Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
The bathroom door opened again and V’rex came out completely nude, except for his tattoos and the broad pair of copper bracelets on his wrists, which all the males in the Compound wore.
Apparently he had no problem with walking around naked—probably because he had the most amazing body Penny had ever seen. From his broad shoulders, to the flat planes of his chest, to his washboard abs and long muscular legs, every part of him looked like it had been sculpted out of marble by some master artisan.
Inevitably, her eyes were drawn to the spot between his legs and Penny was discomforted to see that his long shaft was more than half-hard. What was that all about?
V’rex saw where she was looking and raised his eyebrows at her.
“You like what you see, sweetheart?” he rumbled, giving her a little grin.
Penny felt her cheeks get hot and she looked away at once, clamping her lips closed. But V’rex didn’t seem to really expect her to answer. He simply climbed into the left side of the large, square bed beside her and got under the covers.
This presented a whole new problem. Penny had gotten as close to the edge as she could, but the Hybrid was so big, he took up a lot of the covers and sheets—especially when he turned on his side. Penny suddenly found herself with much less to cover up with as the coverings slid up, exposing her.
“Hey!” She tugged at the covers. “Don’t be a cover-hog!”
“A what?” V’rex growled. “And stop yankin’ on the blankets.”
“I’m yanking on the blankets?” Penny demanded incredulously. “They were just fine until you got into bed! Now, look—I don’t have hardly any at all!”
She pointed to the way half of her was exposed.
“I don’t have any either,” V’rex frowned, shaking his head. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to work, sweetheart.”
“What isn’t going to work?” Penny demanded, her heart thumping. Was he going to insist they get closer? A lot closer?
But all V’rex said was,
“I don’t think we can both sleep on our sides. At least, I can’t—I take up more of the blankets when I’m like this.” He motioned down at himself and sighed. “Gonna have to sleep on my back, I guess.”
And then he turned over, which solved the cover deficit problem, but caused a new one in the form of a mattress shortage.
Try as she might to put some distance between them, Penny found that the Hybrid was just too big—especially laying on his back, for her not to touch him in some way while she was in bed with him. Unless she wanted to fall off onto the floor, that was.
“Look, could you settle down, sweetheart?” V’rex’s deep voice sounded irritated in the dim light coming from under the single window’s shade. “I’m tryin’ to relax here. Don’t need you thrashing all around when I’m trying to sleep.”
“I’m just…trying to make a little space,” Penny muttered, keeping her voice down in case they were being listened to as well as watched, which she thought was completely possible. “Can’t you scoot over a little more?”
“Not unless I want to fall out of the fucking bed.” V’rex sounded more irritated than ever. “Look, just relax, will you? Doesn’t matter if we touch a little bit—I promise I don’t have fuckin’ germies.”
“Germies?” Penny asked.
“You know…” He shifted around some. “Little invisible bugs that you get from touching somebody you don’t want touching you?”
“Oh!” Penny got what he was saying. “Back where I grew up, we called them ‘cooties.’”
“Fine. Don’t got cooties either,” was his grumbled, half-asleep reply. “So just settle down and got to sleep. I’d like to try and drop off before the fucking hypno-whispers start for the night, all right? They give me a fucking headache.”
Penny didn’t want to accept the situation, but it didn’t seem she had a choice. With a sigh, she settled on her side again with her back pressed to V’rex’s long flank. His skin was comfortingly warm against hers and she was reminded of her very first impression of him, when she had been blindfolded during the ceremony—that he put out heat like a furnace.
At first it felt strange and wrong to be sleeping without her clothes and with a man she still considered a stranger. But V’rex didn’t try anything and gradually, by degrees, she began to relax against the big body in bed beside her.
At last she drifted off and relaxed into sleep, just as her pillow began the familiar whispering in her ear.
Forty-One
Penny’s dreams that night were the strangest she had since being brought to the Compound…and that was really saying something, considering the past content of her dreams. Still, this night’s nocturnal musings topped them all… much to her humiliation.
She was in bed naked with Colonel Sanders who was missing his immaculate white suit—he was naked, too. But instead of the soft, doughy body of an aging man, which she might have expected to find, the chicken magnate had the most amazing physique.