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)
Everything on Planet Phallyx so far had felt great, felt promising, exciting, amazing. Until this. This felt wrong. Bad. Scary. I was not just spooked. I had every reason to believe I should be absolutely terrified. And I was.
CHAPTER 6
ZANE
When he left the house to go to the office, he was filled with emotions, most of all: frustration and guilt.
Frustration – at having to leave her. Duty called and it was a priority to find out why there were issues with the translators causing discomfort to the women. There had been no problem with the men’s pieces, thus far. Zane was passionate about his work; he’d have had zero issue with working around the clock on this issue if not for Tanya, but the problem frustrated him. He felt guilty for leaving her by herself and guilt for the fact that his product was causing discomfort. The last thing he wanted was for these newcomers who were already frightened and uncertain to feel discomfort on top of everything else.
Another emotion under his guilt had been happiness though – at her being so understanding about his work, at her openness thus far. At how she felt when he touched her, kissed her. At how nice she tasted. She wasn’t exactly timid, but she was precisely something that appealed to him on a deep level, because she let him lead her with his hand to her back. She didn’t protest when he’d stolen her away. She looked up at him when he spoke with rapt attention as she also devoured his features hungrily with her eyes. Her eyes were definitely hungry. She smelled deliciously ripe, like a perfect fruit ready for plucking. He could smell the arousal on her and could not wait to explore that further. Zane had to muster every ounce of self-control before leaving to not simply take her, make her his completely. He exhibited self-control, but just barely, because although it’d been over four years and despite the potent combination of PD470 coupled with his natural attraction to her, he had a son to think of, too. His groin ached. His fingers tingled. But he beat the urges back.
This wasn’t the first time he regretted not having a lab at home. He was accused, by Arla, of being a workaholic before she’d gotten pregnant with Ollie, and it was one of the many sources of arguments in their home, so when the tiny boy was born and everything else in his life had been uprooted, he examined his life and shuffled priorities. This meant dismantling his home lab, promising himself he wouldn’t make his son feel as if he were competing for Zane’s attention against work. By doing this, he had firmly set boundaries between home time and work time. A few times he’d grumbled about it, having to travel to the office for something fast felt tedious, but it’d felt like the right thing to do for the past four years.
Only now, it meant he had to leave Tanya alone when she’d just arrived and that did not make him happy. If this – with her – went as he wanted it to go, he would set the lab back up at home. If Ollie had two nurturing parents, surely Zane wouldn’t have to feel guilty about the occasional hour working during home-time.
Fifteen minutes after arriving, he’d determined the problem and made corrections to that painful “screeching” women were experiencing. It occurred with higher decibel acoustic levels when they were blended with multiple voices. Zane adjusted some controls and would have the Project D team contact participants to do a manual sync up. He then forwarded a status report to Spar with a request for testing on 10 per cent of those devices to ensure his changes worked. He lifted his communications device, ready to check in with her, but that was when he’d seen the alert that had come in a few minutes before. He’d missed it in his bid to get everything done quickly so he could get back home, back to her, back to where he could have his mouth against her, her body against his, his fingers woven into her soft and beautiful fire-colored hair.
The alert told him the power had been cut to his home and the generators were also in the process of powering down. Why?
Zane accessed previously recorded security camera footage and saw eight men on his street, dressed in tactical gear with communications devices at their shoulders, like the ones the shifty characters had worn at the event that afternoon.
Jaw flexing with tension, he immediately accessed the communications screen in Jaya’s room and went live.
He saw Tanya sitting on the bed, jewels of various colors in her hands and a look of wonder on her face. Every petal in the plant had turned a vibrant orange color. Orange. Jaya’s favorite color. His own mother’s favorite, too.