Page 19 of Bred

“There are many enjoyable things to experience on this ship,” Shank says. “If you spend less time trying to destroy it, and more time availing yourself of them, your time here does not need to be unpleasant. Many of us call this place home.”

I nod and eat. I’m not going to argue with Shank, or explain why it’s important for me to get to my real home. I’m going to take this reprieve from being in trouble and I’m going to make the most of it. These fries are better than a week’s worth of so-called nutritional supplements.

The fries are perfection themselves and they hold my complete attention until someone catches my eye. I say catches. I mean, someone grabs my gaze and pulls it to them and rubs it up and down their perfect body.

“Who is that?”

“That is Luca.”

Luca is one of the most attractive creatures I’ve ever seen. He has perfect facial ratios, a wide smile, a straight, well-proportioned nose, narrowed eyes that smolder at me even with the most casual glance. He’s not as tall as Talon, and almost nobody is as tall as Shank, but he’s still a great deal larger than I am.

Talon is almost always armored. Shank wears his formal disciplinarian attire, but Luca is wearing, well, there’s no way to say it—underwear. A tight black pair of near bikini-style pants holds a suggestive bulge, and the rest of his body is naked, allowing me to take in the muscular planes of flesh. Unlike the other aliens, he has no obvious strange features. No hard ridges, no extra arms, no out of this world hues. His skin is tanned dark, and he moves with an incredible stride that makes me physically react on a cellular level.

A moment after I see him, Luca spots me. His neutral expression is transformed by a smile that turns him from a solid ten out of ten to something beyond natural numbers. His smile is so bright, so handsome, so goddamn dimply and sexy and utterly perfect I feel something in my belly twist with unrequited longing.

How can I be needing someone this bad within moments of seeing them? I’ve heard of love at first sight, but this is more than that. This is a cascade of emotion and desire that completely overloads me and leaves me staring silently as he strolls up to me, his chest and abdominals gleaming.

“Hello,” he says, the word rolling off his tongue in a sexy accent. God, he even has an accent. I can’t say what the accent is. Greek? British? Australian? Some utterly fuckable combination of all three? “I’m Luca.”

“I’m Lyra.”

“What a beautiful name,” he says, deep brown eyes encapsulating me with warmth. This man is every movie star, every hero, every model, every kind of appealing man in the history of men all rolled up together.

“Thank you,” I blush.

“I wouldn’t have thought I’d meet a woman like yourself on this ship. How did you come to be here?”

“It was an accident.”

“So many things are,” he smiles sexily. “Some of the best things in life are accidents at first. Are you enjoying your time aboard?”

“It’s been interesting,” I smile. I am not mentioning to him, well, anything. I don’t know if I can remember anything that happened before I met him. My mind is drawing a complete blank on everything. I feel almost stoned.

“Here’s to interesting accidents,” he says, reaching over to the glass I was drinking out of and lifting it in a sexy toast before tipping it toward me for me to drink out of. I take a little sip, finding it tastes so much better now.

“Maybe I could take Lyra for a little walk,” he suggests to Shank.

I know Shank is never going to agree to that.

I’m outright shocked when Shank nods. “Have fun.”

Have fun? When has he ever wanted me to have fun? Fun has not been on the agenda since I was taken aboard the ship. I’m suspicious, but Luca is standing right there and I almost don’t care that something is obviously going on. There is a little voice at the back of my head warning me to be careful, but that’s been on high alert since I got here, and it is being drowned out by the screaming chorus of ancient desires ignited by Luca’s presence, and the opportunity to escape my disciplinarian’s presence.

Luca takes me by the hand and leads me from the mess hall. I am blushing with every step, tongue-tied, not knowing what to say or how to act around a man as handsome as him.

“Have you seen much of the ship yet?”

“I’ve seen... parts of it,” I say, deliberately avoiding discussion surrounding the entire sabotage incident. I don’t want Luca to know what’s been happening to me since I came on board, how much trouble I’ve been in.

“Let me show you a part I like the most,” he says, guiding me into an elevator capsule.

The space is tight. He turns so he’s standing facing me, our bodies no more than a few inches apart at any point. I can feel the heat from him, his hand large and warm around mine.

“You are truly exquisite,” he says, reaching out to tuck a strand of stray hair behind my ear. “Is it alright if I kiss you?”

Nobody has asked me permission to touch me on this vessel. They’ve handled me into position and they’ve done as they saw fit. It’s almost strange to be asked. I give a swift nod, he tips my face up gently and brushes his lips against mine. The soft kiss deepens and becomes even more intimate as our lips part and his tongue enters my mouth, gently exploring, my head spinning with desire as he stokes the latent arousal inside me to a burning fire.

His fingers are at the snaps of my suit, pulling them open one bit at a time, exposing my breasts to his warm human hand—of which he has only two. The other is firmly on my bottom, cupping me with a tender touch. His palm rubs over my nipple, which is hard as diamond. I am so fucking aroused, it’s madness.

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