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I grit my teeth and wring cold water over my head. Not. Helping.

My body could give a dragon’s ass about the countless number of reasons why this is a spectacularly bad idea.

I duck my head under the surface, floating until my lungs burn and I start to go numb. When I surface, gasping, I feel slightly more in control. Now if I can just keep my mind off Esme…

Esme sings in a sweet, pure voice that would make a phoenix weep. Too softly for me to understand the words, but the melody carries over the rush of water.

I scrub harder at the grime coating my arms.

Focus on the task. On getting clean. On anything except for the fact that she’s twenty feet away and probably⁠—

A wet thwack startles me out of my runaway thoughts.

I spin, my heart thundering in my chest as I scan for threats.

The danger I find is of a different variety. Esme, leaning over to spread her tunic across the boulder to dry.

Her body is visible only for a second or two, just long enough to glimpse the water streaming down her neck and shoulders and her skin glistening like satin. Her body is a perfect blend of strength and curves.

Her weight shifts as she turns, and the edge of her hip comes into view. That sweet arch that fit so perfectly in my palm…

Then she disappears behind the boulder again.

My cock, rock-hard and demanding release, doesn’t care that she’s no longer in sight.

I dunk myself again, hoping the cold helps empty my mind. This time, when I come up for air, I only lift my head out of the water.

“So…” My voice comes out too high, pitched with the strain of reining myself in. I clear my throat. “Who attacks Wardens?”

Esme stops singing, going silent as she ponders. “I don’t know.”

“Think about it.” I work on my neck and the side of my head, where blood crusts in my hair from the cut above my ear. “Who has reason? Who benefits?”

“No one? Wardens are healers. Even if we focus on animals and the land, we still help humans when they ask. Why would anyone hate us enough to—?” Her voice breaks from stress, cracked through like a fissure down the mountain.

If she doesn’t know, who would? We can’t ask Veradin. So I press on. “It has to be someone with the resources to obtain a bomb powerful enough to blow through stone walls and whatever wards your teacher had in place. That takes planning and motivation.”

“I don’t know anyone like that.” Her voice sharpens with frustration and dismay. “Wardens don’t have enemies. We study. We heal. We pick wild plants and rely on no one. Veradin has been around for decades. If he did something that angered someone, they’d have years to talk to him about it. In the entire time I’ve been training, no one has ever approached him with a grievance.”

I work on my legs, then my feet, far away from my throbbing cock. Anything to keep my hands occupied. “So the only thing different today was that you brought me. Maybe someone followed us.”

She snorts. “No one followed us. We would have noticed.”

We.

Despite the lies and the trickery, I like that. I wouldn’t mind being a team with Esme.

With that thought bouncing around in my head, I wade out of the water, my body having finally calmed down enough that I won’t embarrass myself.

Or act impulsively.

Another thought occurs to me. “How old are you?”

There’s a long pause, but I resist the urge to look in Esme’s direction again, not wanting to reawaken my body’s primal urges. “Twenty-one?”

Twenty-one.

Nine years my junior…nearly a decade. I knew she hadn’t finished her training, but I’ve no idea how long those things take either. Esme’s still young. She hasn’t seen enough of the world to understand how it really works. She’s sheltered and naive. Innocent. The opposite of me. The longer I stay with her, the more likely I am to smash everything good out of her.