Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince (4 page)

“
Only ducts and
engineering passageways,” he said without thinking and her thermal
image frowned at him. His gaze slid down to her chest and he
watched her heart pounding. It was beating faster than he had
thought it would. As he watched it, it picked up speed. Her body
temperature rose. He smiled inside, amused at this reaction to his
staring, and then switched off the implants and looked away from
her. It was wrong of him to stare, even if she was the most
fascinating creature he had ever met.

“
Ducts? You can
see the ducts?”

He nodded. “On ships this
size, they are wide enough for someone to crawl
through.”

“
How can you
see the ducts?”

She seemed more interested
in how he knew things than how they could help. He tapped the side
of his head.

“
I have ocular
implants, amongst other things.”

Her eyes widened and her
brows rose in surprise. “Implants? Like cybernetics?”

“
Far more
advanced than that.” He smiled at her. “Does Lyra not have such
things?”

Her jaw tensed and he
realised that she didn’t like it when he spoke about Lyra in a way
that made it sound less advanced than Vega or any species on this
side of the barrier.

She was even more
beautiful when she was angry.

His gaze ran over her
again, this time seeing her as she was. Dressed like a male in what
appeared to be a white shirt and brown trousers. It didn’t suit
her. He could imagine her dressed in the raiment of a female,
something flowing and soft, in subtle shades. With her hair down,
long black locks flowing over her pale creamy skin, she would be
stunning, more beautiful than any butterfly.

Tres frowned when her dark
gaze fell to her knees, a blush of colour caressing her cheeks.
When she raised her eyes again, she gave him a little smile that
sent a jolt of heat through him. Not actual temperature he realised
but something else. Unfamiliar feelings that made him desire to
touch her. Touch. He longed to feel her skin against his, to feel a
connection to something at last.

A noise in the corridor
startled him out of his perusal of her. His eyes shifted to the
door of the cellblock and then roamed back to her, unable to leave
her for any amount of time. He wanted to look at her forever. He
wanted to touch her. Not with gloves on. He needed to feel her soft
skin, needed to feel her warmth. He didn’t care if it was
forbidden. It only made him want it more. He wanted her to touch
him. He craved the feel of her fingers on him, hungered for her
touch.

The violence and strength
of that need surprised him. Never before had he wanted to be
touched. Never had he considered that he had been deprived all
these years by the law that forbade skin-to-skin contact with him.
He wondered what it would feel like to have her warm little hands
on him.

“
The guards are
coming. If they find you talking to me, you will be in trouble.” He
lay back down on his bench, frowning at the hardness of it, and
hoped that she would take the hint and be quiet for a
while.

She moved to the bench and
sat on it, still nursing her hand. She had been foolish to touch
the bars. He knew that some Lyran vessels had similar light
technology. Perhaps she didn’t travel on those kinds of military
vessels, or perhaps she hadn’t seen any cells in her time. A
delicate creature like her would probably want to stay away from
such areas.

Or perhaps a protective
male had kept her safe from them.

That thought sent a cold
spike into his heart.

One as beautiful as her
probably had a male.

The door opened, chasing
away his thoughts. He sensed her stiffen when the guards passed her
cell. They stopped at his.

“
It is cold in
here,” he said, casual and with a smile.

“
We have orders
to maintain this temperature and inquire whether you will eat
now?”

Tres shook his head. “I
will not. Perhaps your other guest will.”

The two male Vegans looked
over their shoulders in the direction of the woman. They grinned
and then the smile fell off their faces when they looked back at
him. He frowned at them.

“
We have orders
to starve her, at least until Lyra sends a party to
negotiate.”

“
Negotiate?” he
said and then bit his tongue to stop himself from saying anything
more. Angering the commander of this ship wasn’t wise. He had
proven himself to be quite ruthless and a male who followed the
rules to the letter. The moment the commander had caught him, he
had thrown him in the cells and done everything required to stop
him escaping.

“
If you try to
ransom me it will be a direction violation of the treaty! You will
be starting a war with Lyra,” the female said.

The two guards laughed and
moved to the female’s cell. She should have kept her mouth shut.
Vegan military officers hated all things Lyran, regardless of how
beautiful they appeared to be.

“
It’s none of
your business. Just wait there for someone to come and get
you.”

“
Wait,” she
said as they started to leave and got to her feet. “My
brother.”

“
What about
him?” The first guard glared at her, his yellow eyes intent on her
face.

“
Is he
alive?”

The guard hesitated and
looked over at him. Tres held his gaze. The man looked back at her
and nodded.

“
He is stable.
He will be ransomed with you.”

She went to speak and then
stopped, as though she had got the better of herself at last. They
had answered one of her questions. It wasn’t wise to ask any
more.

The guards left and she
moved back to the blue energy bars near his cell.

“
Do you believe
them?” she said and he nodded. The officers of this ship would
ensure her brother’s survival. They stood to gain a large amount of
currency from ransoming them, but only if her brother were
alive.

“
Your family
must know that you travel together and that you would never enter
the Black Zone without reason. Therefore, they would know that you
would have been taken together. If they only have you to ransom,
Lyra would enquire after your brother. If they discover he is dead,
they will not pay the Vegans anything. They will
attack.”

She flinched at that last
word and he could see she didn’t want that to happen.

Tres sat up and pulled the
blanket around him, muttering to himself about the guards and their
orders to keep the cells at such a horrible temperature.

“
Are you cold?”
she said again and when his eyes met hers, he saw a hint of concern
in them.

What kind of warm hearted
created was she that she cared about a male she had only just met?
None on this side of the barrier would care about someone they
hadn’t known for less than two standard Vegan years. He calculated
that in his head. By her species, she would’ve had to known him for
at least fourteen years to reach this level of concern.

He tugged at the collar of
the tight suit beneath his looser black clothes, pulling it up his
neck until it almost reached his jaw.

“
It is cold,”
Tres repeated but not in the same tone he had used before. This
time there was a hint of resignation in his voice that surprised
him. Perhaps it was because the guards had flatly refused his
attempts to raise the temperature.

“
What’s that
suit you’re wearing?” She moved close to the bars and peered at the
collar now visible above his clothes. “It looks like a flight suit.
Did they capture your ship too? I didn’t see another ship in the
cargo bay.”

Tres reached into the
pocket of his loose trousers and pulled out his one remaining
glove. He had lost the other to the commander of the ship. Proof of
capture he had called it. Sighing, Tres stared at the glove. In his
current state, there was no way that he could help the woman find
her brother and leave the ship.

His gaze roamed back to
her, studying her face as she looked at his hands. His heart beat
and then only a few minutes later beat again. He had never felt it
race like this, not even when he had been running. Hers was
thundering by the time her eyes met his again. His beat again. When
compared with hers, it was leisurely at best, but to him it was a
giddy fast beat.

“
It’s a thermal
suit,” he said and flexed his fingers while looking at his forearm.
His muscles shifted beneath the skintight material and the residual
heat they created was absorbed and used to warm his entire arm.
“The commander of this ship wanted to ensure I did not get it into
my head to escape so he broke it.”

Her eyebrows rose. “But
you need heat.”

“
He cares
little about such technicalities as that,” Tres said and slowly
stood. It took incredible effort to move his stiff limbs and
stretching was painful but rewarded him with a short burst of
heat.

She stared at him, silent
and pensive.

He wondered what she was
thinking behind her beautiful eyes and then remembered what he had
been thinking about before the guards had entered.

Her. Males.

Tres frowned at the door
to the cellblock and clenched his fists. The thought that she might
already belong to another male infuriated him and his heart beat
again, quickly followed by another. Two in as many minutes. If a
male had her, owned her, then he would fight that male for
her.

His eyes grew wide when he
realised what he was thinking and he looked down at her. She knelt
by the bars, her hands in her lap, her eyes round and dark as she
looked up at him. He would fight for her. On this side of the
barrier, such a fight would be to the death. If her male was large,
Tres could lose, but he would fight regardless. She had him
fascinated, a slave to her, enthralled by her beauty and her
frailty. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and protect her from the
darkness of the universe. He would protect her from
anything.

Anything.

“
What do your
kin call you?” he said and a flicker of shock crossed her face
followed by a crimson blush that stained her cheeks. Beautiful. He
had never seen a female react to him the way she did. He had never
seen a female react like her to anyone. Were all females like this
on the other side of the barrier? What was she like compared to
them—strong, weak, loving, tender, cruel? He wanted to know. He was
so tired of being trapped on this side of the barrier, surrounded
by darkness and loneliness.

“
Renie,” she
whispered, as though ashamed to tell him.

Perhaps not ashamed. She
cast her eyes downwards into her lap and twisted her fingers around
themselves. Embarrassed? Awkward? All new emotions to him. There
was none like her on this side of the barrier. Meeting her and
experiencing this wondrous array of feeling had only strengthened
his resolve to leave the Black Zone.

He moved to the bars and
knelt in front of her.

“
Tres,” he said
and slid his hand between the bars, holding it out in what he hoped
was a Lyran gesture of greeting. His knowledge of different
species’ formalities had all collided in his mind and become
tangled over the years.

She stared at his hand as
though it was going to attack her.

Perhaps he had been
wrong.

Her hand slid into
his.

Tres’s entire body jolted
and tensed, a sweep of tingles racing through him, fanning out from
the point where her skin touched his. She closed her fingers around
his hand, her soft skin brushing his, creating smaller waves of
pleasure with each tiny caress. His heart beat hard in his chest,
pounding in his ears as he stared into her eyes, absorbing the
divine feeling of her body against his. For a moment, he forgot
himself, lost in the feel of her hand in his, her gentle touch. He
had never been touched before, not skin on skin. It was forbidden
for anyone to touch him. As a child, those who’d had to touch him
had worn gloves, and since then he had always been wearing his
thermal suit when he had been touched.

Not that he had ever been
touched as intimately as this. Anything more intimate than touching
his arm or shoulder was forbidden also.

His fingers slowly closed,
clasping her hand, and he never wanted to let it go.

“
How do you
know a Terran form of greeting?”

His eyes had almost closed
when she voiced that question. They opened slowly and ambled over
her body and then her face to meet hers.

Terran. One of her species
then. To think the Vegans and Lyrans had almost destroyed the
species that had created her, a stunning dark rose, a flower so
delicate he wanted to hold her gently and savour her
scent.

“
Education,” he
said as an answer and reluctantly took his hand back, sliding it
carefully through the bars.

He could have held hers
forever.

His entire body felt warm
from just that brief touch but the heat quickly faded.