Sons of Lyra: Stranded

Sons of Lyra:
Stranded

Captain Lyra
III is known for his vicious attitude and brilliance in battle.
Second youngest of the infamously passionate and handsome sons of
Lyra, he’s a born leader and doesn’t take no for an answer. Except
this time. Acer is facing a future that seems like a nightmare, a
future that has shaken him and made him realise that the one thing
he truly wanted in life may have just slipped through his grasp—his
engineer, Stella.

Stella fell for
Acer the moment she was transferred to his ship by his brother,
Captain Lyra II. A year on his ship and never being noticed by him
unless she’s done something wrong, she’s come to accept that she
won’t be the one to tame this prince’s passionate heart, but it
doesn’t make her feelings disappear and doesn’t stop her dreaming
that she might capture him yet.

Attacked en
route to Lyra Prime they find themselves stranded alone in the
middle of deep space and things reach boiling point when the
climate control breaks down. Trapped with only each other for
company, it’s not long before the truth comes out about their
feelings for each other and Acer’s reason for returning to Lyra
Prime.

When Stella
discovers Acer is duty bound to marry a woman of Lyran aristocracy,
she offers him a night to remember her by, but will it be enough or
will it cause them more pain than pleasure? Returning to Lyra
Prime, will Stella’s heart falter or will she rise to the challenge
and fight for Acer? Will Acer be able to find the strength to
forsake his family in the name of true love?

Sons of Lyra:
Stranded

Felicity
Heaton

Smashwords
Edition

Copyright 2008
by Felicity Heaton

All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the author, except for the
inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

****

Sons of Lyra:
Stranded

The engines droned into
silence. This time, the gravity drive went with them. Stella slowly
floated into mid-air in the access panel, still holding the wrench.
Her knees touched the entrance of the curved tunnel, stopping her
from going any higher. She wiped the sweat from her brow, desperate
for a drink and some sleep, and worried that they were going to be
stuck in deep space forever. It had been two days since the engines
had given up, leaving them adrift in the middle of nowhere. There
wasn’t even a shipping lane within fifty thousand leagues of them.
No one was answering the distress call.

Stella pushed off from the
ceiling of the tube and drifted out into the dark, hot engine room.
Turning, she waited for her feet to touch the opposite wall and
then kicked forwards, propelling herself back towards the engine
bay.

She pined for the
stretching blue skies and Gavaelian moons of Lyra Six, the
universe’s foremost pleasure planet. It had been a long overdue
break that she was now missing, knowing that her captain wouldn’t
give her the time off in lieu.

Her fingers locked around
the grab bar near the Gravi-Drive. She whacked the drive with the
wrench. It whined into life. Her feet slammed to the
floor.

Something in the distance
slammed too.

She cringed.

He had already been in a
foul enough mood after they’d been attacked by the Minervan
mercenary ship. It had been a miracle that they’d made it out alive
with such a skeleton crew to fly the ship—only her and the
captain.

Captain Lyra
III.

There was no denying any
part of his reputation—handsome, noble, a skilled captain, and a
vicious bastard.

Not that the last part
stopped every woman of mating age in the universe from trying to
tame him and his passionate heart. None had been successful. Not
even her.

She’d thought about it a
few times when she’d first come onboard his ship. She’d even gone
as far as unzipping her flight suit to expose a little cleavage now
and then. After a few weeks of not being noticed in the slightest,
she’d given up trying to get his attention, but she hadn’t given up
her feelings.

He strode into the room
and her eyes were immediately on him, scanning him from the feet up
as they always did. There really was no denying how handsome he
was. His athletic figure was only emphasised by the tight blue and
black flight suit that left nothing to the imagination. His
features were noble, with bowed lips, straight nose and dark hair,
but it wasn’t those that had made her heart race the moment she’d
met him.

It had been his stunning
aquamarine eyes. They made him the picture of Lyran perfection and
breeding. They made him a man any woman would want—even her. His
eyes held hers. Out of the four sons of Lyra, the royal bloodline,
he was the only one to have eyes like that.

He was the only one
unmarried.

Anger flashed in his
eyes.

Blood trickled down the
bridge of his nose.

There was a cut on his
forehead. He hadn’t had that when she’d last seen him this morning
on the bridge.

“
In the name of
Iskara, Engineer! How many times must I tell you to sound the
warning before re-instating the Gravi-Drive?” He wiped the blood
from his nose, smearing it across his forehead, and then pushed his
fingers through the black tendrils of hair on top of his head to
the shortness of the back.

She saluted. “Sorry,
sir.”

Apparently one more time.
She was so used to working on ancient freighters where the gravity
drive eased itself back into action much like everything else.
These new Achelon Class fighters had gravity drives that snapped
back on. She’d discovered that to her dismay over a year ago when
she’d been drafted to the Lyran Imperial Army. Back then, Captain
Lyra II had threatened to discharge her. In the end, he’d punished
her more severely. She’d been reassigned to the Nephis-Lyra, his
brother’s, Captain Lyra III’s, ship.

His eyes burned into
hers.

All she’d done since
arriving was piss him off. Never once had he threatened to
discharge her though. He’d shouted at her plenty of times and had
even personally thrown her in the brig once, but he’d never taken
it any further.

She wondered what he was
waiting for tonight. Normally by now he’d be across the room and
trying to make her ears bleed with the volume of his voice. He
leaned against the doorway.

The gravity drive
whined.

She smacked it again,
frustrated. Two days and she was beginning to think she was going
to spend the rest of her life stuck in space with just Captain Lyra
III. She wanted to be on Lyra Six, sunning herself and relaxing.
Well, she’d be on her back anyway.

“
Have you tried
sticking a posidriver in it?”

He held up a long
cylindrical tool. A dirty interpretation of his words drifted
across her mind. She swallowed. He walked across the room, steps
slow and measured, moving with the sensuality of a Lyran mountain
panther, and handed her the posidriver.

Her gaze fell to it and
then shot back to him when he unzipped the top of his flight suit,
peeling it apart and pulling it down his arms. He tied the arms
around his waist. Her stomach heated through at the sight of much
bare flesh and muscle. She stared at the posidriver in her hand,
wishing she was on Lyra Six right now, where men like him were
waiting to do her bidding.

He crouched down in front
of the boxy Gravi-Drive and the access tube for the engine. When he
turned and lay on his back, his head and shoulders disappearing
into the hole in the wall, she changed her mind.

Not men like
him.

No men were comparable to
the sons of Lyra.

She handed him all the
tools he asked for, her eyes never leaving his body. They studied
how his muscles shifted and tensed with each movement and the
steady build of a fine sheen of sweat as he tried to fix the
engine. If he was going to give her a free show like this, she
wasn’t going to waste it. She hoped he’d be down there a while. The
sight of him like this was driving her fatigue to the back of her
mind. There wasn’t room in her head for it and all the wicked
thoughts. She fanned herself with her hand as her temperature rose
and then unzipped her tight flight suit to just below her breasts
so the start of her low-cut white vest was showing. There was a
frustrated growl and the sound of a fist hitting
something.

“
Captain?”

Acer looked at the panel
above him and the flashing red warning light. He clenched his fist,
causing the dark blue leather of his gloves to creak, and hit it
again. The warning light went out. So did all the other lights on
the panel.

“
Cruskin
nyaaeso!” He cursed and hit it again for good measure.

“
Captain?” Her
voice became more concerned.

Nothing left now but to
confess. Perhaps he should’ve let her deal with it. He was sure she
would’ve fixed it in the end and he’d be on his way to Lyra Prime.
His family probably thought he wasn’t coming. He wished he
wasn’t.

“
I think the
climate system went down,” he said.

“
What?” Her
voice was louder now and full of disbelief.

He looked down the length
of his body to see her bent over and looking up at him. His lips
parted. His breath left him in a rush. His blood boiled. He could
see right down her flight suit, could see the luscious curves of
her breasts. His eyes shot back to the dead panel and then slowly
returned to her.

“
Do you want me
to come down there?”

She got down onto her
knees and then all fours. She was going to crawl into the tight
tunnel with him. Her breasts squashed together and her hand brushed
his thigh. He swallowed at the brief contact and then shook his
head. He slid out, stood and looked down at her where she knelt on
the floor.

His older brother was a
bastard for placing this siren under his protection. Balt had known
what he’d been doing when he’d transferred her for something as
petty as a gravity drive failure. Since setting eyes on her at the
port of Antilles, Acer hadn’t been able to get her out of his
thoughts.

She stared up with him
round brown eyes that gave her an innocent look and full blush lips
that commanded he kiss her. Her fingers combed though her
sweat-dampened long brown hair. He’d done that once. She’d been
unconscious in his arms at the time. It had been barely a month
ago, when they’d been attacked by the first Minervan mercenary
ship. He’d received the call from home shortly after that and had
selected one crew member to come with him to the Lyra system while
the others had shore leave.

He’d chosen
her.

It was too late
though.

It was only a matter of
time now before she discovered why he had to return to Lyra Prime
and before he lost her forever.

“
It’s getting
hot,” she said and unzipped her flight suit, pushing the arms off
so only a tight white vest covered her top half.

His eyes widened when she
stood and started tugging the blue suit down, revealing an even
tighter pair of little white shorts that hugged her hips. His
temperature shot to hotter than the Lyran sun and he couldn’t stop
his eyes from running down the length of her long slender legs. His
heart pounded.

By Iskara’s wings, she was
trying to kill him.

“
Engineer, what
do you think you are doing?”

She stepped out of her
boots and then the flight suit. “I need to get this engine working
and I can’t do it when I’m slowly boiling to death.”

He raked his gaze over her
again and swallowed hard.

He had to admit, it was
getting hot in the ship.

Her gaze skimmed up his
legs, lingered on his bare torso, and then met his eyes.

“
You should do
the same. You’ll boil if you don’t.” She gave him a small smile,
one that made him believe that she wanted him in just his
underwear.