Sons of Lyra: Stranded Read Free

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