Moonstruck (22 page)

She kept her voice very low. “When you’re next in her quarters, look around—about this high and wide—you’ll see it. It has the answers you seek.” Blushing, she added, “You didn’t hear it from me.”

As if the conversation had never happened, she departed the bridge, leaving him staring after her in curiosity.

B
RIT MET
F
INN
at the door to her quarters. She’d bathed and covered herself in scented oils, which was all she wore when she ran into his arms and wrapped her legs around his hips. His laugh of surprise and delight ended when she sealed her ravenous mouth over his.

They fell to the bed. Four hands helped him out of his uniform. He rolled her on her stomach, flipping her hair out of the way to kiss his way up from her tailbone to the base of her neck. She couldn’t wait any longer to have him. Coming up on her hands and knees, she showed him without words what she wanted. What she
needed.
One strong arm looped under her belly to hold her in place. In the next instant, he’d buried himself inside her.

Pleasure shot through her like a star-flare. Moaning, she rocked with him as his magic hands caressed her breasts and more. All day she’d waited for this, for him.

They started out easy and slow, savoring the sheer feel of one another. It didn’t stay slow for long. The more frenzied she became, the harder he drove into her. It didn’t take long to climax, and when she did, the intensity was blinding.

Nobody made her feel as he did. Nobody.

Treasonous thoughts.

“Ah, sweetheart, my love…” Finn said. Fevered, he groaned as he lowered his head to the crook of her neck, his big body covering hers, his teeth scoring the rounded top of her shoulder. She felt the sting as he lost control. Finally, his heat pumped inside her, amplifying the small aftershocks she still felt.

They collapsed together onto the bed. “Gods be damned, woman,” he gasped. “You sure have a way of welcoming a man home from work.”

She smiled as she turned in his arms. Propped over her, he found her mouth for a long and lazy kiss. “Mmm,” they both murmured against each other’s lips.

Finn stroked her hair, gazing down at her, his eyes sweet with mischief and affection. It melted her. How did he
do that?
Instead of fleeing his tender, no-defenses gaze, she let herself drown in it. An ache swelled in her, something she had not felt in so very long.
Love.

Mentally, she reeled backward from the realization. This wasn’t love. It was sex, only!

Brit, you’re a blind fool.
Her gut had been telling her as much every time she lamented the loss of her once-infallible control. She never wanted to listen. She didn’t want to acknowledge the truth: her feelings for Finnar Rorkken were the reason why the barriers between her emotions and the outside world had thinned dangerously. No matter what her reasons for not wanting it to happen, he’d invaded her heart and soul. He’d tiptoed in stealthily and steadily over the weeks, fortifying his position while her guard was down; that’s what he’d done. Now he was part of her. Ripping him out would take a piece of her with him. She knew how much loss hurt. “I need some wine. Would you like a glass?”

As she climbed out of bed, he lifted himself into a semireclining position, propped on his elbows. “No, thanks. I’d like to know what that was all about, however.”

“What was
what
all about?” She opened the bottle and poured a glass full of wine before turning back to him.

“You opened up to me, there in bed, when we were looking at each other. I saw
you,
Brit. Then you shut down faster than a Borderlands money-changer stand in the middle of a crack-down raid.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I was thirsty.”

He got out of bed. The determined look in his face worried her. He crossed the room with purpose, seeming to search for something on the tables and shelves. Naked, magnificently so, and covered in the scars and tattoos she’d learned to overlook, he picked up a holo-cube to view. “Where was this taken?”

“A resort world in the Arrabaranna Archipelago.”

“Ah. You enjoy the tropics?”

“Very much so.”

“There are many holos here. Where did you find the time to vacation?”

“Shore leave is mandatory for commanders—once a year, barring any major offensive.”

“Enforced fun. So you’d pack your bags and head off to the sea and sun. Alone?”

“Yes, alone.” Worried, she sipped more wine. He was veering dangerously close to asking personal questions.
Did you think you could avoid it forever?
“Why do you ask?”

He shook his head at her. “I want to know you, sweetheart. I want to know why a woman as wonderful as you tells me she isn’t good.”

She focused on her glass of wine. “I’m difficult to get along with.”

“Yes, sometimes you are.” His eyes sparkled. “And so am I.”

“I am a very private person…”

“Aye, I see that.”

“…completely dedicated to my career.”

“Which is something else I admire about you.” He continued to stroll around her suite, picking up items from her travels, looking at and replacing each one. Then his gaze tracked to her desk…and higher. “Why, that’s an interesting box.” He reached for it.

Her heart lurched. “Finn, no.”

She’d allow him anything—
anything
—but not a peek inside that box! “Those are my things.” She set her wineglass down, spilling some, and pulled the keepsake box out of his hands, bumping into the smart chair as she backed up. Thinking she was ready to sit at her desk, the damn thing did as it was programmed to do: it glided into position and stopped—in the precise spot to trip her. She lost her balance and fell backward to the floor, landing, legs sprawled, on her butt. Not a very graceful position for a nude woman. She’d managed to hold on to the box, but the lid came loose and fell.

Her sharp muttered curse tore through the sudden silence.
No!
She threw a hand over the box. Exposed was everything she’d never wanted anyone else to see. Secrets she intended to take to the grave. Horrified, she fumbled with the lid, trying to get it closed.

Oblivious, Finn was laughing. “Here, I’ll help you up.” He hoisted her to her feet, allowing him an unimpeded glimpse inside the box.

The fluffy pink, gaily decorated blanket.

The pair of tiny shoes.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

Shame heated her face even as indignation choked her. She grabbed for the lid; he grabbed her wrist. “These are my private things.”
My private hell.

“A baby blanket?” His eyes bored into her, demanding more—demanding the truth, answers she didn’t know how to give, having avoided them for so long. “Baby shoes?” The note of disbelief in his tone crashed through the wall she was so desperately trying to hold up around her. What wall? He saw everything. With him she felt utterly exposed, and not because she was naked; it was because of that damn box.

“Brit.” His grip on her wrist tightened. “There’s no need for secrets between us.”

Wasn’t there? If she were to tell him of the methods she’d chosen to assuage her grief, the killing she’d ordered in the name of vengeance and masked as military necessity, what would he think of her then? She shouldn’t care, but her feelings for the man made that impossible.

And yet, she wanted the demons out. Out! No one really knew her. She walked alone.
So damn lonely.

“You’re hiding something.”

Like her entire blasted life! “I told you—I’m a very private individual.”

“Cut the freepin’ crap, Brit. The next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’re not a good person.”

She wanted to throw her hands over her ears but he had too firm a grip on her wrists. “Damn you.”

“Why? Why damn me?”

“You’re opening me up, and I don’t want to be opened up!” The first tears rolled down her cheeks. Damn it, but she hadn’t wanted to cry in front of him.

“Brit,” he coaxed, unrelenting. “Tell me about that box.”

“These were my babies’ things,” she blurted out almost accusingly—and to his open astonishment. “I had two children—and a husband. They’re gone. Dead. This…this is all I have left of them.”

His hold on her tightened—not to keep her in place this time, she knew, but with the shock of her confession. “I’m sorry. Gods, I am so damned sorry.”

“Gods? Bah.” Her laugh reeked with so much bitterness that even she recoiled from the sound of it. “There are no gods.”

Finally yanking free of his hold, she slid the box onto the desk and went in search of her wine, finishing the glass in two deep swallows. Let the numbing begin. Sex used to do that. Sex before Finn. Being with him made her
feel
rather than deadening her.

More wine, then.

His large hand closed over her wrist, stopping the sloppy pour. “Use me for the pain, Brit—not the drink.” She jerked away but he curved his other hand around the back of her skull and crushed her against him. His heart thundered under her cheek. “Use
me.
”

“I did use you, Finn! At first, that’s all it was. And then…”
You fell for him.

“It changed,” he supplied.

“Yes!” She tried to fight him off, to push him away, even as she hungered for his strength. Her struggles got her nowhere; he gripped her too firmly.

“I won’t let you go, woman. Best you give up trying.”

His quiet confidence and the underlying tenderness in his warrior’s body broke through her resistance and she crumpled against him. “I don’t want you to let me go,” she whispered. There it was. That particular secret was no more, at least. What about the rest?

His hand stroking her hair was like a drug, stripping away her defenses, making it oh, so tempting to release what she’d kept bottled up inside her. To end the reign of secrets. “Open up, Brit. Tell me. I want to know—I want to know
you.
”

And learn just how personal she’d made the war? That revenge had driven her entire career? Would he still whisper “sweetheart” and other fluffy endearments once he’d learned the truth?

Tell him. Get it over and done with.
She was many things. Coward wasn’t one of them.

“We lived on Arrayar Outpost.” In the hopes of remaining detached, she tried to distance herself from the reciting of what she’d never told another soul. “It was a religious settlement. We maintained the old ways of the goddess. I was raised in that life, a simple life. All I wanted was to be happy, and I was. We were.”

Finn glanced away as if he were loath to imagine her content with another man, even a husband.

“We had a son. Dellan was two standard-years old. I was pregnant again, nearly midterm. That day, the day I lost them, I left Dellan with Seff so I could travel to another outpost with a friend. It was so rare for me to do something that adventurous.”

Despite her wanting to remain aloof, she went soft with an image of how she used to be. “I was a quiet, pious girl who preferred to stay close to home. But a seamstress in another settlement was known far and wide for her work. I asked her to make a blanket and some shoes for the coming baby. I needed to fetch them before I became too pregnant to travel. My friend and I returned home, and no one was about. The cottages were empty. The market, too. It was so strange. We wandered through the village, calling their names. Then we found them.”

As dark and bitter as bile, the old memories clamored for release. She fought for control, fought to continue. “They were in the temple…everyone, dead. Broken crystal everywhere. It pierced my sandals. I didn’t feel it. Later, my feet required reconstructive surgery. I didn’t care! I only wanted to find Seff and Dellan. There were so many bodies, Finn….” Her stomach rolled with the memory of the smells: the peculiar stink of Drakken—from their sleeping skins she now knew—and the odor the release of bodily fluids made when someone died. The smells would live inside her until her last breath.

“I found Seff with the men,” she whispered. “But Dellan…Dellan…” It was the part she’d never wanted to think about. She’d spent a lifetime avoiding the images that represented every mother’s nightmare. She pressed her fist to her stomach to be able to finish. Finn waited as if expecting the worst. It was the worst. “My son had been herded away with the other children. There he was, lined up with the rest of them, little bodies all in a row like dolls. He died alone, Finn. No one to hold him, no one to comfort him. No mommy to hold his hand. To them, to the monsters, my son was just another settler to skull.”

Finn’s entire body jerked. His once-smiling eyes were dark with anguish and shock. “Freepin’ hells, Brit. You lost your family in a skulling raid? Why didn’t you say anything?”

The tattoo inside his bicep was in her view: the black bird of prey stamped on the side of every Drakken vessel. She averted her eyes. He noticed and swore, jamming a hand through his hair in appalled disbelief. “That’s why you ran into the bathroom after we made love the first time. Because my kind massacred your family. You realized what you’d done with me, a Drakken, and you couldn’t bear it. You couldn’t bear me.”

What could she say? It was true.

He strode away to grab his fallen uniform. He shook it out, as if to get dressed and leave.

“Stop there, Rorkken!” she cried. “You wanted to hear this then you’re damn well staying until the end. Then you can make your decision whether you want to leave or not.” She stopped to catch her breath. “Not before,” she whispered. Not before she told him everything.

He stopped but kept his back to her as she began again. “Then the contractions started. The baby was coming. My friend tried to help but it was too early. There was nothing to be done. I got to hold my daughter, you know. Just that once. My little girl. She was so tiny, so perfect. I kept her shoes. I’ll always have her shoes….”

The muscles in his back bunched and he turned around. “How can you stand to look at me, Brit?” He held his arms out to the sides, showing her his scarred and tattooed warrior’s body. Then his arms dropped until they hung at his sides.
“How?”

Naked, he was utterly open, vulnerable, his good and kind soul bared. It touched her—
he
touched her—deep inside, in an inexplicable way that no one else had been able to do. Maybe because he’d risen above difficult beginnings…or that he’d somehow held on to his honor while surrounded by monsters issuing monstrous orders. Or maybe it was how easily his deceptively sweet, smiling gaze seemed to cut through the layers covering who she really was. And how he always seemed to know what pleased her in bed, enthusiastically amplifying that pleasure without skimping on his own.