Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Exactly.” Celia stood her ground, crossing her arms over her breasts.
“Lelka doesn’t mean anything derogatory,” Hold said, coming up behind her. He was wearing a long coat made of shaggy black fur that made his silver hair and hazel-green eyes look amazing. His shoulders looked even broader too—if that was possible, since both brothers were already so muscular and broad, Celia thought.
“Well, what does it mean, then?” she asked, trying not to stare at Hold…or notice the way his eyes kept darting over to catch discreet glances at her body in the form-fitting warm suit. Fierce, on the other hand, was still just staring at her blatantly and not even trying to hide the fact that he liked the way she looked. His dark eyes were lazy with lust as he perused her body at his leisure.
Strangely, Celia found that she liked their eyes on her. If it had been any other man—well, other than Peter, of course—ogling her so openly, she would have been offended and felt violated. But the way Fierce and Hold were looking at her body made her feel beautiful and desired in a way she never had before. They were staring at her like she was some kind of goddess—a being almost too beautiful to behold and impossible not to lust after.
She had to admit that she never got this feeling from her fiancé. Even when she dressed up nicely for Peter to go to a fancy restaurant or a party with his important, rich friends, he always seemed to find fault with her somehow.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he would ask, wrinkling his nose at whatever outfit she’d put on. Or, “Do you really think those earrings go with that dress? Why don’t you run upstairs and change, darling. Maybe put your hair up too—it looks so much more elegant that way.”
Inevitably, Celia wound up trying on three to five different ensembles and changing her hair a dozen times before her fiancé finally approved of how she looked. It was hard on her self-esteem—being an interior decorator and designer, she’d always trusted her own innate fashion sense. Until she started dating Peter, that was. Now she wasn’t sure what looked good on her anymore.
But standing there with both of the huge, muscular warriors looking at her with half-lidded eyes, she definitely knew she looked good in the sleek, black warm suit and it boosted her confidence immeasurably. She didn’t even mind when Hold shook his head and said,
“I’ll tell you what lelka means later—I’m not in the mood to break up another fight between you two.” He nodded meaningfully at Fierce as he said it. “Right now we need to get going before we lose the daylight.”
“Agreed.” Fierce rose and put on a long fur coat of his own—his was a rusty red. The color suited him and made his dark, bearded face look cruel and handsome at the same time, Celia thought.
“Is that real fur?” she asked, nodding at their coats, as Hold donned a backpack filled with supplies for their overnight stay.
“Yes, it fucking is,” Fierce growled, as though daring her to start a fight about it. “But it’s not made of a bunch of pelts of cute little animals like the fur coats on your planet.”
“What is it made of, then?” Celia demanded. She loved all kinds of animals and didn’t believe in skinning any of them for their fur, cute or not.
“Both our coats are made of the hide of a trenka-veerm,” Hold answered for his brother. “It’s a large, carnivorous predator that lives on our home world—Twin Moons. It looks a lot like your great white shark, but it’s a land animal and it has two sides.”
“Two sides? What do you mean?” Celia asked.
“Two faces—two heads and two bodies—joined at the hip,” Fierce said. As he spoke, he was strapping a lethal-looking blaster to his own hip.
“Many creatures on Twin Moons are two-sided or two-faced,” Hold said, strapping a blaster on as well. “Just as it takes us two males to mate one female—doubles and twins are a feature of our planet.”
“I see…” Celia nodded. “So this, uh shark thing—this…”
“Trenka-veerm,” Hold supplied helpfully.
“Yeah—this trenka-veerm must be pretty big, huh? I mean, if there was enough fur to make two coats out of it?”
“Around ten feet tall on its hind legs,” Fierce said casually. “It was threatening a remote village where we were staying—eating their heard of Take-mes—that’s a kind of animal that looks a little like an Earth horse but with two front ends put together in the middle,” he added for clarification.
“I’ve heard some Earth females say that Take-mes look like a ‘push-me pull-you,’ from an old Earth movie,” Hold said helpfully.
“Oh right—Doctor Dolittle! I remember seeing that when I was a kid.” Celia nodded. One of the foster families she’d stayed with had an ancient VCR and a collection of really old children’s movies and Doctor Dolittle had been one of her favorites.