Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Can you pull over, man? This isn’t… I’m not equipped to deal with this much change in this short a period of time, and I really need something to wear.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be pulling over soon,” he says. “I’ve got somewhere we should be safe.”
“I’m not going into another fucking vault.”
“You’ll go where you are told to go,” he says firmly.
“Can I at least get a sweater?”
“No,” he says. “Wait.”
I feel much less obedient as a human than as a wolf, so I do what any naked girl would do. I steal his jacket from the seat beside him, he apparently didn’t put it on after scaring the shit out of that gang. I drape it over myself as I clamber into the front seat. I also lean over and take his glasses off the top of his head and put them over my own eyes.
“I’m Order,” I say in a mock-gruff voice. “I make my girlfriend ride naked in the back seat.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” he smirks.
“I’m trying to mock you, not seduce you.” I push the glasses up into my hair and look over at him with a grin. I’m so fucking happy, like the endorphins of my wolf self are carrying over in the best hangover ever.
“One will get you spanked, the other will get you fucked. I know you’ll enjoy both equally.”
“You do?”
“You think I don’t notice how hard you come when I punish you, pet?” He drawls the question intimately, and I feel myself blush forcefully. I guess I didn’t think he did notice. I thought it was my dirty little secret. But there are no secrets from a master with eight eyes.
Suddenly, I kind of can’t wait to get wherever it is we are going. Fortunately for me, we are entering civilization again, a nice neighborhood where everybody is probably mostly human. I remember when I used to take that assumption for granted.
We pull up outside a house. Just a house on a street in a town in a countryside. There must be hundreds of thousands of towns like these in the United States, each unique, and yet each the same. It’s not a large house. It’s not a small house. It’s a ranch style bungalow.
He pulls down a long drive and then into an attached garage, which provides me cover when I get out of the car.
“Where are we?” I ask the question as if I care, as if I am not brimming with erotic energy begging to be discharged.
“This is one of the homes of the future,” Order explains. “It was designed to be fully automated and even partially shielded from nuclear blasts. The concept was that a housewife would be alleviated of many of her burdens, thus creating more leisure…”
I cut him off with a kiss, which I have to give him on tip-toe because he’s so much taller than I am.
He seems surprised for a moment, and then his six hands wrap around me, claim me and make me anticipate what must be coming next.
“Come see our new home,” he says, lifting me up in his arms. I like being held close to him, grinding my mostly naked self against his firm body.
We step inside the house, through a sort of mudroom place with a very old fashioned washing machine and dryer, that looks as though it thinks it is very modern. They are proudly decked out in teal and a matching hue of pink.
The door between that room and the kitchen opens smoothly, like doors in malls do, sliding open and into the wall cavity without being specifically asked, or touched in any way.
“There are buttons and sensors for everything,” he says, sliding me down to my feet.
I take my first unassisted, unwounded step since I was shot. For months upon months, I have been dependent on a walking stick to help conduct me through the world. I don’t need the stick anymore, and I don’t feel a faint but aching pain with every step either. My body feels like it used to, and that is something I never thought I would ever experience again. I am astounded, and happy, and for some reason, a little afraid.
I stand naked in our new home. It’s already better than the vault because nobody is pupating in it. A large living room greets me, with an archway into a dining room and then an archway into a kitchen. There are two bedrooms, both of which sport double beds, so presumably this house was designed for two adult couples to occupy. Or it was staged by someone who wasn’t thinking about selling it. Who knows. It’s the least of the mysteries I currently have to contend with.
“In here,” Order beckons me into the darker of the two bedrooms. One is a bright pink that commits a full frontal assault to the eyes, the other deep forest green which is so retro it almost feels modern.