9. Nyra #2
Draevik’s chest heaves under my palms. His hands on the wall tighten, his knuckles turning white as he grips the stone. He leans closer, his shadow swallowing me whole.
"You are mine." The delivery carries the dry, dangerous scrape of stone over stone, a warning delivered with a weight that suggests an inevitable collapse. "The mark does not tolerate distance. I will not have you wandering the spine like a stray, looking for doors that will never open for you."
"Then give me something real!" My heart thumps too hard, too fast. "Give me K-Seven.
Give me a viewport so I can see my ship.
Give me a reason to breathe that isn't just you hovering over me and feeding me spiced stew like I'm a pet!
I need more than a gold-plated cell, Draevik. I need my life back!"
I twist my hands in his shirt, pulling him down an inch closer.
Over the last two days, the small moments—the way he watched me eat, the way he let me sleep undisturbed while he worked—have softened the edges of my rage into something more volatile.
Something hungrier. I hate him, but I also hate the way my body reacts to him.
"Is that all I am to you?" My eyes search his. "A component? A biological necessity? A battery for your ship?"
His restraint cracks. I witness it in the way the light in his eyes suddenly blazes into a solid, brilliant red.
He lets go of the wall and grabs my waist, his large hands nearly meeting around the small of my back.
He hauls me up until my toes are barely touching the floor, crushing me against him.
The contact is electric. The mark heats up, a violent, white-hot flare that echoes through my entire body. Being this close to him, without the armor, is like standing in the heart of a sun. He’s so large, so impossibly solid, and the way his body molds to mine makes my head spin.
His breath is hot against my lips, smelling of the ship's ozone and his own raw, metallic heat.
"You are a disruption I cannot solve," he groans.
"I have spent centuries in the cold. I have forgotten what it is to feel a pulse other than the ship's.
And then you arrive—tiny, loud, and filled with a fire that threatens to consume my archives. "
My head falls back as his grip tightens. "Good. I hope I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you. I hope I make you feel as trapped as I am. I hope you can't sleep, thinking about how much you want to let me go and how much you can't."
He buries his face in the crook of my neck, his stubble grazing my sensitive skin.
A shiver races down my spine, a sudden lightning bolt of sensation that makes me gasp.
His hands are like brands on my hips, holding me with a possessiveness that should terrify me, but instead, it makes my blood sing a high, frantic note.
Over the last two days, the silence has been building to this.
Every meal he brought and every book he left served as mere wood for the fire.
"I should lock you in the stasis field." The statement carries a leaden, exhausted momentum, the sound arriving as a series of warm, dragging shadows that settle over my pulse. "I should strip those tools from your hands and seal you away where you can't hurt yourself or my ship."
My fingers slide up to the back of his neck, burying themselves in his dark hair. "I'd like to see you try." “Because you're addicted to the chaos, Draevik. You need the fire. You’ve been dead for a thousand years, and I’m the closest thing to life you have.”
He eases away, and our eyes lock again. The tension in the room is no longer about escape. It turns into something heavy, dark, and dangerously intimate. The alarms have stopped, replaced by a deep, relentless tone from the ship, echoing like a ritual chant.
His thumb brushes across my lower lip, a controlled, deliberate movement that stills my breath in my throat. His touch is surprisingly gentle for a man who could crush me with one hand.
"I hate how much you are right," he admits softly.
I feel the urge to reach up and trace the line of his jaw, but I keep my hands anchored at his neck, standing my ground. His beauty is almost painful to witness—all sharp angles and intense power. I hate him. I hate what he’s done to my life. I hate that he thinks he owns me.
"Then do something about it." My voice emerges as a mere breath, filling the air that lies from me to him. "Stop being a Commander for five seconds and be the man the mark thinks you are. Show me you're more than just an alien pilot for a dead machine. Show me what you're actually afraid of."
His grip on my waist turns punishingly tight, and for a second, I think he’s actually going to kiss me.
The scent of him presses in, paired with the mounting heat of the mark within me.
Draevik’s eyes drop to my mouth, his own lips parting as he draws in a sharp, halting breath.
The world outside this sanctum—the Harrow, the debt collectors, the Veln Expanse—it all fades to grey.
There is only this black stone room, the brilliant violet light, and the giant who has claimed me.
"Nyra," he groans, the name a prayer and a curse.
I lean in, my heart a drumbeat in the silence, waiting for the collision. I want to break him. I want to steal his control the way he stole my freedom.
The ship groans. A sudden, violent shudder ripples through the deck plating, throwing us both off balance. Draevik’s eyes snap to the ceiling, his internal sensors clearly screaming at him.
"The reactor," he realizes sharply, the intimacy shattering in an instant.
He sets me down, his hands lingering on my waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary before he pulls away. The cold air rushing past feels sharp. He turns toward his command console, his fingers already flying across the holographic interface.
"What happened?" I shout, stumbling back against the pillar.
"The feedback loop from your attempt at the door," he explains with that cold, clinical authority. "You’ve tripped a secondary surge in the core. It is a minor fracture in the ship's maintenance—one I will have to recalibrate—but you have proven yourself a disruption I cannot ignore."