Chapter 11 Lyra #2
The gentleness of his hands as he cleans my shoulder catches me by surprise.
I sense he’s straining at the end of some kind of tether, but the hold he has on himself is powerful.
I envy him that. I’ve spent too much of my life being a slave to my emotions, barreling headlong into actions without considering the possible fallout.
I don’t have the strength to delay gratification or savor my moments.
Sometimes, I feel like my days are an endless conveyer belt of pleasures tumbling into a black hole inside me.
The sting of antiseptic shocks me out of my melancholy and I hiss.
“Sorry,” he says. “I should’ve warned you.”
I try to shrug it off and focus on the physical pain to distract myself from my emotional turmoil.
“I suppose that’s fair,” I return. Guilt eats at me, corroding my confidence like acid through metal. “I’m sorry about Fobos. About everything.”
He grunts, but I don’t know if that means he forgives me or not.
“You need stitches,” he says. “I don’t suppose you have a nanopatch in here, do you?”
“Yeah, should be in the drawer over there,” I reply, pointing across the room. Orion’s gaze immediately snaps to my bared breasts and he lurches forward reflexively.
I flinch and draw back, covering myself with my good arm. Embarrassment colors his cheeks a fetching shade of pink.
“Sorry,” we both say at the same time. I chuckle, but he just shakes himself and strides over to the drawer. He grabs a slim metal box and comes back to sit in front of me, tugging his necktie loose and letting it hang down his shirt. The movement is unbearably erotic.
He peels the backing off the nanopatch and presses the small blue button to charge it up.
“Have you ever used one of these before?” he asks. “They can be a little painful if you’re not expecting it.”
I nod. “Yep. Nothing a couple painkillers won’t fix. Go ahead and slap it on, Ranger, and let the nano bots get to work.”
“Deep breath,” he says, and presses the patch over the wound.
The initial sting makes me grit my teeth, but I take the pills Orion proffers and down them with a swig of water.
In a few hours, the nano bots will finish repairing the worst of the tissue damage, and I’ll be none the worse for wear—minus another cool scar to tell no one about.
Reluctantly, I drag my shirt back over my head.
Orion cleans up the bloodied bandages and opens a fresh package of antiseptic wipes.
“For your face,” he says, pointing to the cut on my eyebrow above the eye I can already feel swelling shut.
That bastard enforcer sucker punched me good when I tried to take him down to get to Orion, but I would have fought my way through a thousand Void Stalkers and Brill himself to get to him in time.
It’s useless to deny the panic and anxiety I felt when my grenade had first malfunctioned and I could only listen as Fobos pulled his gun on Orion.
Dread had sent me to a dark place, making my vellia spike out of control on the casino floor. It was too bad the enforcer had been immune to me—a thought I heartily echo as Orion swipes the stinging antiseptic pad across my eyebrow.
“Fucking stars,” I swear. “You’d think by now someone would’ve been able to invent a wound cleaner that didn’t hurt like hell.”
He grunts in assent. I look up at him, his posture still rigid but beginning to soften around the edges. Are the effects of the vellia beginning to ebb?
His gaze drops to my lips and my tongue darts out to lick them reflexively. I taste blood and feel the pricking of pain from the cut on my lip. I forgot about that one.
“I should clean that one, too,” he says as he leans in, his low voice barely above a whisper.
I stare at his mouth, the way his full lips part in invitation.
Stars, I want him. Even as I lust after this dark approximation of the ranger, something in me wants to bring back the old version—the honorable, upright, stalwart, pain-in-the-ass threat to my freedom.
But I know if I kiss him, if I take him to bed, I’ll be taking more from him than he wants to give.
I’d ruin him—and worse—something in me knows it would ruin me, too.
Then again, perhaps I’m already ruined.
“Does it look bad?” I ask quietly.
“No,” he murmurs. “But I hate that you were hurt at all. If I’d taken out Fobos earlier, like you suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t strike me as the ‘take him out’ type,” I say with a wry chuckle. “So you’re forgiven.”
“I told you before—I don’t relish taking lives. That doesn’t mean I haven’t, or that I won’t. Especially if something I care about is threatened,” he says.
Can he hear my heart hammering against my ribs? Mouth suddenly dry, I clear my throat and fight the blush heating my cheeks. “That’s the vellia talking.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I scoff and his intense gaze bores into mine.
“Yes, your vellia wants me to claim you—to throw you onto this floor, strip you bare, and fuck you with a desperation that staggers me, but I’m aware enough to know that I don’t need your vellia in my blood to want you to be safe.
To want you protected. To want you happy.
” He swallows and stands, crossing to the worktable with his back to me, head hung in defeat. “To want you, full stop.”
I suck in a breath and let his words wash over me. For once, no smart retort jumps off my tongue. My heartbeat stutters—the only part of me that isn’t frozen by panic and fear. I don’t believe him, of course, despite the hopeless longing his words kick up.
“I’m sorry, Orion,” I whisper, humiliating tears pricking behind my eyes.
“I just can’t believe that. I know you’re susceptible to my vellia.
That’s what this is. You just think those things because that’s what happens—it’s desire and confusion and frustration because we’re always at each other’s throats.
It’s not real. It never is.” Admitting that out loud guts me, and a tear spills down my cheek.
He whips around—his eyes back to their vibrant, sea-glass green, but the intensity still swirls in them. He stalks toward me.
“I don’t think you believe that,” he says. “That whatever this is between us is just chemical.”
“Yes, I do,” I whisper, another tear falling.
“Then you’re lying to yourself,” he says.
“Oh, please,” I sniff. “This whole time you’ve been calling me a criminal and a liar, telling me you hate me, threatening to turn me in to the Feds, and now you want me to believe you’ve been fighting some secret battle against wanting me.”
“I already lost that battle. Wanting you was never a question. When it comes to trusting you, however, I’m afraid I’m still at a bit of a stalemate,” he says, one corner of his mouth lifting in a heartbreaking lopsided grin.
“Oh, and I’m just supposed to trust you not to tie me up again and hand me over to the Feds when you get what you want?
” I ask breathlessly, mesmerized by the flickering purple synesfores scattered down his neck and throat, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
My hands have a mind of their own and they reach up to slowly pull the tie from beneath his collar.
The heat in his expression cranks my lust up to volcanic levels, but I can’t ignore the disappointment at hearing he still doesn’t trust me.
“I never said I wouldn’t tie you up again,” he says, his deep voice rumbling through my chest. “But it won’t be to give you to the Feds.”
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, all the reasons why I shouldn’t want this line up and sound off. I can’t trust him, we don’t want the same things, we’re too different. Neither of us can afford an entanglement longer than a few nights—not that I want that, anyway.
Liar.
The smart thing to do would be to walk away now, hightail it to Xylothia, and drop him off in that stars-forsaken jungle—with or without the idol, I haven’t decided.
But with his hand cupping my head, those deep emerald eyes fixed on my lips, and the firm length of his arousal pressing against my stomach, it strikes me that I’ve never really enjoyed doing the smart thing.
“You wouldn’t be saying this if you weren’t under the influence,” I argue, my last ditch effort to put a rational end to this.
“Maybe,” he murmurs. “Only one way to find out.”
“Oh?” We’re standing at a precipice—one I know will change everything between us, and probably damn us both.
“Kiss me and tell me it’s not real,” he challenges. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, another tear falling. “And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”
“Then let me prove it to you,” he says, threading his fingers through my hair and tilting my lips up to his. He pauses a breath away—allowing me the space to back out.
Like hell I will.
“Kisses can be dishonest, Ranger,” I say, slowly sliding my hands up to his neck.
“Then I’ll just have to kiss you honestly,” he answers, and pulls my lips to his.
The gentleness of the kiss belies the tension vibrating through his body. His soft lips caress mine in a reverent way, as if one sudden move from either of us will shatter the fragility of the moment.
As if reading my thoughts, Orion whispers: “It’s not the vellia, Lyra. I want you. Stars save me, I want you so badly I can’t think straight. I won’t deny it anymore.”
I lick the seam of his lips, silently begging him to open to me—to stop saying the words my traitorous heart longs for.
In one betraying instant, I fantasize about what it would be like to be with him, flitting around the galaxy with no worries and no responsibilities except to each other.
We could trust each other. We could love each other.
That’s not the life for you, Lyra, my mind argues. That’s not the life you deserve.