Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince Read Online Free PDF Page A

amount of time. He wanted to look at her forever. He
wanted to touch her. Not with gloves on. He needed to feel her soft
skin, needed to feel her warmth. He didn’t care if it was
forbidden. It only made him want it more. He wanted her to touch
him. He craved the feel of her fingers on him, hungered for her
touch.

    The violence and strength
of that need surprised him. Never before had he wanted to be
touched. Never had he considered that he had been deprived all
these years by the law that forbade skin-to-skin contact with him.
He wondered what it would feel like to have her warm little hands
on him.

    “ The guards are
coming. If they find you talking to me, you will be in trouble.” He
lay back down on his bench, frowning at the hardness of it, and
hoped that she would take the hint and be quiet for a
while.

    She moved to the bench and
sat on it, still nursing her hand. She had been foolish to touch
the bars. He knew that some Lyran vessels had similar light
technology. Perhaps she didn’t travel on those kinds of military
vessels, or perhaps she hadn’t seen any cells in her time. A
delicate creature like her would probably want to stay away from
such areas.

    Or perhaps a protective
male had kept her safe from them.

    That thought sent a cold
spike into his heart.

    One as beautiful as her
probably had a male.

    The door opened, chasing
away his thoughts. He sensed her stiffen when the guards passed her
cell. They stopped at his.

    “ It is cold in
here,” he said, casual and with a smile.

    “ We have orders
to maintain this temperature and inquire whether you will eat
now?”

    Tres shook his head. “I
will not. Perhaps your other guest will.”

    The two male Vegans looked
over their shoulders in the direction of the woman. They grinned
and then the smile fell off their faces when they looked back at
him. He frowned at them.

    “ We have orders
to starve her, at least until Lyra sends a party to
negotiate.”

    “ Negotiate?” he
said and then bit his tongue to stop himself from saying anything
more. Angering the commander of this ship wasn’t wise. He had
proven himself to be quite ruthless and a male who followed the
rules to the letter. The moment the commander had caught him, he
had thrown him in the cells and done everything required to stop
him escaping.

    “ If you try to
ransom me it will be a direction violation of the treaty! You will
be starting a war with Lyra,” the female said.

    The two guards laughed and
moved to the female’s cell. She should have kept her mouth shut.
Vegan military officers hated all things Lyran, regardless of how
beautiful they appeared to be.

    “ It’s none of
your business. Just wait there for someone to come and get
you.”

    “ Wait,” she
said as they started to leave and got to her feet. “My
brother.”

    “ What about
him?” The first guard glared at her, his yellow eyes intent on her
face.

    “ Is he
alive?”

    The guard hesitated and
looked over at him. Tres held his gaze. The man looked back at her
and nodded.

    “ He is stable.
He will be ransomed with you.”

    She went to speak and then
stopped, as though she had got the better of herself at last. They
had answered one of her questions. It wasn’t wise to ask any
more.

    The guards left and she
moved back to the blue energy bars near his cell.

    “ Do you believe
them?” she said and he nodded. The officers of this ship would
ensure her brother’s survival. They stood to gain a large amount of
currency from ransoming them, but only if her brother were
alive.

    “ Your family
must know that you travel together and that you would never enter
the Black Zone without reason. Therefore, they would know that you
would have been taken together. If they only have you to ransom,
Lyra would enquire after your brother. If they discover he is dead,
they will not pay the Vegans anything. They will
attack.”

    She flinched at that last
word and he could see she didn’t want that to happen.

    Tres