Delivery (Star Line Express Romance Book 3) Read online

  “No,” she says. I detect her scent. I think I picked it up the moment I walked into the control room earlier today, which seems like it happened about a year ago. That’s what pulled me toward her.

  “Your eyes are violet when you’re angry,” I say.

  “Really?” she says, mimicking me. She puts the dirty dishes in some contraption, just throws them in there and then kicks a switch.

  “They’re gray when you’re kissing me,” I say, hoping she’ll take the hint, but her eyes stay that very dark violet.

  “You absolutely cannot take Aeryen in that raft. You are completely untrustworthy. I think you’ve proven that today.”

  She’s leaning against the dishwashing device, which makes no noise or movement. These would be very popular on Choryn but perhaps too expensive to ship. I’ll have to talk with Nik about it.

  “I’m completely untrustworthy?” I say, laughing. “I’m not the one who invented a nonexistent mate and pretends to be the mother of a Chengdry child.”

  “There’s not a nonexistent mate,” she says, doing her damnedest not to raise her voice.

  What if Aeryen hears her, leaves his room, and tells me the truth?

  “Because there’s no mate,” I say.

  We say nothing for a bit. I mentally try on different methods of transporting these dishwashing things around the galaxies—or at least to Choryn, where they’d be a stunning success—as a ploy to keep my libido in check. And exporting these devices isn’t a bad idea. I could use the credits.

  “What is Chengdry?” Niya says.

  Finally. And she obviously has no idea what Chengdry is.

  “He has those hairs on his wrists, doesn’t he?” I say.

  “He doesn’t,” she says. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

  “No amount of shaving will keep them in check,” I say. “You need a chemical solution for that.”

  A Chengdry pal at flight school had to use it. Regulations. Stupid regulations, as all regulations are.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” she says. So I answer it.

  “The Chengdry are the indigenous population of Choryn,” I say. “The ones the Choryneans destroyed in order to take over.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “The ones who left Choryn to settle Engra,” I say. “Millennia ago.”

  “Oh,” she says again.

  “You never heard of this, did you?”

  “Of course I did,” she says. “I just forgot.”

  “The way you forgot the year your mate died,” I say.

  “I didn’t forget,” she says.

  That’s when I get this idea and just blurt it out, like the fucking oaf I can be at times. “He’s got a vestigial tail, doesn’t he?”

  Niya

  When did I start trembling?

  When Joston first kissed me in the control room?

  When he came into my s-car and acted like he belonged there?

  When he took Aeryen into the backyard and played with him the way I always wished someone would play with him? Someone who wasn’t me?

  When he called me out on my lies?

  But how could he possibly know about Aeryen’s vestigial tail?

  “No,” I say. “Of course not. Why would you even think that?”

  “It’s all right, Niya,” he says. “It’s very common among Chengdry. Admired. Treasured.”

  “He doesn’t,” I say.

  “But I’m guessing it’s not admired or treasured here on Engra. Because you don’t even know about your own Chengdry heritage.”

  “He doesn’t,” I say again. “He’s not Chengdry, whatever that is.”

  “Don’t ever bring him to Choryn,” Joston says. “Everyone there would know instantly.”

  “He’s not. He doesn’t. He isn’t. It’s not true.”

  “Niya,” Joston says. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” I say.

  I’m actually sobbing. Crying would be quieter and less awful than this. And in front of someone I don’t even know. Not really.

  “It’s all right,” Joston says.

  He puts his arms around me. Not like he did in the control room, but gently, like a brother, not a sweetheart. I bury my head against his chest and sob harder. I can’t seem to stop.

  “It’s all right, Niya,” he says. “Does anyone else know?”

  I nod, but I can’t talk.

  “Chlo?”

  I nod again.

  “Good,” he says. “You can’t do this by yourself.”

  I do it by myself every day, I think, but I can’t talk. I haven’t cried this hard since I was Aeryen’s age.

  Then Aeryen shows up in the kitchen. Terrible timing.

  “Mom!” Aeryen says. “What’s wrong? What did you do?” he says to Joston, pinning the blame where it belongs. This brash pilot has been the catalyst for every runaway emotion I’ve experienced since he landed this afternoon.

  “Your mom’s just upset,” Joston says. “She hasn’t seen her friend Chlo in a long time and she’s a bit emotional about it.”

  “You’re going to see Chlo?” Aeryen says to me. I’ve extracted myself from Joston’s grasp, even though I would rather have stayed there for another month, maybe more.

  “Yes, Aeryen,” I say. I swipe at my eyes.

  “Can I come too?” he says.

  “Of course,” Joston says before I have a chance to say the exact same thing. “We’ll take the raft. It’ll be fun.”

  Then Aeryen hugs Joston harder than he’s ever hugged me.

  “Thank you!” he says. “This is the best day ever on Engra!”

  He starts back toward his room.

  “Aren’t you going to kiss me good night?” I say. “Like we do every night?”

  Aeryen gives Joston a look, then shakes his head. “Let Joston do it,” he says, and he and Joston both smile the sort of conspiratorial smile that I imagine fathers and sons must share with each other.

  “Yes, sir,” Joston says to Aeryen, who’s already halfway down the hall.

  “I should let you get back,” I say.

  “How would that work?” he says. “I came out here with you.”

  “You did,” I say.

  Did I plan it this way?

  “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he says.

  That’s what his words say, but his body says something altogether different.

  It’s saying the same thing my body is saying.

  I need you. Tonight. Now.

  Chapter 5

  Joston

  Niya escorts me to the couch that I had the stupidity to suggest and disappears down the hall opposite to where Aeryen’s room is. Here I am in the middle, on the damned couch.

  Today’s ecstasies are turning to ashes.

  Then I make the mistake of turning the Marinax channel of my comm back on.

  As if things couldn’t get any more frustrating, Nik is telling me repeatedly that I have to report back to the ship first thing tomorrow morning, not in the late afternoon, as I’d originally been scheduled to do.

  Well, at least I don’t have to report back now.

  I turn off the comm, lie down on the couch that’s almost not long enough for my tall body, and tell my cock I’m sorry—but it doesn’t accept my apology. It’s more interested in its own needs, its own dissatisfactions, and its own departure from the norm, back on Choryn, where I never had to have an internal conversation like this one.

  At least she kissed me. Several times.

  Yeah, Joston? What the hell good is that?

  Have you ever had better kisses?

  I’m not keeping track.

  Think harder.

  Try not to use that word so loosely.

  Think with greater care, then.

  Fuck you.

  Is that all you think about?

  Right now, it’s all I can think about.

  On Choryn, before my cock and I had a chance to get into any such futile disputations, I�
�d already be halfway into my tried-and-true routine, the one that Chorynean females were so fond of. Especially the about-to-be-mated Chorynean females.

  Ah, those were the days.

  Although those days had no Niya Redmors in them. Who, if everything else she does is like her kisses, then . . .

  I get up and pace around the living room, or whatever room it is that has a couch in it here on Engra, and remind myself that I got to be a pilot again today, for the first time in months. That I get to do it again tomorrow and for the next few days while we’re here on Engra.

  I remind myself that even if I’m dying of sexual need, I’m not actually dying and that, anyway, there are, as Niya said, a million females here on Engra who’d be more than happy to have dinner with me. To do a lot more than just have dinner with me.

  And even if none of them would have those soul-deep gray eyes or those sensuous lips or luscious curves or a passion that I’d like to try and get enough of—even so, I’d be in their bed instead of on their sofa.

  My cock reminds me that I asked to be on the sofa. Which I’m not on. I’m striding around the room, as though that will relieve my needs.

  Stop thinking about her, I tell myself.

  Niya Redmor’s got enough problems already. She’s got a kid who’s probably not hers and whose Chengdry origins are about to become obvious to everyone on Engra. She’s got no mate, probably never had one, and, because of Aeryen, probably will never have one. She doesn’t need Joston Lynar to appear out of nowhere, fuck her during every minute he’s not doing business here, and then desert her. Flying away in the Marinax, where he won’t be able to pilot again until the next port. If then.

  I don’t even know exactly where her bedroom is, but I can feel her need as it bursts through the walls. She needs me as much as I need her.

  That’s what I tell myself as I walk faster and faster, in circles now.

  Then I tell myself the truth—that even if she does need me, she’d be better off having nothing more to do with me. And so would Aeryen, who’s the nicest kid I’ve ever met.

  Damn. I promised I’d take them to the Marinax tomorrow.

  “Joston?” says a voice behind me. I turn around.

  “Are you okay?” Niya says. She’s wearing a long kind of a T-shirt, and nothing else. At least, nothing else that I can see. And my night vision, like all Choryneans’, is excellent.

  I nod.

  “I heard you pacing around. Do you need a blanket?”

  “No.”

  “It can get cold here at night.”

  “Niya,” I say, “go back to bed before we do something neither one of us will be happy about in the morning.”

  “Joston,” she says. “I already have passage to the Marinax arranged.”

  “Damn you,” I say. “I said I’d take you there.”

  “But you don’t have to,” she says.

  “I don’t go back on my word.” I don’t. Not when I can avoid it.

  “Good night, then,” she says. She starts to walk away. I can’t stand it.

  “Niya,” I say.

  She stops.

  “Joston?”

  “I need you tonight.” No finesse at all.

  But despite my lack of subtlety, she extends her arms toward me, right now a safe distance away, and says, “I need you too.”

  Niya

  I should never have come back out to the living room. But I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well lately anyway, but tonight it was impossible.

  While I was shifting and kicking at the covers, I convinced myself that it was because I’m too worried about everything. About Aeryen. About seeing Chlo. About doing what I’m thinking of doing. About discovering I’m capable of a hundred thousand times the passion I thought I had in me. Or wanted to have.

  Yes, all these things are true.

  But truer still is that I want Joston Lynar. I probably wanted him even before I saw him but was staring at the thrilling things he was doing with that transport raft. At that moment, everyone in the control room probably wanted him, or wanted to be him.

  But I wanted him. I’d already heard his voice and it was ricocheting off my flesh, inviting me to pleasures I’ve been denying myself for a very long time.

  And those kisses.

  “I need you too,” I say, my inhibitions and hesitations unhinged as soon as I hear him say, “I need you tonight.”

  I hold out my arms. He stops his frenetic pacing and comes over to me.

  Now I’m in his arms again and it just feels so perfectly right. But when he starts pulling up my nightshirt and puts his hands on my ass and I press myself into him, I remember that we’re in the living room.

  “Joston,” I say. “Let’s go to my bedroom.”

  “Mmm,” he says between the kisses that he’s laying on my neck. His hands are all over me, stroking me. He’s discovered that I have nothing else on. Just this tee. His hands are underneath it, driving me wild with his touch.

  “Joston,” I say. “Aeryen’s right down the hall.”

  “Yes,” he says, then he stops everything he’s been doing and I feel like I’m going to go insane with desire. I press myself against him and feel his rock-hard cock through his uniform pants.

  “Come to my bedroom,” I say.

  We walk down the hallway together, not touching, but the current between us is so strong that it’s as though we are touching.

  “You won’t mind when I leave in a few days and we never see each other again?” he says. Is he trying to be gallant? Cruel? Or just pointing out the obvious?

  “Is that your idea of foreplay?” I say, trying to put some humor in this situation.

  “No,” he says.

  Just outside my bedroom door, he backs me into the wall and leans into me. I need him so desperately, it’s all I can do not to tear his pants off and jump onto him. My entire body is throbbing with an unfamiliar intensity.

  Then he leans closer into me and starts rubbing his granitelike shaft against the inside of my thigh while he pulls my shirt off over my head, leans down, and plants kisses on my collarbone, my chest, and my breasts, until his hungry mouth finally breathes fire over my left nipple.

  He kisses it with a very light kiss while he presses even harder against me.

  “This is my idea of foreplay,” he says.

  Before I lose my mind completely, I pull on his arm and say, “We have to go into the room. Aeryen.”

  “Right,” he says. He’s clutching my shirt in one hand and with the other he pushes open the door to my bedroom and guides us both inside. Then he kicks the door shut behind us.

  “Tell me now if you want to turn back,” he says as he opens the front of his shirt, revealing a muscular, seemingly hairless torso. The light from Engra’s smallest moon shines through the shades and I see that his chest is actually covered with a dusting of fine white-blond hairs.

  He’s staring at me. Choryneans have notoriously excellent night vision, so I realize that he can see everything even though I can’t. But I can see that he’s now undoing his pants.

  “I don’t want to turn back,” I say.

  I can’t believe it’s me who’s saying this. But I am. And I don’t want to turn back. If anything, I want to go back to earlier, back to when he said he’d sleep on the couch, and laugh at him, since we both have known all along that this was the inevitable consequence of our having met.

  He comes over to me, his proud, nude body the very definition of masculinity. I try not to stare at his large, stiff cock, and I end up staring at the slot on his left hip instead. Isn’t that where Joston Parst keeps his hidden weapon?

  I back up a little.

  “Wrong Joston,” says my Joston—Joston Lynar. “This”—he grabs hold of his ever-larger cock—“is the only weapon I’m carrying. And it’s hardly concealed.”

  “Joston,” I say, swallowing the word. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you did,” he says. “Even on Choryn it’s kind o
f a joke, even when it isn’t a joke.”

  I go toward the bed.

  “Did you just move in?” he says, moving closer.

  I sit down on the bed, which is the only piece of furniture in the room. My clothing’s all in drawers in the closet. I don’t need anything else.

  I usually don’t need anything else.

  “No,” I say.

  “Lean back,” he says, the gravelly tones of his voice insistent. I can feel his words inside me.

  I lean back.

  “There’s no turning back,” he says.

  “I don’t want to turn back,” I say, but there’s something in my voice that’s not hiding everything I’m thinking, because Joston says, “Forget about tomorrow. It doesn’t exist.”

  Then he’s on the bed beside me and he’s touching me everywhere and I’m touching him everywhere and I feel the fine, soft hairs on his chest and the hard muscles on his arms and back and the smooth flesh covering his sex, which I try to climb onto, but he moves me aside.

  “Slow,” says the daredevil speedster pilot as he caresses my breasts, touching everywhere except the nipples. He traces circles around them, then blows on them with his fiery breaths.

  “We’re going to go very very very slow,” he says while he uses his hands, his lips, and his flesh to turn my body, turn my very being, into a throbbing inferno of need and passion.

  Chapter 6

  Joston

  If Niya were an instrument, I’d be the virtuoso. I know just how to play her even though I’ve known her only a few hours. Yet I know exactly where to touch her, exactly when to touch her, exactly when to not touch her.

  The two of us have lit a fire that makes the blaze in the forest around Kaera Birtak’s place seem like a tiny spark.

  And if I’m a virtuoso, then so is Niya. Her hands are all over me. Her leg is thrown over my thigh. Her urgent kisses set my soul to a new channel.

  “Slow,” I say, reminding myself as much as I’m reminding Niya. Since all I want to do is take her legs, wrap them around my waist, and plunge into her.

  “Joston!” she says, whisper-shouting as I do just that. I didn’t realize I wasn’t just thinking about it.