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)
He was a good man.
He was a handsome man.
He could dance.
He recognized sweet lyrics in a song.
And maybe he was still missing his dead wife. Maybe it was why he was hesitant with me physically and wanted to take things slow. He clearly had no idea about the 72-hour deadline so why would he hurry?
I’d have to tell him. I would have to tell him and then have him give me sex out of pity. And that sucked. I was no longer afraid of dying because I knew that once I told Zane, there was no way he would let me die.
I would’ve much rather he be overcome with passion and make a conscious decision to marry me because he could not take another minute before sealing the deal because he just had to have me, feeling sure he could see spending the rest of his life with me and giving me a bunch of babies, including letting me be the momma to his beautiful four-year-old child.
I knew I’d never rate for a guy like him if their entire planet wasn’t affected by a female shortage. But here I was. And he liked me. And his son liked me.
They picked me based on watching me during a time when I was very much being…just me. Quiet. Watchful. Observing. They liked that girl on the spaceship. And she was me.
So… I guessed I’d have to live with the fact that he’d marry me to save my life. I’d lose my virginity to him out of pity. But it was better than dying. I still couldn’t help but feel sad.
***
I kept waking up between Chili feedings, at Chili feeding times, too. I was worried about him getting out and doing damage. His clicking didn’t wake me that first night because I was drunk and also because sleeping to the sound of a typewriter had been the norm for me, and that’s what the clicking sounded like. I also kept waking because I was thinking about Zane. I looked out the window and didn’t have a view of Zane’s house; I had a view of Zorald’s house. Thankfully, Chili was a perfect angel who slept after each feeding, evidently tuckered out after his big adventure breaking Zane’s house.
CHAPTER 26
ZANE
It was a long night. And he was exhausted by the time he was done at less than an hour before dawn. But he fell into his bed, exhausted, without removing his clothes.
The rewiring was done. Any potential danger zones were dealt with. And he’d also spent time working on a plan and setting it into motion. There would be an enclosure added onto the greenhouse so that little monster could run and play and live somewhat like a fuschialala viscacha. It’d be equipped with traveling tubes that would screw with the esthetic of the back of his house, but that was already done when Zane added the water playground.
Truthfully, he’d regularly made changes to his home. Swapping out the master bedroom after Jaya and Arla. Tearing down the office. Adding the pool Arla never wanted. Putting on that extra balcony to give Tanya a reading spot as per Ollie’s request.
When this set of renovations was done, the pink monster would be able to visit their bedroom through that tube from his enclosure and get to the end of that tube where they could opt to let him in, or not. Zane had also programmed things so that if Chili was in his enclosure, an escape rather than being let out by someone in the household who had to let him out with their fingerprint, would result in an alarm.
Zane went to sleep knowing something else. He was more than ready to take things to the next level with Tanya.
He didn’t like sleeping alone. Didn’t like the idea she wasn’t under his roof. He wanted her under it and wrapped around him in that sweet way that she had when they’d slept together the night before. He wanted every bit of the her to be his, truly. Not just on paper; for real. And he knew it would come with a pet fuschilla, with phrases and odd traditions like ‘cheers’, strange dancing, and other stuff that she’d need to explain. But it would also come with a lot more.
He was planning to ask his father to keep Ollie the following night. Chili too. It’d take the house at least 48 hours to build Chili’s advanced addition due to all the finishing touches and technical specs. But while his father watched his son and their new pet, he’d make Tanya his. He knew she wanted it. He had no idea why she was so panicked for it, perhaps just the anxiety of being in a new place that held some hostility against Earth, but he’d get to the bottom of that and any secrets she had, share his own relationship history, then … she’d be his. His wife. He drifted off to sleep happy. Ridiculously happy for a man who’d had his house ripped apart by a pest in order to keep a smile on a sweet, little flame-haired woman’s face.