Page 17 of Warlord's Mate

She glanced at the fire pit. “Cleaning the ashes away.”

“With your hands?”

“Yes.” She sat up on her knees and met his gaze. “It’s how Jityria told me to remove them.”

His ire at Jityria grew as he stood there. No one cleaned the pit with their bare hands. Jityria telling this one to do so—

“Did you need something?”

He nodded and put his back to her. “Straighten the straps. They’re twisted.” He waited so long he thought she hadn’t understood him but finally felt her hands on his naked back. He froze at her touch as the feel of her hands on his skin raised the hair on his arm.

Her fingers slid along the bands of the bandolierup the length of his back before crawling up under his hair, a chill skating down his spine when they did. That one touch giving him a small shiver of pleasure when it shouldn’t have caused the anger he already felt to multiply and he looked over his shoulder and bit out a harsh, “Are you not finished yet?”

She tugged on the strap one last time before her hands fell away. He turned back to face her. The front of the oversized shirt she wore was now completely black. He looked at her hands. They were no longer covered in wood ash, but held a slight discoloration from where they had been. She’d wiped her hands before touching him.

He scowled at the realization and turned on his heel, marching back across the camp. That’s why it had taken her so long to begin fixing the straps. She’d been cleaning her hands and her doing so irritated him more than if she’d smeared the wood ash all over him.

There wasn’t a man here that didn’t go out of their way to do as he asked but very rarely did any of them do anything to please him. That little red one did, in less than a day. As much as he hated to admit it, she pleased him with nothing more than a simple glance in his direction.

And he hated that she had any sort of effect on him at all.

Aryan walked his way, something in his hand. He held it up, then ran the rest of the way across the clearing. “There’s a drop today.” He offered him the paper he held.

Jorrick read the notice then sighed. He needed to be out there looking for Aris but that drop … there were so many things they needed. He looked back at the girl. She had nothing to wear but his shirts, not that he minded, but they were much too large. The one she wore now fell off one shoulder, drawing his attention to the top of her breast and if he noticed, others no doubt have as well. She needed proper clothing and protection for her feet. Once the temperatures started to fall, she’d need thick layers to keep warm.

She won’t be here that long.

The words whispered through his head as he watched her. She was his revenge, nothing more. Her being here until the snows fell hadn’t been in his plan.

A few watchers flew into his line of sight. The small cameras were undoubtedly waiting for him. He bit back a curse and balled the notice up and tossed it away. “Grynn and his scouts will have to look for Aris alone. We go to the drop.”

Aryan nodded and ran back to the group waiting for him at the edge of the clearing. The camera followed him as he headed their way. Jorrick glanced back at the fire pit when he reached the tree line. The girl had been watching him, her head now lowering before she scooped out more of the ash with her hands.

He turned and headed into the trees and spotted Darqu. He had one shoulder leaned against a tree, his head turned in the direction of the girl. Uneasiness made his gut clench. In all the years he’d known Darqu, he’d never once doubted his ability to see the camp safe. He still didn’t, but Darqu spent too much time issuing orders as of late. He also couldn’t stop staring at the red one. He wasn’t the only one, but there was something predatory in the way Darqu watched her and for reasons he didn’t want to think about, it made something inside him have thoughts so black, he wondered if he needed to just kill him and be done with it. If there was another who fought as brutally as Darqu did that he could trust to watch the camp when he wasn’t there, he would.

The girl was off limits. They all knew this. He’d made it clear when he marked her that she was his and his alone. There were four other females in camp for Darqu and the others to dally with. The red one was his. He had plans for her and he’d not let anything stand in his way of seeing it through.

Marcy stood by the fire pit, her hands black from the wood ash. Jorrick’s surprise at her using her hands to clean the pit meant that Jityria told her to do it that way just for shits and giggles.

She watched Jorrick walk away, his wide shoulders all she could focus on, that and those straps criss crossing his bare back. His request for her to straighten them had given her a minute of pause. Her hands had been black and only after wiping them on the only thing she’d been given to wear, had she reached out to straighten them. It was the first time she’d touched him—well, if you didn’t count when she woke up this morning with him wrapped around her like she was his own personal teddy bear but that was him touching her.

She hadn’t voluntarily initiated any sort of contact but after seeing him bathe, she was rethinking that possibility, especially after waking in the pre-dawn light to find his morning wood pressed into her ass. She now knew why it had felt so big. Because it was. Not only was he massive in height, his shoulders impossibly wide, he had the biggest dick she’d ever seen and thinking about it made her ache in ways she shouldn’t be on an alien planet filled with creatures straight out of her nightmares.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex. She’d been afraid of being raped when she got dropped on this moon and that very well may still happen, but now, instead of thinking about forced sex, she can’t help but think of sex for pleasure with a surly, rude warlord.

Was it her fault she found him attractive? Well, yes, but … she couldn’t deny that he was good looking, even with that gnarly beard, because the simple fact was—he just flat out did it for her. Stupid as it may be, she couldn’t help it. He would probably end up killing her or passing her off to one of his buddies here in camp and she’d hate him for it but for now … he was a nice piece of eye candy.

He wasn’t anything close to being the type of guy she dated. Hell, she wouldn’t have approached someone like him back on earth if she’d been drunk and dared to but there was no denying how her traitorous body responded to him all the same.

Soft whispers and a grunt snapped her out of her daze and she turned her head to see two aliens sitting near a hut not far from the fire pit. They were the same species and appeared human-like except they reminded her more of a goat than a human. With curling horns and flat noses, they were a bit odd looking, and they both had a slight hump on their back. Long, white hair fell nearly to their waists and even though neither of them looked old, something about them told her they were.

One of them gasped when she looked at him and he grabbed the other by the arm and turned them both so they were facing the opposite side of camp. Marcy raised an eyebrow at them. What the hell was that all about? She shook her head and bent to pick up the bucket she’d been putting the ashes in and carried it to the spot behind one of the smaller huts she’d been told to dump them, pouring them out before heading to where the other females were. Celestia, the blue female, offered her a bucket of water to clean her hands with. “Thanks.” She washed, trying to dig the soot out from under her fingernails and straightened when she’d finished, grabbing a cloth to dry them.

“You cleaning the pit that way was punishment from Jityria.”

“I figured as much.” Marcy tossed the drying cloth down, “So, where did the men go?”

Sabera, the female who reminded her of a fairy said, “I heard Aryn say there is a drop today.”