Her Fearless Warrior: A SciFi Alien Romance (Lunarian Warriors Book 6)

by Roxie Ray

  But maybe…

  I ran my fingers down the bare length of my thigh that my nightgown didn’t cover, remembering the way Gallix’s arms had felt wrapped around me last night.

  If my Lunarian-to-be looked like Gallix, I was pretty sure I could manage it.

  “Breakfast,” Gallix announced. He winked at me as he placed a plate of one green sausage, a massive egg with a golden yolk, and a torn length of flatbread on the table in front of me. “Look good?”

  “Looks…incredible,” I breathed. But as I glanced between my plate and Gallix’s bright purple eyes, it was hard to tell which was making me salivate more—the food, or him.

  Then again, this was easily going to be the best I’d eaten…well, ever. Green sausages and all.

  I gave Gallix a smile and dug in.

  “Oh.” I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and moaned as I chewed the sausage. It might have been the color of the skies before a twister, but it tasted good enough to be well worth any hesitations I had about its hue. Its crispy skin burst between my teeth and salty, spicy oil pooled on my tongue. I moaned again. “Wow,” I said, covering my mouth so I could talk while I chewed. “That’s… incredible. Mmm.”

  “You, ah…you like it, then?” Gallix looked suddenly…anxious, or something. Was he really worried that I wasn’t impressed?

  “It’s…” I searched my romance-novel vocabulary for the right word to soothe his worries. “Oh, Gallix, it’s orgasmic.”

  “Oh.” Gallix blinked at me, then clenched his jaw. “Good. Yeah. Great. Great. Great.”

  “Are you okay?” I raised an eyebrow. If he’d looked tense before, now he was wound so tight he looked ready to snap. His eyes were flashing between a bright orange and a deep, gorgeous blue.

  “Fine, yeah. Just…” Gallix clenched his eyes shut and turned away. “Quit moaning and eat up. You look like you need it.”

  “Mm.” Marisa purred as she stepped into the canteen with us. “Something smells good. Did you save some for little ol’ me, Gallix?”

  “’Course,” Gallix grunted. “Just a sec.”

  He looked a little less anxious as he made Marisa a plate. After the way she’d come onto him last night, I was a little surprised that things weren’t the other way around. It almost didn’t seem fair. Why was he so relaxed around Marisa, and so tense around me?

  The others came in one by one. As Gallix said, he and the other Lunarians ate their meat raw. Marisa inhaled her food like it was air, Ora hummed pleasantly through every bite of her meal. Every time she glanced over at Pax, I watched him look away from her. And every time she lowered her eyes back down to her plate, I saw him stare at her again with a small smile on his lips.

  Meanwhile, Gallix was making a huge point of not even looking at me.

  Great.

  6

  Gallix

  Seeing Eve in that short, thin nightgown that clung to her breasts and waist so perfectly?

  That, I could take.

  Hearing her say the word virgin over and over again, like she felt it was entirely necessary to constantly remind me that she’d never been touched by another man?

  It wasn’t easy, no, but that too, I could take.

  In the end, it was the moaning that got to me. The little sounds of pleasure that escaped her lips…nine hells. She made my balls tense, heavy and hot with seed. She made my chest ache like there was something feral inside it, caged within my ribs and straining to break free. Speaking of straining—she left the laces on my trousers threatening to burst from the way my cock was pressing against them.

  When Marisa and the rest entered, it wasn’t any release—but at least it was a reprieve. Barely.

  Even in a room full of others, Eve had a way of stealing my every thought, every breath. Every beat of my heart and piece of my mind.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked as she helped me clear the table.

  Blood. And she didn’t even know.

  “Nah. Not at all.” I wasn’t too keen on this line of questioning. For several reasons. Most of them pretty damn obvious.

  Everything that Eve had told me about her life back on Earth so far called me to want to protect her. Comfort her. Keep her safe. She’d been wronged since birth—and if we didn’t figure out what the High Council really expected of her before we got to Lunaria, I feared she’d be wronged for many years to come on top of it.

  How was I supposed to tell her that I was spending half of my time around her fantasizing about crushing her pretty lips beneath mine so I could taste her tongue in my mouth, and the other half trying not to stare down her top while I willed my cock to stop threatening to split my trousers with every throb?

  “Are you sure?” As Eve placed the last few plates in the sink, her hand brushed against mine beneath the water. If her touch was as electric as it felt, I would’ve ended up fried. “You seem tense around me all of a sudden. If I said the wrong thing, or said too much—”

  “Eve.”

  “Yes?” She blinked up at me, hazel eyes clouded with worry.

  “You did not do anything wrong. Believe me.” I sighed and tore my eyes away from her. Better to watch the plate I was scrubbing clean than risk getting lost in the greens and blues of her irises again. “I’m tense because…well, it doesn’t matter. It’s not because of anything you did.” It’s because of everything you are, you ridiculously gorgeous creature. But of course, I wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “Then why?” Eve moved to the other side of me. When I finished washing my plate clean, she took it from me to dry.

  “You…don’t wanna know.”

  “I do, though. Everything about this whole trip feels so uncertain now… If I’m doing something wrong, can you just tell me so I can fix it? Please?”

  A growl of frustration resonated from the back of my throat.

  “You’re…pretty,” I said after a long moment. That was the easiest way to put it. Anything else right now, it just would’ve been too much.

  For both of us.

  “Well…thank you.” Eve laughed. Her cheekbones were flushed again. “And you’re, well, you’re handsome. But, um, is there something wrong with any of that?”

  “No, but—”

  I stopped as Eve shifted to set the plate she’d been drying aside. As she moved her shoulder down, her robe slipped away—and the strap of her nightgown along with it. She was freckled across her shoulders too, though not as heavily as she was across her cheeks. Her shoulder was as thin as the rest of her.

  Slender enough that if I bent my lips down to it, I was almost certain I could take it between my teeth in just one bite.

  “Blood,” I swore as I turned away. The beast in my chest was thrashing wildly now, starved and salivating and desperate. If I stared at her for any longer, I was going to lose control. It was going to break free.

  “Gallix, what’s wrong?” Eve paused, plate still in one hand. With her free hand, she reached for me.

  As soon as she touched my arm, every ounce of restraint I had left shattered in an instant, and as I snapped around to growl how badly I wanted her, so did the plate she’d been holding. It slipped from her fingers and broke into bits on the floor.

  “Oh, no,” Eve gasped, backing away. “I’m…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No—it’s fine. It’s fine.” I shook my head quickly, dislodging that impure train of thought from my brain.

  But just as I stooped to pick up the shards of the plate, I was stopped by the sound of a sharp alarm that rang through the ship so loud, it made the water in the sink ripple and broken pieces of ceramic on the floor shudder.

  Blood. Another problem.

  And if the ship’s alarms were sounding, it meant this one was too big to put off, shut away or ignore.

  “Oh, no,” Eve gasped again. “What did I do?”

  “This wasn’t you, bright eyes.” I reached across the broken plate and grabbed her arm, then guided her around the mess. “We’ll take ca
re of that later. Right now, I need to get to the cockpit—and you need to get strapped in.”

  “But—”

  “Questions later. Move now.”

  As we headed for the cockpit, Bessie’s alarms continued to sound all around us. There were only a handful of reasons my ship would be making that sound, and few of them were good.

  Maybe the autopilot had flown us into an unexpected cloud of obstacles—either asteroids that Bessie’s navigation system had miscalculated the position of, or more likely, a cloud of Rutharian space trash. Maybe we’d come into proximity of the flight path of another vessel, one that had either malfunctioned when it had logged its own trajectory or failed to broadcast its flight path entirely.

  But when we met Pax in the hall and I saw the pale orange of his face and the worry in his eyes, I knew that we hadn’t gotten that lucky.

  Not by a long shot.

  “Rutharians?” I asked him.

  “Rutharians.” Pax licked his lips and nodded. “Ronan needs you in the cockpit. Now.”

  “Already on my way.” Down the hall, Ora and Marisa had poked their heads out of their rooms. They looked scared, and I didn’t blame them a bit. “Get the females strapped in. This might be a bumpy ride.”

  “What’s going on, Gallix?” Eve asked as I pulled her down the hall past Pax. “Who are the Rutharians?”

  “Trouble,” I told her. “Come on. We might be in for a fight, and I want you close.”

  “Shouldn’t I go with Ora and Marisa?” There was panic in her voice. Her breaths were coming ragged and short.

  “Nah. You’re with me.” I turned to her and forced a smile that I hoped was reassuring. “You can be my good luck charm.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve been much good luck for you so far…” Eve mumbled.

  “Then you can start now.”

  I took her into the cockpit and strapped her into one of the passenger seats there. It was a little awkward, given that the main clip of her belt was located between her slender thighs—but this wasn’t the time for my masculine bits to chime in with their input. I knew this ship better than I’d known my own father. We needed to work fast right now. If my knuckles brushing against Eve’s inner thighs was the fastest way to get her safely buckled in, then so be it.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her as I clicked the buckle into place. “We’re in a bit of a bind here, but I’m the best damned pilot Lunaria’s ever had. I’ll get us safe.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said back to me.

  I winked at her. “Always am.”

  As I slumped into the pilot’s seat, Ronan gave me a tense look.

  “We are taking fire.” He tapped at the navigation controls with two of his hands and used a third to point a finger at me. “Stop playing around.”

  “How many have we got on us?”

  “Three cruisers, one dreadnought.”

  “All for just Bessie here?” I frowned as I took the controls over from the ship’s autopilot. “Little excessive, don’t you think?”

  “Not if they have been tipped off as to what our cargo is,” Ronan said grimly.

  “Don’t call ‘em that.” I bumped up our speed and dodged a blast from behind that I caught on our radar just in time. “Shields holding?”

  “Barely.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ronan’s face. It wasn’t so much orange anymore as it was gray. “Divert power. We need oxygen, thrusters and steering. Everything else, send to the shields.”

  “Agreed.” Ronan’s fingers paused over the controls. “Unless…”

  “We can’t fight a dreadnought, Ronan.” As much as I would’ve liked to, it was a bad idea. “I’m gonna have a hard enough time evading their cruisers already, and we don’t have much in the way of weapons.”

  “If we cannot outshoot them—”

  “Then we’ll outfly them,” I finished. “You strapped in?”

  Ronan used his free hands to pull his safety belt over his shoulders. He clicked it into place, then nodded. “I am now.”

  “Pax?” I called over my shoulder, steering with one hand and strapping myself in with the other.

  “The other females are strapped in and secured.” Pax stumbled into his seat at the comms and clicked his own buckle into place. “And so am I. Shall I send a distress call to Lunaria?”

  “Do it,” I said. “But…first, you might wanna hang on.”

  As I clocked four more blasts coming our way, I took a deep breath then jerked the steering sharply to one side. The ship veered out of the way just in time. I kept the wheel turned and disengaged our stabilizers, sending us into a spin as more blasts followed.

  Behind me, Eve screamed. From the hall, I heard Marisa and Ora do the same—but they’d just have to deal with it for the moment.

  If we wanted to get these Rutharians off our tail, we were in for a wild ride.

  Three of the next blasts missed us by so much, I was almost embarrassed for the Rutharians that had fired them.

  “Dumb baz-terds,” I said with a chuckle. I was feeling pretty good about myself—at least, until the fourth blast hit. It slammed us off course as it bounced off our shields, and I reengaged the stabilizers quickly.

  The entire ship rocked sharply as the world returned to its upright position.

  I wouldn’t be able to try that trick again.

  “All right. Damn.” The spiral I’d plunged us into had helped us evade the blasts from the Rutharian ships temporarily, but now that we’d been hit, the Rutharians would be onto that trick. The key to good piloting was unpredictability—which was why I was the best Lunaria had to offer. When enemy ships couldn’t calculate your next move, they had to rely on their gunners to lock the sights of their weapons manually. It gave us an advantage—one we sorely needed right now. “We’re taking heavy fire, Ronan. Shields?”

  “We can take one more hit. But—” A shock rumbled through the Bessie, causing the lights to flicker. “Blood. Shields are down.”

  “I am sending out distress beacons to the Lunarian fleet,” Pax growled from behind us. “But none are responding. They are all out of range. We are on our own.”

  “We need to make land, then.” I wasn’t happy about that assessment, but we were already at top speed. I dodged two more blasts from the Rutharian dreadnought handily, but even my unpredictability was proving to have its shortcomings. Against one or two ships, maybe even three, I could’ve managed. But three, plus all of the guns of a full-sized dreadnought? Their firepower was just too much.

  “Pax!” Ronan called out. “Nearest planet?”

  “There is only one,” Pax said. His voice was shaky. Nervous. Never a good sign. “But you are not going to like it.”

  “We’re not gonna have a choice,” I grunted back at him. “Break it to us gentle, Pax.”

  “Edon,” Pax said. “The nearest planet is Edon.”

  “Blood.” Ronan and I swore the word simultaneously.

  “What’s Edon?” Eve asked from behind us. “Will we be safe there?”

  “Safe enough,” I grunted. “But…there are other issues.”

  “What issues?”

  I sighed. “Remember what I was telling you earlier? About Lunaria and Earth and the clocks?”

  “Gravitational time dilation,” Eve recited like she was reading it from a textbook. Next to me, Ronna hummed, impressed. “I remember. What about it?”

  “We’re going to be dealing with a whole lot of it on Edon. Planet is habitable but…unfathomably large.” Large enough that it was going to be a problem. A big one. “What’s the readout, Pax?”

  “One day to one year.” Pax swiped frantically across his screens. “No other habitable zones in this sector, though. It’s our only option.”

  “Then it’s not an option at all,” I said. “Ronan?”

  “Diverting power from engines to steering.” Ronan’s fingers hovered over the execute button. “We are in range. Edon’s gravity will pull us in, but… Gallix, are you sure about
this?”

  “We don’t have a choice.” I shifted the ship into place and took several breaths. “It won’t be pretty, and I’m not looking forward to the repercussions, but—”

  “What repercussions?” Eve cried out. “Gallix, what does that mean—one day to one year?”

  “For every day we’re on Edon, a year will pass on Lunaria,” I said through my teeth. The ship was rumbling now as blasts glanced off its hull. Our engines were down, which would keep us from imploding if the Rutharians hit them, but thanks to Edon’s gravitational pull, we were accelerating. “And on Earth, too.”

  “No!” Eve gasped. “Gallix—you can’t—”

  “Didn’t you hear me before, Eve? We don’t have a choice.” I tilted Bessie’s nose downward, and suddenly, Edon was clearly in view. We were close enough, and Edon was big enough, its surface took up the entire windshield before us. Its atmosphere swirled in pale white wisps. Beneath it, the planet was green as envy. Green as my stomach was turning at the knowledge of what we had to do next.

  I looked to Ronan, and he nodded.

  “Diverting power from steering to navigational autopilot.” He didn’t hesitate this time. He knew as well as I did that this was our only way out. “At least the Rutharians will not follow us.”

  “Can’t blame them.” A day to a year. It was a hefty price to pay to avoid being blasted to bits out in open space, but I’d rather lose time than lose us our lives. “Brace yourself, Eve.”

  “Gallix! Please, can’t we—”

  “No other option,” I said a final time as Edon’s atmosphere swirled before us. “We’re going down.”

  7

  Eve

  Birds whistled. Water bubbled, gentle and sweet. A fire crackled comfortingly, and somewhere overhead, the wind ruffled through the trees like a loving mother tousling the hair of a favorite child.

  Eve, a voice called to me. Wake up, Eve.

  I smiled softly but didn’t open my eyes. There was something pleasantly warm pooled behind my head. A warm bath, maybe? I’d heard the other women in the camp talk about those before, though I hadn’t yet gotten the chance to have one myself.