She felt like she was nearly leaping out of her skin with so many conflicting impulses. “You can’t fire me.” Her voice was all over the place, wildly unsteady. “I don’t work for you.”
“I am close friends with your employers. You’re fired as soon as they come back.” His lips brushed her cheek. “Xanthe, stay with me.”
She took fistfuls of his shirt, feeling the broad, tight muscles underneath. “I am not willing to take the wildest chance on your safety and wellbeing either.”
“I know, darling.” He kissed the indentation at the corner of her mouth. “Everything you have done for days has been for my best good.” He lifted his head slightly. His expression had turned tender. “No one has ever cared for me like you have.”
“No one ever will.” The words escaped her; they just escaped her, barely audible and yet laying her soul wide open.
He tilted his head and covered her mouth hard with his, a strong, confident taking that pushed her head back against the wall. Her legs shook; she felt drenched with erotic shock as he deepened the kiss, pushing into her mouth with his tongue. She could barely breathe and couldn’t think. Her body’s instincts took over and she kissed him back wildly.
His hardened lips slid over hers, slick with their moisture. Her heart was pounding so that she thought it might burst from her chest. She was almost lost, almost—
But no. Decades of training asserted itself.
She yanked her mouth away and gasped, “I need to know where those men went.”
He was breathing as heavily as she was, his entire body run through with the finest tremor. He stared at her mouth, his darkened gaze sensual and compulsive. For a moment she thought he would refuse to lift his body weight from hers. Then with a grimace, he pulled back. “All right. We go together.”
She didn’t try to argue anymore—with their last fierce exchange they had catapulted each other into a strange new realm where she didn’t understand the rules. Instead she shrugged out of her harness and tried to hand her sword to him. “Take this. I’ll take the knives.”
He stared down at the sword in her hand without moving to take it. Then he gave her a quirk of a smile. “When I am up to speed, I am a perfectly good swordsman. But I am not at my best, and you have to be one of the finest in the army for Tiago to agree to you becoming one of Niniane’s guards. You keep the sword. I’ll take the knives.”
She scowled, not liking either possibility for how they divided the weapons. But she strapped the harness back on again, while he took her wrist guards with the knives. Then they slipped quietly out of the cottage, into the growing heat of the day.
Sunshine pressed down heavily, the silence broken with the occasional call from birds and the heavy drone of insects. Aubrey gestured for her to lead the way, and she took them in a wide circle that circumvented the cottage. Having found no sign of the men, they moved wider afield until they checked the path where the men had been before. Then finally they moved to the bank of the river. She was studying the bank for footprints when Aubrey nudged her gently and pointed downstream.
She glanced where he pointed. Some distance away the riverbank jutted out in a small promontory that was little more than a tangled mass of tree trunks and debris that had been swept downstream. A small barge had gotten tangled in the debris, and two men, covered in mud, were working to get it loose.
The knot of tension that had tightened her shoulders loosened.
Aubrey slipped an arm around her shoulders from behind, his forearm crossing at her collarbones. He pulled her back against him and said in her ear, “Looks like someone’s livelihood might have slipped its mooring and floated downstream. Satisfied?”
She nodded, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. After a moment, she said, “I’m not sorry for being so paranoid. You really did almost die.”
He heaved a rough sigh. “I know.”
His body felt hot and tense. Her mind was split wide open with incredulity for this blaze of fire that had leapt up between them.
“There is no one else in the world like you. I’m willing to take that wildest chance and stay here with you.”
He cupped her neck with one hand while he kissed the sensitive shell of her ear and whispered, “Let’s go home.”
Home? The sound of that word, coming from him, gave her another thrill of shock. Unable to form words, she nodded. His arm loosened and he let her go.
They made short work of the trip back to the cottage. Once there, she shrugged out of her harness and hung her sword on its hook. Aubrey gazed at her steadily while he yanked open the fastenings on the wrist guards. Her mind hazed with heat. Desire for this man was the sweetest pain she had ever known. That he might grow to want her too was beyond anything she could have dreamed of, extraordinary.