Page 18 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

I stare at her consideringly and am about to refuse when she juts her chin toward Khrint and Tenyt. “I want to see exactly what happens.”

Tenyt steps forward with an easy shrug. “Happy to demonstrate, Your Lordship.”

We all follow as he moves to his assigned cryocasket. While Tenyt connects the monitoring leads, Izzy peers at the stasis pod.

“It looks like a coffin,” she says.

“It’s a cryocasket,” I correct her.

“A glass one.”

I frown. “It’s a clear polymer-ceramic composite. And it’s transparent so as to allow any waking crew to more easily monitor anyone in cryo.”

She tilts her head to one side and stares at me, her mouth opening and closing several times before she manages to force words to come out.

“What is it?” Lara asks her.

The expression Izzy turns to her sister is incredulous. “Are you seriously telling me that some magical dude straight out of some weird-ass fairy tale wants me to take a bite of his drugged apple, so I’ll fall asleep in a glass coffin?”

Lara blinks a couple of times and then snickers. “Well, yeah. I guess so.”

“What then?” Izzy continues, waving her hands in the air. “Is he going to kiss me awake?”

Lara’s guilty gaze darts at me, and it’s suddenly obvious how Izzy deduced that I had seduced the elder girl into eating the stasis apple.

“I believe,” I say dryly, “I can safely promise never to kiss you.”

“Your Lordship,” Tenyt says nervously, “I’m ready for the demonstration.”

“Of course.” I wave at him to continue.

Tenyt climbs into his pod and retrieves his portion of stasis fruit from its container within. With a slight bow of his upperbody toward Izzy, he takes several bites, then slides the fruit back into its container, and lies back in the cryocasket.

His eyes flutter closed almost immediately, his body relaxing as the fruit’s sedative properties take effect.

Izzy approaches cautiously, studying the steady rise and fall of his chest and the peaceful expression on his face. She presses her hand against his chest—feeling for a heartbeat, I presume.

When she finally turns to speak to me, her voice is tight, and she glowers at me. “Fine. Where’s my...sleeping pod thing?”

I direct her to her cryocasket, and she heads toward it.

Then she pauses as she’s about to climb in. “You know I’m only doing this because I won’t leave Lara alone with you people, right?”

“I know,” I say softly.

As Khrint hooks Izzy up to the monitors, Lara turns that fierce glare on me, her eyes burning in a way that makes the ribbons I tied to her pulsate in time to the almost painful throbbing of my cock.

She waits until her sister is safely encased in the stasis pod before speaking. “And I’m only here because you have Izzy.”

It’s not true, of course. She’s also here because I won’t let her out of my sight. Not until the time comes for the sacrifice. But I nod anyway, trying to ignore how the ship suddenly feels too small, too intimate now the others are securing themselves in their pods. Soon it will be just us—Lara and me and the endless expanse of space.

At the thought, my breath hitches in my chest. How easy it would be to corner her against the bulkhead, to taste those defiant lips again. To press her back against the cold metal and make her forget everything but the feel of my hands on her skin, my mouth on hers, take my time exploring every inch of her until she’s gasping my name, begging for more...

What would it be like to have her come to me willingly? To feel her yield to me completely, without any barriers between us? To allow everyone in the ship to rest, unaware, as we…

But I can’t think that way. Can’t let myself imagine possibilities that will never exist. While we’re on our way back to Trasq, Lara will not be distracted from Izzy for long, not by anything other than cryosleep itself.

The sisters may express their protective instincts differently—Lara through fierce defiance, Izzy through wary calculation—but I can’t deny their shared loyalty.

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