Impressed and rather awed by it all, she watched as he peeled his clothes off and exposed his ripped, sexy body for her hungry view.

But her heart sank at the sight of his latest stomach wound his mother had given him on his arrival. “Should you get that wet?”

“I’ll be careful.” He slowly undressed her, making her all the hotter and needier.

The minute he uncovered her back and saw the glue Syn had used to seal shut the small incision he’d made to remove her tracking device, Dancer hesitated. “Are you scared to have that gone?”

She shook her head, knowing that what she’d done was a death sentence for them all. “I just don’t want to get you or Syn in trouble for it. As soon as it was implanted, I came to terms with the fact that I was living on borrowed time. That I could die brutally at any moment.”

He brushed his lips over the wound before he brushed her wet hair back from her neck so that he could nibble a heated trail along her collarbone and over her League tattoo. “I will keep you safe, Tarra War Hauk.”

Tears choked her at the noble title. It was how his wife would be addressed by others. But that wasn’t the only part of his noble words that touched her. “Ever the Andarion TAM.”

“And never more so than I will be for you.”

She sank her hand in his hair. “Just remember that when you’re fighting now, Dancer, you are taking my heart into battle with you… every time you are struck, it is a blow straight to it. And if anything were to happen to you, you would take my heart with you, wherever you go, and I doubt I would last ninety-two minutes without you.”

Hauk froze as he savored words he’d never expected to hear from anyone. All his life, he’d felt so worthless. Despised. Undesirable. Because of the way Andarions dressed, his scars had always been plainly visible to others. Unless it was necessary or required, even his own mother had refused to appear in public with him.

You’re an embarrassment to our lineage. I can’t believe you’re what I’m left with.

Those scars had even kept him out of his obligatory Andarion military service. They had been the primary reason he’d joined The League after leaving school.

But Sumi didn’t see his flaws. In her eyes, there was only acceptance and love. He tightened his arms around her as he whispered in her ear. “You don’t take my heart with you, mia. You are the only heart I have. And I wouldn’t last two minutes without you in my life.”