It was a strange day, a day in which anxiety and ill-feeling hung in the air like a mist. The guys had picked up on it, I knew, but they didn’t seem worried. So their hosts did not trust them? One more fight tomorrow and they were out of here. Why should they care?

I cared.

I cared about how people saw them. I wanted them to be recognized as the heroes they were by more people than just my mom, and maybe Bren. I cared about how people talked about them behind their backs. I had already noticed how some fathers had secreted their daughters away out of sight, locked them in their rooms – there wouldn’t be any lost virginities on their watch. But most of all, I cared that they were leaving. To them, it was just another job, and a badly paid one at that, and afterwards, it was off to the next without a glance back. But to me, the idea of them leaving felt like the end of the world. How quickly my attraction to these men – my lust for them – had evolved into something more. I had seen in them the best of men.

They killed for a living – there was no getting around that - and yet, that occupation seemed to have given them a greater respect of life. I was still not sure I understood them, but what I knew, I could not help but admire.

Dinner that evening was supposed to be a celebration – not quite one to match the previous night, but still a joyful recognition of what had happened today. But though everyone went through the motions, it was a muted affair. The music lacked energy, the drink flowed less freely, the girls were very much lacking in number, owing to their protective fathers. Taka, Rex and Kai – Luca was conspicuous in his absence - retained their good humor and were friendly and cordial to their hosts. But I could not understand how. They had to be insulted by this. They had saved us and yet, we did not seem to trust them. I was ashamed of my own people.

“No Dana tonight?” I asked Bren.

“Her father won’t let her out.”

I sighed. “What have you been doing to that girl? Honestly, Bren, not all girls are like me.”

“I haven’t done anything,” said Bren, defensively. “It’s your friends.”

“What?”

“Dana’s father said he knows their type.”

“That man wouldn’t know his ass if he tripped over it,” I snarled. “Why don’t you try and sneak her out the window?”

Bren looked at his feet. “I sort of…”

“Oh gods, you agree with him?”

“Not agree, exactly,” Bren replied. “Just… They’re mercenaries, Keira.”

“They saved us today.”

“From what?” Bren countered. “If they hadn’t been here, then the bandits wouldn’t have attacked.”

“No, they’d have taken our food.”

“It’s the price we pay.”

“And they’re trying to make sure we don’t have to pay it.”

“Well, we didn’t ask them to,” pointed out Bren.

“What about the people they take?” I knew this was my killer blow and, sure enough, Bren looked the other way.

“Look, I’m not saying they aren’t helping us. And maybe it’s all to the good. But just because they’re helping us, doesn’t mean they won’t also help themselves.”

“To Dana.”

“Or another girl like her,” Bren insisted. “Girls are all the same to their sort. Anyone will do. You know what they’re like.”

I got up from my seat. “Yes, I do know what they’re like.” I had slept with three out of four of those men and I’d practically had to force them into it. I stalked away from my best friend, angrier at him than I had ever been.

I didn’t have any sense of where I was going, but as I walked through the outskirts of the village, I heard a noise from the stables. Hurrying over, I saw Luca, feeding the new horses. Once again, the big village dinner had not appealed to him, and tonight I could understand why.

“Hi.”

He turned and nodded to me in reply.

I took a step closer. “I just wanted to say; you may have had a point about me.” No reply. “I was out of line last night with those guys. And I was out of line this morning when I tried to kiss you. If it had been the other way round – you trying to kiss me when I wasn’t interested – that’d be a serious offense. You’d be drummed out of the village. I was every bit as wrong, and I’m sorry. I wanted to say,” I took another step closer, “I deserved to be punished, and I want you to finish what you started.”

My ass still ached from the morning, but some secret spot within me ached for more. Perhaps it was wrong, perhaps it was just me taking advantage of him in a different way. But I couldn’t help myself. I longed for it; to feel the sharp sting of his hand on my flesh; to feel the uprush of hot, liquid desire inside me; and this time, to feel the relief of completion. I wanted Luca so badly I could taste it.

“You’re wrong.”

“Wrong?” I frowned.

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Luca turned away from the bandit’s horse to face me, “I think you deserve a good whupping more than any woman I have ever met. But I also think that all four of us, working in shifts, still wouldn’t have stamina enough to tan the impudence out of your hide.”

A pleasant tremor prickled across my skin, partly in pride at being thought so mischievous, partly at the idea of all four of my guys taking it in turns to spank my ass.

“You’re wrong,” Luca continued, “about me. You’re wrong to think that I didn’t want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you and it’s getting harder and more frustrating to hide by the day. I guess that’s what this morning was about. Again, you deserved it for the way you treated those boys, but that’s not why you got it. I’d reached the point where if I didn’t touch you, I’d explode, but if I did, then I didn’t know what would happen. And I didn’t want that to happen. So, I found a way to touch you that didn’t betray my past.”

I sat on a bale of straw and looked up at him. “You could tell me about it, if you liked.”

Luca seemed in two minds, then, he turned to feed one of the horses again, starting to speak as he did so.

“I grew up in a village not so very different from yours. Only, on the plains. Difference there is that you see the war a lot more, you see the soldiers. I was like any other boy, I wanted to be a soldier, wanted to have a sword and fight. Be a hero. Also, like every other boy, I liked the girls.” He smiled a little wanly at the memory. “By the gods, I was a holy terror. Fathers used to lock up their daughters when I was about – just like they have here; don’t think we haven’t noticed. I think they held a party when I left to join the army. I was a good soldier. It’s a bloody business but I saw it as I’d been trained to see it; them and us. And if civilians get in the way then… well, bad luck to them. And whenever I wasn’t fighting, there were plenty enough women in the surrounding towns and cities for me to pursue my other interest. Fighting and fucking – that’s the soldiers’ mantra. Or, at least, it was mine. I’d been in for two years when I got leave to go home for a visit, and when I got there, there was only one girl left in the village.”

I waited quietly as he paused, stroking the horse’s mane.

“Not literally. There were still plenty of pretty girls – and some were well pleased to see me back – but I didn’t see them; I only saw Joss. I’d seen her before, of course, before I left. She’d been one of my ‘conquests’. But now she was... well, she was a woman. I don’t know that she was better looking than the others, smarter, funnier or what have you – I saw her that way, but I couldn’t be sure. I can’t explain it really, there just weren’t any other girls. She was the only one. We spent my leave together and I knew then it wouldn’t be so long before my next visit. But when I got back, I found the war had changed for me. Somehow, Joss had changed me and following orders wasn’t so easy as it had been. One day, a sergeant ordered me to kill a woman for looking at him funny or something, and I wouldn’t do it. ‘Walk away, then’ he said. And I wouldn’t do that either, I stood between him and her. He laughed and called the rest of the squad. Five of them there were, big guys. They strung me up by my hands and took it in turns to use me as a punch bag. As each finished, the sergeant would say, ‘Kill her, and all this stops’. But I couldn’t. I thought of Joss and I couldn’t. They forgot about the girl, she ran off. When she looked back, I honestly don’t know if she was grateful or thought I was crazy. Finally, they cut me down, and as I lay on the ground, bruised, broken and bleeding, the sergeant says he’s going to kill me, and I think I’d have welcomed it if it weren’t for the thought of Joss. Through a film of blood in my eyes, I can see the five of them standing over me. Then – and I swear I just blinked – they were all lying on the ground, and there’s one man standing over me, and he says, ‘If you can stand, then I’ll save you’.”

“Taka?” I asked.

Luca nodded. “I stood. I don’t know how I found the strength, but I stood.” He paused a moment. “I’ve often wondered if he had only just arrived or if he’d watched them beating me up, just to see how tough I was. I’ve never asked. Don’t really want to know. Anyway, he and I put together our little band of mercenaries, operating just outside military law, working for the highest bidder to our own set of ethics. Not strong ethics, but not just following orders, either. I remember,” a sad smile crossed his face, “how proud Joss was when I told her. She thought I was doing the right thing.”

“What happened to her?” I felt that if I didn’t ask, he might not have the courage to tell me.

“Soldiers passing through the village,” said Luca, his eyes not moving from the horse in front of him. “Looting. She tried to stop them. Always trying to do the right thing, was Joss.”

“I’m sorry,” I breathed.

“Since then, I’ve fought like never before. Every soldier I kill could be the one… I’ll get vengeance in volume of blood because there’s no other way open to me.” He sagged. “But I’ll never know who actually did it. So all the blood in the world will never be enough.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. So worthless, but what else did you say?

He looked at me as if for the first time. “You know, you’re nothing like her.”

“Oh.”

“She was a good girl.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing.”

“Calling me a ‘bad girl’ is hardly a compliment.”

Luca laughed. “Would you disagree?”

“No.” Of course I wouldn’t. I’d spent my whole damn life breaking rules just because they were there. I did the wrong thing because it amused me. I was a bad girl.

“I mean, it’s no bad thing you’re different to her,” Luca explained. “If you were like Joss, then I’d compare you to her, and that’s a short route to unhappiness. But you’re so completely unlike her. She was the ideal version of who she was and you,” he gave me the most honest and beautiful smile I had seen on his handsome features, “you’re about as perfect a version of Keira as could possibly exist.”

“Bad girl and all?”

“You own it,” said Luca. “You know who you are.”

I smiled. It was an odd compliment, but a rather lovely one, nonetheless.

“You’re a very beautiful woman,” said Luca, making it sound like an admission. “As soon as I saw you, I found myself… drawn. Attracted. I desired you. I comforted myself with the fact that you were probably a little bitch, and then you started breaking rules, which gave me hope. But then you damn well grew on me. Maybe you were a little bitch, but you were an honest one, and I realized that my attraction to you had become more than physical.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing to me or to Joss.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell him that it was time to move on, that he had to live his life, that Joss would understand and would want him to be happy. But how much of that was just me pleasing myself because of my own burning attraction to him?

I stood up. “I’ll go.”

“No.”

I turned back to see Luca holding out a hand to me.

“I don’t know what’s going on inside me at the moment. I don’t know if what I want is right or wrong or just next. But I do know what I want, and I think if I don’t kiss you then I will regret it forever.”