Sons of Lyra: Stranded (2 page)

It was a cruel temptation.
Perhaps he should’ve told her why he had to return home. Maybe then
she wouldn’t have stripped off. If she knew it was as hopeless as
he did, she wouldn’t be sending out such signals.

He wasn’t a prude though,
and this was no time to back down from a challenge. If she was
brave enough to get down to her underwear to avoid heatstroke, then
so was he.

A glance at the
temperature reading on the large display screens to the right of
Stella revealed that it had already hit thirty degrees Celsius
throughout the ship, and it was steadily climbing.

He untangled the arms of
his flight suit and then unzipped the rest of it. Pushing it down
his legs, he couldn’t stop his gaze from straying to hers. What he
wouldn’t give to have had her like this a few months back when he
could act on it, when he could have had those beautiful slender
legs wrapped around his waist and her screaming his
name.

Kicking his boots off, he
peeled the suit off over his feet and then straightened. He looked
at her, watching her drink her fill of his body and fighting the
urges sweeping through him. Wearing nothing but his white trunks,
it was no time to get those kinds of urges. She’d know the second
his body began to respond and then it would be game
over.

Damn his
brother.

Damn himself too for not
acting on his hunger and feelings for her when he’d had the
chance.

He’d give anything to
brush his fingers over her arms, across her stomach, and feel her
silken skin. He’d give up everything if he could kiss
her.

Everything.

There wasn’t anything he
wouldn’t swap for just one moment with her.

Unable to bear torturing
himself any longer with what could have been, he walked to the
door.

“
Continue work
as long as you can,” he said without looking back at her. “I need
to return to the bridge.”

He walked out of the door
before she could respond. She wouldn’t notice his change in
attitude or feeling. To her, he’d appear to be the same abrupt and
demanding captain he’d always been. He’d be the man in his
reputation, not the one he wanted to be with her.

The corridors of the ship
were quiet. He could sense the temperature had risen by another
couple of degrees. The air was becoming close, stifling. It would
only be another quarter of an hour before it was too hot in the
engine room for Stella to work.

The doors to the bridge
slid open as he approached and he walked in and down the semicircle
of steps that led to the pilot and co-pilot’s chairs. He looked out
into the darkness pricked with distant stars. He couldn’t leave it
any longer.

Clenching his fists, he
slumped into the pilot’s chair. He shook his head when he looked
down at himself. He’d never thought he’d ever be walking around his
ship in only his underwear.

Sitting forwards, he
looked down at the controls and then out at the darkness again. He
moved his hand forwards, his finger hovering over the button. He
couldn’t leave it any longer. He had to send the distress
call.

He’d told her when the
engines had given up their fight to keep going that he’d set the
emergency beacon going. He’d lied.

He’d rather be here than
on Lyra Prime.

Now it was getting too hot
and the situation was getting too dangerous. He couldn’t risk
Stella out of selfishness any longer. He had to send out the call
for help and ensure she was safe, no matter what the cost was to
him.

Taking one last, longing
look at the freedom of deep space, he breathed a long sigh and told
himself that it was only a matter of time now. This close to the
Lyra system, it wouldn’t be long before someone picked up the
distress call and came for them.

He pressed the button and
sealed his fate.

With a heavy heart, he
walked back through the ship. He removed his gloves and let them
drop to the floor halfway along the corridor between the bridge and
the engine room. He skimmed his fingers over the dark metal walls,
following the dotted line of lights that shone up from either side
of the walkway. His eyes fixed on the engine room door as it came
into view.

If only she
knew.

She’d given him looks when
she’d first come onboard, ones full of meaning and easy to
interpret. She knew his reputation and she wanted to be the one to
catch him, to tame him and claim his heart for her own. He wished
he’d let her rather than fighting the attraction. What could have
been something beautiful now brought him nothing but pain. It hurt
to even think that now nothing could happen between them, no matter
how badly they wanted it.

He turned down a side
corridor and away from the engine room. The temperature was rising
again. He wished the climate control had broken on a downswing not
an upswing. He could handle the freezing cold far better than this
stifling heat.

Ahead of him, the mess
room doors opened to greet him. He went straight to the
refrigerator units and took out two bottles of water. The cold
against his skin was divine. If they had enough supplies, he’d
bathe in them. Maybe once he could’ve convinced her to bathe with
him. Not now though. He’d wrecked any chance of that.

He laughed at himself and
left the mess room. A man well known for his vicious attitude and
confidence had been too frightened of rejection to ask the most
beautiful woman in the universe to be his. His parents would have
frowned on it, his desire to marry a woman outside decent Lyran
society, an engineer on his ship no less. He supposed they’d be
happy now they were getting what they wanted—one of their sons
married to Lyran aristocracy.

He wasn’t.

The door to the engine
room slid open and he stepped inside. She was on her back, her
knees bent and the top half of her body hidden inside the tube. He
padded quietly over to her, hoping not to disturb her so he could
observe her and remember how good she looked in little
clothing.

“
I can’t fix
it!” There was a clang of metal on metal and then she slid out from
the tube.

She lay on her back
staring up at him.

She’d tied her dark hair
back and her white top was damp with sweat around the edges. He
held one of the bottles of water out to her. She got to her feet
and took it from him, gulping half the contents down in one
go.

“
It’s too hot,”
she said and wiped the sweat from her brow.

He glanced at the
temperature reading. Thirty-seven degrees Celsius.

At this rate, they’d be
dead before anyone found them.

He sipped his water,
trying to think of a solution. There had to be a way to save Stella
from this heat. Pain wracked his heart at the thought of her dying.
He’d never let anything bad happen to her. Never. Nothing in this
universe, not even his future wife, could stop him from protecting
her or change his feelings towards her.

Stella gulped half the
remains of her water, desperate for its coolness. It did nothing to
lower her temperature. Seeing her captain in just his underwear
wasn’t helping. She swore that the second he was out of sight, her
temperature had dropped by five degrees.

He was staring at her but
she didn’t look at him. She liked the feel of his eyes on her,
trailing fire over her body and making her burn for him. If she
looked at him, he was likely to look away. She hadn’t realised
before today, but he watched her if she didn’t pay attention to
him. Was he scared of looking at her when she was looking at
him?

“
I suggest we
go to the cryo-sleep chamber. The temperature may be cooler there
if we open the pods.” His voice was liquid fire, seeping into her
veins and stirring ideas that would only make her
hotter.

She nodded and swigged her
water, hoping it would cool her down.

He walked from the room
and she followed him, her eyes roaming the strong muscles of his
back, sculpted to perfection. His buttocks shifted as he walked and
dimpled. He had a cute backside, and those legs were to die for.
Long, muscled and strong, she wanted to touch every inch of them
and gradually work her way up. She wished he was facing her again.
There was nothing as spectacular as the sight of his torso or his
body in the tiny tight trunks.

All too quickly, he came
to a halt in front of the cryo-sleep chamber. The door swished open
and she followed him in. It was as hot and stuffy in the room as it
had been in the rest of the ship.

She stood in the middle of
the room and looked around her. He went to one of the glass and
white metal pods and opened it. A cool breeze touched her skin,
pleasant and refreshing. She went to the pod on the opposite side
of the room to the one he’d opened and pressed the button. It
whooshed open. Chill air washed over her skin. It was
wonderful.

She remained there,
enjoying the cool air and how refreshing it was. She didn’t even
move when it turned colder, freezing her skin. His hand came to
rest on her shoulder. She moved now, turning to look at him. There
was fire in his eyes and they burned her as he looked her over. Her
nipples hardened into peaks that pushed against the tight material
of her white vest. She blamed the cold.

Looking into his eyes,
with his hand resting on her shoulder, she felt connected to him.
Her body was aflame where he was touching her, his fingers lightly
grazing her skin. She couldn’t believe she was standing alone with
him in only her underwear. Something surfaced in his eyes that she
couldn’t read and his expression altered for a brief moment before
returning to normal. What had he been thinking in there? Was it
about her? Was it about them? She laughed internally at herself for
being so ridiculous. He was miles out of her league. Her
imagination was playing tricks.

His hand trailed off her,
leaving her feeling bereft. Her gaze followed him as he crossed the
room. It slid over his back muscles again, slowly falling to his
shorts. The tight white material really left even less to the
imagination than his flight suit did, if that was
possible.

He turned to face her when
he reached the benches near the shuttered window. His physique was
stunning, better than any she’d seen in the brochures of Lyra Six
or imagined in her fantasies. Her eyes delighted in following the
lines of his muscles, over his smooth defined chest to his taut
abdominal muscles, and then onwards to the point where they ended
and the shaping around his hips led her eyes down to his
shorts.

She swallowed, burning
up.

“
Take a seat,”
he said in a voice so husky it startled her out of her
reverie.

She sat down on the bench
opposite the one he was near. He opened the screen across the
window to reveal the never-ending darkness of deep space. In the
distance she could see the spiralling arms of the closest
galaxy.

“
It’s
beautiful,” she said.

He sat on the bench and
she knew his eyes were on her again.

“
I never get to
see it where I work,” she said, feeling the need to
explain.

He was looking out of the
window at the galaxy when her gaze slid across to him.

He was beautiful. He was
more breathtaking than that galaxy or anything she’d ever seen in
her life. He made her glad she’d been drafted. The idea that she
might have spent her whole life never seeing such a man, only
seeing the grimy dark engine rooms of half-dead freighters and the
dusty space ports of the outer colonies, made her ache and made her
happy to serve her galaxy’s leaders.

“
It’s the
reason I wanted to be a captain,” he said in a voice tinged with
sadness.

“
Your brother
is a captain also,” she said, wondering if he was so very different
to his brothers.

He smiled.

“
He is,” he
said and then whispered so quiet that she barely heard him, “he
sent me you, a real star, more beau—”

She frowned, her heart in
her mouth and her mind screaming out for him to finish his
sentence. Had she imagined it? Had he been on the brink of saying
that she was beautiful?

In the distance, the
gravity drive whined.

She grabbed her bench at
the same time as he grabbed his. There was a clunk, a shudder that
rocked the ship, and then she was drifting off the seat, only her
hands anchoring her.

She couldn’t look at him
so she pushed off and floated to the window. Shame filled her along
with embarrassment. What kind of engineer couldn’t fix an engine?
Granted they were low on parts and weapons fire had damaged it, but
she still should have been able to fix it.

“
Are we ever
going to get to Lyra Prime?” she said to the night.

“
I don’t mind
if we don’t.”

She looked over her
shoulder at him. He had his head hung forwards, staring at the
floor. A blind person could have seen he wasn’t happy. She’d
thought he’d be pleased to be returning home, to see his family and
the planet he’d grown up on again.

“
Why?” she
whispered, not confident enough to voice that question
clearly.