Determined, she made a plan. Tonight was the best chance she was going to get, as it was the last night they were going to spend in this inn, where they shared a bedchamber. Tomorrow they will travel on to London, where they could find more adequate accommodations. But that also meant more distance between them and less opportunity for seduction.
Tonight. The thought filled her with trepidation and a strange sort of anticipation.
But how to go about seducing Dariux? She hadn’t the faintest idea how to arouse a man. parbots didn’t require seduction. One only needed to display some visual cues or speak the trigger words, and they would spring into action. Kalli smiled at the double entendre of her words; ‘spring into action’ was right.
She pondered the question. What aroused her? She thought of his body. Oh yes, the image of his naked body was an undeniable trigger. What else? His voice, low and sensual, was like a velvet caress. Yes! Definitely his voice. The touch of his fingers on her nape as he buttoned her blouse made her shiver. The smell of his skin, so fresh and clean, but also with a deeper note that was all his. She went to his luggage and retrieved a shirt. His essence still clung to it. She brought it to her face and inhaled, closing her eyes as desire escalated. And the taste of his mouth when they kissed? Ambrosia. It didn’t take a genius to realize that seduction started with the senses. The more of them she could involve, the greater the web of desire she could weave.
Smiling with her newfound realization, she made preparations for when he returned.
CHAPTER 6
After settling theaccounts with the innkeeper and going to the train station to purchase the tickets for tomorrow, he had no more business to attend to. Still, Dariux planned to walk all afternoon. He didn’t want to return to the room. If he was going to maintain his sanity, he had better keep his distance from Kalli for the remainder of the mission.
Fortunately, tomorrow they were going to London. They would be staying in a big hotel, with a multitude of rooms. No chance of them having to share a room. He would make sure of that.
For a few moments, he let himself fantasize about how it would be like to bed his colleague. Was it really so bad to satisfy each other’s needs? It would be like eating a meal or scratching an itch. Just a physiological need that was being neglected during the length of this mission.
But just as he thought it, he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Already, Kalli was talking about emotions. Love. He had no interest in love. Having never experienced it, nor been the object of it, he found it an alien and dangerous concept. From all he had read, it was a volatile force. Uncontrollable, unreliable, and most of the time detrimental to the person who suffered it. Almost like a disease. Why on earth were people trying to rekindle that emotion in humanity?
That brought a stab of guilt. Another unwelcome emotion. He might not have outright lied, but he had misled Kalli about his beliefs regarding this study. The fact was, he was in the anti-love camp. If anything, he wanted to find proof that love wasn’t necessary for the survival of humankind. Or at the very least, that there were better alternatives. That Kalli seemed to have found a link between sexual relations between humans and the generation of the ‘love hormone’ was another reason to stay away from her.
He had meticulously cultivated his mind and crafted his life to be free of sentimentalism and all other base emotions. He believed in logic, reason, and order. Giving in to desire now might be tempting, but it would bring a plethora of complications he just wasn’t willing to take on.
In a few short weeks, he would be back in his home environment with Elena. She was good at satisfying his needs and making him comfortable. All of this would be left behind. In the past. In more than one way.
He just had to keep his penis in his pants.
He had wandered away from the town’s high street and was currently on a track that ran alongside a river. There weren’t that many houses around here, and everything was quiet and peaceful. Maybe he would spend the rest of the afternoon here, away from people and their dramas.
Taking refuge under a big tree that had grown next to the water, he lay on the grass and closed his eyes. The dappled sunlight and the breeze soothed his overactive mind, and soon he was dozing off.
The high-pitch scream of a child splintered the quiet peace of his retreat. Jumping to alertness, he appraised his surroundings. A small girl a little upriver was pointing to the water and screaming. What had happened? Had another child fallen into the tumultuous river? He turned his attention to the water and saw a little yellow head barely sticking out. Not a child, but a dog. A young one. He couldn’t determine the breed of the puppy, but it was small.
The little head bobbed in and out of the water, the puppy’s frantic pawing barely able to keep him afloat. The girl continued screaming and running along the bank after her puppy.
“My puppy! Help!”
