Page 29 of Chased by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #6)
Lyra
After sleeping for a few hours, I’d woken to a dawn crashing bold and bright across the horizon in front of us.
The colors had been so tempting that I’d rooted around the tiny space until I’d located the comm device.
It had fallen out of my pants when Solear took them off earlier so he could take care of my injuries.
I wanted to catch that sunrise on camera so I’d never forget it—and the way it made me feel.
Alive, safe. Like Solear and I were headed for a golden future, together.
He rumbled a growl as I searched, then pulled it free from between the seats with a huff and amusement dancing in his eyes.
“Well, excuse me,” I said, “I don’t have super senses like you do.
” I patted his muscular shoulder and traced a few scratches along the shiny black of his armor.
Then I snapped a picture of the sunrise gleaming orange against his face.
“You’re unfairly pretty after pulling an all-nighter.
” I poked at my own messy hair and was warmed by the rush of thoughts that tumbled abruptly into my brain—not words, but snapshots he’d taken of me, pieces of memory.
And in all of them, I glowed, looking like the most beautiful being I’d ever seen.
That wasn’t me thinking that; that was what Solear thought when he recalled those instances.
He particularly liked his memories of the wet shirt clinging to my boobs and turning almost entirely transparent.
But his favorite moment was watching me sleep, just after we’d first had sex—like he couldn’t get enough of me.
I was actually blushing at that; how could I not feel pretty when he looked at me that way?
“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay.” I kissed his cheek, then turned to finally take my shot of the rising sun.
It caught me by surprise when I discovered the edges of a continent in the distance.
Waves crashing onto pink and yellow shores, and more jagged mountain peaks rising in a craggy landscape.
Dotted with craters and rising mountains, green grass grew lush and verdantly over everything.
Or maybe it wasn’t grass so much as a type of moss. “We’re almost there?” I wondered.
“Yes,” Solear responded, and I smiled, starting to get used to hearing that response inside my head.
Since we were aboard this small ship, he hadn’t responded to my thoughts anymore, so I knew he was giving me privacy.
I appreciated that. But I liked being able to hear what he had to say more, anyway. “We’re almost there.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, gesturing at the landscape we were now flying over.
The layer of green on everything seemed thick and soft, lush.
We passed beautiful waterfalls and springs, and I shifted onto my knees on the seat, my coat abandoned and only my shirt brushing against my thighs.
With the comm in hand, I leaned against the window and snapped pictures.
Who knew—maybe I could sell them to some editorial or magazine out here?
“Your brother was meeting us in that city, right?” I vaguely recalled that being the agreement. Then, even more vaguely, something tickled at my brain, possibly inspired by the crater-like landscape around us. Something about time pressure, a rush for us to get to that port.
“Meteors,” Solear said grimly. I twisted against the window to look at him.
Oh, fuck, yeah, that’s what the captain had said in that last call.
Something about a meteor storm striking the planet.
I’d seen a few of them, but usually they were not a danger; the stones would burn up in a planet’s atmosphere.
When I eyed the large craters around us, the prospect of a meteor storm took on an entirely different meaning.
Those were huge holes. Was that what we could expect, and when?
“I’ve been adjusting our course, tweaking the autopilot with my twin while you slept, but we can’t outrun it.
” That sounded bleak, but when the first meteor struck not much later, it was just a small streak of flame and a distant crash.
The photographer in me could not resist, channeling worry into curiosity.
Raising the comm, I began to snap pictures of each strike and each hurling stone falling from the sky.
They weren’t big, and they were oddly beautiful as they rained down and sowed destruction.
I also knew I could not distract Solear, his intense focus on the controls weighed on me like a heavy blanket.
His hands shook against the yoke as he was forced to take the small vessel off autopilot and fly it himself.
My guy did not like that, but he was not alone, guided, I felt certain, by his twin brother whispering to him in his mind.
I could not hear those thoughts, but I sensed they were there.
Kind of like hearing voices talking in the other room without understanding the words.
It all seemed calm, despite the chaos outside.
Our path was winding, swerving to avoid projectiles and the spray of rock as meteors struck.
Despite that, we weren’t jostled inside the small ship, just lightly pressed into our seats by the force of our speed.
Solear also seemed tense but calm, focused in a way that shouted he had it all under control.
So I relaxed just a tad and focused on taking more pictures of the raw force of nature outside my window.
Leaning just a bit more to get a downward angle, I never expected the window to abruptly unlatch and the hatch to swing open.
I flung forward, not held by any seat belt, and would have nearly fallen out of the ship if not for Solear’s abrupt jerk on the yoke.
Then his arms were around me, hauling me inside, and the door slammed shut.
My heart pounded in my throat from the shock, my fingers numb around the comm, but when I looked at Solear, it was like he’d just seen me die.
His already bone-white face looked possibly even paler, his eyes huge inside the dark eye sockets.
He was panting, his hands clinging to me as if he could not let me go.
“The yoke,” I said when I realized he wasn’t steering and the sky was still raining with falling space debris.
“The yoke, Solear! Someone has to steer. I’m okay!
” I had to physically pry his hand off my hip and put it on the metal bar, but when I did, his fingers clenched and he gave me a nod.
I did not move from against his side, ignoring the crashing chaos outside.
My eyes were on his face, making sure he was flying this ship so we wouldn’t crash.
The near fall was already half-forgotten, that was nothing after what we’d been through.
“I’m okay, you had me,” I said again, when it became obvious that Solear was not shaking off the incident the same way I was.
His body was so tense, he was like a live wire, crackling with energy.
A low growl had begun to rattle inside his chest, and it was growing louder by the minute.
When it became louder than the storm outside, I knew I had to do something.
It seemed to be abating outside anyway, we’d come through that without a scratch.
“Put it back on autopilot. Tell your brother to help you. We’re fine. ”
When his hands unclenched from the yoke to flick at buttons, I crawled into his lap and threw my arms around his neck.
“I’m okay; you didn’t lose me.” Then I said the words I knew mattered most to him: “You’re not alone.
” His eyes flicked from the console to my face, a bleakness in them that I didn’t expect.
Was it so bad, the thought of losing me?
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tried to assure him, but that only seemed to make his expression grow even grimmer.
Since my words weren’t getting me anywhere, I tried a different approach.
He was a telepathic being, more so than any other of his kind, because of the trauma he’d suffered as a boy.
Maybe I could reach him that way. It felt awkward—clumsy—to try to formulate thoughts to reach out to him, but once I did, it was easier than I expected. “You’re here with me. We’re safe.”
Solear’s expression turned anguished, and then came the tumble of thoughts—the real problem that was bothering him.
“I don’t deserve you! I do not deserve a mate.
You nearly died again, and it’s my fault.
” I was overwhelmed then by a bombardment of images he’d been holding tightly to himself ever since last night.
It started with him seeing how the hatch on my side had gotten hit by a shot, which was likely why it had been able to swing open with a little inside pressure, like me leaning against it.
“That’s not your fault!” I protested, but it wasn’t the core of the problem anyway.
What he really blamed himself for was my capture by Goldie and the Krektar.
“If I’d put you first like I’m supposed to, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.
” His hands dropped from my middle to stroke along my legs, where only faint pink spots reminded me of the small cuts the flowers had inflicted.
“But I chose vengeance over protecting you.” Had he?
I didn’t recall it in quite the same way.
Well, I supposed he had stubbornly gone down to the mansion to steal information when we all thought that was a suicide mission.
But I was certain he’d only gone because he thought I was safe.
If he’d had any inclination that I’d be in danger in that cave, he never would have left.