Page 20 of Rescued By the Luxirian

Chapter

Nine

DROXAN

“Storm is blowing in,” I informed Lyra. “We should wrap up.”

“It is?” she asked, her tone bewildered as she tilted her face up to the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud in sight. “Droxan, you’re joking.”

I chuffed out a laugh, something I found I’d been doing a lot that afternoon.

“I wish I was,” I murmured, hauling myself off the bannister, wiping my arm across my forehead, before swiping my tools against a spare rag. Lyra frowned when she saw me doing it because she’d primly informed me about an hour before that that washerjob.

My lips twitched and I stopped, deciding to clean the tools while she was sleeping before I incited her wrath.

When I stood, I stretched my back out, the muscles tight from being bent over the water catch tank all day. The last storm had been massive. I’d left a stack of terrace pavers against the wall and a gust of wind had catapulted them at the tank, nearly shredding the metal and severing the wiring, before they’d disappeared into the ravine below.

Ullima’s stormy season was here. Luckily, it didn’t last long but this would be the third storm this week. The season would stretch for another month or so and then the weather would calm as it got colder.

Lyra was watching me stretch. That charged energy suddenly crackled between us, energy that had nothing to do with the storm.

She was sitting back in a chair I’d procured for her, her legs crossed. My tunic she wore was stained in grease and oil from the machine and the tools. She’d become an expert on the different fittings I had in my tool set and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this…light.

The afternoon had been easy.

Easy and fun, even as I performed one of the more mundane tasks of my week. I’d rather haul up the water from the falls because it kept me moving instead of bent over the side of a wall, fiddling with the insides of a machine.

But with Lyra, I would gladly spend an eternity doing just that.

That afternoon had reminded me that I used to talk to people all the time. All day. Every day. Running my business on Luxiria, I’d been surrounded by people every moment. While I’d moved to Ullima to escape some of those people…it felt nice totalkagain. It felt nice to learn things about Lyra, to study the way her expressions lit up her face, or even watch her disapproving frown when I reached for a tool myself. It felt good to laugh again when she swatted my hand away. It felt good to tease her, to flirt, to watch that flush crawl up her neck when we held onto one another’s gazes for a little longer than necessary.

A grin stole over my face when her eyes dipped down my chest…though it slid off my face when they settled on the tent of my pants. Licking my lips, I tossed my tools next to her chair, crouching low as I slotted them back into place.

“That’s my job,” she said, just as I knew she would, her voice dropping low. Intimate even, as she smiled at me. “Organization, remember? One of my specialties.”

I’d smelled her arousal on and off throughout the day and it was definitelyonright now. This morning, I thought I’d been mistaken until I realized that the musky, sweet, tantalizing smell was all Lyra.For me. It filled me with masculine pride, making me want to puff out my chest and roar with satisfaction, to know that she was attracted to me.

Fear,too…because I knew it only brought me one step closer to claiming her for my own. Fear that I would grow too attached to her—my fated mate—and that I’d be left broken when she left.

If I thought I could fight the Instinct’s pull…that afternoon had proved how wrong I was. It was a battle I could see myself slowly losing throughout the course of the day. And still, I couldn’t find it in me to feel too terribly about it.

What I really wanted to do was sweep her up in my arms, bend her over the terrace wall, and claim my fated mate right there and then. As the storm rolled in, as rain lashed at our bodies, and wind stroked over us. It was unnatural for a Luxirian male to deny his Instinct what it truly craved, especially when it scented its fated mate’s arousal.

Would she want that? Would shelikethat? Would she moan as I sank into her, wet and slick and ready for me? Would she want me as crazed as she made me or would I have to gentle my touch?

We were both staring at one another again. A puff of air left my lips, wondering how much longer we’d do this.

I’d learned more about my mate that day. I’d learned about her life on Wero, why she’d moved there, what she liked about the colony—which wasa lot, much to my dismay. Because if she loved living there so much, why would she ever want to leave it?

She told me about her job, working for a textile merchant named Mr. Kee, though I’d never heard of him. A smaller operation, servicing the nearby outposts—though he had been known to travel between Quadrants—for market days and trader auctions. When I’d asked her if she liked her job, she’d told me, “It gives me everything I need and everything I want. There’s not a lot of job prospects for human females outside the Fourth Quadrant. Especially ones who live alone because I have to take my safety into account. So I’m lucky to have found this job. I have no complaints.”

Her words had filled me with restlessness, but also relief.

They told me that perhaps Wero wasn’t as safe as I’d originally thought.

They told me that Lyra didn’t have a male. Ahusbandor whatever humans called their chosen mates.

The two emotions completely clashed with one another. The need to keep her safe, the need to protect her while I worried over what would happen if she chose to leave Ullima, all while I wanted to bellow with satisfaction, knowing she had not claimed a male for her own.

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