Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
He didn’t look any different though, she thought. The big Hybrid was still completely humanoid—he was just acting like an animal. He had been so sweet, licking away her tears and trying to comfort her—even though it was clear he didn’t understand what she was saying or why she was sad. Again, he reminded her of her old pet.
After Spark had passed, when Andi was only ten, her mom hadn’t been able to get another dog. She said it made her too sad. Andi had felt the same way—she’d never intended to get another pet after the trauma of losing Spark.
But now she apparently had a pet after all—a huge Kindred warrior who was much bigger than Spark had ever been. Even on his hands and knees, Cade’s head reached her waist easily and he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds—all of it pure muscle.
Andi rubbed her tight nipple, which still tingled from where he’d sucked her. There was a wet spot on the front of her dress and she wished again that she had worn a bra. For a moment, she’d been so shocked she had simply let him suck her. It had felt good but Andi felt guilty—her Protector didn’t know what he was doing, which was why she’d had to finally push him away.
Cade was still making frustrated noises and nosing at her thighs. A look between his legs showed that there was a definite tent in his tight black trousers.
His mind is stripped down to its most basic animal instincts, Andi thought.
And what were an animal’s main instincts? To eat and to breed. They were going to be in trouble here if she wasn’t really careful.
I have to figure out how to get us off this planet before things got out of hand! Andi told herself. But how?
The first thing she needed to do was go back to the front of the ship, she thought. Maybe there was some kind of emergency beacon she could activate or a way to call the Mother Ship.
But her optimism was greatly reduced when she was actually standing there, staring at the control panel. Cade always handled the ship with such ease—he made it look simple to fly the long-range shuttle. Looking at all the sleek buttons and knobs and dials, though, Andi felt her heart sink. There was no way she could figure this out!
It wasn’t like there was a button marked “Help” or “Emergency Beacon” she could press. Everything looked extremely complicated and besides, all the lights were out. The ship seemed completely dead, which meant that even if she pushed and pulled to her heart’s content, nothing was going to happen.
“Okay, so that’s not an option,” Andi muttered to herself. But neither was staying here in the broken shuttle with her enormous Kindred Protector who now had the mind and instincts of a wild animal.
Glancing through the viewscreen again, she saw the buildings in the distance. Maybe someone in the town could help her? Surely there were other women there—if this really was Zo’rath Three, they must know what to do with a man who had been stripped down to his most primal instincts. Because all of the men here were in the same situation, if what Cade had told her was right.
“All right—that’s what we’ll do,” Andi said, speaking both to herself and to Cade, who had followed her to the cockpit and was nosing at her knees. “We’ll go to town and see if we can find some help. And maybe they’ll even have the facilities to make a long-distance call to the Mother Ship,” she added hopefully.
Though to be honest, she didn’t know the Mother Ship’s coordinates or how to get in touch with them. But she pushed that doubt to the back of her mind resolutely. She had to try something and sitting around in the shuttle waiting for Primal Cade, as she was beginning to think of her animal-minded Protector, to get horny again wasn’t an option.
She didn’t go right away though. First, she needed something to barter with. She knew there was an emergency kit located in a small cupboard at the very top of the kitchen cabinets, so she went to get it. As tall as she was, she still had to stand on tiptoes to open the cupboard and claim the small pouch, which looked a little like a high-tech fanny pack.
Inside were several types of currency that were used on most inhabited planets in the galaxy. There were the gold-edged cred chips in different denominations and the sharp-edged blood-coins used in planets ruled by the Bite—vampire like creatures who lived on blood.
Andi handled these with care—they were meant to cut you because the coins weren’t legal tender until they’d been dipped in blood. Ugh! Luckily, the Bite were mostly relegated to a few solar systems on the far edge of the galaxy so she didn’t think she’d be using the blood-coins.