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

by Claire Branson

  She gasped, stepping over her foot and tripping over herself. The coffee went flying above her head and, by some miracle, landed to the left of her. But she tumbled right on top of the man, her head slamming into his chest.

  She scurried away from him as soon as she possibly could, covering her jeans in dirt in the process. Her skin tingled from the knowledge that she had touched him, but then it tingled with something else.

  Her chest swelled, her heart aching and pounding in its rib cage. She drew her knees up to her face, resting her chin on them as her head was flooded with an emotion foreign to her. Her bones shook, her eyes rolled back in her head, her fingers clenched into fists.

  She gazed at this man, her eyes like lasers catching every little thing about him. Her skin burned for him, her whole body possessed with the knowledge that he sat mere feet away. He breathed the same air as her, suffocating her. Her heart pounded in her ears, thudding in her chest, transporting thick, hot blood through her body. Her stomach churned, her womanhood throbbed. How foolish she was to think that she had ever had a choice.

  She was possessed with an impossible clarity.

  She had to have him.

  Chapter Three

  Moire barged through her backdoor, tracking mud all over her hardwood floors. She kept going until she got to her sink. She didn’t know what was happening to her. Panic welled up in the pit of her stomach as her vision went in and out. One minute here, the next there. She was obsessed with the man. The man without a name.

  And now she could hardly see straight.

  She gripped the edge of the sink as she started to lose herself. Suddenly she was no longer in her kitchen in the suburbs of Boston. Suddenly she was standing in an open field. Just ahead of her was a string of women tied to stakes.

  “Witch!”

  The people screamed this word over and over again as a man with a collar lit a torch. He handed the torch to another man, who then placed it on the bed of dried hay. Flames erupted, and it wasn’t too long before the smell of burning flesh filled the night air. She glanced all around her. There were people screaming in triumph, others crying in fear.

  The sunny day had turned dark with smoke.

  Moire trembled as the scene grew less and less distinct. There were people running here, dying there. Fire surrounded her, the heat of it pinching her skin. She was running as fast as she could, getting as far away from all of them as possible. “For Kahara.” That phrase filled her head. She shouted it over and over and over again before she reached the shell of the home that she knew.

  Bodies had been drawn out. Dead bodies.

  A family lay in the lawn, their skin charred beyond recognition.

  Then she was running again. She hid herself in a forest. “For Kahara…”

  Then the memory released her.

  She ran cold water over her face, peering out of the window at that man as her mascara ran down her cheeks. She licked her lips and swallowed the bad taste that whatever that was had left in her mouth.

  Then she went back outside. Her heart ached at the thought of him lying out there all on his own. So she approached him again, this time without the hesitation, and dragged him by his arms. It was difficult at first, but she thought about it, and she meditated about it, and she summoned that reserve of her strength from the pit of her stomach.

  She had him in her living room within ten minutes. Idea after idea, solution after solution flooded her mind until she found herself in her kitchen working out a poultice she had concocted from a mix of her painkillers, spices, herbs, plants, and cosmetics. She had no scientific explanation for her inspiration, but somehow she knew it would work.

  She mixed a little of it into some water, but then, when she watched it sink down to the bottom of the cup, she decided to switch the solvent to vodka. She put a straw in the cup and hurried out to her living room. She cradled his head in her lap. It felt so right, so natural. He stirred a little, his eye twitching, so she stopped and she watched him. She licked her lips, using her pinky to trace his own.

  Her whole bodied tingled.

  She draw the mixture into the straw and placed it in the man’s mouth. She watched with trembling hands until finally he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving as proof.

  She let out a sigh of relief and administered the rest of the liquid. It took her almost an hour to get the whole thing finished, but by the time she had done so, she could already sense the change in him. Another look at his wound told her that he was healing alarmingly quickly.

  In another bout of inspiration, she grabbed three oversized buckets, filling one with sudsy water and the other two with warm water. She stripped him down right there in her living room and cleaned him. Her rag caressed every lump and line in his body, peeling off the layers of dirt and pain to reveal a beautiful man underneath.

  She finished this and got even more curious. So she ran to her bathroom, plucked her Venus five blade, her Aveeno shaving cream, and her sheers, and she groomed him. As she did this, each stroke of her shaving stick revealing more and more of what had become her new obsession, she could have sworn that he was responding to her.

  There he went again, a slight brush of his hand on her lower back. It brought goosebumps to her skin, nearly drove her mad with longing.

  As she placed the blade on his chin for one final touchup, he wriggled his nose.

  She froze, the fear she should have felt in the hours she was attending to him coming to her all at once.

  His eyes snapped open.

  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 d
on’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.