It doesn’t matter now, and I suppose I should take advantage of the situation and get some sleep.
Even though I just put it on, I shuck off my ill-fitting dress, folding it neatly and placing it on the chair. I pull back the soft orange covering on the bed and slide my freshly cleaned body between the alien sheets.
Taking one of the pillows off the pile behind my head, I clutch it tightly against my chest.I wish Bruno was here.
I might sound like a crazy dog mom, but even despite the shit show that my life is shaping up to be, Bruno would make it better. He would lay his pittie head on my chest, stare up at me with his pale blue eyes and calm my anxiety.
And hell, maybe he’d even hump Duke Fuckface and put him in his place.
For as insufferable as the duke is, I don’t think he’ll kill me. He seems to hold himself to some level of royal duty. I guess that’s a step in the right direction.
Wiping a reluctant tear for my late pup off my face, I turn away from the open door. Maybe my mood swings are calming down, or maybe the exhaustion is just setting in, but sleep comes easy. I let myself be taken away to the world of dreams.
CHAPTER14
?NOCTURNAL SATELLITE EMISSIONS?
?RAF’ERE
If I thoughtmy sleep was suffering when Marta was in the cryopod, having her breathing feet away from me all night is making me an insomniac.
The mate bond heightens my senses when she’s near, our heartbeats are even synced. How do I know that? Because I can hear hers, even though she’s tucked away in the closest. I hear her pulse and the slow pace of her breathing while she sleeps. Her smoky scent is overpowering any other smell in my chambers. If I closed my eyes, it would seem as though she was lying in bed next to me.
It’s pure unadulterated torture, and I know sleep won’t be within my reach tonight.
I roll onto my side, trying to find some corner of my room unsaturated with Marta’s scent. When it doesn’t work, I groan, sliding my data pad off the nightstand.
Bright blue alerts flash, and I bring the screen up to my face. My calendar for the upcoming few days is stacked deep with meetings for the upcoming Andjin treaty talks. I have six missed calls and messages from Tri'ot, which I delete without reading.
Before Marta, I would use this sleepless night to prepare for those meetings. Peace between the Korlyan Moon and Sontafrul 6 is tense at best.
But I can’t focus, and every time I close my eyes, all I can see is her face twisted in pleasure as she came apart in my arms.
I swipe to a new screen and click the search bar of the satellite transmissions database. The cursor in the search bar blinks, waiting for my input.
I type
HUMAN
and hit send.
My screen fills with tiny video thumbnails, my search returning billions of recordings of human entertainment. Wars, historical events of Earth, game shows, and news broadcasters fill my screen.
The database doesn’t understand subtlety, and I am afraid to type what I really want. So, I split the difference.
HUMAN “ITALIAN”
There are just as many clips, but I pull up the first one, hoping to understand better what she said earlier.
The clip plays, and three human males in a wheeled vehicle drive out into a field. One of them pulls a weapon and kills another human in close contact.
“Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” the portly male tells the other after the brutal murder.
Although my translator chip shows me this “cannoli,” I don’t understand what the white-filled tube is. I also still don’t understand what in the goddess’s name an Italian is.
Given this clip, I’m going to assume that the humans who call themselves Italians are some kind of warriors on Earth.
I turn my head to the open closet door, the soft glow of the lamp casting strange shadows across the room. It’s filled with the waters of I’loh, from the springs and ancestral tunnels of our temples.
