Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Her thoughts were interrupted by a passionate voice.
“Oh, my heart! My one!”
The voice was coming from a tall, slim woman with rose-pink skin. She came running up to Kozen, who jumped off his lubby at once and held out his arms to her.
The woman threw herself at him, almost desperately, pressing her body to his shamelessly, in the middle of the crowded main street.
“Oh, Kozen, my one,” she told him, looking into his eyes. “I was so worried about you! I feel as though we were parted for an age at least!”
“Navii, my heart,” Kozen put his hand between her breasts as though to cradle her heart in his palm. “I have only been gone a few standard hours,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but I missed you so much! You went out beyond the fence and I was afraid…” She broke off, shaking her head as tears filled her large, purple eyes.
“You didn’t need to fear, sweet one—the sun has not yet set,” Kozen told her. Lifting her chin, he tenderly kissed the tears from her eyes.
With a little sob, Navii kissed him back and soon—much to Danni’s discomfort—the two of them were actually making out in the middle of the street with open-mouthed kissing, groping, and heavy breathing on full display.
“Navii, my sweet wife, how I have missed you—your beautiful body and your luscious breasts,” Kozen murmured, cupping one of his mate’s breasts through the thin white shift she wore and thumbing the nipple gently.
“Oh, Kozen! How I long for your shaft within me!” was his wife’s reply as she rubbed herself eagerly against him and moaned as he continued to fondle her breasts and tease her nipples.
Oh my God—are they going to go for it right here in the middle of the road?
But though the public display of affection made Danni squirm and want to look away, the other H’rakens went about their business as though it was perfectly normal for two people to be groping each other in public.
Okay, well I guess that’s one social custom we can discount, Danni thought. There was no way she was going to act like that with Commander Bravik, she told herself—not even though they were pretending to be married.
At last, just when she was wondering if Kozen and Navii were going to lay down in the middle of the road and have actual intercourse, Kozen somehow pulled himself away and said,
“But my heart, we are being rude to our new guests.”
“Oh, yes—forgive me!” his wife fluttered. She smiled up at Danni and Bravik, who were still mounted on Lovely Eyes and made the one-handed twirly bow, as Danni was beginning to think of it. “Dear friends, you are most welcome to our township,” she told them, smiling brightly. “You must excuse my exuberance upon seeing the other half of my heart again. But we had been parted for several standard hours and I feared for him.”
“Why did you fear?” Bravik rumbled, sounding interested. “Was it something to do with the Riivers?”
But he seemed to have said the exact wrong thing because Kozen and Navii and everyone within hearing distance of them stopped what they were doing and stared up at the big Kindred in mute disapproval.
“We…we do not speak of such matters within the township gates,” Navii faltered. “To do so it to invite bad omens—it is forbidden!”
Danni could feel Bravik shifting behind her uncomfortably.
“Forgive me,” he said quickly. “I…did not know it was a forbidden subject. I simply wished to know why you feared and the reason for the fortification around the village, er, township.”
“The gate is to keep all who do not belong out,” Kozen said stiffly. “I hope I have not misjudged in allowing the two of you inside.”
“No, of course not—you haven’t misjudged,” Danni said quickly. “Please forgive us for any words that you find offensive and remember that we are still struggling with our translation bacteria.”
“Ah yes—the faulty translation.” Kozen looked mollified at once and all the people who had been staring at her and Bravik looked away and went about their business.
“Faulty translation?” Navii looked confused.
“The way they are able to speak our language,” her husband explained. “There is a fault in it which causes our new guests to say offensive or untrue things at times, through no fault of their own. Why, do you know that when I came to collect them, they had me believing that the two of them were UnJoined Ones at first?”
Navii looked shocked at this but once Kozen started laughing, she joined in as well, shaking her head fondly.
“My goodness—that must be quite a struggle!” she remarked to Danni. “Especially when the two of you are so clearly a well-matched couple who compliment each other so nicely—despite your rather small heads.”
“Thank you,” Danni said, taking the compliment gracefully and ignoring the “small heads” part. “You are most kind, Mistress Navii.”