use comm units to search for what I needed without being caught.”
A swift death would be too kind for Maurin. Garik wanted to drag his torture out until he felt every bit of the pain he’d dealt the woman who had been a child in his home. “And the scar on your face?”
“From another time when I’d angered him. He did it when I least expected it. Came upon me with calm questions. A smile at my answers.” Her features cringed in memory. “Before I could read the change in him, he slashed at my face and I fell to the floor in shock and pain.”
Garik resisted the urge to roar out his rage at the abuse she’d suffered. The day was coming soon for Maurin to pay for all he’d done to his sweet mate. “What about your parents? Did they not have any say so in his abuse? Were they afraid to leave and take you with them?”
Garik had never contemplated having kids but if he did, there was no way he’d allow someone to hurt them the way Saedra had been hurt. Her gaze dropped and Garik braced for a lie. “My parents couldn’t help.”
Her shrug was hard to decipher.
“Are they dead?”
Tears glimmered in her eyes, then she blinked them away. “As good as.”
He decided to let it go for now. The expression on her face spoke to a sadness he assumed related to the loss of her parents.
They talked of other things and while Garik struggled with giving personal details about himself due to his role as assazi, Saedra managed to get him to talk about his parents.
“So they were good to you?” she asked when he finished explaining their deaths and how he ended up on the streets living with other kids who were orphans.
The few memories he had of his mother and father were positive ones. He’d had clean clothing and food enough to keep him full. Neither of them had talked much of his future beyond their small city and Garik had assumed he would one day work in the labor force as his father had. “They were good. Decent.”
She nodded, accepted the fact. “How did you end up with the Guild?”
Garik tensed. He didn’t talk about Nevo Xyman, the man who’d given him the card to contact the Guild. Nevo was no longer an assassin with the organization and now pursued mercenary and bounty contracts independently. Their paths didn’t cross often and when they did, Xyman never acted as if he remembered Garik as that lost youth. They acknowledged each others presence and went about their business.
Which was for the best because if Garik’s reputation sent targets running, Nevo Xyman’s had those on his radar screaming in terror and making extreme back door deals to escape his notice.
Saedra touched his arm lightly. “If its too much, you don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s complicated. Simple story is, I joined and went through the training process. Once done I started taking assignments and the rest is history.”
Along with a fortune earned from his assignments, Garik had amassed a ton of favors. One of which he planned to use to get them out of here and have a place for them for the night. “Come on. Let’s head out. Staying here doesn’t give me a sense of security.”
Staying anywhere he didn’t personally plan and arrange would never sit well with Garik.
Chapter 12
Saedra slung the straps of her pack over her shoulder and stood next to the door of the shed. She waited until Garik finished shutting everything off and wiping down anything they touched on their way out one last time. He went to the hover-cycle along the wall and pushed it through the door then threw his leg over the saddle once outside and turned toward her.
Her breath caught. The clothes she’d purchased were low quality, but the black fabric hugged his body like a lover. Long sleeves followed the lines of the muscles in his arm and the pants stretched taut over his thighs down to the foot he had planted on the ground. Scarred black boots completed the look.
With his disheveled hair and jagged features, she shouldn’t find him appealing. But he was. An assassin with a reputation of being ruthless and lacking in mercy yet he’d not treated her unkindly. He’d vowed to protect her, held her in his arms and gave her an unknown before gift of passion. And asked nothing in return.
“Saedra?”
His gaze roved over her from head to