Read Online Starflight by Melissa Landers - Free Book Online Page B

prodding at its wires. It didn’t take long for her to find the problem. “The couplers need replacing.”
    “Easy fix?”
    “Five minutes, tops,” she said. “But I’ll keep it powered off until the crew’s awake. I don’t want bodies crashing to the floor. That’s no way to say good morning.”
    Doran laughed. The sensation felt foreign, and he wondered how long it’d been since something had struck him as funny.
    “Hand me the smallest wrench,” she said. After he delivered the tool, she held it between her teeth and delved inside the grav drive. But loose strands of hair kept drifting into her face, tangling among the wires. She growled and mumbled around the wrench, “Help me out, will you?”
    Doran didn’t want to go in there, but he stuffed down his fear and moved behind Lara to gather her wayward locks. He smoothed the hair back from her head and twisted it into a ponytail, then rubbed the ends between his thumb and index finger. Her hair was freakishly soft, like liquid velvet. Lara shivered when his thumb accidentally brushed her skin, and he noticed chill bumps break out along the back of her neck.
    She spat out her wrench. “That tickles.”
    “Sorry.”
    He tried coiling the twist into a knot, but the strands were too satiny to hold. Faintly, he recalled that he’d done this before—run his hands through a girl’s hair—and liked it. But he’d never felt anything as silky as this. Probably because his girlfriend had damaged her hair by dying it so many glaring shades of pink.
    He blinked and saw the girl’s face, so stunningly gorgeous that she barely passed for a mortal. A sheet of sleek bubble-gum tresses fell just above the swell of her flawless breasts, and the rest of her was pretty impressive, too. He recalled that she’d even made elevator rides enjoyable, no easy task for a claustrophobic like himself.
    “I think I have a girlfriend,” he said, grinning. “She has pink hair.”
    Lara snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I met her. Pink hair and a black soul. You really know how to pick ’em.”
    “Oh, that’s rich,” he told her, “coming from a felon.”
    As soon as the words left his mouth, several things happened at once.
    Lara whipped around to face him, jerking her hair from his grasp.
    Their eyes widened and locked.
    And Doran remembered everything.
    It was like he’d yanked a veil from his face, and now free, he saw his past with perfect clarity. He was Doran Michael Spaulding, from Houston, Texas—the original Texas, not the terraformed knockoff in Sector Two. He’d had a brother once, a twin who shared his face. But that boy had died in a ball of flames, and Doran still had nightmares about it. His parents were Richard Spaulding and Elizabeth Kress-Spaulding, record holders for the world’s most bitter divorce. His dad owned Spaulding Fuel, and his mom had moved off world when she’d decided that her second-favorite child wasn’t worth raising. Doran still hated her for that, but not half as much as he missed her. He recalled that chocolate made him break out in hives, and his favorite food was fried green beans.
    Most important, he was
not
anyone’s servant.
    He grabbed the wall and used it to propel himself backward, away from Solara—her real name—until he was outside the tiny compartment. The distance was more for her protection than his. Rage boiled his blood, and there wasn’t a word vile enough to describe what he wanted to do to her.
    “Doran,” she whispered. “Hear me out.”
    “Don’t tell me what to do.” Before she could advance on him, he slammed the door shut and trapped her inside. “Ever again.”
    She slapped her palms on the door, piercing his ears with the clank of metal. “I had no choice,” she shouted, loud enough for him to hear on the other side. “You were going to leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere!”
    “What did you do to me?” he demanded. “Hit me on the head? Drug my food?”
    She waited a few beats before