Page 19 of Guiding Desire

Orrey hesitated, then said, “A little.”

Senlas walked toward Orrey, stopped in front of him. “Turn.”

“E-excuse me?”

“I want to look at the burn patch.”

“Ah.” Orrey showed his neck to the Guardian. Fingertips against his skin made him flinch.

“Easy, kitten,” Senlas said, and the Guardian’s cool fingers glided over the edges of the patch. “Okay. Looks good.”

Orrey turned to face him again. A slow smile had spread over the Guardian’s face.

“It probably didn’t need a burn patch,” Orrey said.

“Can’t be too careful. I have some painkillers you can take. I just have basic medical training, but you’re probably experiencing a fine blend of buffer hangover and sunstroke.”

“Buffer what?” Orrey asked, following Senlas to the kitchen.

“It’s something that you get, well, kids get that. Mostly when they start making out with kid Guardians. If you don’t know your powers yet and do it a bit too much, you get tired, cranky sometimes. Hangovers are also common, but you’ll learn to control your powers and get used to channeling my power. It just tends to take a bit of time.”

Orrey leaned against the central kitchen island while Senlas turned toward the counter and pulled a pill bottle from the same first aid kit he’d used last night.

While the Guardian’s back was turned, Orrey couldn’t help thinking that he was a beautiful man, tall like all Guardians were, and strong too, the definition of his muscles more visible now that he was wearing a bathrobe than it had been yesterday.

This man is my custodian,Orrey thought, then ran a hand over the burn patch on his neck.

He said, “Conduits don’t really have power though. Conduits and Guardians are opposites in that, the Guardian the force-wielder, the Conduit the force-soother.”

Senlas snorted and looked over his shoulder as he took a glass from a cabinet and filled it with tap water, no fancy berries in there today. “Regular textbooks are so bad, but you learned them by heart, didn’t you?”

He dropped two pills into Orrey’s palm and put the water glass in front of him.

Orrey looked at the pills. He’d never taken anything he hadn’t been prescribed. He swallowed both in one go, then emptied the entire glass, his thirst raising its head again.

“This is the first time I’ve been criticized for being good at studying,” Orrey said and put the glass back on the counter with a click.

Unless he was mistaken, the Guardian’s cheeks reddened. “I didn’t mean it like that. Ah. Just. The Conduit cohort at the G&C school have different textbooks.”

Orrey’s fists balled, but he controlled himself when he noticed. “I didn’t go to that school.”

“Shit. Hound-fucking—listen. Can we start this conversation over? I’ll make you breakfast.” He paused, his eyes narrowing as if he were recalling something he’d studied not too long ago. “Sorry.”

Orrey straightened. “Actually, I was hoping to go back home. I understand—I had messages. I understand the situation, such as it is. I know you are not obligated to allow it, but I would really like to go home, collect my thoughts. It’s protector housing, so it’s safe,” he added, in case Senlas was concerned about that. Different textbooks or not, even Orrey knew that an imprinted Guardian was driven to protect “what’s his,” as so many of the streaming dramas called it.

“Well,” Senlas said. “You don’t live there anymore.”

“Huh?!” Orrey said, taking a step back from the counter.

“Whoa there, kitten. The protectors did that. Your division supervisor was even faster than Col when they got the notice about you, and she had all your things brought here yesterday. Col would’ve stopped her, but she was apologetic about having a Conduit work there, and it would’ve turned into a whole mess if we’d made it sound like we didn’t want them to do that. They’d have thought we blamed them over you. Col would’ve gone there if he could’ve.” He paused, then added, “Sorry.”

Orrey didn’t know whether it was real vertigo so much as imagined. The end result was the same, all his world spinning. He reached for the kitchen counter but missed it, felt his legs give out, and then—stopped.

He was suspended in his fall for however long it took Senlas to round the counter and help him back to upright. Orrey couldn’t really do upright at the moment, it seemed, and the speed with which the Guardian lifted Orrey in his arms did not allow for even the slightest protest.

“How did you…?”

“You’re not that heavy,” Senlas said as he walked to the massive couch.