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in your eyes, I’m going to feel like a real fool.” But watching her eyes, he grinned. “Except now you’re laughing at me.”
He lay down beside her, watching a pair of the green-and-white-striped snakes fly across the golden dome as he pulled her slender hand against his chest.
“I’m glad you came, Tarrys. It’s a hard thing to admit, but I’d be dead if you hadn’t.” He squeezed her hand, then rubbed her warm, soft skin with his thumb. “Sorry for pushing so hard. I thought you’d give up, but you’ve got the stamina of a marathon runner. Now I realize sending you away was the last thing I should have been doing. I hate Harrison’s being right even more than I hate being wrong.”
He rolled onto his elbow where he could see her eyes. “I do need your help.”
She blinked.
The realization jerked Charlie upright. “It’s wearing off.”
Her hand convulsed in his and he rubbed it as if improving her circulation would somehow make the poison wear off faster. Finally, she gasped in a deep, desperate breath of air, then coughed it out. The mottling, he noticed, was gone.
Charlie helped her sit up, bracing her with an arm around her slim shoulders as the coughing fit slowly subsided.
“I’m glad you warned me about the paralysis or I might have had you buried by now.”
Tarrys looked up at him, her violet eyes shuttering her emotions as they hadn’t when she was paralyzed. “You shouldn’t have waited with me.”
“Didn’t you hear me when I was talking to you?” He’d already had his half of this discussion.
“Yes, but you don’t understand. I can’t keep up with you.”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“Barely. You don’t know what it’s been costing me to keep going. Even when I shot the trimors I was dizzy with exhaustion. I can’t keep up with your pace, Charlie.”
“I’ll slow down.”
“No.” Her expression turned earnest as she leaned forward. It was all he could do not to meet her halfway and taste those lips again. Lips that were now free to kiss him back.
“I came to help you, not hold you back,” she said. “You have to reach the princess. Your world is depending on you.”
“Tarrys …” He settled his hand on her jaw and rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “I can’t keep up that pace, either. I was being an ass. I thought if I pushed you hard enough, you’d beg off and tell me you had someplace else to go.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.” He took her hands and rubbed his thumbs over the soft skin of their backs, the friction going through him like electricity. His gut reaction was to pull her closer, but he felt a tension in her. A resistance. So he held her hands and met her gaze. Fell into her gaze. Why had he never noticed that her eyes were deep as the ocean, bottomless wells of violet? Why did she have this pull on him?
He dropped his gaze slightly, breaking the connection as he focused instead on her mouth. And totally forgot what he’d meant to say. That lower lip fascinated him. Just slightly too big in a way that sent shafts of heat firing through his body. All he wanted to do was taste it again.
But she was looking at him with misery in her eyes. His mind gave him a kick. She wasn’t fast enough. That’s what he’d meant to respond to.
He met her gaze. “You’re more than fast enough, Tarrys. What’s more, you’re tough. I admit I didn’t think you would be.” He gave her a self-deprecating grimace. “You don’t exactly look the part. But you’re a hell of a warrior. If you’d panicked when you saw those cats, we’d both be dead.” He shook his head. “You were amazing.”
He’d never spoken truer words. Not only had she kept going when, by her own admission, she’d been close to collapse. But she’d done what she must to save them, and trusted him to do the same.
She watched him uncertainly as if she wanted to believe his words and wasn’t quite sure she could.
Squeezing her hands, he released her. “Let’s pick up the arrows, get some water, then find a sheltered spot to take a break. We could both use a nap.”
They rose as one, then turned in opposite directions to search for the arrows. But his gaze kept going back to her, admiration rising inside him. He recognized in her that same rare strength he’d had to find in himself during SEAL training, the most physically grueling training in the U.S. military. To make it through, he’d had to learn to isolate the pain and discomfort and ignore them, a feat that had demanded a strength of will and spirit few people possessed.
Yet in this delicate-looking little female, he’d found both.
The realization humbled him. He’d long ago figured out that size had nothing to do with that kind of strength. Many of the best SEALs weren’t physically imposing men. But never would he have expected to find such toughness in such a small woman. Was it her race? Was this what the Marceils were all about?
Or was he simply beginning to understand Tarrys? Was he starting to see in her that same drive to win, no matter the circumstances, no matter the odds, that was in him? The reason he’d become a SEAL in the first place.
They’d make a good team. As he bent to pluck an arrow from the grass beside the stream, an odd sense of calm settled over him. Accepting her as his partner somehow soothed the ragged sense of chaos that had ridden him since he’d arrived in this place. He was a highly trained, skilled warrior used to being thrown into situations that were out of his control. But always with a team. Never alone. And the situations had been based in a world he understood. A world where the grass and flowers grew where they were planted and invisible animals didn’t attack from thin air. His skills had been honed in that world, not this.
Esria was unlike any place he’d ever imagined. Alone, he’d be lost. With Tarrys at his side, he might just stand a chance. Assuming he could get his growing attraction under control.
Tarrys had risked her freedom to come after him. She threw her heart into everything she did. Everything he knew about her told him the woman didn’t do casual. Neither did he when it concerned his missions. But when it came to relationships? He didn’t do serious.
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