Page 27 of Rescued By the Luxirian

“Boring,” I told him, in answer to his question.

He laughed, a sharp chuff at my neck. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true,” I sighed, finally feeling the drag of my eyelids going heavy whenever I blinked. We smelled of sex even though we’d never sealed the deal. But I’d come on Droxan’s tongue more times than I could count and I was very intimately acquainted with the feel of his cock in my mouth, all hot and velvety and I knewjustthe spot that had him spontaneously coming down my throat. I knew that he went insane when I wiggled my tongue there.

My jaw ached from his sheer girth but I didn’t care. My voice would be hoarse in the morning from all my sobbing cries of pleasure but all I did right then was give him a sleepy smile.

“I like my routines,” I said, my heart finally calming and I turned in his arms, feeling them wrap low, feeling the weight of hisstill hardcock pressing into my belly, but I’d long ago given up on trying to make him soften. Just because he was hard didn’t mean I didn’t satisfy him. “I like the predictability of it. And you? This place? Anything but predictable.”

“And why is that?” he wanted to know, finally ungluing his lips from my neck to peer into my eyes. My head was in the crook of his strong arm. His other was slung across my hip.

It struck me howcomfortableI felt with him.

As if we’d been hooking up for years. As if I hadn’t just crash landed onto his planet and into his life yesterday.

“Such a strange thing,” I whispered, putting off his question.

“What is?” he rumbled.

“To think I never knew you existed until yesterday.”

Those blue eyes gleamed. He went tense for a very brief moment. His lips opened. Then closed. His brow furrowed.

“The Fates rarely work in the way you think they will,” was what he finally said. Though I had the odd thought that he was going to say something else entirely.

The Fates. The Luxirians’ deities, I knew.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded me, running his dull claws up my spine, making me shiver.

“Does it matter?” I whispered.

“I want to know everything about you,luxiva,” he told me. “Is that such a bad thing?”

I sighed, snuggling closer. “Ilearnedto like routines. Maybe ‘like’ isn’t the right word. I think Ineededthem.” His expression was puzzled and I finally admitted, “I was orphaned young. I never knew my birth parents. And so growing up, I never had a stable home. I’d lived in four different places, in two different Quadrants, until I went to live with a family on Brune.”

He frowned, coming up to his elbow so he could look down at me, giving me his full attention while my head rolled onto a cushion. “I’m sorry, Lyra. I didn’t know.”

How could you?I thought silently.

“I didn’t have aterriblechildhood,” I told him, not expecting to talk about this tonight. Not one bit. “I consider myself lucky. I got placed with a human family and I lived there until I came of age. But we were never afamily, you know? We were a mishmash group of people. But living there was predictable. They were strict but they were never mean. I came to crave that dependability because nothing in my life had ever been dependable before, moving from place to place like that. It was exactly what I needed, at that time. And I guess…”

I chuffed out a small laugh, making him frown.

“I guess I’ve just lived that way ever since,” I said quietly, turning on him with a small smile. “Because if you met me on Wero, you’d think I was a stick in the mud.”

“A stick in the mud?” he repeated slowly, blinking as he processed my words. He shook his head. “Nix, I don’t think I’d ever think of you like that.”

“I wake up at the same time every day. I have the same thing for breakfast. I commute the same path, work the same job, talk with the same people, and then I come home,” I whispered, turning in his arms. There was a desperation rising in my chest as I listed off all these things, like check marks down a list. I realized I never left room in my structured life for anything but those check marks.

Except for a baby, I couldn’t help but think.

That was the only thing I allowed myself to want forme.

For a long time.

And the damn vacation cruise, I grumbled mentally, though right then, lying in the arms of a gorgeous Luxirian who literally made me see stars, I couldn’t feel all that bad about it.

“Sothiswoman?” I murmured to him, gesturing between us, like our naked bodies would show him what I was trying to highlight. “I don’t really recognize her.”

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