Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 539(@250wpm)___ 449(@300wpm)
He reached over and touched the earring that was embedded in the cartilage at the upper part of the shell of my ear. I felt the heat of his fingertips and shivered.
“It doesn’t…” He shook his head with confusion. “It was pink before I left for the office. It’s set to turn blue when you’ve got Phallyxian male DNA in your body due to intercourse.” His eyes moved to mine. His brows were knit together. “Unless there’s a pregnancy.”
“I’m not lying, Zane,” I defended hoarsely, my voice and my body both shrinking.
He looked at me with surprise. Frown lines appeared over the bridge of his nose. “Of course you’re not lying. I’m sorry, Tanya. I didn’t mean to infer that you were.”
He abruptly reached for me and pulled me against him, burying his nose in my hair. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking grateful. I’m just… I’m sorry.”
I felt the tears threaten.
He let out a deep breath. And then another. He kept inhaling me.
“Stench of my dead husband? Did I s-smell? Do I smell now?”
“No,” he breathed into my hair. “It’s a figure of speech here…”
“It’s a figure of speech where I come from, too.”
He inhaled some more. “You smell lovely, Tanya. Lovely.” His hand moved soothingly up and down my back.
I kind of didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want him to let go of me. But, then he did.
“Let’s sleep. In the morning, we’ll go to my lab so I can look at the software and assess things. Try another gem. It doesn’t compute. The gem shouldn’t change color without intercourse. There is a sequence of color changes that happen due to your body’s reactions and chemistry. I just thought…I thought he might’ve been about to rape you when I saw you and thought, when I saw your ear gem and your panties, that he’d already done it.”
“He wanted to,” I whispered.
“Fuck,” he snapped and pulled me tight to him again. I sank into him. As our bodies melded together, he reclined so he was lying down, keeping me against his side. My head was on his chest.
What an intimate position to be in with someone I’d only just met. But, he acted like this was the most natural thing to do. It felt so absolutely right of a thing to do. I found that so strange. This wasn’t like earlier, caught up in passion and being on a bed together. This was something different. Something nurturing.
He stroked my hair with his left hand, which was wrapped around me, keeping me against him. His right hand moved to the wall and he fiddled with a screen beside him.
The ceiling retracted, revealing a bright purple starry sky.
I blinked at it in astonishment.
“Won’t bugs get in?” I asked after a few minutes.
“Bugs?”
“Yeah, creepy crawlies. Ick.”
“I don’t know what…” He reached for his phone and he must have looked up what I’d said. “Oh. We don’t have insects here.”
I blinked. “You don’t have insects?”
“One of our regions does have some, but they stay there.”
“Whoa.” No mosquitoes? No houseflies? “What about pollination? How do things get pollinated? What do birds eat? And bats?”
He stared at me a second.
“Pollinated. Um…”
“I know what you mean. Tiny cross-fertilizing birds. There’s a field of resistance so they won’t come in, but they generally stay away from people, anyway. He flashed his screen at me, and I saw tiny bee-like birds. These creatures looked like hummingbirds from the neck up with fuzzy yellow heads and like fat little bees otherwise, with fluffy striped bodies. The video showed them flitting from flower to flower with supersonically fast wings.
“Do you fight to keep insects out of your home at night on Earth?” Zane asked, looking down at me, hand stroking the hair behind my ear on the ear with the piercing. I saw him look at it again, intensity and focus beaming from his eyes. He was still trying to figure that out, obviously.
“We don’t generally sleep with our windows open. If we do, we have screens, otherwise, yes, if it’s not the dead of winter, we get bugs inside. Some areas worse than others. And they’re either a pain or they’re the kind that sting or bite, or whatever. In some areas, the biting bugs carry disease.”
“Ah. I heard you don’t sleep soaking moonlight.”
I must have looked confused because he went on to explain.
“We glean healthy energy from the moonlight. It aids the body’s rest and rejuvenation process. Most Phallyxians have domed ceilings or panoramic window views with special glass that allows the moon’s energy to soak in. Some even sleep outdoors in certain regions, wanting to be close to the moon.” He gestured toward the ceiling.
“We don’t get much from the moon in that sense. Or maybe we would if we knew about it.”
“No. No, you don’t, not compared to what we get from this one, anyway. We have several moons. The moon over our capital region is very beneficial and powerful. Yours really doesn’t have the same properties.”