Page 67 of Shadows of Stardust

Fuck.

He can’t… hear us? Can he?

He’s twenty freaking yards away, but as soon as he catches me staring, the corners of his lips quirk up.

I look away.

“He’s handsome,” I say reluctantly. “And… hot.”

“And fuckable,” Juni adds.

“And… that.”

She laughs, satisfied with the confession she’s squeezed out of me, and mercifully changes the topic of conversation back to her and Tev and Serril and their budding throuple.

When the game breaks half an hour later, Juni gets up and dashes off to Tev. I stand, too, heading for the edge of the beach and the path back to the bungalows, knowing my huge, hulking shadow will be right on my heels before long.

“Good conversation?” he asks, falling into step beside me a short minute later.

I just grumble, absolutely not about to give him the satisfaction.

“You could try being a little more enthusiastic next time,” he continues, tone casual, with just a hint of the self-satisfied smugness he was wearing all over his face earlier. “Really play it up, you know? How hot you find me, how fu—”

I stop walking and round on him. “Or maybe I could just—”

“Three o’clock.”

I see the camera coming up on his left side as he speaks, biting back the rest of my sentence and taking a step closer to him.

“You were saying?” he asks, deliberately provoking.

“I don’t think you want me to finish that sentence.”

“No?” He runs a hand idly over my bicep, my shoulder, to the back of my neck, where he gives me a gentle squeeze for the benefit of the cameras.

Just for the benefit of the cameras.

And maybe I’ve got heatstroke or something, because the heavy pressure of his enormous hand and the steady strength of his grip ratchets down some of my irritation a little. At least enough to remember my earlier question about just how the hell he knew what we were talking about.

“You were eavesdropping.”

He huffs a breath. “Hard not to when you two were so loud.”

“Loud?” I ask, indignant. “We were barely talking above a—you know what? Nevermind. You’ve obviously got freakishly good hearing.”

“Honed by many, many years needing to listen closely and observe my targets,” he says matter-of-factly. “And a specially tuned earpiece.”

He pushes his hair back to prove it, and I huff a laugh.

“So that makes me what? Your target?”

The camera drifts even closer, nearly close enough now to pick up our conversation, and he leans in before he answers. “Mypartner. Just keeping tabs in case you needed backup.”

“I doubt I need any backup with Juni.”

“Even so,” he murmurs, “we’re in this together, and it’s my job to evaluate and deal with any possible threat.”

Nowthatisn’t doing a whole lot for my heatstroke-induced tolerance of him, because the assurance only makes me relax into him further. Desperately, I claw my sanity back to me, eying the approaching camera warily.