The indignation and challenge in those words made him smile. He fell back under cover so that the ships wouldn’t see them should they happen by. “Let’s take a second to catch our breath.”
“If you need to…”
He grimaced as the male pride in him reared up and demanded he make her pay for that. Yeah… the little brother in him was desperate to run her until she puked from it. But he wouldn’t be that cruel.
Not at the moment.
He pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her. There was no missing the gratitude in her eyes or the relief that danced across her features. For the merest instance, she looked at him like he was a hero and something about that made his cock and stomach jerk. Never had a woman, other than his sisters, made him feel that way.
“Thank you,” she said, taking it from him. Her hands shook as she tried to open it.
“Here.” He held his hand out for her to return it to him.
She hesitated before she complied. He could tell it wasn’t often she allowed anyone to help her.
He popped the top and this time when she took it her hand brushed against his in the tenderest of caresses. For the merest slip of a heartbeat, he wanted to take her hand into his and kiss those soft knuckles, and tell her it was all going to be okay.
I am insane. He was in excruciating pain. They were in the middle of a chase and all he could focus on was how adorable she looked with her skin glistening from sweat. How cute the dirty streaks and windblown hair were on her.
Yeah, he must have hit his head harder than he thought. Women had never caused him anything except trouble.
Pushing those thoughts aside, he pulled out the bottle he’d opened earlier and finished it off.
Desideria sipped her water slowly while Caillen guzzled his so fast she was amazed it didn’t make him ill. He pulled a cloth out of his pack and wiped the sweat from his brow. She didn’t know why, but she had a sudden urge to want to do it for him.
“How much further do you think?” she asked, trying to distract herself.
“Couple of miles.”
She had to force herself not to whine in protest. You can make it. At least that’s what she hoped.
“You think the Andarions caught our assassin?”
Caillen shrugged. “I hope so, but my luck says the bastard will be back to hound us when we least expect it.”
She took another drink of water. “Is your luck really that bad?”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “My luck is the stuff of legends. The badness of it is such that if you were to do an analysis of its regularity, they’d say that it is impossible to have it. And yet, it craps on my head every chance it gets. Statistical anomaly and all.”
She shook her head as he started forward again at a much slower pace. He continued to lead her through a rough patch of the woods. They didn’t speak much for the next few hours as they made their way to the upscale neighborhood he’d charted.
By the time they neared the houses, it was almost dark. She was aching all the more, exhausted and hungry. Given the injuries on his leg, Caillen had to be hurting even worse, but he said nothing about it.
He stopped just outside the yard of a house whose back end was hidden from the road and from its neighbors by a giant hedge. Completely dark inside, it looked to be unoccupied. But of course, there was only one way to know for sure.
One of them would have to break in and see.
Caillen winked at her. “Chin up, Princess. We’re almost able to lie down. I’m going in first. If I make it in and don’t get caught, I’ll motion you over.”
She nodded even though she didn’t like the idea of breaking into anything. Any other time, she’d decline. But this was a special circumstance and sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to to protect the ones you loved. Her mother better appreciate this.
Caillen paused by the hedge and had a moment of doubt as he saw the exhaustion in Desideria’s eyes. For the last hour, he’d expected her to keel over and leave him to carry her. It was a testament to her strength that she not only kept going, but that she kept up with him and didn’t bitch while she did it. If ever there was a woman he could see at his back, she was it. But he knew better than to make that mistake. On her world, men were property and no one would ever own him.
He handed her another bottle of water and squeezed her hand comfortingly before he skimmed his way around the hedge in the yard to come out near the house’s outbuilding. About four hundred square feet, it looked like a typical storage unit. While the house appeared unoccupied, he wasn’t willing to chance it. Even vacant, it could have all manner of security and right now he was too tired to screw with trying to disarm any system. He just wanted to lie down for a few and relax.