Page 6 of Surrender
She lowered her head and was silent for a long moment before a sweetly spoken apology tumbled from her lips.
“I-I’m sorry for being disrespectful.” She paused, and her voice quavered when she continued. “Forgive me, but I-I, er, this is very new to me. Again, I am sorry.”
Merokk lifted her chin up, staring into her pretty blue eyes. “That’s better,” he said in a deep, raspy voice.
This tense interchange between them had caused his pulse to race and his cock to harden painfully inside his pants. He lifted her up gently and rested his hands on her shoulders. Her lips curled in a brief apologetic smile, but the conflict in her eyes remained. No doubt she was at odds with herself, and perhaps she had only apologized out of fear.
Her expressive eyes revealed all, and he imagined he would be able to read her thoughts with ease once they became better acquainted. And with their wedding hour fast approaching, that was exactly what Merokk planned to do.
“Come,” he said, grasping her hand. “Let us go for a walk, little one.”
Chapter 3
Fiona could scarcely believeshe was in Washington, DC pretending to be the First Daughter, of all people. The last forty-eight hours seemed unreal, particularly her brief meeting with President Carson, just before he escorted her to meet Merokk. Any moment now, she half-expected to wake up and find this was all a dream.
She peered at Merokk and tried not to admire his handsome masculine profile. She judged him to be over seven feet tall, like most Kall warriors. His dark red skin gleamed in the sun, and his black, short-cropped hair held a few touches of white, giving him a distinguished look. He possessed a strong, square jaw and a long nose that appeared as though it had been broken several times. A thin scar traveled down the side of his face and neck, which only made him look more intimidating.
Whenever she glanced at the tall, muscular alien, small quivers rushed through her. He was her fiancé. World leaders had signed the treaty that listed all the Kall-human arranged marriages, hers among them.
Except it wasn’t really her place to marry Merokk.
Her throat went dry and she worried what might happen if the huge alien ever learned the truth about her identity.
She would have to be very, very careful.
For her own sake, as well as her mother’s.
Dread, and even a small amount of guilt, ate away at her until she felt queasy.
For the past few hours, she’d walked the White House grounds attached to Merokk’s arm. He’d asked her many questions about herself, which she’d done her best to answer, though in an effort to keep herself from slipping up, she always countered one of his questions with at least three of her own. Fortunately, this method worked, particularly when she forced a note of interest into her voice.
During their long walk, he was perfectly friendly and treated her with more warmth than he had during their initial meeting, frequently smiling at her or giving her hand an affectionate squeeze as he spoke.
She got the sense that he wanted her to understand him better, that perhaps if she knew more about him, she might feel more comfortable in his presence. But learning more about him didn’t ease her fears over the prospect of marrying him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He touched upon his life on the Kall homeworld but glossed over the wars that had torn him away from the planet on occasion. He’d been in charge of training the units of Kall warriors in his district, and his life experience traveling to other worlds overwhelmed Fiona with a sense of inadequacy.
She’d barely left New York—well, except she had.
As Betsy Carson.
Betsy had led a full, galaxy-trotting life, a life Fiona was now forced to pretend was her own. An aide of President Carson’s had spent hours teaching Fiona all about the First Daughter. Her head was still spinning from the history lesson. She hoped she didn’t forget about anything important.
As Merokk continued to entertain her with a story about his two oldest brothers, remorse pushed its way into her consciousness. Why she felt guilty over lying to him, she wasn’t quite certain. Given that he’d killed many of her people, she ought not feel an ounce of guilt over what she was doing. Part of her wished Merokk was cold and cruel, then she would have more reason to hate him, more reason not to care that she was deceiving him, that she was using him.
She hadn’t imagined how difficult it would be to pretend she was another person, and the wedding was tomorrow at noon. Her stomach flipped.
Marriage.
Before the war, a medicated Janie had teased her about finding a good man and settling down. But Fiona’s romantic interludes had been few and far between, and none of them ever lasted more than a few weeks.
She had perpetual cold feet.
Each time she realized a relationship was growing too serious, she withdrew emotionally and let it fall to ruins. The truth was, the prospect of marriage scared her. She knew all too well that people could change, and often not for the better. What had happened with her parents was the perfect example of a once happy marriage turned sour.
Her parents had seemed blissful, in love, and her childhood had been a happy one. But when Janie experienced the first symptoms of dementia, Fiona’s father couldn’t handle the strain it put on their marriage. The man she’d thought the world of transformed into a drunkard who cared little for his wife and daughter. He left the year Fiona graduated from high school, and she’d angrily cut him out of her life.
She still had no room in her heart for forgiveness.
