Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
A bath sounded wonderful but first she wanted to get a snack from the kitchen. Some of the sweet little cookies that tasted like a cross between oatmeal and some kind of extra sweet banana which had been served for dessert at dinner. She knew there were some left—she’d only gotten to eat one herself before Cade had started licking her.
She made her way to the back of the mansion, walking carefully in the dim light since the house had been “put to bed” for the night and all the servants had gone home or were sleeping in their quarters. She had only been in the kitchens once, for a very brief tour, so she hoped she could find what she was looking for.
Once in the cavernous cooking area, Andi looked around with care. She was sure the cookies would probably be one of the many pantries she’d seen on her one and only visit—the question was, which one?
She made her way to the very back, walking around the gleaming cooking areas and countertops until she found something she had yet to see in a Zo’rathian house—a door that wasn’t round.
The door was smaller than most and made of thick blue wood. It was rectangular, Andi saw, rather than round like all the other structures on this planet. Other than the unusual color of the wood, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a house back on Earth.
Could the cookies be in here? Andi took a firm grip on the knob and pulled open the door. But what greeted her eyes wasn’t a shallow room with lots of shelves—instead she saw a stairway going down into darkness. At the very bottom, there was a dim glow, like a single candle flame.
It occurred to Andi that this was her last chance to try and find anything Goodie Bo-long might know about The Scent or a cure for Manimalism. She’d tried her best to search around the house but the mansion was vast and lately Cade had been so insistent about breeding her all the time, she hadn’t been able to do much looking.
Should she go down those dark stairs? Andi bit her lip as uncertainty flooded her. On one hand, she really wanted to see if she could find a cure for Cade. But on the other hand, this was like a set up from a horror movie! If she had been watching herself on a movie screen, she would have been shouting,
“Don’t go down there!” or something to that effect.
Andi was still standing there, hovering on the top step and filled with indecision when she heard a voice floating up from the darkness. She couldn’t make out the words it was saying, but it held her riveted all the same.
Because the voice, which was speaking in a low but clearly intelligent cadence, was most definitely male.
47
ANDI
Andi’s feet took her down the dark stairs before she quite knew what she was doing. As she got closer to the bottom, she heard another voice—one she knew.
It was Goodie Bo-long and she was talking to a male—clearly someone she knew.
“Why do you continue to torture me like this?” the unknown male asked in low, gravelly tones. He sounded exhausted, as though he was weary to his core, Andi thought as she crept quietly closer.
“Why did you torture me during our marriage?” Goodie Bo-long snapped back. “All you had to do was show me some respect—let me help with your research. You know the degrees I hold—you know I’m every bit as intelligent and capable as you. But you held me down—punished me for being a woman— for being your wife!”
Andi put a hand over her mouth. Was Goodie Bo-long talking to her husband—the renowned scientist, Dr. Bo-long? But she’d said that he had “gone Manimal and run off.” Cleary she had been lying.
She reached the bottom of the staircase and peered carefully around the corner. At the far end of the basement area—which Andi had never seen before—was what looked like a kind of laboratory. There was a table with some complicated looking scientific equipment, some test tubes, and a large centrifuge.
But it wasn’t the equipment that drew Andi’s eye the most—across from the table filled with scientific paraphernalia was a cage—a prison made of iron bars that was only about as big as a jail cell back on Earth, she thought. A tall Zo’rathian man with skin the color of an overripe avocado was standing there, holding the bars and looking out. Goodie Bo-long stood facing him, her hands on her hips and a look of triumph on her face. Gobi was at her heels, on his hands and knees as always, panting eagerly as he pressed his face under her short skirt.
“I should have treated you better—I should have acknowledged your academic prowess—I admit it!” Dr. Bo-long said heavily. “But why must you take my son from my first marriage and turn him into your sex-beast?”