Page 23 of Guardian's Heart

"Like this." She put her hands over mine, creating currents of heat rippling underneath my skin.

I relaxed and allowed her to take the lead. To my astonishment, smoke plumed. Not as much as she had teased from the wood, but enough to see, bringing up an inexperienced excitement in me.

Emotions were something else new to me. Just like the unexplained markings or the way she had aroused me earlier and now. I had always taken my duties seriously and took pride in fulfilling a mission assigned to me, but those were the only emotions driving me for as long as I could remember. Sure, I craved sex, food, drink, and even a good fight, but the sex we’d had was so much more than anything that came before it.

Her palms touching me felt… comfortable, not just arousing but soothing at the same time. She made my chest swell with… with… emotions I had no name for. I wanted to be with her, protect her, hold her. Her presence confused me like nothing ever had. And yet the thought of not being here, with her, was torturous.

The smell of burning meat got both our attention, and we jumped up, bumping into each other. I held out my hand to stop her fall, put a bit too much vigor into it, and she ended up crushed against my chest.

The urge to kiss her was overwhelming, but she twisted out of my embrace, making her way over to the fire before I could react.

"I think it's okay," she said, turning the skewer.

I could not have given a flying frygg about the meat just then, but her rumbling stomach took priority. I noticed she had wrapped the same rope-like part of a plant around her waist as she had used on her feet. It kept the cloak off the ground for her and accentuated her small frame, which looked like it was drowning in my cloak. Somehow, her wearing it, wearingmyclothes, filled me with pride. It was the same as her eating the food I had killed a little while later.

We both ate in silence, staring into the flames. I wondered if she was thinking about the same things as me. Our tattoos, our inexplicable urge to be next to each other. The explosive orgasm she had ripped from me. Had it been the same for her? By the way she had moaned, I was convinced it had.

I was about to take my comm out and do some research, but an inexplicable force held me back.Inexplicable, I mused how that word had snuck into my vocabulary and taken first place.

"I have some water," she offered, interrupting the silence and my thoughts.

"I'm good, thank you. I can simply drink from the stream." I had noticed how she had boiled the water earlier. Smart.

"You shouldn't; it might be contaminated," she warned.

"If it is, the Ohrurs have already given me the antidote to it," I explained.

"Ohrurs?"

"My minders," I filled her in.

"Minders?" Her head tilted.

"Bosses, superior," I elucidated, suddenly stumbling over the wordminderas well. I had never questioned it before.

"Oh. They hired you to bring us humans to Astrionis?"

I shook my head. "No, the Pandraxians hired the Ohrurs to send us."

At her questioning look, I explained, "I'm a Space Guardian. At any given time, there are a thousand of us in the universe. The Ohrurs hire us out to rid the universe of criminals that the GTU can't touch."

I saw her next question coming and spelled it out for her. "Galactic Treaty Union."

"So you are an assassin for hire?" She wrinkled her nose.

"Something like that. I go after the worst criminals. I and my brethren find wherever they're hiding and terminate their useless lives."

I intentionally chose brutal words to see her reaction, but she didn't seem that fazed. She didn't even flinch.

"I've killed many," I bragged, just to see her react.

"But only bad guys?" she checked.

I nodded.

"How do you know they're bad guys?"

"The Ohrurs vet them before they give us the orders."

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