Silas: Imperial Warrior (A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance) (11 page)

"Is it?"

"Yes, of course. Something awful happened to you, you know? I mean, I know you're looking at it like you should have done more or done better or something. Like you're failing your people, but that's not true, and this isn't your fault. That you're stuck here, I mean."

He sighed, letting out his breath in a messy rush before running fingers through his hair. “Thank you,” he said. “I...I’m just used to having to…” Finishing that sentence didn’t seem like it was worth it, so he just shrugged a shoulder and bent down to start picking up the pieces of the things he’d found. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Seven: Unexpected Closeness

Katia yawned as she stepped out of her car. What a day. Putting out fires left and right, dealing with angry guests who didn’t want to pay money for the amenities they wanted, putting out a literal fire in the kitchen because Jerry had been flirting with one of the housekeepers, dealing with Ava gushing about the new guy she was dating. It had just been a really long day, and now it was after dark and she was finally home.

She stopped at her mailbox, pulling out a stack of bills and junk mail and resolving that she’d deal with it all tomorrow. Or the next day. Or Saturday when she could pretend to have some energy.

Most of the time she loved her work, but sometimes it was exhausting.

As she walked up the driveway towards her front door, she saw her neighbor, Mrs. Worthington, looking over at her from where she was standing on her own porch across the hedges.

“Good evening, Mrs. Worthington,” she said, unsure of why she was being stared at.

“Katia,” the older woman said crisply. She had to be in her sixties, and she talked about her husband quite a bit, even though Katia had never seen him and she was pretty sure that no one else who lived on this street had seen him either. “I wasn’t aware you had someone visiting.”

Katia furrowed her brow and bit her tongue to keep the ‘I wasn’t aware I had to run it past you’ from slipping out of her mouth.

“Yes,” she said instead. “He’s a friend, and he’s staying with me for a while.”

“I see. And does he know that it’s common decency to wear a shirt when he’s out in the yard doing his yoga or whatever it is he calls that?”

It was too dark to be sure, but Katia was fairly certain the older woman was blushing. Well, Katia couldn’t blame her for that. She’d been the victim of Silas shirtless more times than she could count now, and it never failed to get her all flustered. He was just so
muscular.

“I’m sure he just wanted to keep cool while he worked out, Mrs. Worthington,” she said. “He didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s October!” the woman huffed. “There’s no reason for
nudity
. My husband would have had a heart attack to look out his window and see something like that.”

She tried, really very hard, not to burst out laughing. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll have a word with him about it.”

“Good. We have
standards
in this neighborhood, you know. People should wear clothes!”

“Yes, Mrs. Worthington. Won’t happen again.” Katia continued up to her front door, amused that the woman had been paying such attention to the fact that Silas was shirtless and yet hadn’t noticed the color of his skin, apparently.

As distractions from her long, hard day went, that had been a pretty good one, and she felt better as she turned her key in the lock and the listened to the door across the hedges bang shut, signaling Mrs. Worthington’s return to her home.

“Silas?” Katia called as she made her way into the house. “I’m home!”

“I can see that,” came his voice from right in front of her, and she jumped to see him sitting right there on the living room floor, surrounded by mechanical odds and ends. He was wearing a shirt at the moment, and Katia was definitely
not
disappointed.

“Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“Hello. How was work?” He glanced up at her briefly and offered a smile before going back to the cracked and twisted tablet in his hands.

“In a word? Stressful,” Katia replied, stepping over the piles of things to come sit on the couch. “I hear you had an eventful day, scandalizing my neighbors and all.”

Silas looked up again, a frown marring his handsome face. “What?”

“Mrs. Worthington from next door had some complaints about your indecency.”

“Is this because I wasn’t wearing a shirt? Is she the one who was staring at me the whole time?”

Now she did burst out laughing, because she could just imagine Mrs. Worthington staring through her porch screen like the nosy busybody she was, being disapproving and getting a free show all the same.

“That’s the one,” she said. “She stopped me on my way in to complain about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Silas said, sounding sincere. “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble with your neighbors.”

Katia shrugged, turning on the couch so she could put her feet up and rest her head on the arm. “It’s not a big deal. Mrs. Worthington always finds something to complain about. And I think she’s mostly upset because she enjoyed the view so much. What were you doing out there, anyway?”

“Shin-vera,” Silas said.

“I...have no idea what that means.”

He shot her an amused look. “Shin-vera. It’s...I don’t think there’s a direct translation. It’s a series of movements and stretches that get you ready for combat. Warms the body up and gets the blood flowing. That sort of thing.”

“Oh.” She could picture him doing that. Of course, in her head it was like Tai Chi, and he was shirtless and glistening with sweat, muscles bunching and stretching as he went through the movements… Katia cleared her throat and hoped her face wasn’t as hot as it felt. “Are you expecting to have to fight someone?”

“Now? No. Eventually? Of course. This will all come to a head sooner or later, and I don’t want to be completely out of shape when it does. But I was doing that this afternoon because I needed to clear my head to work on this.” He nodded to the piles around him.

“How’s that going?” Katia wanted to know. “Any luck?”

"Not as yet," Silas said with a sigh. "All of the pieces seem like they should go together, but I may have overestimated my skill with this sort of thing. I'm a soldier, not a techie."

Katia covered her mouth to smother the giggle that wanted to burst forth. It was sort of funny, watching him sitting there surrounded by delicate pieces of machinery and all, when he was so large and seemed much more suited for a battlefield or training area or the gym. But telling him as much wasn't helpful, and above all, she wanted to help him.

"I believe in you," she said with a soft smile, and when Silas looked up and returned her smile with one of his own, she definitely could feel her cheeks heating. "Um. I'm going to go see what we have for dinner. Are you hungry?"

Silas didn't look away from her, holding that eye contact while he nodded. "Starving."

"Great. Uh. Great. I'll just. Go see what we have. Okay." She wanted to put her hands over her face and disappear. Or better yet, go back outside and try this again when she could manage to not sound like a complete idiot. One of the things she had prided herself on was not going to pieces around him, no matter how hot he was sometimes and how much he made her laugh. She needed to keep to that and stop acting like a girl with a crush.

Katia hopped up and went to hide in the safety of the kitchen, grabbing leftovers and things from the pantry until she had come up with a passable version of fried rice that she could put out.

She hummed under her breath as she poured drinks, and then turned to put them on the table with the food, nearly smacking right into Silas who had somehow come up behind her without her noticing.

"
Christ
," she said, heart racing. And god, she hoped
that
wasn’t noticeable. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, looking down at her and steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Walk around without making any noise. You're seven feet tall for crying out loud!"

Silas smirked, and there was genuine warmth and humor in his eyes. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe you just weren't paying attention."

"How dare you," she said. "I was definitely paying attention. You're just some kind of ninja."

Now he just looked confused. "A what?"

"Never mind." Katia shook her head. There were some things she was just better off not explaining. "Time for a dinner break?"

"Yes," he said, taking the glasses from her. "Thank you for the meal."

"Of course. Can't have you starving, can I? Not when you have to go off and save the world. Come sit down."

Silas obeyed, and they sat down together, eating and teasing each other across the table. It wasn't anything new, really. Since those first couple of awkward days when they hadn't known what to say to each other, the two of them had fallen into an easy rhythm. They teased, they laughed, they talked, and it was actually much more comfortable than Katia had imagined possible.

But something felt different about tonight. Everything was charged with this...energy. Everything she said to him felt like flirting, and everything he said to her felt like a response to it that said 'yes, I want you'.

She didn't think it was just her imagination, either. There were lingering glances, touches that lasted just a bit longer than was normal. She'd learned that Silas was a very touchy person, which had come as a surprise since 'military leader' and 'alien' weren't really things she associated with wanting to be touched, but Katia was aware that there was a lot she didn't know about both of those categories.

Silas was always letting his fingers touch her arm, or resting a hand on her shoulder when they spoke. It had been a while since she'd been close enough with someone to do that, and over the week or so that they'd known each other, she'd begun to reciprocate, laying her hand on his arm as well, and leaning into him when they were next to each other.

It had only been about a week and a half, closing in on two, since he'd come here, but Katia felt like she'd known him for so much longer than that. He felt like a long time friend, someone she'd had hundreds of conversations with. Someone who knew her just as well as she knew him.

It was an illusion, of course, because they only knew certain things about each other, but the atmosphere between them was warm and comfortable, and Katia really liked it.

So much so that she wasn't letting herself think about what would happen when he had to go back to his planet. That would happen eventually, of course, and it was the desired outcome. His desired outcome, so it needed to be hers as well because she wanted him to be happy.

But she also wanted to get closer to him. She wondered often what that would be like and had to shake herself to keep from doing something that would be inappropriate. Like touching herself to the thought of him. Or to the thought of him touching her. Or anything like that.

At the end of the meal, she got up and cleared the table, needing a distraction.

“Let me help,” Silas said, as he always did when she cooked dinner for him.

“No, no,” Katia replied, as she usually did when she wanted some time alone. “You have a project out there to work on. I can handle this. I need the time to de-stress from my day, anyway.”

Even as she said it, she realized that it had been nearly two hours since she’d come home, and she hadn’t really thought about her bad day since she’d come through the front door.

“Good grief,” she muttered under her breath, watching as Silas went back out to the living room. “Pull yourself together, girl.”

The dishes were done, and she was standing in the bathroom, debating the merits of a quick shower versus a longer bath. It was already closing in on eleven at night, and if she was going to get a good night’s sleep, she would need to go to bed soon. A shower sounded good for that, but a long soak in the bath sounded amazing, actually.

So she’d be a little tired the next morning. That wasn’t the end of the world.

She ran the bath.

Hot water and bubbles were exactly what she needed, and she twisted her hair up into a knot at the top of her head before she slid into the water, sighing contentedly. This was the life, honestly. If she had the next day off, then it would be better, but for now, this would have to do as far as relaxation went.

Katia hummed and sang to herself as she alternated between soaking and washing up, resolving to have some candles for the next time she did this. She had just let her hair down and ducked under the water to give it a quick rinse when she heard a knock on the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” she called, reaching for a towel to wipe the water from her face.

“Are you alright in there?” Silas called back. “I knocked this time.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that, remembering their conversation about how he didn’t need to burst in on her before trying to save her or whatever. “Are you insulting my singing? Saying it sounds like I was in pain?”

“No, you’ve just been in there for a while. I wanted to check that you hadn’t drowned.”

Katia rolled her eyes, and she could hear him laughing. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just relaxing a bit before bed.