Page 47 of Phoenix's Last Heist
Mine, my body insists. If Lyra and I were to have sex again, the nodes would swell with the effort to knot her and get her pregnant. It would be sex with a mate—my mate. Until then, my body will do its level best to encourage me to take her as many times, as many ways as possible.I need to tell her.
Panic claws at me, but I don’t want to confront it yet. I know it’s wrong—this is all a mess—but I allow the wave of tenderness I’ve been holding at bay pull me under. I know she isn’t mine. Iknow I’ll have to let her go. I know all the reasons we can’t be—they’re practically infinite. But for tonight…just for tonight, I can pretend this is us. This is it.
Exhausted by the spirited fucking and the draining events of the day, sleep soon tugs at my senses.
“Orion?” Lyra’s soft voice comes to me almost like a dream.
“Mm?”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I wonder if I dreamt her question. But then, after I hear her take a steadying breath, she continues.
“This wasn’t from thevellia, was it?”
The uncertainty and fear in her voice fractures something deep within me. After all this, she still doesn’t believe I want her for her. The honesty of her sadness—of her acute loneliness—devastates me. Pulling her in until there isn’t a breath of space between us, I sigh and kiss her forehead.
“No, Lyra,” I answer. “It wasn’t.”
It takes a few minutes, but I feel her relax against me, as if she’s been holding onto something and finally lets it go. In that moment, I feel her vulnerability. Her trust. It’s a gift more precious than everything locked in Fobos’s vault—more precious than all the enaurium in the universe—more precious than even the Solar Mother itself. And I swear to all the gods in all the galaxies that I’ll never take that for granted—even if, for her, it only goes as far as this bed, as far as tonight. With horrifying certainty, I know there will never be anyone else. I will go to my grave and meet the Death Goddess loving Lyra Phoenix.
I’ll tell her about the Dark Star.
I’ll tell her everything.
At some pointin the night, I wake to a shuddering rumble and the soft pulse of crimson light. Lyra sleeps against me, curled into my side with one leg draped over mine. I breathe in the scent of her hair, revel in the softness of her skin against mine, and a deep peace blankets us.Lyra stirs and flings her arm across my chest, mumbling unintelligible words into the mattress.
“Ada, what’s going on?” I ask softly. “What’s that noise? Why are the warning lights on?”
My scanners have picked up a ship closing in. Estimated time of contact: five minutes.
“A ship?” I sit up in bed, shaking Lyra awake. “Lyra, wake up! We’ve got someone on our tail.”
She sits bolt upright and glares at the blinking warning lights.
“Fuck! Ada, who is it? Is it someone we know?”
She crawls over me in a mad dash for her clothes, yanking a tank top over her bare breasts and hiking up her underwear. Before I can toss a pair of pants at her, she rushes through the door, running for the cockpit on bare feet.
Yes. I’m afraid it’s theEdax Deorum.Preliminary scans indicate a full crew within.
The satisfying post-sex blush on Lyra’s cheeks disappears behind a new, sickly pallor, waking that misguided protective instinct deep within me.
“Who’s on theEdax Deorum, Lyra?” I demand, surprised to hear the growl in my voice.
Lyra ignores my question in favor of shouting at Ada.
“Well, why didn’t you wake me up earlier? The purpose of a proximity alarm is to—you know—alarm.”
I didn’t want to disturb you until it became strictly necessary. The level of oxytocin you were producing suggested...
“That’s enough, Ada, thank you,” Lyra snaps.
I tug on my pants and barrel after her into the cockpit. At her pale visage, I start to strap into the navigation seat, but she stops me.
“Can you shoot?” she asks, flipping switches and engaging a secondary holographic screen that I haven’t seen her use before.
“I’ve never fired from a ship,” I admit, panic making my palms shaky and damp with sweat. “But I’m good enough with a plasma rifle.”
She winces, but tugs me into the seat on her left side.
