Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 103(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 103(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
I exit my audiobook app in a hurry, but it's no use.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to reach our final stop. The New York City Police Department would like to remind you that passengers may be randomly requested to present proof of identity upon exit."
I press my legs together as hard as I can. But this doesn't work either. I'm still turned on by that last bit of smut, and so all I can do is pretend that I've got a piece of gum inside my mouth.
Chew, chew, chew.
It's the only thing that prevents my terribly expressive face from betraying me, the only way I can keep myself from blushing, moaning, or smiling like an idiot in public. My reaction varies, and since the sex scene I've just listened to is way, way hotter than I expected—-
Chew, chew, chew.
And the fake chewing continues until the train slows into a smooth stop.
"We have now reached Night Bloom. As you exit, please be careful of the gap between the platform and the train. Sunset today will be at 1750 hours. Thank you for riding with us."
It's the usual hectic rush out of the train, and while I'm grateful this proves to be a quick-dry solution for the wetness between my legs, I'm just a bit sad since this also means I've to say goodbye to my beastly boss, and yes, I do imagine myself as the heroine of every romance novel I'm reading.
Laters, baby.
Some might think I'm crazy (or insanely pathetic) for having imaginary conversations with my book boyfriends, but that's just how it is.
I'm already thirty-two, but since I've also decided to save my first time for someone special, a girl's gotta find things to distract herself with while waiting.
And these books?
It's one of my major sources of distraction, just like this long, long, long daily climb out of the subway. There are no escalators or elevators here, and I've worked long enough for preters to know that this is no oversight.
Night Bloom is the most recent addition to NYC's iconic subway. It's aptly named, too, and not just because all of the buildings here are painted a matte shade of black. Now that preters no longer have a reason to fake being as flawed and frail as humans, what used to be preposterous is now easy-peasy-achievable, and it's how this entire "city" was able to blossom from blueprint to reality in a blink of an eye.
The things preters can do are just astounding, but right now what astounds me more are the numbers that flash on the screen when I take my iPhone out.
07:43?
How is it already 7:43? How? It's typically a leisurely twenty-minute walk from the subway's A1 exit to my workplace, but time has somehow gotten away with me, and it's now down to a seven-minute sprint.
Run, Cat, run!
The sight of Nox Tower in the distance seemingly beckons and taunts me at the same time. It feels so near and far at the same time!
Just two more blocks to go, Cat. Hang in there!
My workplace is the tallest building in Night Bloom, with seventy floors above ground, and God knows how many there are below. While it's been lauded as a structural masterpiece of brutal beauty, all it reminds me of is a larger-than-life coffin, and I'm not sure if it's because I just have bad taste...or it's the fact that the Nox also happens to have its own morgue that I can't help feeling morbid.
I know it's been the trend lately for Fortune 500 companies to come up with either the poshest or wackiest amenities, but...c'mon now.
That's the best they can do?
A morgue?
I actually tried asking around about it, but no one I've talked to had anything concrete to say, and that's no surprise. Much about the Nox is shrouded in mystery, and it's pretty much the same everywhere else in Night Bloom.
This place might share the same railway with the rest of New York, but they're certainly not of the same flesh. Everything to see here is preter-owned. All of the homes, the businesses, and even the lone police station next to the subway's D2 exit. You name it, a preter is on top of it, and humans have no right to complain about this at all...since Night Bloom isn't one's normal definition for a 'city'.
It might look and feel like one, but all ten thousand acres of the place are private property, and the one person who owns this is my boss.
Well, my boss's boss, but you get what I mean.
A STREAK OF LIGHTNING flashed across the cloudy skies in broad daylight, and both human and preter members making up Nox Incorporated's board of executives gulped and trembled in their chairs as the air inside the room cracked with danger and fury.
Something - or someone - had obviously pissed the King to make him bristle so, and when lightning flashed again, the man they served spoke only one word in its aftermath.