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)
His phone, lying on a table beside the bed, chimed and he looked to it.
“I… shit… I have to take that call. Rest, Tanya. You’re safe. I swear it. I’ll be back.”
I rolled to the side since I’d been effectively blocking him from getting up and rested my weight on my elbow.
He put his lips to mine just briefly and then startled, like he didn’t mean to do it. I probably looked like a deer in the headlights as he backed out of bed, taking the phone with him and leaving the room.
I blew out a big breath and flopped to my back. Saved by the bell. But I was disappointed about the interruption. And for a split-second panic wanted to set in again at not having my protector close by, but something twinkled in the sky. A shooting star zoomed by and I watched it leave a glittery trail of lime green stardust in its wake.
Mesmerized, I stared at the vividly beautiful night sky, and I thought about the day I’d had. The week, really, because that’s all the journey here felt like. And leading up to that was the stress of the sexual harassment, preceded by breaking up with Giorgio and how that relationship left me feeling so inadequate.
Before that, losing Mom to the stroke. I’d had just about enough of my problems by the time Marsha from HR went missing and I felt, just… numb when I figured out I was being shipped off to a whole other planet.
In my mind, I’d wondered if it could possibly get any worse. They say that sometimes you just have to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. But what if that light seemed like a train? For me I was now wondering if the end of that tunnel was lime green stardust in a pink and purple sky.
Here was a fresh start in front of me. Kind of right on time. I didn’t feel numb now. I felt… exhilaration.
If that was a shooting star, I should make a wish, shouldn’t I?
I did. Right there, I wished for it to work out. For the light at the end of what’d been my dark tunnel to be Zane and his adorable little boy, Ollie.
I licked my lips and it tasted of him. It tasted good. Better than good.
Zane was someone I was anxious to get to know. I had less than three days to get my vaccination. And the nurturing way he’d been, maybe he would give it to me gently.
And then I’d be his. His and Ollie’s.
And they’d be mine, too.
And I wouldn’t die from the Phallyxian plague.
I fell asleep, not haunted by the alien that had been ready to rape me in order to ‘marry’ me or about anything previous to that which’d plagued my life for the past several months.
I fell asleep with a smile on my face under a purple star-studded sky that felt like it was infusing me with something wonderful. Zane’s delicious, manly scent was in the bedding and in the air. Whether the rejuvenating Phallyx moon had anything to do with it or not, I didn’t know, but I slept the best sleep I’d slept in as long as I can remember.
***
It was morning on Planet Phallyx; at least I figured it was because the still open dome above me revealed pink. It was a cloudless pink sky above me.
I looked to the spot beside me and I wasn’t sure if it’d been slept in.
I sat up.
Oh. That was my first thought because Zane was asleep by the window. On the rug. I was in a bed the size of two king-sized beds and there he was on the floor.
He had his arm thrown over his eye, bare chest on display. One bare foot sticking out of the plush-looking glittery salmon-colored blanket that was barely covering him. His curls were stark dark against the white of the plush carpeting.
I had sixty-one hours left to get my vaccination. Or thereabouts. I had my mom’s dainty gold and mother-of-pearl wristwatch. It belonged to her mother, too. It was a pretty piece of jewelry with a clamshell over the clockface that had a pretty tulip carving on it. When we arrived, one of the men in lab coats had examined it and scanned it with a device. I was worried he’d take it. It dawned as I looked at it that I had so few mementoes of Earth with me. Would I ever get to go back?
I shook that thought off. I had no idea if time worked the same way here, but I had glanced at my wrist while we were in the lobby of that building before Zane ran away with me and if my calculations were right, around late afternoon the day after tomorrow would be cutting it close to that 72 hour mark.