Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
I wondered if the Baron had been affected as strongly as I had and my eyes flickered over the crotch of his tight black trousers. Unlike most Naggian males, he didn’t wear the long, embroidered robes, preferring to dress in trousers, boots, and sleeveless shirts that showed his muscular, tattooed arms.
Sure enough, there was a definite bulge at his crotch—a very large one, I might add. But he seemed more interested in examining my wrist and forearm than in doing anything about our mutual silent arousal. He had pushed the crimson sleeve of his robe up and he was looking at my arm in the glow from the fireplace. As he examined me, his face grew dark.
“I…I know it looks bad,” I stammered. “But I promise, the veins are still good. You can still get plenty of blood from them!”
“Let me see the other one,” he ordered, beckoning for me to give him my other hand.
Miserably, I complied and when he rolled up the other sleeve, his face darkened even more.
“How many clients do you let feed on you on any given day?” he demanded, looking up at me at last.
“R’xs wants me to try and get at least twenty a day,” I admitted. “And since he takes three-fourths of everything I earn, I pretty much have to if I want to make rent and buy anything to eat.”
The Baron—or “Vik’tor” as he had told me to call him—let out a low curse.
“I’m sorry if you don’t like the way my arms look, but they’re the only part of me I can let you bite,” I said quickly, trying to keep him from asking about my neck or my thighs. “I don’t sell blood from anywhere else on my body,” I added and once again the strange vision of him leaning over me and getting ready to bite my neck pushed its way into my mind.
Vik’tor didn’t answer. Instead, he rose abruptly from the chair, making me jump back with a gasp since he was now towering over me.
“Have a seat,” he said and it was an order, not an invitation.
“I, um…okay,” I said meekly. I sank into the wingback chair he had vacated, noting as I did that the smooth leather was still warm from his big body.
“Stay there,” Vik’tor told me. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He left the small room by a different door than the one I had entered and I heard his heavy boots as a muffled tromping on the rich red carpet outside.
I sat there feeling miserable, wondering what was going to happen to me next. Clearly from the questions he had asked and the way he looked at my mutilated arms, the Baron hadn’t liked what he saw. He probably thought I was offering him “used goods”—something a male of his social status probably wouldn’t accept. He might even make me get dressed and send me right back down to the Central Hub immediately.
Or else he would use my scarred arms as an excuse to want to bite my throat or my inner thigh. Although, at the moment, with the strange surge of lust still coursing through my veins, the idea of letting him drink from my thigh wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been earlier. Or rather, the idea was still frightening, but now that fear held a sexual edge that made me tingle all over when I thought about it.
Don’t be crazy, Natalie, I told myself. Even if he does go down there, he’s not going to want to do anything but drink your blood—that’s what all Naggians want, right? Well, mostly anyway…
I had heard from the other Blood Whores who let clients drink from their thigh that a male putting his mouth on a female “down there” was strictly forbidden in Naggian society. Something about a man “lowering” himself to a woman and how it was wrong. (Oh yeah, the patriarchy was alive and well on O’nagga Nine.) But the very fact that it was a “forbidden” act seemed to make some men crave it—at least according to the women I talked to.
Not that I was willing to test that theory with the Baron, I told myself firmly. If he didn’t want to drink from my bruised and battered arms, well, that was just too bad. I wasn’t prepared to offer him access to any other part of my body.
But what about that weird image you saw when he touched you the first time? The one with him getting ready to bite your neck?
I pushed it away. That was crazy—nothing. Just like the weird surge of sexual energy that had passed between us like a lightning bolt zapping both of us at once. It was like Vik’tor had said—probably just some weird reaction because we came from different planets or peoples or something. I wasn’t going to let him bite my neck or my thigh. It was strictly the wrist or nothing.