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

by Claire Branson

  The commander nodded. “That is all well, but have you managed to find a woman in all of your wanderings? You know that is our main concern.”

  Marak sucked in a deep breath. “Maybe. She’s an artist, but her work is made of strange metals. They aren’t of this world.” He huffed out a breath before he continued with, “And she can wield metal and stone. Brilliantly.”

  A faint smile lightened the commander’s face. “Wonderful. I would like you to pursue this. You can put the town hall off for after…”

  Marak dreaded whatever the commander had meant to end that sentence with. He knew that as soon as he had admitted to Lacey’s existence, she was no longer free. She would necessarily become his objective. He could woo her, he could try to gain her trust, but whatever happened, if she was who he thought she was, if he asked her to join them and she refused, he would have to erase her memory.

  This bind gripped his heart.

  ***

  That jerk hadn’t called Lacey for a whole two days. She thought she had hit everything out of the park on their date. Two days and she was already becoming one of those girls she hated: the analyzers.

  “He didn’t even kiss me!” she ejaculated into the bathroom mirror.

  In any case, it didn’t matter.

  She needed to get out and do her show.

  She needed to forget all about him.

  For the most part, she did. The show went exactly as planned. In fact, it went so well, she got bored. She hated encore performances by principle. It’s live for a reason. Why do it twice? But the gallery had solicited reporters, and for all of her qualms about money, she needed the exposure.

  By the time she had hit her backbend, her mind began to wander.

  Anger bubbled in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t believe she had actually gone soft for someone like him.

  When she caught the knife, she threw it right at the soft center of the Frick. It slid down the vulnerable canvas before lodging itself between two metal plates. It ripped right through her arcs and strokes.

  “There. Now no one can have it.” She didn’t even wait for the gasp to morph into a round of applause. She jetted out of that gallery and to the parking garage across the street. Suddenly, she suffocated in her own space. All of those unfamiliar faces made her want to see him. And yet, there she was again, thinking about him. She needed to get away and fast. So, she went to the only place where she knew she could disappear, if only for a few hours.

  ***

  Two days of stalking Lacey without actually talking to her had just about driven Marak mad. So far, he knew where she lived, where she got her coffee, what she drove, and how much time she spent on the steps of city hall, which was a surprisingly large amount.

  Once she stormed into the garage, cranked up the engine of her 2005 Jeep, and pulled out, he followed her. He yawned, ready for another twenty minute drive through the city to her home.

  However, his interest peaked when she didn’t get off on the correct exit but rather drove on the highway for another thirty minutes before taking a deserted exit with nothing to boast of other than a single gas station.

  The next thing he knew, he had followed her down a dirt path. In order to insure that he wouldn’t be discovered, he turned his headlights off, trusting his night vision for the first time in months.

  Finally, she began to slow.

  Sensing this, he stopped his car and waited patiently for her to come to a stop.

  She climbed out of her truck, glanced around her, and then started hiking through the brush.

  Marak rolled his eyes. He would fall for the most adventurous woman in the country. Being as silent as he could, he followed her.

  If he’d had any doubt about her heritage, what he saw at the end of that path extinguished it.

  ***

  A smile stretched across Lacey’s face as she rounded the back of the vessel she had found on a hike as a college student. The thing was like her personal church, standing faithfully whenever she needed it. Through her layman’s detective work, she had reasoned that it was some kind of ship. Maybe an abandoned government operation? In any case, she didn’t want anyone to know about it, because if they did, they would take it away. Then where would her inspiration come from?

  She made her way through the old passenger’s cabin, which had, after years of scrapping for art, become nothing more than a hallow vessel. She didn’t want to disturb the integrity of the outside of the ship, so she kept going on into what looked like a large storage room with a plethora of cabinets and switches. She placed her palms on the surface of a door and blasted it with as much force as she could garner. It fell away.

  As the whine of the shifting metal came to a stop, she heard an echo of something that wasn’t her. She froze.

  “Lacey.”

  She knew that voice anywhere.

  A groan slipped out of her lips. “Oh God.”

  Chapter Five

  Lacey paced back and forth. “I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that you know about this place or the fact that you stalked me to find it.” She shook her head. None of this made any sense at all. Why would he ignore her calls but then stalk her so vigorously that he followed her out in the middle of nowhere?

  And yet he remained calm, infuriatingly calm. “Aren’t you cold?”

  So she took another look at his eyes, at his towering height, at his warm skin tone. She had the sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t the only one hiding something. “You just watched me move metal, and you’re asking me if I have goosebumps?” She charged him. “It’s not that you know I should be cold, it’s that you know I’m not for a specific reason.”

  His chest rose and fell for one singular breath before he crossed what little space remained between the two of them. “I have to ask you something.”

  She stared right into his eyes. “No, you don’t. You have to tell me the truth.”

  He placed his hand on her cheek in a way that made her feel like he had already begun his question.

  She felt her heart swelling and her throat closing up, because there was no way she could deny that she felt something for him.

  “You aren’t human.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “I already knew that.”

  He grimaced. “You did?”

  “Well, sort of.” She shrugged. She would be stupid to grow up as different as she was and not suspect something.

  She felt naked in front of Marak as he scanned her from head to toe, his eyes searching her soul while his fingers examined her body.

  “Of course. I could kick myself for not seeing it before.”

  Lacey burst into laughter. For all the seriousness of the situation, she could not believe that Marak had just said he wanted to kick himself.

  “What?” His eyes were wide with ignorance.

  “You could kick yourself?” She stepped away. “I would love to see that happen.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “So what is this, then? A kidnapping? An intervention?”

  His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. “Please do not joke about this.”

  “Maybe if you would tell me—”

  “I would if you could only shut up.”

  Lacey snapped out of it, blinking her eyes. “Sorry you’re so impatient.”

  “Well I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how to keep you in my life, so I think I deserve a little consideration.”

  Lacey gazed wide-eyed at him. There was something more to his anger than just hurt feelings or embarrassment. Everything from his messy hair to his winded expression told her that something had him completely stressed out. She took a step toward him, realizing that she had gone too far. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I get so stressed that I pretend that nothing matters.”

  He let out one stingy chuckle. “That’s an ineffective coping mechanism.”

  They both laughed at this.

  With a sigh, he took her hand in both of his. “Lacey, you kno
w you aren’t human. You’re more, or different, or however you like to think of it. You’re part of an alien race…”

  “That’s not possible. I have two human parents. I was born on Earth.”

  “Well, they must have adopted you.”

  Lacey’s head spun. Not only did she have two asshole parents that had chucked her out, but she had two asshole parents that had chucked her out and never told her she was adopted.

  “I’m sorry. I know this must be a shock. It must hurt a little. But I have to say something else, something difficult. You’re one of the few females of our kind that still exists.”

  Lacey ducked her head. “How?”

  “A comet destroyed our planet. The military survived because we happened to be staging an exercise when it happened, but the women were in different barracks. They didn’t survive. Now, after we have gone through great lengths to retrace to Earth, we are faced with another dilemma.”

  “I think I know where you’re going with this.” Lacey pried her hand out of his. “And the answer is no.”

  Marak pursed his lips. “You have to listen to me.”

  Lacey clenched her fists. She had been plucked. The first guy to show genuine interest in anything other than getting in her pants and bolting at the first sign of intellectual conversation was trying to pluck her. “I have.” She didn’t even want to look at him.

  “Please. You don’t have a lot of options.”

  “No,” Lacey said, shooting him her iron glare. “You don’t.”

  Marak approached her again. She wished he would stay away, but she knew she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of running yet again. “They’ll make me…”

  “I don’t care what they’ll make you do.” She stood her ground, ignoring the pain in his eyes. “If you have to kidnap me, or force me, then do it, because I won’t come willingly.” She would have patted herself on the back if she knew it wouldn’t destroy the mood.

  “Why?” He grabbed her face, gripping it tightly in both of his hands.

  It scared her and excited her all at once. “Because you don’t love me. You don’t even like me or care about me.”

  His face went all soft, his eyes drooping and his lips folding into the kind of desperate frown that made Lacey want to kiss him right then and there.

  But she had already uttered her words, and she believed them with every bone in her body.

  “I do.”

  Lacey knew that he could have been lying. In fact, she was almost certain that he was lying. But she couldn’t bring herself to deny what looked like the absolute truth spilling from his eyes.

  “You do what?”

  His jaw hung open as she watched his gaze go from her eyes to her lips. She gulped, the hairs on the back of her neck raised, because she knew, without a doubt, against all odds, exactly what was coming next. “I…” But his face was already moving toward hers.

  When their lips met, Lacey’s knees went weak. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her arms fell around his neck. His lips demanded everything of hers. His tongue jutted into her mouth, a kind of charge she didn’t expect in him.

  They continued like this, their bodies pressed together, the heat from each of them effortlessly radiating to the other. The more she had of him, the more she needed him. All she had to do was accept his offer to have all of this for the rest of her life.

  But that thought stopped her. She pushed away with so much force that she created a pressure wave that put a dent in the wall behind her. “No.I won’t fall for you and then let you take me away like this. No.”

  He stepped away from her, adjusting the bulge in his pants, his chin raised. “What would you do otherwise?”

  Lacey ducked her head. She hated that question. “Whatever I have been doing.”

  “How can you go back to the way things were? My reality is shifted now. I won’t return to my mundane search for a stupid town hall design, not without you.”

  Lacey glowered. “I refuse to lose myself in you!”

  “I think you already have.”

  Lacey shook her head, her eyes stinging. She wouldn’t allow him to tell her what he’d done. “No. You have to get out of here. You have to leave me alone.”

  Marak bit his lip. “I can’t.”

  Chapter Six

  Lacey turned to pick up the cabinet door she had plucked off. She clutched on to it as hard as she could, bending the corners, but she didn’t turn around. She was afraid that if she looked at him, she would forget all the good reasons for why she could never honor his request.

  “Yes, you can. You can find it in your heart to let me live the rest of my life without you.” She felt the warmth of his body right before he placed his hand on her hip.

  “If you let this go, I will have to erase your memory. Everything from the moment you met me would be gone.”

  Lacey felt like someone had punched her in the gut. “So you were never planning on kidnapping me?”

  “I could never force you. No one ever wanted to force you.”

  She needed to reject him, because she needed to be able to believe that she still could. She needed to know that she held within herself the power to rid herself of him, that falling for him had not caused her to sacrifice herself. “I need to remember.” She turned around.

  “You need to remember that you rejected me?”

  She bit her lip. It sounded so heartless when he said it out loud, but he didn’t do it justice. For her, it was more than a show of dominance. He represented the first real indication that her childhood spent othered and alone hadn’t been for nothing. He was the pure representation of everything she already knew she was. Without this to hold on to, she would have to go back to being truly alone and that was more than she could handle. “I know it sounds stupid. I know. It just took so long for me to find myself. I just can’t let you take it away.”

  Marak opened his mouth to say something, but he stopped when he heard a loud click. The two of them snapped their heads in the direction it had come from.

  “What was that?” She heard another sound, a whine coming from the front of the cabin.

  She froze, but Marak seemed so much more alarmed.

  He stepped away from her, his eyes wide and his movements stiff. “How long has this space ship been here?”

  For lack of knowing what else to do, Lacey followed him as he rushed down the small hallway that connected the passenger cabin to the cockpit and pulled it open, using his sheer force to bypass the obvious lock.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I put it here!” Lacey followed him inside, stopping short at the sight of all of the gadgets and controls. She had never been in the cockpit of a human spaceship, much less an advanced, alien one. She gulped as he sat down, his eyes scanning everything.

  “Why is it all lit up like that? I thought it was broken.”

  He glowered at her. “You’ve been harnessing energy from this ship for who knows how long, and you thought it was broken?”

  Lacey’s heart sank down into her chest. She watched him throw switches on and off, press buttons, and grumble to himself, but it was too obvious that he wasn’t making any progress.

  “Sit down!”

  Lacey clamped her jaw shut and followed his direction. The whine of the craft had reached an unbearable noise. She could hear and feel the metals shifting all around her.

  Marak strapped himself in. “Are you aware of any human settlements nearby?”

  “What?”

  A strong rush of air drowned out her question.

  Marak had to yell to be heard. “Does anyone live around here?”

  “I don’t know! Why?” Lacey’s heart thudded against her chest as she internally kicked herself for not being able to be more helpful.

  “Because this ship has decided to take off, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Chapter Seven

  The sheer force of the ship plastered Lacey against the back of the chair. Because it was so large, she could b
arely feel the wind resistance that must have been slamming the ship. It was one smooth, strong accent. She grasped the edges of the seat, her mind working a mile a minute, because she could see that Marak had already given up.

  She thought that she would feel less afraid once the force slowed and they had stopped fighting air itself, but that didn’t help a thing.

  Marak huffed out a breath. “We’ve broken the surface of the atmosphere.” He took off his seat belt and began scanning the control board all over again.

  “Where are we going?” Lacey hovered over him.

  “Probably back to Kahara. This ship only had two destinations programmed into it.”

  “So what do you want to do? What are we gonna do?” She hated how shrill and feminine her voice sounded.

  But even in all of his struggling, Marak stopped and glanced down at her. He placed his trembling hands on her shoulders and gazed right into her eyes.

  She resisted it at first, but then she let herself look right back at him and just be grateful that he had chosen her and had followed her there that night, because if he hadn’t, she would have been hurtling through space all by herself, and no one would have been the wiser.

  “I’m going to figure this out, and then I’m going to fly us back.”

  It wasn’t until he had let go that her pride started seeping back in, and the urgency with it. “I don’t know why men think the shoulder grab thing is helpful. It’s not. It’s just patronizing.”

  Marak waved her away. “The controls are disabled.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  Lacey glowered at him. But then, as she listened to the shifting metals and watched the stars engulf them, she got an idea. “Why don’t we just push it back down?”

  He stared at her, his eyebrow raised. “What? You’re going to maneuver an entire spacecraft with your mind?”

  Lacey ducked her head. “No. You’re going to help me.”