Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 (31 page)

She always hurt him.

Every single time.

There wasn’t any point to pretending. “I’m sorry,” she started.

“No.” Edison shook his head fiercely, his arms crossing as he straightened up to his full height. “You’re not sorry. You’re not sorry at all. If you were, you wouldn’t—”

“I have to.” Plix couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. She couldn’t even hold her unaltered hand in front of her, it was shaking so badly.

“You don’t. You don’t have to,” he said, pleading. “Whatever it is you think you need to do, it can wait.”

As she fought back the tears that wanted to overflow, she tried to shake her head, tried to move, tried to leave. But she couldn’t. And then there were hands on her shoulders, one rising up to touch her cheek, seeking roughly to tip her head back. When she held firm, her eyes trained intently on the floor, he gave up and simply wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face against his chest.

He smelled so good.

“Please, Plix. Please. Just a few more days.”

She’d already stayed too long. “No,” she said. The sound was muffled by his shirt, every breath and every word pulling more of his scent toward her lungs.

He pushed her back, and in her surprise, she let her eyes meet his. “Then let me go with you. Let me watch out for you. If you have to do this, we can do it together.”

She closed her eyes and her fists. “No.”

“Please—”

“No.” Sucking in a deep breath, she summoned all her strength to open her eyes and meet his gaze. “You know I have to…that I can’t…”

When he lifted his hands to cup the sides of her face, she wasn’t prepared for how powerfully that unexpected tenderness would affect her. Usually, he screamed. Sometimes he broke things.

He never touched her. Not quite like this.

Maybe he knew after all.

“Plix, I can’t…I can’t keep doing this.”

She felt her expression fall, the truth of what she was saying making the words echo with the pain she wanted so desperately to hide. “You won’t have to.”

For a long moment, their eyes held, and she was left with no doubt as to whether he grasped her meaning.

“Please.” Plix didn’t know how their faces had gotten so close, his breath warm on her face as he whispered, “For me.”

Her eyes fell closed again, the lashes brushing his cheek, and as she parted her lips to speak, she could feel the warmth of his skin.

For the first time in all these years, she felt his mouth.

His kiss.

It was chaste. Simple. Just pressure and lips, and it was everything she had ever wanted but never dared to ask for.

It was everything she couldn’t have.

Plix gave herself just a few seconds to memorize the feeling of his lips, full and soft against hers as she let her mouth open, a brief caress, damp and perfect. And then she pulled away, her palm coming up to stroke the rough plane of his cheek as she said quietly, smiling brokenly, “Of course it’s for you.”

With an ache building inside her chest, she uncurled his hands from around her face, kissing the knuckles of each just once before placing them against his heart. His glassy eyes remained on hers the entire time, his lips still parted.

Edison didn’t say anything, though. Not when she stepped back or when she placed her hand on the door. Not even when she rasped out a choked, “Goodbye.”

It wasn’t until she was almost gone, the thick plastic of the door already swinging closed, that he finally spoke. His words were muffled. Quiet.

Still, it hurt her more than she could have imagined to think that the last words he’d ever say to her would be, “For now.”

Beloved Stranger

Janet Miller

Marrying his match was easy. The hard part will be keeping her.

A
Gaian
Story

Roan Duman is six months from the end of his sentence at Ares Five mining colony, and he doesn’t plan to go home to Gaia empty handed. He’s going with a wife. The only way he can get one? Purchase her from an illegal marriage meet.

Ironically, he ends up in the one thing that landed him here in the first place. A fight over a woman. The one he wins—sight unseen—turns out to be as stunning as she is innocent.

Or so she seems.

Six years ago, Sonja escaped from Ares Five, forced to leave her sisters at the mercy of the slavers who sold them into the marriage meets. Now she’s back to rescue them, even if the only way to get access is to marry one of the prisoners.

She plans to get in and out with her sisters and be well away before Roan figures it out. She hadn’t counted on the annoying fact that her husband’s talent for scheming exceeds her own. Or that his sense of honor is the key that unlocks her heart—and the one thing she can’t leave behind.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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Beloved Stranger

Copyright © 2012 by Janet Miller

ISBN: 978-1-61921-041-7

Edited by Jennifer Miller

Cover by Angela Waters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: August 2012

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