Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
It’s get close to him or freeze to death, she thought, shivering again. Just be careful, Danni—you should be okay as long as you don’t lose your head.
“Well…all right,” she said at last. “As long as you promise nothing else will happen.”
“Promise, little girl,” Bravik growled. “Now come over here and warm up.”
Danni scooted towards him and he drew her against his big, warm side. At first she was stiff but after a moment, she gave in and cuddled against him.
“There you go. Gods, you really are freezing, little girl.” Bravik rubbed her arm briskly to warm her up and pulled her a little bit closer. With a sigh, Danni melted against him completely. She hadn’t noticed before, when they were on the couch, but he really was extremely warm—he put out heat like a furnace.
“This is nice,” she admitted. “We just…can’t go any further than this.”
“We don’t have to and we won’t,” Bravik assured her. “Like I said, it’s easier to control ourselves when we’re not being irradiated by that fucking pink beam of energy.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Danni admitted. “Maybe that’s why Navii kept telling me that you and I should sit on the couch in the glow of the Mother Stone before, uh, ‘christening our bower’.” She cleared her throat to cover her embarrassment.
“Oh, so that’s what she told you,” Bravik rumbled. “She must have figured that damn pink radiation would make us so horny we’d be fucking like bunnies all night.”
“Uh, probably.” Danni felt awkward having this conversation while pressed up against the big Kindred’ side—though being this close to him hadn’t bothered her a bit while they were both on the couch.
That thought made her decide that Bravik must be right. The power of the Mother Stone was not only healing—it was also some kind of weird aphrodisiac. It seemed to exude some strange, sexual energy that lowered inhibitions and made people much more amorous than they normally would be.
From the moment she and Bravik had sat down on the couch and started staring into that weird, pink glow, their walls had started crumbling. And they had ended up doing things…things Danni would never have done with a coworker if she hadn’t been under the influence of some weird alien radiation, she told herself.
“I really think you’re right—about the power of the Mother Stone having such a strange effect on us,” she told Bravik.
“I know I’m right,” he growled. “I had just gotten through promising you we wouldn’t do anything in private when we didn’t have to put on a show for the damn H’rakens and then we, er, ended up doing something anyway. I don’t break my word. Or I sure as hell didn’t mean to.”
Danni sighed.
“I was blaming myself for being, uh, unprofessional,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I didn’t think that the radiation might be affecting me.”
“It’s just a damn good thing we found it out now,” Bravik pointed out. “Can you imagine if we’d gone into the source of the power tomorrow night without a clue about how it makes us act?”
“Good point.” Danni nodded. “We need to be on our guard during the, uh, Adoration of the Mother Stone tomorrow night. But I do think we still need to go check it out.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Bravik rumbled. “I mean, it appears to be able to heal people—or give them the power to heal others—and it might even help with aging. The fact that it also makes them horny is kind of a minor side-effect.”
“As long as we’re on our guard against the effects, we should be all right,” Danni agreed. “And in the meantime, maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves for…for what happened.”
“You mean that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Bravik told her. “Take it easy and don’t hate on yourself for being ‘unprofessional’, little girl. Okay?”
“I guess I’d have an easier time doing that if…if I didn’t think you’d lose respect for me,” Danni admitted in a low voice. “I mean, if something like what happened between us had happened between me and a colleague down on Earth—”
“You mean a human male?” Bravik’s tone betrayed his contempt for the males of her species.
“Well, yes.” Danni nodded. “If something had happened between me and a human man, he wouldn’t have respected me much afterwards. It doesn’t matter how many MDs or degrees or initials you have behind your name when you’re a woman—just one stupid action on your part and you’ve lost all the professional respect you ever had.” She sighed.
“That’s fucking ridiculous,” Bravik growled. “Is that really how human males operate? If that’s true, then they never had any respect for their females in the first place.”
“That’s possible, I suppose.” Danni sighed. “Then you don’t think less of me for…for asking you to suck my nipples?” The words stuck in her throat a little and she had to force them out, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.