Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“I…I guess I still don’t understand.” Mia shook her head.
Sev sighed and ran a hand over his horns.
“You want help up?” he asked abruptly, nodding at the passenger side of the ship, which was a good meter off the ground.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Mia nodded and he leaned down to encircle her waist with both huge hands and lifted her gently into the ship.
It wasn’t something she would have allowed until recently but she was growing to trust Sev more. Not just to have her back in a dicey situation—she knew she could trust him for that. But ever since she’d cried in his arms and he’d held her and then hadn’t made a big deal of it afterwards, she’d felt like she could trust him emotionally as well as physically. Which meant she could let him help her into his ship without worrying that he would treat her like a girly-girl instead of a competent officer and fellow detective afterwards.
And now she found that she wanted him to trust her as well—to understand about his past, if only he would explain it.
“Tell me more,” she said, after he had climbed into the pilot’s chair and fastened his harness.
Sev sighed and ran a hand over his horns again. They weren’t smooth—they had ridges like a goat’s horns. Mia knew because she had touched one once—at his invitation—when they were first getting to know each other.
“You humans have a sexual practice called BDSM,” he said at last. “Or sometimes they just call it D/s—Domination and submission.” He was staring at the viewscreen as he spoke, not looking at Mia directly. “It’s where one partner dominates and sexually controls the other.”
“Uh, yes—I’ve heard of that.” Mia cleared her throat, feeling a hot blush rising in her cheeks. “I’ve never, uh, participated in anything like that but I’ve heard of it.”
Where she’d come from such ideas had been considered deviant. But then, even PG 13 movies and the mildest of curse words had been considered deviant in the religious sect she’d been raised in—they hadn’t even been allowed to take mild stimulants like coffee or cola, because both contained caffeine.
Still, she was a big girl—she could handle what Sev was telling her. She stared at her partner intently and murmured,
“Go on.”
“Almost everyone on my home world is in a D/s relationship—not just in the bedroom but in their daily lives,” Sev admitted in a low voice. “It’s not always the male dominating the female—sometimes, though rarely, it’s the other way around. But there is no true equality between the sexes because of it. It’s why I left my home planet and came to find a new life on the Mother Ship.”
“Because you didn’t have those, uh, urges?” Mia asked. They were getting into murky territory now—she and Sev almost never spoke about anything sexual. But she couldn’t help asking.
Sev surprised her by shaking his head.
“No, Mia.” He turned to face her at last, his golden eyes glowing in the dim interior of the ship. “Because I was afraid I do have those urges. Not to hurt a female—as a Kindred, I would never want to do that. But I could see myself being extremely dominant. Especially sexually.”
“Oh…” Mia whispered and for some reason a shiver ran down her spine. She didn’t want any man dominating her, she told herself—especially not considering her background. But the way Sev was looking at her so intensely, with his eyes glowing like that made her stomach feel like a thousand butterflies had just taken off inside it. Her nipples were suddenly tight and the place between her legs felt tingly and hot. She squeezed her thighs together tightly.
“So you…” She cleared her throat, trying to sound normal and not so breathless. “So you’re afraid this assignment will bring up…bad things from your past?”
“Are you afraid of that?” he countered, surprising her. “Why are you so eager to take this assignment—how did you know right away the PPP is a cult?”
“Well, I mean…it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Mia said, fumbling for words. “Their leader calls himself ‘The Prophet’—that’s like Cult 101—right?”
Sev didn’t answer. Instead, he kept staring at her with those glowing golden eyes.
“I told you why the assignment bothered me—told you a little about my past, Mia,” he said at last. “I think you owe me the same.”
Mia bristled—she wanted to tell him that she didn’t owe him a goddamned thing! Except…that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Sev had told her something he’d been holding back—something he seemed to be deeply ashamed of—she owed him a little quid-pro-quo.
“I recognized the PPP as a cult because…” She took a deep breath and decided to just plunge in. “Because I was raised in a cult. Or a religious sect that might as well have been a cult, anyway. From the time I was twelve until I was twenty-four, when I finally left. And believe me—they don’t make it easy to leave,” she added. “They tell your entire family that you’re going to Hell and they can’t have anything else to do with you, so you don’t ‘infect’ them with your worldly ideas and your sinful ways.”