Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 215(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
“For me?” Kross frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No, but you will, Mr. Kross.”
Kross turned and saw that the screen on the far wall was lit again and Barbarous was smirking at him from it.
“What are you talking about?” Kross demanded. “You think I’ll hurt her just so you can get off watching it? I don’t fucking think so!”
“If my formula works, you won’t have a choice,” Barbarous told him.
“Formula? What for—” Kross started to ask. But at that moment there was a hissing sound and the tree trunk room began to fill with pink smoke, pouring in from a hidden vent somewhere.
It was cloyingly sweet—Kross coughed as he inhaled it. He felt like he was choking on cotton candy—a confection that humans were fond of though it was nothing but sugar.
The girl they had shoved in the room with him was choking too. Kross wondered if the plan was to kill them both with poison gas—what else could Barbarous be doing?
But after a moment, the smoke cleared leaving nothing but a lingering, too-sweet scent hanging in the air. Kross looked down at himself. His body looked fine and he certainly didn’t feel any different.
The woman looked pretty much the same too, he thought. She was just standing there, blinking, as though she had been stunned.
“Well?” Barbarous demanded eagerly from the screen. He was staring at Kross avidly. “Well, how do you feel?” he asked.
“Fine. The same.” Kross shrugged. “Why? Am I supposed to feel something? Because I don’t. I guess that formula you’re so proud of is a dud.”
Barbarous scowled at him.
“Impossible! There must be some effect!”
“Ohhhh!”
The noise startled Kross and he looked away from the screen to see that the woman with the goat’s horns was moaning and rubbing her body. One hand was touching her breasts and the other was between her legs.
“Ohhh,” she moaned again, looking up at Kross. “Oh, please!”
“Please what?” he asked, frowning at her.
“Please take me!” the woman begged.
Kross was taken aback. Just a moment ago she’d been afraid he would hurt her—now she was begging him to have sex with her. What in the Seven Hells was going on?
It has to be that damn cotton candy gas, he thought, as he backed away from the pleading woman. It must have affected her somehow. That’s what Barbarous meant when he was talking about his “new formula.”
Speaking of Barbarous, he was glaring from the screen on the far wall.
“Well? Why do you not take her? Fuck her!” he demanded.
“She’s been drugged,” Kross growled, glaring at him. “I’m not going to fuck a drugged woman—that’s called rape!”
“No, that is what we call scientific progress,” Barbarous corrected him. “So you feel no urge at all to mount the lovely Lorna here?”
“Of course not!” Kross was disgusted. As if he would take advantage of a woman that way! It went against everything the Kindred stood for—everything he had ever believed.
But more than that, the idea of rape went against his very DNA. It was so deeply ingrained in Kindred males that females were sacred and not to be harmed that he couldn’t have brought himself to hurt the woman or take her against her will even if his own life was on the line.
“Hmm…interesting. Very interesting.” Barbarous nodded and made some notes. “Well, it seems that this version of the formula isn’t useful for males though it does appear to work quite well on females.” He nodded at the girl named Lorna, who continued to rub herself and moan. “Are you certain you don’t want to put her out of her misery? She won’t be satisfied until she’s been penetrated, you know.”
“Fuck you—I won’t do that!” Kross shook his head. There was only one woman he was interested in and he wasn’t going to go fucking around with a complete stranger who he’d never even seen before.
“Fascinating.” Barbarous made another note. “Very well—it’s back to the lab I suppose. I must study those samples you gave us.”
Just as though Kross had offered his blood freely, instead of being coerced.
The fucker! Kross thought fiercely. But before he could say anything, the screen went blank once more.
The goat-woman continued to cry and rub herself but after a moment, the door opened again. This time three of the tree-men came in and one of them was holding Kross’s own blaster, which they had stolen from him when they caught him in the forest.
“Send the girl out,” the one with the blaster demanded.
“Fine—take her.” Kross held up his hands, though he was wondering if there was some way to take the blaster away. He edged closer to the pain wall, waiting for the tree-man closest to the switch to turn it off.
The minute the wall went down he dropped low and lunged forward. He was just about to go for the blaster when Barbarous’s voice came from the screen again.