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)
I felt like I was being watched. I was.
“Everything okay, Tanya?” he asked me, stretching an arm over the back of the bench seat we were on. His fingertips grazed the exposed part of my shoulder.
“I’m at a weird place in my head,” I told him with a shake of my head and a shrug. My hair splayed out across his hand and his fingers immediately played with the length.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” he invited.
“I’m feeling really lucky right now that I got whisked away by you, especially given the experience I had yesterday with that … other guy. But I’m worried about some of my friends.”
“Who are you worried about?”
“I got kind of close with a few of them on the flight over. Jetta Michaels. Lacey…um… I don’t know if she told me her last name.”
Zane pulled a little computer tablet from a brown leather satchel that was on the floor and touched the screen. Strange symbols were on screen until he clicked a few times and put his thumbprint in the center. He took his arm out from behind me to tap away at it with both hands.
“I already know about Jetta Michaels,” he said, thumbing away. “She’s now Jetta Blackstar and she’s sort of my sister-in-law.”
I perked up. “Get out.”
He frowned.
“Jetta married your brother?”
“No. My best friend and former brother-in-law Daxx. He and Jetta married in the wee hours of the night. He’s Ollie’s uncle. His father is the ambassador of this region.”
“He’s your best friend?” I brightened.
That must say good things about this Daxx person.
“We grew up together. Jetta is in very good hands.”
“Get out!”
He tilted his head, frowning in confusion.
“Great news,” I amended. I wondered if Jetta really had consummated her relationship with this Daxx. Somehow, I was skeptical. She was extremely resistant to the idea of all this. She’d been branded the troublemaker of the group by the men who oversaw our journey to this place and spent a lot of her time asleep because they kept putting her under to get her out of their hair. Even more than the rest of us. I hoped that if she had actually had sex with Daxx, that it was consensual. It’d mean maybe she was actually happy and that she’d now be immune to the plague that killed off most of the women here.
“Lacey…” Zane said and kept tapping and then his expression dropped. “Lacey Underwood. Her status is unknown, and her tracker is offline.”
It was my turn to frown.
His finger scrolled on the screen some more. “She’s one of the ones who were abducted. I’m so sorry, Tanya.”
He reached for my hand.
I gripped his and took a big breath. He put his arm around me, and his lips touched my temple as he put the tablet away. “They’ll work hard to track her down and get her safe. The Project D team won’t simply allow this. It could become mayhem if they don’t take a hard stand with it.”
I nodded and blew out a breath.
Oh Lacey. Lacey was convinced she had the worst luck in the world. I’d looked at her and thought, though I didn’t say it, that maybe her bad luck was confined to Earth. My heart sank.
The sky car stopped. We were on the rooftop of a dark glass building, and the symbol on it matched the symbol from Zane’s house.
***
Elevator doors opened and Zane carried me inside with him.
We were immediately greeted by a man who took one look at me and gave his head a not-so-subtle shake as his eyes went big.
“Pace, this is my … wife, Tanya.”
The hesitation in Zane’s voice was a bit jarring, but not as jarring as the words he’d said. I felt his arms tighten around me as he said ‘wife’ and my name, his voice had gone what I can only describe as husky.
I accidentally sighed kind of loud. Oops.
There went my nipples again. I wondered what the shelf life of that aphrodisiac they’d given me was. Was that the reason for these crazy sensations? I quite liked them but had the sneaking suspicion that Zane was picking up on them and that was a little bit embarrassing. But also, exhilarating.
The man in front of us had long and straight glossy dark hair and dark eyes and though he wasn’t quite as tall as Zane, he was muscled. He wore a skin-tight lime green turtleneck that highlighted his large muscles and black trousers that reminded me of the harem pants of the 80s. They billowed at the hips and tapered down at the shins. He was attractive, despite the oddness of his clothing. He had black sandals on with them. And oddly, socks. Green ones that matched his shirt.
“Pace is VP of operations here.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I held my hand out, feeling awkward about how the man looked at me, like I was some strange specimen (though, really, I guess I was). Also, I tried not to stare at his ridiculous outfit.