Page 15 of Rauf: Minotaur Mates

But who would I trust to keep her safe? Korfas? Ha! He couldn’t protect Kazan’s star-figs, let alone my… I shoved any label away. Let alone any woman who needed him.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

I stopped before we reached the yard and looked her over properly. No blood marked her face or arms. Her shirt was dirty and one knee of her trousers had gone dark with damp earth, but she stood straight and put her weight evenly on both legs.

I leaned closer. Dirt and burned machinery clung to her, but her scent came through both. I breathed her in once, then again.

She flicked some of the dirt off of her shoulder. “I might be a bit bruised, but I’ll live. What about you?”

“I’m unhurt.”

“And, uh… mentally?” She winced as she asked.

“What are you saying?”

“It seems like the drone brought up some nasty memories. I heard there are counselors in town⁠—”

“I’m fine. My mind is just as sound as my body.”

Teresa snorted.

“Do you mock me?”

“Do I mock you?” Laughter tinged every word and then it burst out of her like sunlight.

Her eyes squeezed shut and her shoulders shook until she had to bend forward, one hand braced on her thigh. Every time she looked up at me, she started again.

I watched her mouth and the flash of her teeth. I smiled before I could stop myself.

The last of her laughter faded. She straightened and found me smiling at her.

She stood close enough that I could feel her warmth. Her hand was still in mine, and her face tipped up toward me.

I wanted her.

Without thinking, I raised my hand until the backs of my fingers brushed against her cheek. There was a bit of dirt smudged there and I could pretend that was why. But I didn’t lie to myself. Not about things like this.

Teresa sucked in a breath and leaned into the touch. Her skin was so soft I feared it would dissolve under my roughness. But she only leaned in closer. Her eyes drifted shut.

Need roared through me, ancient instincts I couldn’t understand, that I refused to examine too closely.

She could be mine. If only I leaned in and took her.

That stopped my hand. What would I be then? Some cowed gentlebull who moved into town and played house with the woman from a planet untold light-years away? I was barely tolerated now. I couldn’t inflict my life on someone who deserved better.

People in town crossed the street when they saw more than one of us coming. Conversations stopped when we entered a shop, and no one relaxed until we left.

Butcher wasn’t an insult someone had invented after we settled here. Every male at the farm had earned the name in the arena. Any woman beside me would have to live with those stares too.

I pulled my hand back. Slowly, Teresa blinked her eyes open. They were dreamy for a moment, but she must have read something in my face that made her own walls come right back up.

Good. That would protect us both.

“You shouldn’t have come out here,” I said.

She ignored that. “How’s the goat doing? I would have asked one of your men, but none of them have come to town.”

“They’re not my men. They just live here.”