A man couldn’t work as a bounty hunter, going after scum and lowlifes—hell, working for scum and lowlifes—and not expect death to come calling. It didn’t make it easier, though.
When he shifted the body onto the vacubag so he could seal Jasto inside, she made a keening noise, and he couldn’t resist.
“Want to do the honors?” he called over his shoulder. “Close his eyes for me?”
A faint puff sounded from behind him, but she hadn’t fainted, imploded or melted, so he returned to the task at hand. Closed Jasto’s eyes, sealed him inside the vacubag he’d brought along, and muttered a quick goodbye to both his friend and their old life together.
When it was done, he crossed to the river to clean his hands.
He wasn’t hungry, but they should eat. They had a long walk back.
She was still leaning against the tree when he came back, as far from the body as she could get and still be in the shade.
“You ready to eat?”
“Eat? With your—Jasto—just lying there? Dead?”
“It’s hot.” He dug through his bag for the ration bars.
“You just put a body in a bag.”
“Would you have been hungrier if I’d offered you food before I bagged him?”
She glared at him, and seeing her angry was more fun than seeing the dead look in her eyes after the fight with her father.
“I can take him back out of the bag if you’d like.”
Her mouth pursed. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
“Sit down.” He tossed a bottle of water in her direction. It landed in the dust with a thud. “And drink. We’ve got a long way back. You don’t want to be outside when night falls. If you collapse, I’m not carrying both of you.”
She took a tiny sip and lowered herself daintily to the ground.
He pulled out the ration bars he’d packed and bit into one, taking down half in a single bite.
That elegantly bridged nose wrinkled. Not coming to get the food, then. He tossed the half-eaten bar at her. It bounced off her belly and hit the dirt in front of her. She glowered.
He tugged his shirt over his head, dropped back in the dust, and polished off a second bar, staring at the canopy overhead.
Every once in a while, a breeze came along and grabbed hold of the pale, furry tree, and it looked like the whole thing was dancing. It smelled good too. Sweet and girly. A little like her, last night, when she’d turned to fire in his hands.
There were worse places. He’d been free to do as he pleased for ten years. That had all ended the day his brother had died.
He lay in the shade, and he thought about Jasto. And Dillan. He thought about his father. He thought about all the people back on Vesta who were counting on him. And he thought about the woman with him—an Argenti woman—the daughter of the War Chief who didn’t want to marry the man he’d chosen. Life was funny.
Two small and insignificant people stuck together by fate.
In a universe at war.
“Why didn’t you take the ship?” Klymeni interrupted his thoughts from her little perch, voice tight. “If you knew you had to retrieve a... body.”
He let his eyes drift shut while the soft breeze dried his sweaty body. “The escape pod we landed in doesn’t have wheels, and it doesn’t fly. All it does is land. My ship’s not made for cross-terrain jaunts.”
Plus, a small part of him felt like he owed it to Jasto to suffer. Just a bit. He’d been tied up too long. The exercise wouldn’t kill him.
She picked up the bottle of water and took a longer pull. The lean muscles of her biceps flexed.
She was in decent shape. All things considered. She hadn’t complained once about the march in the heat, and though she’d been flushed and breathless, she hadn’t had the labored breathing of the chronically lazy. Whatever she’d done with her life up until now, it must have involved some physical exertion.
She moved like a dancer, with a solid core.
Like a dancer in stupid shoes. He’d seen the slight hitch in her step. “Go put your feet in the river.”
She sent him some side-eye.
He laughed. “The water’s fine. Just washed my hands in it.”
She rose carefully and picked painstaking steps down the shore, lifting her skirts. The dress took the light in just the right way. She might as well have been naked. Those long legs went on forever, perfectly outlined. She slipped out of her shoes and tiptoed along the river bank. The water lapped up over her ankles, and she sighed, a soft, breathy sound that went straight to his cock, cranky now in his too-tight pants.
The water looked cool.
His feet were hot too.
Grumbling, he pulled off his boots and socks, rolled up his pants and joined her.
She didn’t look at him, kept her gaze on the mountains in the distance. Her hair had come loose from its bun, long golden strands running down her back. Her cheeks were still pink, eyes bright. And those tits. With every breath, they threatened to spill over the top of the ridiculous vest contraption she’d strapped them into.
He tore his gaze away, splashing the water around them just to annoy her. Water sprayed over them both. Blue fish darted away from his foot, and the front of her dress went completely translucent with the spray. He turned away so she wouldn’t see what was going on in his pants. “Let’s go.”
“That felt remarkably good, actually,” she said tightly. “I’m sure that wasn’t your intention. Nonetheless, I feel much cooler. So, thank you.”
He glanced back as she bent down, stretching out a graceful hand to cup water in her palm and bring it up to splash her face.
Little droplets ran down her neck and into the bodice of her gown, racing over her straining tits. He didn’t even bother pretending not to look. In fact, he actively leaned back to get a better look at her
