She screwed her face up as he pulled out a huge knife from the sheath on his thigh that also holstered his blaster. “I’d really rather not.”
Pausing, he arched a brow. “A squeamish assassin? Really?”
“Conscripted,” she reminded him. The last thing she needed was for a trained killer, holding a knife, to see her as the threat she knew she could be. “Before that, I was a botanist.”
He sharpened his knife against the bracer on his forearm that contained a whetstone. Sumi wasn’t sure what part of that disturbed her more. The fact he was so nonchalant about it, or the fact he felt compelled to wear a whetstone for such occasions.
Hauk tested the edge of the blade with the pad of his thumb. “So slaughtering innocent plants doesn’t bother you?”
“I never slaughtered any plants. I only studied and catalogued them.” She turned away and grimaced as he…
Shivering, she couldn’t even think about it. It brought back too many awful memories for her.
Suddenly, she felt his warmth at her back. He was close enough to touch her, yet he didn’t breach that little distance between them. “How did The League train you?”
She trembled even more. “Death matches and hunts.”
He turned her to face him. In spite of the darkness, she saw the sympathy in his eyes as he stared at her. “Botanist, huh?”
Sumi nodded.
Hauk watched as she nervously bit her bottom lip. That single act sent a ferocious wave of desire through him and set his heart pounding again. Because he wasn’t allowed to touch a female, he’d never spent much time around any who weren’t bound to a male. Not that it mattered. Andarion females considered him disgusting and hideous. One look at his scarred flesh, and they curled their lips and insulted him before they scurried away to their mothers.
None of them would ever accept him in her bed.
The one and only time he’d tried to kiss Dariana, she’d stabbed him and warned him that if he ever offended her like that again, her next attack would be against his groin.
As for human women, they’d never appealed to him, especially since their reactions to his presence made the Andarion females seem kind. Not until this one. He couldn’t explain it or understand it, especially given how much she reminded him of Fain’s wife.
A woman he’d vowed to kill should their paths ever cross again.
And yet there was no denying what he felt anytime he caught the sweet floral scent of Sumi’s hair. All he wanted was to bury his face in those pale strands and breathe her in.
To feel her body pressed against his. Skin to skin.
Damn it. He was even harder now than he’d been when he left to take care of… things and hunt. He wanted her so badly that he wasn’t sure how he remained apart from her.
Touch her and Dariana will gut you with glee.
No, his own mother would gut him. Ever since Keris’s death, she’d been lying in wait for a chance to honorably end his life and he knew it. And all because of a blood feud that had nothing to do with him.
Rather his mother, desperate to tie her blood to his father’s lineage, had seduced his father the day before he was to have been pledged to Nykyrian’s mother. The moment the Andarion princess had learned that her champion had sampled another female’s body, she’d refused his pledge and sent his father home in disgrace.
But at least Cairistiona hadn’t demanded his father’s head or his cock, which any other female would have.
His paternal grandmother had never forgiven his mother for that act that had risked his father’s life and denied them a royal lineage. Her life’s dream had been to live long enough to see the War Hauks tied to the eton Anatoles. Because Keris had been conceived during that night when his mother seduced his father, his grandmother had been forced to allow them to join bloodlines to keep the Hauk lineage pure. But she’d never liked it.
In spite of that, his grandmother had held on to the hope that her great-grandchildren might merge. It was why she’d paid to send Hauk and Fain to school with Prince Jullien, as companions and guardians for him. But that would never happen now. Childless, Prince Jullien had been removed from the royal succession and only Nykyrian remained.
Even if one discounted the age difference, Thia hated Darice and viewed him as a pesky little brother. She would never accept his pledge. And Nyk’s youngest daughter was barely three months old. There was no chance in hell that Nyk would allow her to marry someone that much older – provided he ever allowed Zarina or Thia to marry at all. And even if by some miracle Nyk did accept Darice, Hauk’s grandmother wouldn’t live long enough to see Zarina to adulthood. She was already almost two hundred years old.
And so his mother, a former negotiator for the Andarion royal house, had found in his grandmother the one being she couldn’t win over with her guile.
No matter what she tried.
To this day, he and Fain were caught between their ongoing war as his mother tried to prove to his grandmother that she was the better mate for his father than the queen would have been. That his mother had conceived the better sons.
Because Hauk loved his mother, he had done everything possible to please her, and show his grandmother that he could be a grandson she could take pride in.
Never once had he asked for anything of his own. Duty. Honor. Family. Obligation. Loyalty. Those were the oaths of an Andarion male. No matter what others or life had thrown at him, he’d done his best to rise above it and adhere to their customs.
Until now.
For the first time ever, he craved the one thing he knew he could never have.
The gentle touch of a woman’s hand on his bare skin. It would mean his life to taste those lips that lured him toward suicide. But what truly scared him was the part of himself that really didn’t give a shit. The part of him that was willing to die painfully for one night in the arms of a female who didn’t loathe him.
Clearing his throat, he stepped back from her before he gave into his supreme stupidity. “You should probably rest in the tent while I do this.”
Sumi hesitated. She didn’t want to leave him. Strangely, she wanted to walk into his arms and have him hold her. To kiss his lips until she was drunk from passion. That urge was worsened by the knowledge that he’d never taken a lover.
That she would be the first woman to have him inside her body.
If what Thia had said was true, he’d never even been kissed before. How was that possible that no one had sampled such an incredibly sexy beast?
But then she’d seen his photos. He’d spent most of his life around male humans. Probably to avoid temptation.
Which meant he wouldn’t be interested in her.
At all.
He’s your target, moron! Not your boyfriend.
Oh yeah. There was that.
Yet as she walked away from him, and he returned to skinning his kill, she didn’t see a target there. She saw a beautiful Andarion male whose intelligent eyes were tinged with the deepest sadness and pain.
As Sumi neared the tents, Thia arched a brow at her. “What?” she asked the girl.
“I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”
“What do you mean?”
Thia jerked her chin toward her uncle. “First, Uncle Hauk would kill me if he knew I’d said anything to you about it. Second… I’ve stoked a fire with you that I shouldn’t have.”
Sumi scoffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. You know he’s forbidden, and it’s irresistible now. But just remember this… I’m not the only one who loves him and who considers him family. If any harm comes to him because of your actions, we will hunt you down to the outer edges of the universe, and take turns making you wish you’d never been whelped.”