Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
It was a beautiful vow but the “no emotions” thing had Seline’s mind humming at once. She’d wanted to know more about it—and she soon had a chance to ask.
“So…tell me more about this not having emotions thing,” she’d said to him, during their very first trip to Yonnie Six when they were strapped into the long-range shuttle together.
Nox had been piloting the ship and he had turned to face her, one black eyebrow raised.
“What would you like to know?”
“So…you don’t feel anything at all? Not love or hate or annoyance or anger or lust or anything?” Seline had asked him.
He had shaken his head.
“I have no use for such ‘feelings’ as these—they would only interfere with the logical way I live my life. To be honest, I don’t know how beings who feel emotions manage—it must make your life much more difficult.”
“Yes, but it makes it more colorful too—more fun!” Seline had exclaimed. “What’s the point of just drudging through life, never feeling anything? The excitement of meeting new people and trying new things…anger when someone wrongs you…the heart-pounding bliss of falling in love…” She looked at him expressively. “Is any of this ringing a bell? No? Nothing?”
Nox shook his head.
“I am afraid not. I have never been excited or happy or sad or angry. I do feel anticipation for events I find agreeable. And while I cannot feel love, I can admire beauty.” He had raised his eyebrow at her again, his pale silver eyes taking her in. “For instance, now.”
“Oh, um…” For a moment Seline had felt almost flustered. “That’s…very kind of you,” she’d said at last.
“It was not a compliment—merely a statement of fact,” Nox had remarked in that maddeningly cool, logical way of his. “And now we should be going—the Mother Ship has opened the fold in space for us.”
That had been the end of that conversation, but not the end of Seline’s intense interest in her Protector. As she had told Kat, she loved a challenge. And from that moment on, she wanted nothing more than to break through Nox’s stoic façade and make him feel some kind of emotion. Any kind—though if she was being honest, lust would be best.
She wasn’t looking to make him fall in love with her—she’d had enough relationship commitment to last her a lifetime with Mitchell. Now she just wanted to be footloose and fancy-free, as her Granny would have said.
She also wanted to explore some new facets of herself that were coming to light, now that she was finally out of her dead-end marriage. Some new “kinks” you might call them. Kinks that Mitchell had been completely uninterested in.
Not that her ex would have been very good at what she was interested in. Mitchell didn’t have a dominant bone in his body. He was an accountant, only an inch taller than Seline herself, with thick glasses and a fixation on spreadsheets.
But Nox…well, he seemed like he could be very dominant if only he was put in the right situation. He was so big and stern and muscular—and he always wore all black from his tall leather boots to his tight trousers to his satiny, button down black uniform shirt. Also, since he’d stopped wearing the big, scary exoskeleton at Seline’s request, he had replaced it with a long black leather duster which made him look mysterious and foreboding in a very sexy way.
Just the thought of her Protector as a Dom made Seline’s heart flutter, though she was pretty sure she could never get him to do the things she was secretly dying for. But she was having fun trying to get him to react, anyway—even if he almost never did.
The thing about Nox was that he was safe. Because of the no-emotions thing, as Seline thought of it, she could flirt with him as outrageously as she wanted to without worrying that she would annoy or enflame him as she would a regular human man. Though of course, she kind of wanted to enflame him and she had the sense that she was getting closer to her goal.
One way she knew this was the fact that Nox had started showing up in places she didn’t expect him to be—places that were totally non-work-related.
For instance, the other day when she’d gone to work out at one of the many fitness facilities aboard the Mother Ship, Nox had appeared. Seline had been halfway through her cardio—she loathed it but it made her feel better and more energetic—when the huge warrior had come in quite casually. She might not have thought anything of it, except she knew for a fact that he lived on the other end of the ship—this gym was out of the way for him.
Nox hadn’t looked at her—had simply gone straight to the free weights and started loading ridiculous amounts on the bar. He had proceeded to bench press the equivalent of a small car as smoothly as a machine while Seline watched from the corner of her eye in awe.