeeded—some of them, the wrong kind who loved nothing more than to brag about it.

Suddenly, being at home with Missy wasn't the worst thing in my life any longer.

I thought about running away and living in the swamps, but even my rebellious mind realized that wasn't the greatest idea for a teenage girl. As mean as Daddy and Uncle Boone could get, they had protected me. Nobody in their right mind would have tangled with the Beauvier brothers. But they were gone.

I ended up in the computer room with nothing to do one day during a free class. I had my own laptop at home, of course. I wasn't a dummy with it, either.

But that day, I met Frog. Frog wasn't his real name; his real name was simply unpronounceable to most of us, so he ended up being Frog. Something about how his fingers danced over the keyboard, how his brows knitted in concentration, and how sweat ran down his neck fascinated me. I stepped closer and looked over his shoulder.

It took me a moment to comprehend, but then, "Are these your records?"

"Yap," he said around a No 2 pencil he was biting down on.

"Wow. How did you do that?"

I watched him change an F to an A- and an A into an A+.

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