Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 130947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
“What’s wrong?” Sylvan asked.
“I’m getting…someone I don’t know is trying to bespeak me.”
His brother raised one ice blond eyebrow. “Damn rude of them, whoever it is.”
“Yeah but what if it’s about Olivia?” Baird felt a surge of fear. “I’d better take it.”
Closing his eyes, he tried to open himself to the unfamiliar connection and after a moment he could hear a voice in his head.
“Baird, my brother in arms, I am calling on an urgent matter. Will you hear me?” The mind voice had the soft double resonance of a Twin Kindred. Baird frowned, wondering if it was someone he and Sylvan had known from the time they spent on Twin Moons after their father had found his third and final bride.
“I’ll hear you,” he thought gruffly. “But you’d better have a damn good reason for bespeaking me instead of leaving a message on my holo unit.”
“What I must say is too important to wait—it concerns your bride.”
Baird felt like someone had punched him in the gut. “Olivia? What’s happened to her? Is she all right?”
“I don’t know. She was visiting our bride, Jillian, and left our suite before my twin and I got home. However, we couldn’t help noticing her scent. It’s very…” The Twin warrior hesitated, obviously trying to think of a delicate way to put it.
“Yeah, I know what she smells like.” Baird frowned. “And I know there’s none of my scent on her to warn anyone else off.”
“Exactly.” The male sounded relieved that he didn’t have to go into details about such a private matter. “Well, from what Jillian told us she rode your Take-me to our suite with no problem and she was supposed to go back the same way she’d come. Unfortunately when my twin tried to track her, he found that her scent trail diverged from the older path.”
“Diverged? How? Where did she go?” Baird was so upset by now that he was talking out loud even though it wasn’t necessary.
There was a pause that went on for so long he thought they’d lost the connection. Then the unknown Twin Kindred said hesitantly, “I’m sorry, brother. We believe she went into the unmated males area.”
Chapter Twenty
Liv swayed along on the back of the Take-me, lost in thought. The scenery which she’d admired so eagerly on her trip up to see Jillian was now just a blur.
It wasn’t that Baird had lied to her, exactly, she decided. But he hadn’t told her the absolute truth either. Of course, what would she have done if he had? Would it have made it easier to deal with her body’s betrayal? Would knowing that she was being chemically manipulated have made her more able to refuse him, to not ask him to…to take her completely? She still didn’t want to think the words bonding sex or what it entailed, even to herself. Baird’s mating fist was a pretty scary part of his anatomy, but not nearly as scary as what would happen if she let him use it on her.
I’ll be stuck here forever. Never knowing if I really loved and wanted him or if I was just addicted to his damn smell. If that’s all there is to the Kindred should skip the whole claiming period. It would be faster if they brought the Earth women they wanted up here and turned them loose in the unmated males’ area. Then we could all sniff around to see who smelled the best and get matched up that way.
The thought made her sad and she looked down at her hands, curled in the shaggy green mane of the Take-me. She’d been feeling more for Baird lately than she wanted to let on, even to herself. He was patient and caring and funny—when they were able to ignore the sexual tension between them and just talk, that was. And there was no doubt he was hands down the most skillful and giving lover she’d ever had even though they hadn’t actually made love yet. No—not ‘yet’, Liv scolded herself. It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. Not after what I just found out.
“Hello, Earth female. What are you doing here?”
“Huh?” Liv was so deep in thought that it took her a moment to realize that she was no longer in a part of the ship that she recognized. The Take-me had left the plain metal corridors behind awhile ago and entered the bright, open center of the ship. But when she looked up, it wasn’t the park-like expanse of trees and grass that she saw or even the touristy area filled with neat little shops and eateries. What she saw was the dark alleys and narrow, crowded shops she’d passed on the way to Jillian’s suite.
The unmated males’ area—Oh my God! What am I doing here? And speaking of unmated males, there was one standing right in front of her. He was eyeing her the way a starving man might look at a steak. Only you don’t want to do the nasty with your steak. My God, what am I going to do?