DFF – Delicate Freakin Flower Read Online Mary B. Moore

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Insta-Love Tags Authors: Mary B. Moore Advertisement

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I ran a hand over my face, forcing myself to breathe, and then dropped into the chair closest to the window. I just needed a second—not to fall apart, but to remember. To find my footing again.

My gaze drifted to the opposite wall, unfocused, and before I could stop it, my mind took me somewhere else entirely.

The cabin.

Gabby’s laugh echoing off the walls as she burned the toast and tried to convince me it was intentional. Her bare feet tucked in my lap while she read a battered old book, half-asleep, barely turning the pages. The way she looked at me after I kissed her for the first time—like she didn’t quite believe she could have this but wanted it with everything she had.

I’d never met anyone like her. Sharp and stubborn. Kind in quiet, unthinking ways she didn’t even recognize. Half-wild, half-fire.

She hadn’t just walked into my life. She’d stormed in, knocked down the walls, and made herself at home in places I didn’t even know were empty.

And now she was out there, doing what she believed she had to do, even if it meant going down with the ship alone.

I closed my eyes and let the memory settle, heavy and grounding.

Then I stood. “Find that signal because I’m not losing her. Not now.”

Gabby

If this were a movie, I’d look incredible right now.

Even locked in a concrete room with crusted dust on the walls and a single flickering lightbulb, my hair would be effortlessly tousled, my makeup smoky but somehow still flawless. I’d be wearing the kind of artfully torn shirt that was designed to look sexy instead of tragic.

Instead, I probably looked like a skunk who’d just lost a fight with a leaf blower.

I ran my fingers through my hair, wincing when I hit a snarl that felt like it might need a pair of scissors to escape. There were probably better things to think about at this moment—like the fact I might be dead in a few hours—but now my brain was locked on the idea that, if I ever got out of this, I was enrolling in some kind of emergency beauty survival course. Hair, nails, skin—the works.

If I’m going to be kidnapped again, I want to at least look like a badass, not someone who crawled out of a ventilation shaft after three days of stress eating and sobbing.

I wandered toward the window if you could call it that. It was more like a narrow gap in the metal sheeting. Outside, the construction site buzzed with quiet movement. A couple of trucks rumbled across gravel, and one guy stood beside a pile of bricks, just kind of staring at them like he was waiting for them to stack themselves.

For a construction site, it was weirdly… aimless. Busy but directionless.

Was that normal? Did construction crews just mill around, waiting for the plot to move forward?

I narrowed my eyes at them, unease crawling just beneath the surface. Something about this felt off. Completely wrong, in fact.

Why wasn’t I being interrogated? Where were the threats, the demands, the pressure? I hadn’t been questioned or restrained. No one had tied me to a chair or screamed in my face. Weren't they meant to be doing things like that? And that was the part that made my skin itch.

There were no grand speeches, no dramatic reveals, and no one pacing the room while casually polishing a knife and laying out their evil plan, as if it were a Bond movie. There was just silence. Stillness. Waiting.

And that—more than anything—was what had me on edge. Because whatever they were stalling for, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it when it finally arrived.

Maybe that’s how it works when you’re not just kidnapped but inconvenient. Maybe when someone like Maddox decides you’re a problem, the solution isn’t dramatic—it’s clinical. Cold, like deleting a file.

I paced back to the center of the room, chewing the inside of my cheek.

And then the door creaked open.

I spun, half-expecting another meathead with a smug grin and a threat. What I got instead made my brain stutter.

An older woman stood there. White hair pulled into a neat bun, cardigan buttoned all the way up. Her long skirt swished around her ankles as she hobbled into the room with a tray balanced carefully in her hands. If I hadn’t been staring directly at her, I would’ve thought someone was messing with me. She looked like she should’ve been feeding birds on a park bench or knitting a scarf for someone who never wore scarves. Then again, who wore scarves in Orlando?

“Time for something to eat,” she said gently as if she were delivering tea and cookies to a guest in her sitting room, not feeding a hostage.

I stepped back, my eyes locked on the tray.

Ham sandwich. Bottle of water. A small bag of chips.


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