Total pages in book: 175
Estimated words: 166095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 830(@200wpm)___ 664(@250wpm)___ 554(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 166095 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 830(@200wpm)___ 664(@250wpm)___ 554(@300wpm)
But then I’m standing next to him and he gives me that tight-lipped look even as his tail reaches out to twine with mine.
And I burst into tears all over again. “I hate you,” I sob even as he folds me into his arms. “I was doing just fine without you making me fall in love with you, you prick. You and Dora are the worst.”
“I think that’s her way of telling us that she loves us,” Dora says with a watery giggle.
He rubs my back. “I love you, too —”
“No, you don’t!” I push away from him, remembering that I’m keffing furious. “If you did, you wouldn’t have scared us to death like that.”
“I didn’t think it mattered. I figured it was my problem, and I needed to handle it. I didn’t want to bother the both of you.”
Not bother us? With his keffing health? I’m glad Dora’s wearing the same look of incredulous disgust I am. “We’re your mates, remember? Your problem is our problem.”
He shakes his head. “Yes, but —”
“Yes, but what?” Dora prompts. She moves to my side and crosses her arms under her breasts, giving him the same skeptical look I am. Our tears are gone. She’s growing as irritated as I am. “You kept a life-threatening secret from us. Why would you do that?”
Jamef is silent for a long, quiet moment. I untangle my tail from his and thwap him with it, demanding an answer.
“Because I thought you’d get rid of me sooner,” he admits. “Once I wasn’t convenient to have around, you’d decide you’d be better off with a pair than a triad.”
Now I’m the one that’s silent.
“Why would you think that?” Dora asks, hurt in her voice.
He shrugs, as if that answers everything, and the closed-off look is returning to his features.
“Well,” I say finally, and gesture down at his new leg. He’s wearing his favorite pair of worn trou, but the fabric hangs slightly differently. There are less bumps and bulges, a sign that his prosthetic is one of the newer, sleeker, more expensive types. “Everything working all right with the new parts?”
“Seems to be,” Jamef says gruffly, as if he doesn’t really want to talk about it.
“Great. And is your old leg still around?”
He eyes me with a wary expression. “I suppose so. Why?”
“Because I’m going to find it and beat you over the head with it for thinking that we would be together without you,” I snarl. “What the kef are you even thinking, you absolute idiot?”
One Hundred Twenty-Eight
JAMEF
Both Bethiah and Dora are completely and utterly furious with me…and I can’t help but bask in their reactions.
It’s an even better feeling than my leg, which no longer hurts in the slightest. I didn’t realize how much the defects in it were troubling me until they disappeared, and now I feel fantastic. Better than fantastic. I feel like a youth again, with a whole body and the entire universe in front of me.
And apparently I have the love of two very, very angry females. That’s the part that’s the most surprising.
“How could you even doubt how we feel about you?” Dora asks. “Haven’t we told you that we love you? Haven’t we shown you?”
Bethiah is silent, her glare livid, the twitch of her tail showing just how furious she is. I’m surprised she isn’t yelling at me any longer. Instead, she’s just fuming in silence, which is worse.
“I overheard the two of you talking once,” I confess, so they don’t think I’m making this all up in my head. “Bethiah, you were talking about how you hadn’t felt love for anyone before Dora. And I knew your prior relationships were with women, so I figured I was a very distant third in our triad and that it was only a matter of time before you both got tired of me.”
Dora tilts her head, a confused look on her face.
Bethiah is equally puzzled. She glances over at Dora, as if trying to place the conversation, and then shrugs again. “I think whatever drugs Zakoar had you on aren’t out of your system.”
“No drugs. I know what I heard.”
“Prove it to me,” Bethiah says, her hands on her hips. “You can access the security footage on the ship, right? Show me where and when I said that I loved Dora and only Dora.”
I immediately connect to the Pleasure Spot’s network using my eye’s computers. Once I’m in, I sort through the footage at high speed, looking for a frame that matches the query I send through. I’m searching for a time when Bethiah and Dora were in the bedroom and I was in the hall outside. A few instances pop up and I review the first one, then discard it.
In front of me, Bethiah examines her nails. Dora nudges her.
“Any time now,” Bethiah complains when I check the next instance and discard it, too.