Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Saxon growled something to himself but made no more protests as they followed the golden robot.
At last it stopped, rolling to one side of the entrance to a new room.
“In there,” it said in its hollow, mechanical voice.
Lynx and Saxon stepped into the room the automaton had indicated.
“Hey—there’s nothing fucking in here,” Saxon said, looking around at the four metal walls with no windows or doors, other than the one they had entered by.
Lynx turned to face the automaton.
“Is there some reason you led us here?”
“Yes,” the robot said. As it did, a gate made of thick metal bars crashed down, blocking the doorway and trapping them inside.
“What in the Seven Frozen Hells?” Saxon strode up to the bars and gripped them in his big hands. Lynx could feel his frustration boiling over into fury as he tried and failed to bend them.
“Easy, Brother,” he murmured, sending calm through their bond. “Just let me talk to our friend here for a moment.”
“Our ‘friend’ has locked us in a fucking cage, Brother,” Saxon growled. “I knew we shouldn’t have taken this fucking assignment!”
Lynx bit back a sigh. He wished his Bond-Brother didn’t have such a short fuse! But there was nothing he could do now but appeal to the robot.
“Listen, we’re not here to hurt you,” he said reasonably. “We’ve come to keep Mistress Mirabella safe. We even have some food for her, since we heard that her stores were running low.”
“Food?” The golden robot almost seemed to be eyeing them suspiciously. “What kind of food?”
“All kinds.” Lynx patted the large carry-all cube he wore on his back. It was filled to the brim with necessities, many of them miniaturized using Kindred technology so he could pack them all. But there was one thing he hadn’t made smaller, since it seemed to affect the taste.
Unslinging the cube from his back, he opened it and reached inside. The golden automaton rolled back quickly, as though expecting that he might bring out a weapon.
“No, no—don’t worry,” Lynx said quickly. “Look—this is a very special food I brought all the way from a planet called Earth, on the other side of the galaxy. It’s called ‘chocolate’ and females really seem to enjoy it.”
“Chocolate? You have chocolate?”
Something strange seemed to happen to the mechanical droid. It shivered and then a wide vertical slit appeared, bisecting its enormous round midsection. The slit widened and then opened completely and out climbed a lovely, if slightly bedraggled, little female.
“What the fuck?” Saxon was staring at her, dumbfounded, and Lynx could feel his Bond-Brother’s confusion through their bond.
To be honest, he felt fairly confused himself. So the girl had been hiding inside the robot all this time?
“You said you had chocolate?” She came up to the bars, looking up at him with a hopeful, hungry expression on her pretty face.
She had smooth, light brown skin and big green eyes and her hair was a mass of tumbled black curls with golden highlights that gleamed in the dim lighting. Her garments were ragged and crumpled but clean, as though she’d been wearing them and washing them over and over and they were skimpy enough for Lynx to see that she might once have been an Elite, though she was dangerously close to losing her curves now.
All in all, he thought she was the most enchanting sight he’d seen in cycles and the hopeful, hungry way she was looking at him nearly broke his heart.
“Here you go,” he said, handing the foil wrapped chocolate through the bars.
He felt another burst of irritation from Saxon.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” the Lykan muttered. “Why did you just hand it over? You should have used it to negotiate our fucking freedom with! Now she’ll never let us out!”
“She’ll let us out,” Lynx said confidently. “She just needs to be sure of us first.”
They watched as the girl tore open the foil. She looked so hungry that Lynx thought she might just start cramming the creamy brown squares directly into her mouth. Instead, she took a moment to inhale, breathing in the sweet, sugary scent of the candy. As she did, her green eyes rolled up in apparent ecstasy.
“Oh Goddess—I haven’t had this in ages!” Lynx heard her murmur. And then she broke off a single square and placed it on her tongue almost reverently.
It seemed clear she wanted to savor the flavor but the effect was somehow erotic. Lynx couldn’t help enjoying the look of sensual pleasure on her lovely face as she let the chocolate melt on her tongue.
“Wow—you weren’t kidding when you said females liked that stuff,” Saxon muttered.
He too was watching and Lynx could feel his interest through their bond, which surprised him. It was the first time the Lykan had taken notice of any female since their mate had gone to be with the Goddess.