Page 17 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

Izzy backs away as I approach with the stasis fruit. “Don’t you come near me.”

“You’ll need to eat it before we enter FTL,” I tell her, keeping my voice level.

“Like hell I will!” She slaps at my hand, and the fruit goes flying.

I catch it with my other hand, ice crystals forming along my fingers. “I had hoped to do this the easy way.”

“You can go to hell.”

“It will help you sleep through the journey.”

She laughs aloud. “So you want to drug me?”

I glance at Lara, remembering how she’d finally yielded to me that first journey. “Your sister was far more cooperative.”

“Eventually,” Lara mutters. Her hand drifts up toward her mouth and she runs her fingers across her bottom lip.

“Oh. Only because you basically seduced her into it,” Izzy snaps, and I see Lara flinch from the corner of my eye.

The truth of the accusation stings more than it should. I am what I must be to save my world. The fact that my desire for Lara is real changes nothing.

And in any case…

“You don’t know what happened,” I say.

“Are you kidding? I can tell just by looking at the two of you.” Her gaze flickers between us and she shakes her head a little wildly. “You pulled some weird frozen Satan-snake shit on her and convinced her to eat your apple. Well, that’s not gonna happen with me. Nope. No way.”

My ice power, depleted though it might be, skitters down my arm and to my fingertips, where it causes a snowflake-pattern to bloom across the surface of the stasis fruit.

It’s truly fortunate I acquired the elder sister first.

Lara’s fire burns hot, but she also possesses an underlying sweetness I never expected to find in a human.

This one, though—Izzy has thorns where her sister has flames. I wouldn’t have shown such patience with her defiance.

I reach for Izzy’s jaw, prepared to force-feed her the fruit, but Lara steps between us. “The fruit isn’t harmful—it’s just to help us through the wormhole jump. Like sleeping meds.”

“Why would we need drugs for space travel?” Izzy demands, though she stops trying to back away from me.

“Oh, my.” Cyan’s voice holds gleeful anticipation. “Shall I explain the effects of unprotected wormhole travel on the human nervous system? The hallucinations begin withinseconds, followed by extreme vestibular disruption. Most subjects experience the sensation of their internal organs being turned inside out while?—”

“That’s enough, Cyan,” I interrupt, though I notice Izzy has gone pale.

“I’ve had the fruit stuff twice now,” Lara says quietly. “Once when he first brought me to Trasq, and again when we came to get you. No side effects.”

Lara’s words make my lips curl into a smile I quickly suppress. Of course she would try to protect her sister, even if it means appearing to side with me.

Izzy spins to point at her sister. “Why are you helping him?”

“Because she knows what happens when you don’t cooperate,” I say, letting frost edge my tone. In the periphery of my vision, I catch Lara’s slight flinch, and I assume she’s remembering the hanging she witnessed early on—the punishment in front of my household.

Bitterness floods my mouth at the necessity of reminding her—but I can’t allow more than a year of careful conditioning to be undone.

Though it occurs to me almost immediately that she might be remembering the spanking she received at my own hand. As the thought flashes through my mind, I’m reminded of the feel of her ass under my hand—and that leads to the memory of Lara’s scent, her taste, surrounding me.

I quickly suppress a groan and tear my attention away from her, focusing it back on her sister.

Izzy’s jaw sets in a stubborn line I recognize from her sister. “Fine. But one of your men takes it first.”

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