A Heart's War (The Broken Men Chronicles Book 5) (13 page)

It took some work, but Morgan and I managed to convince my brother and his wife to head back to Jake and Danica’s where they’d left the kids before heading over.  Not only did I want Morgan and I to be alone, but with the attacks escalating, I wasn’t willing to put my brother and his family at risk unless it was absolutely necessary.  It was bad enough that Morgan was suffering through any of this at all, but since she was alone, I had appointed myself as her protector.

No sooner had we arrived to my house, I dropped Morgan’s bag by the front door, did up the deadbolt and turned the woman so her back was up against the wall.

“How are you feeling?” I pressed my body against hers, cradling the side of her face with one hand as the other braced me from applying my whole weight on her.

“Exhausted, but wired.  It’s hard to explain.”

“It’s the adrenaline from everything that’s going on.  That exhaustion you feel right now will feel ten times worse when the adrenaline surge wears off.”  The pad of my thumb skimmed her bottom lip, her tongue slipping out to lick the tip of it, causing my body to heat up.  “Baby,” I groaned.

“I need you, Theo,” she whispered.

“You have me.”  I covered her lips with a soft peck.  “You’ll always have me.”  I repeated the soft brush of my lips against hers. “Now let’s get you to bed.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” she confessed as I grabbed her bag in one hand, her hand in the other, and pulled her toward the stairs.  “I can’t take my mind off of what’s been happening.  Why is this happening, Theo?”

My silence was held until we’d reached my bedroom.  It was the only room that had been relatively whole and liveable when I’d bought the property.  Depositing her bag by the dresser, I went to Morgan who stood by the side of the bed.

Pushing her down so she sat on it, I kneeled in front of her.  “I don’t know why this is going on, but we’ll get through this.”  With her face in my hands once more, I bent it down and kissed her forehead before pulling away enough to look into her eyes, and with potent resolve, I repeated myself. “I promise we
will
get through this. Together.”

Her eyes closed as she let my words sink in.  “Together,” she whispered before glassy eyes met mine and she leaned in with a feral kiss.

Her arms came around my neck as she held me to her, causing me to lean up, my arms bracing me on either side of her thighs.  Morgan’s lips left mine, trailing nips and licks down my chin, to my neck and back up to my mouth where she paused to look me in the eyes. “Make love to me, Theo.  Make me forget.  I need a hero for tonight.”

I groaned.  “Baby, I’m no-”

Cool fingers covered my mouth, ceasing my words.  “Tonight you are, in my eyes.”  Her words were filled with so much sincerity that she had me believing her, though it couldn’t have been further from the truth in my mind.

Even though I had decided I wasn’t going to argue with her, “But I wasn’t there,” was out before I could stop it.

She cupped my face in her hands.  “You were there eventually.  That’s what counts.”

“But I was late and anything could have happened to you.”  My voice shook with so much pent up emotion, the most prominent being the sense of loss I felt tugging at my heart at the thought of never being able to be with her again.

“Nothing did, baby,” she said.  “And you showed up regardless.”

“But-”

She sighed.  “No more, Theo.  I’m not going to let the man I love tear himself to pieces over this.”

My breath seized in my lungs, my heart leapt.  “Say that again?”

Morgan’s eyes twinkled as her hands held my face firmly.  “Theo Lowell, I love you.”

I savoured her words with my eyes closed for a split second.

Before I knew it, Morgan was on her back, my body covering hers, her wrists restrained on either side of her head by my hands as I looked down at her.  “Tell me I’m dreaming,” I whispered against her ear and pulled back to look at her face.  “Tell me that it was the heat of the moment, or because of crazy emotions, because a woman like you can’t possibly love a man like me.”

“Well, if this is a dream, I don’t ever want to wake up.”  She smiled for the first time since before I’d left her for my guys’ night.  “And I guess I’ve achieved the impossible then, Theo, because I do love you.  You might think you’ve failed or that you’ll never be good enough, but all of that is keeping you from seeing the man you really are.”

“Morg.” Fuck, she undid me.  “I-”

“I love you,” she repeated, and even though it was the fourth time in as many minutes, it still felt as good, if not better, than the first time.  “That’s the whole of it.  It’s my decision and the best damn one I’ve ever made in my life.”

A laugh bubbled out of me and I attacked her lips with mine briefly before I pulled away and buried my face in her hair, taking this new reality of ours in.  As I pulled away, I found myself unable to hide from her anymore.  “God help me, but I’m feeling selfish.”  I gave her a hard peck.

She harrumphed.  “And so you should feel entitled to be.”

“I love you too, Morgan Smyth.  I think I’ve loved you since you first called me up and asked me to plug up your hole.”  Her blush had me laughing.  “Then again, it might have been the drenched clothing that was plastered to your body when you answered your door that first day.  I had the hardest time focusing…”

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to free her wrists from my grip.  “You men are all the same, aren’t you?”

“Hmm.”  I nuzzled her nose before staring into her eyes.  “Honestly, I think I fell in love with you the minute you refused to let me walk away.”

Morgan’s face lost its playful look and her features softened.  “Really?”

I nodded.  “Here was this tiny spitfire of a woman with a larger-than-life attitude, telling me how things were going to go.  Morg, I’ve gotten used to fighting all my life.  I fought in school to be the best at sports because fighting for my grades didn’t prove anything.  I fought my brother for girls, my dad because I could never seem to please him.”  Her head bobbed up and down, urging me to continue.  “I fought to get through basic training, the sandbox, through being a prisoner…torture.”  My eyes burned and my throat closed up.  “Dammit, I fought just to stay alive even though I’d lost everyone…everything I knew.  And then there’s you.”  I took a deep breath, trying to calm my roiling emotions.  “Baby, I fought my feelings, I fought
you
.  Don’t you see?”

“See what, Theo?”

“Out of all of this fighting, all I’ve ever had was someone fighting with or against me.”

“Theo…” Morgan’s voice cracked.

“But I’ve never had someone go to
war
for me, to fight
for
me.” Morgan’s breath whooshed out. “That’s what makes you different from everyone else.  I know my family and friends love me.  Hell, I love them too.  But you, you top them by miles, Morgan.  You win my heart, my soul…me.”

Silent tears began to fall down her face and I let go of her wrists to wipe at them.  “I never wanted to go to war, Morgan, but for you, I’d start one, or however many it will take, if it means me spending the rest of my days with you, making you happy, seeing you smile, coming home to you and-”

“Baby,” she said through the stream of tears leaking from her beautiful eyes.

“I’m serious, Morgan Smyth.”  I kissed a tearstained cheek.  “I want it all with you.”  I kissed the other.  “Forever.”  I aimed for her lips.

Words ceased because at that point our bodies spoke volumes larger than our voices ever could.

Like every other morning that followed a night spent with Morgan, I awoke to find myself wrapped around her back, my arms surrounding her while she slept.

As I shifted slightly, Morgan sighed peacefully, a perfect indicator that she was waking.

“I love you,” I whispered into her ear before kissing it, the hand covering her stomach, slowly gliding over her soft, heated skin, down toward her folds, which had remained bare – as with the rest of our bodies – from last night’s frivolities.

Sliding a finger through her damp folds generated a whimpering moan from Morgan.  With a thrust of her hips backward, I groaned, running the edge of my teeth over her shoulder.  “I can’t seem to get enough of you,” I whispered against her heated skin, but the sudden rigidity of her body made me pause.

Before I could ask what was up, she said, “Do you smell that?”

With my nose buried in her hair, nuzzling the crook of her neck, all I could smell was sleep-warmed skin with a subtlety of sex musk left over from last night and Morgan’s natural scent.  “Mmm,” I mumbled.  “All I care to smell right now is you.”

As I moved my thumb to flick against the quivering nub at the apex of her thighs, Morgan’s hand covered mine to halt it.  Snapping her legs shut tight, she leaned up on her elbow, forcing me to back away from her slightly.

“No,” she whispered and turned her head so I could finally see that the usual sleepy gaze she normally wore in the morning had gone wide.  “I smell smoke.”

Her words broke me out of what was left of my sex-induced daze, and that’s when I picked up the rankness that permeated the air.  If I had paid more attention, I would have realized that the haze mixing with the daylight coming from my bedroom windows wasn’t from the sun, but the smoke that was sneaking past the bottom of my bedroom door.

An explosion of broken glass set me in action.

“Oh my God!”  Morgan sat up and covered her nakedness with the thin bed sheet that had only moments ago cocooned us in warmth.

Shoving my legs in a pair of worn jeans and sliding my feet in a pair of beat up running shoes, I headed for the source of the smoke.  “Get dressed, stay here and be ready to move when I tell you.”

“No!”

My shoulders bunched to below my ears and I spun around to face my woman.  “Morgan, I need you to listen to me.”  The look of sheer terror on her face made me go back to her and crouch down so our eyes were even as she sat on the edge of the bed.  “I don’t know what I’ll find on the other side of that door, but I need you to be ready for anything.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begged.

“Never.”  I grabbed her face with both hands and pressed my lips firmly against hers.  “I’ll just be a few minutes.  I need to get my phone to call the firehouse and Shane, and then I can get us the hell out of here.”  Getting back up to my feet, I turned to look at her from the door.  “Please get dressed and be ready.”

“I’m begging you, Theo, let’s just get out of here.  We can call 911 from my house.”

She was right, but seeing as this was my turf, I had to know.  With the recent happenings on Morgan’s property, something niggled at the back of my mind – and that something might just have been driving an old beat up red Ford pickup truck.

Disregarding Morgan’s concern and her common sense, my hand tested the knob and when it found it cool enough – but barely – I opened the door to the hallway, letting in plumes of thick dark smoke.  Grabbing a towel from the hook on the back of the door, glad that it was still moist from last night’s shower I said, “Two minutes,” before jumping into the hall and slamming the door shut behind me.

The first thing that hit me was the pungent smell of gasoline. With my towel over my mouth and nose, I set forward to investigate how much of the house the fire had spread to.

I didn’t get far.

Without setting a foot onto the first tread of the stairwell, I could barely make out the front door due to the thick smoke and angry lashes of flames.  It was too risky to even attempt heading down there.  The heat was unbearable, and as I stepped back, part of the stairwell gave way with a loud crackle and snap.  The hiss and sizzle of a burst water pipe was accompanied by a shooting flame heading straight for me, making me dive out of the way.

Running back toward my bedroom, I knew that my mother had been right all along.  This house of mine was a firetrap.

I sure hoped that Morgan wasn’t terrified of heights.

Trying to clear my lungs enough to take a proper deep breath, I found myself in the middle of a coughing fit as I slammed the door, secluding myself and Morgan where just moments ago we’d woken up to a total nightmare.

The woman rushed to my side, wiping at my face with the now relatively dry towel I held in my hand.  The amount of soot wasn’t much of a surprise.

On a wheeze I managed, “We’ve got to get out of here, right the fuck now.”

Morgan nodded and reached for the door.

“No!” I grabbed her arm and nodded toward the window.

“You can’t be serious?”

“The stairwell just gave way.”  I coughed some more.  “The whole main floor is up in flames and if we don’t hurry, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to make it out of that window.”

“There’s no way-”

Grabbing her hands to quell her panic so she could listen to me, I said, “Baby, it’s either we risk getting hurt, or we die.  I’m not done living, baby, so-”

With a flicker of resolve to her impending fate, Morgan’s head gave a short nod. “Okay.”

Knowing the fire was reaching us at a faster rate than I would have liked, I got Morgan to crouch down on the floor to the side of the bed opposite the entrance to our safe haven while I readied myself to open the window.  God only knew what would happen when the fresh air gave the fire on the other side of our wooden barrier the fuel it would need to destroy the rest of my home, my woman and me with it.

The glass panes slid up without a problem just as Morgan screamed and a wave of heat flared at my back.

“Stay down and crawl to me!” I yelled at Morgan. The bedroom door had given way to the inferno and the flames licked at the ceiling which groaned above our heads.

Despite the terror surrounding her, Morgan’s body set itself in motion and she approached me.  I grabbed onto her and hugged her tight before I swooped an arm under her knees and began to lift her feet-first through the opening that led to the roof above the front porch’s awning.  I wasn’t sure it would hold, but what other choice did we have?  There was no time to go out and see if the structure was still sound to bare her weight, never mind my own.

Relieved that the roof held, I tried to release Morgan but her arms held like steel rods, around my neck.

“Morg, you’ve got to let me go,” I told her.  “Crawl on your stomach to the edge and lower yourself until you can let go and fall feet-first to the ground.”

“Get out and then I’ll go.”

“Morgan, you’ve got to go now!”  Her head snapped back and eyes widened at my “That’s an order!”  Softening my tone despite my rising panic, I added, “Please, baby.  I’ll be right behind you.”

I watched as Morgan crawled toward the edge of the roofline like a trained commando.  The heat increasing in its intensity at my back, the smell of burning paint and roofing tar singeing the lining to my nose made me worry that this plan wasn’t going to work.

A minute later, Morgan’s worried gaze met mine as she began to lower herself over the edge of the roof.  I winked, trying to reassure her that I was right behind her. “I’ll see you soon.”

Safety beckoned the moment my feet touched the shingles beneath me and I dropped down to lay on my front, but that sense was short lived as I reached the halfway mark to the roof’s edge.

The surface I was crawling on, radiating blistering heat, gave a groan and within seconds, the shingled structure beneath my legs gave way.  All I could do was dangle and hold on with my arms, or drop and hope to some higher power that I’d get out of what was quickly seeming like my peril.