Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“Oh, Sev!” Mia threw herself at him and hugged him tight.
He winced.
“Watch the back, baby—okay?”
Looking down over his broad shoulder, Mia saw that while the cuts from the beating he’d taken were nearly healed—probably from the Goddess’s power— there were dark bruises forming where the cane had hit him.
That’s right, she thought, feeling shame wash over her. He was beaten for me—he took the punishment that I deserved.
Guilt caused her to draw back, away from her partner.
“Hey—I didn’t mean you had to run away,” Sev protested. He groaned as he levered himself to his feet. “What happened around here? Where’s The Prophet?”
“Last I saw him he was being dragged away by a mob of angry Concubines,” Mia told him. “Look, we need to get out of here and I think I know how.”
She was thinking of the plans she’d seen—the 3-D holo of the PPP Dome’s infrastructure and blueprints. And she remembered Zellah telling her there was a secret way out.
“Come on,” she told Sev. And taking him by the hand, she led him deeper into the former Prophet’s private rooms.
They passed through an opulent layout—overstuffed velvet couches big enough to seat twenty… a golden fountain flowing with what appeared to be some kind of expensive dark blue wine…a bed made to host orgies that filled a whole room and was covered in a shiny gold-thread duvet…a bathroom with an enormous swimming pool-sized tub edged in gold and silver.
At the very end of the luxurious living area was a room which seemed to be kitted out like a BDSM dungeon. Mia felt her cheeks go hot when she saw a spanking bench with a rack full of paddles and a milking mat that had golden suction cups at one end and what appeared to be a golden dildo on a mechanical piston arm on the other.
“Sick fucker,” Sev muttered, looking at the mat. “I guess when he was too lazy to milk them himself, he set them up there and let the machine milk them and fuck them.”
“We don’t have time to look at all his equipment,” Mia reminded her partner. “Come on—I think I see what I’m looking for.”
At the very end of the room was a door. When she opened it, all she saw at first was a lot of BDSM equipment—paddles and whips and leather harnesses hung on rings. But after pushing all that aside, she found it at last—another door. And this one opened into a long tunnel.
“Here it is!” Mia felt her heart pound with excitement. “Come on—let’s go!”
“Where the fuck does this lead and how did you know about it?” Sev asked as he ducked his head to follow her in. The tips of his horns scraped the ceiling and he had to stoop over as they hurried along the underground passageway.
“I saw the blueprints for the Dome in the Library yesterday. It’s supposed to go to the Docking Cave,” Mia told him. “Come on—we don’t want the Elders or anyone else coming after us. We need to get out of here!”
They hurried along the dim tunnel, Sev bent almost double to keep his horns from scraping the low roof. Sooner than she would have expected, Mia saw another door. To her relief, it opened without any hand scans or optic nerve readings and they soon found themselves blinking in the slightly brighter light of the Docking Cave.
“There’s our ship! Come on!” Sev led the way now and Mia followed him, almost at a run. Both of them were more than eager to get out of this horrible place. Mia just wanted to leave the PPP Dome behind and never see it or any of its inhabitants ever again!
To her relief, there was no guard in the cave and nothing to stop them. Sev boosted her into the passenger side and then ran around to climb into the pilot’s seat. He started the engines, backed out of the Docking Cave, and then, finally, they were on their way, soaring up into space.
“Goodbye, PPP Dome,” Mia said, as they watched it’s shimmering rainbow curves get smaller and smaller in the viewscreen.
“And good fucking riddance,” Sev said and heaved a huge sigh of what Mia could only interpret as relief. “Gods, I’m glad to be out of there,” he said. “Just wish we could have saved the camera bug for all the evidence—we got plenty of it.”
“It was pretty smart of you to let it go, knowing it would pair with the big screen in the park and show everyone who The Prophet really was,” Mia said.
He shrugged.
“It was a spur of the moment idea—I just hope all the PPP members saw him for the bullshit artist he is—was, I guess,” he corrected himself. “But if we had the camera bug we could show the World Council too.”