AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Damn him.
20
It drove me nuts that I couldn’t do more to protect Moira. Whoever the perp was didn’t care for the fact that I was here and hanging around her this way.
Once Moira went upstairs to take a bath, I prepped the chicken she’d bought today and popped it in the oven. It likely wouldn’t be as good as if she’d made it, but I was more about getting some good protein into her. I tossed together a salad with some of the veggies she’d picked up. And while the chicken was baking, I went outside with Tater. I did a perimeter sweep of the house grounds, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
When I was satisfied that nothing had happened while we were gone today, I went back inside with Tater. Only to conduct a sweep of the house inside, checking all the external doors and windows until I was satisfied.
It was likely overkill, but I didn’t care. Moira was being pushed to the brink. She’d mentioned to Dan that this had been going on for a few months now. But it had taken a really dark turn since my arrival.
I checked on the chicken and pulled it out of the oven. Then set the table. I cracked open a bottle of white wine, figuring she could use it tonight. I was carting the chicken over to the table when she appeared in the dining room in a pale blue robe that left little to the imagination.
I fought against my desire for her. That wasn’t what she needed from me right now. She needed to be cared for and looked after, not treated like a vessel for my lust that I’d love to bend over the table and screw until my knees buckled.
“You did all this?”
“I did. Why don’t you have a seat? There’s wine if you’d like.”
But Moira didn’t listen. Instead, she walked right up to me after I set the chicken down. She wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
Instinctively I wrapped my arms around her. She was such a force of nature. Seeing her muted in the slightest, seeing the fear and uncertainty today, had driven me bug fuck. I was a man of action. Give me something to shoot at, blow up, or dismantle with my hands. But this, offering comfort and taking care of her, were out of my wheelhouse.
But I couldn’t deny it felt good. She felt good.
Right, even.
She even felt like she was mine.
Which was asinine. But from the moment I appeared on her doorstep, she had been this pivotal force, drawing me in until she was all I could see. It was messed up and wrong on so many levels. She’d dated my best friend. The same best friend who’d asked her to marry him.
And yeah, I’d known Evan hadn’t been entirely faithful. There were a lot of guys in my field who weren’t.
What we did was hard as fuck. Our lives were literally on the line at every given moment. And many took it to mean they lived out loud with a YOLO attitude and desire to score as much pussy as possible before their number was up.
But that had never been me. I’d never considered myself the settling down type. I was too much of an adrenaline junkie. But even that had changed over the last few years. If anything, I felt as if my soul had been leached from me, and I was simply going through the motions. I really didn’t have any drive other than to protect my squad mates and complete the next mission and the one after that.
The only easy day was yesterday.
It was a motto we lived by. And yet standing in Moira’s dining room with her tight little body pressed against mine, holding her in my arms, and offering her comfort, something clicked inside me.
Because I could see myself coming back to her. And thatneverhappened. I’d never wanted it to happen. I was happy being single.
Moira upended all my previously held convictions. I craved her in ways I never thought possible. The soul I thought had long ago been shredded to pieces on the battlefield whispered for the first time in years. That here, finally, was a soft place to land when the job and mission were too much. That here I didn’t have to think about mission parameters and whatever hellhole we were about to be dropped into and whether my unit and I would make it back alive.
I pressed a kiss against her forehead. Her scent invaded my lungs. And I knew no matter what, I would carry this slice of time with her with me.
“Come on. Let’s eat before it gets cold.”
She nodded against me. “M’kay.”
I ushered her into a chair and took the time to serve her. She watched me. I noticed some of the color had returned to her face and form. Thank fuck!
Earlier, she’d been deathly pale with glassy eyes that had scared the fuck out of me. I wasn’t any good with feminine emotions. I knew where my strengths were. And I wasn’t a soft man. Eighteen years in the military had beaten that out of me years ago.
I took the chair catty-corner to hers. “What’s your schedule look like this week?”
“I’m off tomorrow, thank goodness. But then I work Tuesday through Saturday at the club.”
