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)
“Is that a translation failure? Small, sweet dessert item?” His eyes twinkled playfully.
“It translates,” I informed with a huge smile and looked away, blushing.
“Your stone isn’t the only thing that’s pink, Tanya,” he said.
“My cheeks?” I asked.
He moved in close. “Yes. Your cheeks. Are you too warm?”
“Maybe,” I giggled.
He put his arms around me. “I’m quite warm, too.”
“You’re definitely not cold,” I told him, feeling the pink likely switch to red on my face because it was so not like me to be this bold.
“On fire,” he whispered, and his mouth came closer. “What are we going to do about this pink stone business?” he asked, lips attacking my earlobe. I shivered.
“What do you mean?”
“If it’s pink, people will assume you’re unattached.”
“Oh.” My head rolled back as his mouth moved along my ear, then down, nibbling along my throat toward my collarbone. “You could put the other one back in.”
“Mm hm,” he said.
“Or…” I said and my whole body tingled.
“Or…” he parroted and then had both of my hips and hauled me a few inches forward on the table so that the core of me was pressed right against his ---- him. Him.
My legs immediately wrapped around him and I clenched my thighs.
He stopped and looked at me. And then his expression dropped. But his hand tightened on me briefly before he let go and stepped back.
And it had a similar effect to what I’d imagine a bucket of cold water being tossed at me would feel like.
“We should wait. Make certain we’re…sure.”
He lifted the blue earring up and looked at it thoughtfully.
How long did he want to wait? I only had about 56 hours.
CHAPTER 12
ZANE
He could do it. He could have her right now. She’d welcome it.
He’d felt possessive, primal when he’d grabbed her and put his mouth on her. He’d been annoyed at her giving Pace a smile, at Pace touching her hand. He wanted to show her that it wasn’t okay. He wanted her to know that she was his.
But she wasn’t. Not yet. Not truly.
If he kept going, this was final. Marriage. Even though they were married on paper, they weren’t actually married yet and Zane wanted to be sure that she fit with him and his son.
He had always been an analytical person, it made him good at his job, but he was torn between fear that he might be overanalyzing this and fear that he wasn’t thinking things through thoroughly enough.
Kissing her lips, tasting her, holding her against him, he’d nearly gotten lost in her right here in his lab. He’d made such a pressured snap decision when it came to getting married the first time, back when marriage didn’t have to be permanent. Was that a stumbling block here?
He also knew that if he was about to marry her, it couldn’t be here on the lab station in his office. Yes, he would be all about fucking her in all sorts of non-traditional ways and places, but not for their first time, not for the cementing of an unbreakable bond between them.
“Let’s get this back in,” he said and took the tool that would remove the pink gem from her ear so that he could reattach the defective blue one. The blue one would at least offer time to figure it all out.
He examined it and saw that the blue was fading, turning pink around the edges, which it shouldn’t have done. Once blue it should remain blue.
He also knew the one in her ear should’ve changed within a maximum of two minutes if she had Phallyxian DNA in her body. No matter how long since then. Or at least it should.
After he married her, if he married her, he would test it over and over to ensure the readings were correct. He thought about the wince she’d done with the pinching sensation and didn’t want to subject her to any discomfort at all, so he decided he’d find an alternate measurement tool. She wore a ring of silver with a red jewel on a necklace during the flight over. He’d seen it on the footage, on the live streams. Perhaps he’d have rings made that contained the same sensor jewels.
Elaina Blackstar’s suggestions for the ear jewelry had made sense as part of their trials as she wore several of them already and it would make installation simple when the women had their trackers inserted into their ear canal. The leaders of the Project D team didn’t want something that the Earth women could easily remove, giving any opportunity for either adultery or for others to plead ignorance about whether or not they knew a woman was attached.
Elaina had been quite bejeweled, even having a navel piercing as well as one on her upper lip, so the ear piercing made sense.
Zane felt Tanya’s flinch when he clamped the blue gem back onto the ridge of her ear in the spot it’d been before and gave her an affectionate squeeze.