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)
“Off that ankle, baby, you’ll have a setback.” He scooped me up and put me on the bed so quickly that we both bounced, and I wound up on my back on the mattress. He was sort of still holding me so was hovering over me.
I was breathless. And still feeling angry. I mean, my planet killed their women with food! And now they were shipping women here against their will to pay for their carelessness?
“Zane, I’m so sorry.” I burst into tears.
He spun me so that I was mostly on top of him. He stroked my hair. “It isn’t your fault, Tanya. I’m sorry you were taken away and sent somewhere strange. And I’m sorry that as soon as you got here, I acted no better than the rogues who showed up here yesterday. I’m also sorry that you had to witness me kill one of them, though I’m not sorry he’s dead. If I’d been a moment later, you’d be his, not---”
The hesitation in his voice? He was about to say “mine”. Arousal flooded me.
And he’d called me baby. Baby. My belly dipped.
“You’d be not here,” he finished, and then cleared his throat.
I looked up into his eyes. He looked deep into mine.
I wanted to swallow. I couldn’t.
His eyes roved over my face. I devoured his features. His five o’clock shadow. Those full lips. The inky darkness of his soft hair falling in ringlets over his forehead. The piercing shade of his light blue eyes.
His fingers wove into my hair by my ear as his thumb traced my bottom lip. My heart began racing.
“Would you like a tour of the house?” he asked, as he watched his thumb graze my bottom lip some more.
I blinked off a trance.
***
I had about 48 hours to get my vaccination. It was late afternoon and I was out on the patio in the lovely floating pyramid daybed that Zane had admitted was put there just for me, Ollie’s idea. It was a perfect reading spot.
I was nearly finished that reverse harem book that Maeve picked for us to read for book club. I was saving the very last chapter, wanting to savor it. The temperature was perfect outside. The air was fresh. And I had an Earth tablet that had been magically connected to my e-book cloud at home. Zane had asked me for my email address and password and worked some sort of magic to get me access to my e-book library. When he passed me the new e-reader that was a brand from home that I knew, he told me he’d had an assortment of Earth technology at his office for his research into our culture and language. This made me a little nostalgic and he promised to show me what he had the next time he took me to his office.
“Would you like to go with me tomorrow? I have a few things to look into so it would help to do that in the office.”
“Sure,” I replied. He could probably ask me to go anywhere and I’d have replied the same.
“Ollie will be with us. He should be, at least. I expect my father to bring him home tomorrow morning.”
He’d carried me through the rest of the floor we were on, which I’d told him I’d already seen when I’d gone looking for a bathroom. As we were about to pass that bathroom, I explained that I’d accidentally wound up with the strange robot arms on me, which made him laugh.
“It was something Ollie’s mother had me put in. She would get terrible headaches and she said the head and scalp massages helped. It can shampoo your hair while you’re in the shower or tub if you like, and serves as a cosmetician or barber, too.”
He took me in and showed me how to use the panels in the bathrooms. I could get anything delivered from the inventory room to any place in the house. He explained that it was size dependent and that his robots could move things that couldn’t be sent through the conveyor system which sounded like a dumb butler inside the walls with pulleys and belts and such. There were larger closets in each room as well as the nourishment stations where things could be delivered. And there was also the fact that the robots could use the elevator to bring things around the house. He had three robot things that could move, clean, and fix things. He explained that he had a manufacturing hub on his transportation level that could fabricate certain things and the way he explained it, I knew he was talking about what we’d call a 3D printer.
He got me to order a chair be brought to us by one of those robots and sat me in it while he showed me the massage controls while he got a fast shoulder massage. He invited me to get my makeup or nails done if I wanted to try it.