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)
“Oh, Mia…” His intense golden stare softened abruptly. “Is that why you’re estranged from your family?”
Mia gave a short, stiff nod.
“You could say that. Michael and I left together,” she made herself add. “Or I thought he left. I found out later that he was still attending services on the sly—still reporting back on me to the, uh, sect leaders.”
“Was that when you filed for divorce?” Sev asked.
She nodded again.
“I couldn’t forgive the duplicity. Not to mention that being around you made me realize what it was like to be…to be respected.” She looked up to meet her partner’s eyes. “To be treated as an equal instead of less than because I’m a woman.”
Sev ran a hand over his horns again, a worried look coming over his face.
“What if we’re going someplace where I can’t treat you as an equal, Mia? What if they want me to dominate you? The way the males of my planet dominate their females?”
“Oh…well…” Mia cleared her throat. Normally she would have said she wouldn’t tolerate any man trying to dominate her—it was one of the main reasons she’d left the sect. Their misogynistic, controlling ways and manipulation of every aspect of her life had gotten to be too much to bear.
But somehow the thought of Sev dominating her was…different. Maybe because it brought other things to mind…things she hadn’t ever allowed herself to think about. “I could be extremely dominant,” he’d told her. “Especially sexually.”
“Mia?” he rumbled, pulling her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see that the worried look was still on his face.
“Oh—sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I mean, we’re going to be playing parts, right? It’s not like you’re actually going to, uh, dominate me—you’ll just pretend to.”
Sev shook his head doubtfully.
“The reason you left Michael was because he didn’t treat you like an equal. I don’t want there to be tension between us if I’m required to treat you the way the males on my planet treat the females. Which is definitely not equal.”
“I left Michael because he was a controlling, gas-lighting asshole who was reporting on me to my old sect behind my back,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to be upset if you have to play He-man and I have to pretend to be your obedient little wifey for a little while. That’s just part of the mission, right?”
Sev sighed deeply and ran both hands over his horns this time.
“All right—if you say so.”
“I do,” Mia said firmly. “Let’s go take this ‘Prophet’ asshole down!”
Her partner nodded and the ship’s engines roared to life. But Mia could still see the worry in his golden eyes as they lifted up and out of the Docking Bay.
FIVE
SEV
Sev concentrated on the red rift in space—the tear in the space-time continuum that the Mother Ship had made just for them so that they could travel directly from the space around Earth to the barren desert world of T’zgarian.
It was dangerous for women who were pregnant to fold space but he didn’t bother asking his partner if she was pregnant or not, because he already knew the answer. His nose told him that Mia hadn’t been with any other male since she’d left her ex, Michael. In fact, she hadn’t been with her mate sexually for quite some time, even before the divorce. If she had, Sev would have smelled the other male on her and he hadn’t.
Even after she left her mate, Mia didn’t seem inclined to try and find another one. Or to engage in any “casual sex” as the humans called it. She seemed to prefer to bury herself in their detective work and forget about having any kind of romantic or sexual relationship at all.
Sev wondered sometimes if his partner was repressing her sexuality—hiding her drives and desires even from herself. He knew she had desires—again, his nose told him so. As it had just now, when he had admitted to her that he thought he would be extremely sexually dominant if he allowed himself to be. As he spoke the words and looked into Mia’s clear gray eyes, her breathing had quickened and her pupils had dilated. Not only that, but he’d scented her desire—a rich, indefinably feminine scent laden with pheromones.
A human nose couldn’t pick up on anything so subtle but a Kindred male of his kind had a better sense of smell than a Blood Hound. Clearly what he’d said had “turned Mia on” as the humans would say. But he doubted if she even knew it herself.
But her desire wasn’t the only thing she was hiding—though she had told him some of her past, he had the feeling there was much more buried under the surface. Just as there was more to his own past. And he couldn’t help worrying that they were headed into a potentially volatile situation that might trigger one or both of them due to their complicated backgrounds.