Page 58 of The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement
Chapter 15
Rayna wandered through the ballroom, feeling a little freaked out. Where had everyone gone? Where was Raz?
She hadn’t realized it was so late. By the time she’d said goodbye to her sister and Dejo and good riddance to all the factions interested in influencing what became of Blackworm Station—temporarily billed as Earth Interstellar Holding #04 until they came up with a snazziermoniker—it was almost dark.
Peeking into the empty dance chamber, she saw only a few of the glowing globes casting pools of pearly light upward to the sky far above visible through the open roof. Staring up at the watercolor wash of stars with her neck cricked gave her a touch of vertigo. It reminded her a little too much of waking up in the glass coffin. Was she a ghost wandering through animpossible dream of being rescued from her own loneliness?
“Rayna.”
His voice, rasping, almost broken, brought her whirling around, and her heart lifted as if gravity meant nothing at all. “Raz.”
“You’re here.” He stood frozen on the edge of the ballroom. The light from the nearest globe barely reached him, leaving half his lean face in shadow. “You didn’t leave.”
She took a step toward him.“Not without seeing you again.”
He retreated an equal step. “So…youareleaving? On what ship? I just saw theOnoffonand the council cruiser depart.”
“The council and the Earth envoy were peeved that I wasn’t open to more of their suggestions.” She snorted. “I mighta channeled a certain smug nobleman to get through the worst of that. Vaughn and Dejo are heading to the station with the secretdata gels on theOnoffonto see if they can learn more about what Blackworm was doing out there on the edge of the singularity. They’ll be back in a week or so. An Earth week, not a Azthronos week which I know is longer.” She lifted one shoulder in an awkward shrug, uncertain of his continuing silence. “I hope…you don’t mind me staying here.”
“Staying until they come back,” he said after anotherlong, awkward beat. “Andthenleaving.”
“I…don’t know.” She stared at him miserably. He was so far away, just across the room, but the way he stood with his arms over his chest, his chin set over the high asymmetrical collar of his formal tunic, reminded her he was an alien, a duke.
A man she’d let closer than any before.
He stared down at her, the lights turning his gaze frosty. “I don’t knowif I can help you this time. What do you want from me, Rayna?”
She fisted her hands in the soft Thorkon skirts over her churning stomach. Vaughn had scoffed at the day gowns, saying they were too flimsy, but Rayna remembered how they had lifted both her and Raz with a bit of hidden power. She needed that power now.
She lifted her chin. “I have a space station I don’t know how to run. A universeI know basically nothing about. A couple friends who aren’t sure what they are doing with themselves.” With each word, she took another step toward him. He didn’t retreat this time, but his gaze bored into her with an expression she couldn’t decipher—yet another unknown to add to her baffling collection. “None of that has anything to do with you. You don’t have to save me again.”
“I never mindedsaving you.” He angled his head away from her. “You were the one who wanted to stand on your own.”
“I do.” Her voice cracked, and he flinched, as if it had pained him. “I did. But I get it now. Since I met you.”
“Now? Because so much time has passed?” His lips quirked harshly. “I understand why you ran from me after the ball. I didn’t tell you about the space station, and you thought I was usingyou, just as the others want to use you now.”
She shook her head. “I know you weren’t, and aren’t. I knew you weren’t like that even before you stood up at that meeting and said you’d give me whatever support I needed to claim the station. But I want you to know that I’m not using you either. Not to save me, not to guide some clueless closed-worlder.” With only an arm’s length of space betweenthem, she halted. Though she ached to reach out to him, to gap that small distance, she knew she’d hurt him. She wished she could blame the fact she’d just woken up from an alien abduction, but really, her whole life she’d been afraid to rely on anyone and he was a man who took pride in his commitments.
She closed her eyes and let out a slow breath before looking up at him. “I don’t want youto save me or guide me. I want…I want to take this chance together, you and me, with what might happen next.” Unable to hold herself back anymore—even though she felt she’d been holding back for so damn long—she lifted her hand to touch the hard set of his jaw. “I want to be together, not as a destitute duke and a lost lady, or an alien and an Earther. But just…you and me. Raz and Rayna.”
Underher palm, the grind of his teeth felt harsh. “I wouldn’t hold you back, if that’s what you needed,” he said gruffly. “Poor little rich boy though I am, I know what it means not to be free.”
“Oh, Raz.” She let her hand slide down his chest, bumping over the ceremonial insignia on his broad chest, feeling the powerful beat of his heart buried underneath. “Trying to get away from it all took meto Nowheresville where I was hiding when Blackworm found me. That wasn’t freedom; that was fear. Fear that I’d care again, be left again, cry again.” She swallowed hard. “But I’d risk that all again. For you.”
She reached into her pocket—Thorkon day gowns had lots of convenient pockets, she’d discovered—and held up the ring.
In the uncertain light of the ballroom, the gemstone’s dazzling corewas muted, all its sparkle restrained.
But as the Duke of Azthronos slowly lifted the ring from her palm, his royal blue eyes had all the fire she needed to see.
“Ask me again, please,” she whispered. “Only this time, ask not for one night. Ask for forever.”
His dark lashes veiled his eyes for a moment as he studied the ring twisting restlessly between his fingertips. She looked at it too—avow in the shape of a black hole. All her insides were afloat with terror…and hope.
“Lady Rayna,” he said softly as he lifted his gaze to hers. “Would you take me and my planets and my people and all our possibilities? Would you be my guide in the darkness, mine to cherish? Will you be my ray of light through all eternity?”
He spun the ring toward her, an offering and a dare.