MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) (93 page)

Chapter Four

Moire’s jaw dropped at the sight of those silver irises staring back at her. A shock of exhilaration shot up her spine. “Oh my God.”

“Who are you?” His voice flowed like silk.

She watched his face move, but when she reached up to touch it, he grabbed her wrist, holding it there.

She winced, her brow furrowing. “Wh…”

He threw her arm away and stood up in one lithe motion. He paced around the room with heavy footsteps, glancing at everything from her vases to her picture frames to the television set in the center of the room. “What is this place?”

“My house?”

He glanced down at his naked body and then back at her. “What have you done to me?”

“N-nothing. I just found you in my garden and I—”

He fingered the wound in his torso, glancing back up at her, his eyes narrowed. “What is this? Did you heal me?’

Moire threw her arms up. “I think so.,” she whispered.

“You think so?” He took one gigantic step toward her. “I was dying and now I’m sitting in your living room as well as ever.”

Moire hated the way he kept saying, ‘
you
.’ . “I don’t know what I did.” She wanted to ask him questions, but she didn’t know how to demand things of others, especially when she was afraid she would scare them away.

He smacked his lips. “Is this…?” He stuck his finger into his mouth. “Did you give me drink?”

Moire raised an eyebrow. What was up with that? He sounded like he was an actor in the renaissance fair. “I…” She pursed her lips. “I might have mixed some vodka into your medicine.”

He stared down at her with an upturned nose. “How dare you.”

“I had to dissolve the…” She gulped. Her heart thudded wildly. She just wanted to be near him. “…the…”

“The what?” He lunged at her.

She jumped back, but in less than a second her eyes were wandering.

He followed her gaze. “For the love of Christ.” He slammed his hands over his manhood. “Who the hell told you to take my clothes off?”

“I wanted to clean you!” By now, Moire was starting to feel like a blundering witness on the stand, and not like the woman who had saved a man in her own home.

“Tell me what you put in me!”

“Stuff!” she screeched. She shook her head. God she felt stupid.

“You do not pump a man you don’t know with some poultice you don’t even understand.”

Something about his finger jutting into her face made anger bubble in the pit of her stomach. “Does it matter? I saved your life!”

“How do you know I’m not just going to drop dead?”

Moire narrowed her eyes. “Wait a second…” She lowered her voice, unsure of herself. “You were nearly dead when I found you…in my yard.”

“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “What’s wrong with you?”

Moire’s eyes flashed wide. This conversation was getting more and more nonsensical. “What?”

“Why haven’t you asked me where I came from? Why I ended up in your yard? What happened to me?”

She bowed her head. “I-I just didn’t want to.” He took another step toward her.

She gulped.

“You tread too lightly.”

“What does that even mean?” All at once she was afraid of him, which wasn’t saying much considering being under the scrutiny of anyone could make her tremble.

He touched her chin, lifting her face up to meet his.

She could have melted.

“Where is your self-confidence?”

It was like a shock wave had slammed her in the face. “What do you mean?” It wasn’t that she didn’t know she was lacking in the confidence category, like she didn’t notice herself second-guessing everything all the time. It was just that he shouldn’t have known that.

In any case, she liked that he did.

“Ask me your questions. You deserve it.”

Moire nodded and then looked up at him, her throat stuffed with nerves. Why was it so hard to just talk to this man? What was she afraid of? That one was easy. What if he left? Where would she be? She felt impossibly dependent on him. “Uhm. Okay. First of all, why are you here? What happened to you? Were you attacked or…I mean, is anyone looking for you?”

But he seemed to be looking right through her. “Your eyes…”

Moire grimaced. “How did I know this was going to happen?”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“What?” The flash of a woman on the stake crossed her mind.

“My kind.”

“Your kind?” She gazed back into his exotic, silver eyes.

“When I awoke, I thought that surely I could be the only one left. But no. This…this makes more sense.” He stepped away, his head bowed as he thought about things. “We’re resourceful. The men would have run, like I did.” Then he locked eyes with her. “You’re a descendant.”

Moire swallowed. This was so not the morning she had signed up for. “A descendant of what?”

“You must have noticed you aren’t human.”

“What?”

The man shook his head. “The plants. The healing. How else do you explain it?”

“A descendant of what?”

He pointed at her. “What’s your name?”

Moire sat down on her couch, her patience wearing thin. “Moire. What’s yours?”

“Tarys.”

Moire could have melted all over again. “Tarys,” she whispered.

“I’m not human either.”

The word came to her. “Kahara.”

He snapped his gaze in her direction. “Yes. How did you…” But then, as if to remember something, he bowed his head again. “Of course. The charm.”

“What charm?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn’t answer my questions.”

He smirked. “You’re learning.”

“Not from you.”

His eyes flashed wide for a fraction of a second. “I have to contact Kahara. They need to know what happened to us.” His hands clenched into fists, excited muscles flexing all over his body. “They need to know we’re still out here.”

Before Moire could say anything, her phone rang. Suddenly she remembered all of her normal responsibilities. “Shit,” she hissed.

She gazed back at her new best friend, a look of longing in her eye. Her curiosity made her want to stay with him for the rest of the day, but as she looked at him again, she knew she needed to make sure she wasn’t going to lose this wedding—and she needed to get him some clothes. “I have to take this. Please don’t go anywhere.”

“How lonely can you be?”

Moire shook her head. He was getting less and less charming the more he said. But even then, the thought of being away from him for the rest of the day made her heart cringe. She just wanted to lie with him, to tell him all of her secrets and deepest thoughts.

What was wrong with her?

“Can you get me something to wear?”

What if he steals something?

He wouldn’t.

“Yes.”

Chapter Five

Tarys lifted the forest green, terry cloth robe off its hook and draped it over himself. After an hour of wandering around aimlessly in Moire’s house, the guilt started to roll in. The poor woman had left him inside her home after having not known him for more than a couple of hours. He could have been anyone. He could have been dangerous.

He lifted the collar of the robe to his nose and took a whiff of it. The sweet scent, so poignantly her, drifted up his nose. Just thinking about her calmed him. She filled his head as he wandered out of the bathroom and into her misshapen room. She moved, spoke, thought, breathed just like the flowers she surrounded herself with.

As he sifted through her kitchen, looking for traces of what she might have put in him, he couldn’t help but to think about her talent. She had an obvious gift, an alien one.

He stopped with one hand on a bottle of cayenne pepper and his other on a bottle of antihistamines. There was a portrait of a woman standing with his Moire. He could immediately tell from the hue of her skin and the look in her eyes that she was at least part Kaharan. She had shaved her head and covered it.

Moire’s pixie hair came to mind. It was obvious that she kept her hair short…but why? She didn’t have cancer herself…

But the woman in that picture had, and, in that picture, they were both bald. Tarys raised an eyebrow. She had shaved her head with her mother. It was the kindest thing he had ever known a human to do. He stepped away.

There was a strength in her that even she was unaware of.

The thought of the enslavement came to mind. It pained him just to think of that look of longing in her eyes when she’d had to leave. She didn’t deserve this. She would have helped him without the bind.

Just like that, he found himself basking in the glow of her compassion, her intelligence, her gentle manner. His heart fluttered just at the sensation of her name on his lips. The idea of her came with a kind of clarity he had never felt before.

He made a decision. He would clean his own clothes, find her, and remove the entrapment, even if it meant that she wouldn’t want him around her any longer.

***

Janice, the wedding planner, shook her head. “These are nothing like roses.”

Moire stood on the other side of the counter in the shop, staring at the woman with the expensive suit and the big hair. She knew she would say that. “No. That is because they are not roses.”

The man, who would be the groom, turned to glower at her. “I said I wanted roses. Didn’t you tell this woman to get roses? What is she, stupid?”

“Gerald, don’t let this get to you. Why don’t you call your husband-to-be and ask how the cake tasting is coming along?”

Gerald rolled his eyes at the both of them before barging out of her store, leaving the door swinging behind him.

Moire thought about Tarys, the only thing that could take her mind off the diatribe of demands the capitalist burden of making money had placed on her shoulders. “What are we doing here?” Janice asked with the kind of condescension you would expect from an elementary school teacher.

“Look, if you can’t do roses, I just thought that it would be nice if it didn’t look like you were trying to.”

“It’s not about what you think is best, Moire. Just shut up and give me what the client asked for.”

“I just wanted to give you something truly beautiful.”

“I’ll decide what’s beautiful.”

Moire’s eyes stung. She pursed her lips, willing herself not to cry out of anger. Not this time.

Her bell rang as someone barged into her shop. “I fear that would be a mistake.”

Her eyes flashed wide at the sight of Tarys standing just over the threshold. “I thought I told you to stay at home.” She reveled at how he almost glowed in the sunlight. She knew him coming here was a bad idea, but she couldn’t deny the fact that she was glad he had done it.

“And who are you?”

Tarys glanced at her and then back at Moire. “Her…lover.”

Janice glanced from Moire to Tarys and back to Moire, a new kind of respect in her eye.

“I came to escort her to lunch.”

Moire could have been flying.

Janice cleared her throat. “Well, I wouldn’t want to intrude. There is clearly no other work to be done here. I expect you to get back to me with your other sketches by tomorrow.” She left.

Tarys chuckled as he approached her.

Moire stepped from around the counter. “I thought I told you to stay in the house.” She tried and failed to hide her satisfaction.

He shrugged. “Well then, you should have tied me down.”

Moire grimaced at him. “Of course. That is definitely a thing within my abilities.”

“You don’t know your own strength.”

Moire shook her head. “I really, really need to get you something real to wear,” She stepped back behind her counter.

He shrugged. “I feel just fine.”

Moire caught herself smiling like an idiot all over again, but when she looked up at him again, she could see a kind of dark shadow in his eye. What was he hiding? “You don’t look fine.” She reached out to touch his forehead without even thinking about it.

Half of her expected him to throw her hand away, another half of her expected him to ignore it, but he did neither. He covered her hand with his and then left it there. She could feel her warmth seeping into him and vice versa. Even with the counter separating the two of them, she felt so close to him that they could be the same person.

“Listen. I need something from you.”

Moire nodded. “Anything.” She gulped, realizing too late how desperate that sounded.

“I have to get home.”

She nodded.

“To Kahara.”

She froze, her eyes stinging all over again. The thought of him leaving made her want to vomit. “No. You can’t leave.” She stepped away from him, her back pressed against the back wall.

Tarys huffed out a breath. “This is all my fault.”

“What is?”

He gestured loosely at her. “You, feeling this way.”

“Can’t you just stay for a moment? Why do you have to run off so fast?”

“I won’t be able to go anywhere unless I can contact them anyway. I need you to help me with that. I don’t have the energy, or the strength to do it on my own.”

“I’ll do anything for your good, but I won’t help you.”

Tarys’s chest went all big as he sucked in a huge breath. “Just come here.”

“Why?” Moire asked even though she was going to do it anyway. His pull reached her on a cellular level. He controlled the ebb and flow of the air in her lungs. 

He took her face in both of his hands.

She gazed into his eyes, but he seemed to be looking right over her head. “What could I possibly do?”

“Shhhhhhhh…”

She winced. “What are you doing?”

“I miss the time when you couldn’t even find your own voice.”

“I learned how to speak to you.”

He pursed his lips. “You really must be quiet.”

“Why?”

But he had already begun to ignore her. He placed one of his hands on her forehead, the touch more comforting than ever.

“It really isn’t that hard, Tarys,” he said.

“Are you talking to yourself?”

He placed his other hand on her lips.

Moire glowered at him, begging for an explanation, but at the same time hoping he wouldn’t let her go.

He looked back down at her, and as he stared his eyes grew softer. His hand slipped away from her lips.

She didn’t waste a second. “Please. Don’t. Leave.”

But his gaze had shifted from her eyes to her lips. He lowered himself to her.

Moire’s eyes flickered shut as he kissed her. In that moment, she felt like more of a person than she had in a long time.

“I can’t do it,” he said as he broke away.

“Do what?”

He looked at her as if he hadn’t realized that she had heard. “If you could come with me, would you help me?”

“What? Come with you?”

“To Kahara.”

“You want me to leave Earth?” She didn’t believe him.

Tarys ducked his head. “What, exactly, do you have to leave? This tiny shop?”

Moire clenched her jaw, ignoring the pang in her stomach from his insulting words. “This tiny shop is my life’s work.” Her flowers were her life line. They had helped her through the worst parts of her childhood. The only things that seemed to listen to her. They depended on her for survival. With those flowers, she mattered. And yet, he wanted to take her away from them. She could already feel herself fading.

“But you have a gift. You’re capable of so much more than building decorations.”

Moire raised her hand. “Okay, first of all, I highly doubt that. And, second of all, maybe this is all I want.”

“I cannot stress to you how important it is that I find my way back home. I need to tell them what happened to my colony.”

“So…go.” Her voice broke. “But I can’t go with you. I have a… life here.” She hated the flimsy cover.

He huffed. “Okay. This is getting circular. You know you don’t want to see me go.”

Moire glared at him, determined to hold her own. “Don’t tell me what I want.”

He grabbed both of her arms. His energy was intoxicating. “Just because your mother died—”

Moire’s eyes went wide. An image of her sick, half-dead mother in a hospital bed rose to mind before she could construct a wall against it. “What?”

“She did have cancer, right?”

Moire ripped herself out of his grip. “Please stop talking.”

“You can’t let what happened tie you down.”

“You don’t know shit!” she screeched, feeling lightheaded from the outburst. How cocky of him. Her mother’s death was only the beginning, the bang that set off the avalanche.

“Fuck me!” His hands clenched into fists.

Moire glared at the sign above the door: Carol Brendan.

Tarys followed her gaze, just like she didn’t want him to. “Do you even want this shop? Or are you just here because it’s hers?”

Moire stepped back behind the counter. She hated her job, but she loved her flowers. So what did that mean?

Tarys leaned over the counter. “Moire.”

“Does it matter?”

He placed a hand on her cheek.

She hated the way it calmed her.

“You’re better than this.”

There was a ring as the door opened. A woman with a briefcase walked in, her high heels clicking noisily against the floor. Another wedding planner.

Moire cleared her throat.

“I’ll just…” Tarys stepped away.

Moire watched him leave.