Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
There was also Aleksei’s more formal office, which had a state-of-the-art holographic conference table (totally going to holo the girls in there one day).
There was a library with three walls of floor-to-ceiling books (real ones!) and a comfy seating area in the middle in which to hunker down and read.
There was a room that had a billiards and a poker table (and another full bar, wouldn’t want to have to walk down the hall to grab yourself a whisky in the middle of a game).
And there was a media room with the biggest screen I’d ever seen, a massive square couch that was more like a couch-bed, a station that did have a Bev-Buddy, along with a Snack-Sensation, because if you were in the middle of bingeing a show or watching a vid, you wanted to program in the soda or popcorn you had a hankering for and not have to mess with making it yourself.
I’d camped out there with my Palm, doing some back-and-forth text comms with Monique, Gayle and Cat about the photo op, assuring them a task force was on the case about the gallery sitch (but not going into detail), and sharing the great news that my beast was stirring (I’d had two more flutters since that morning!). I also received some updates on their lives (Gayle was being closed-mouthed about Sirk, which meant I’d have to take it out of a group comm to get the skinny from Cat or Mon).
I finished it by telling them we needed a get together, because I wasn’t going to go into detail over a text comm about Aleksei and me consummating our mating, and just how phenomenal that was. That had to be face to face.
We’d almost made a date before Monique reminded me, I was now one part of a couple, and we would need to confirm after I made sure it was cool with Aleksei.
This did not bother me at all.
Truth told, it was thrilling, thinking I finally had someone in my life to check plans and schedules and leave digi-notes for.
I left them holding for confirmation, and with all three of my cats in attendance, I was munching some sour cream and cheese flavored potato blobs, sipping a grape sparkle and watching They Came in the Sunlight, a vid about the Troll Invasion that was released a few decades ago (my troll skin was going to be so much better, if I did say so myself).
I felt his arrival (gods, I loved that), but stayed where I was, because I knew he could find me easily (and I was super comfy).
So this was as I was when Aleksei entered the room.
I lost interest in the vid in favor of watching my mate wander in in shirtsleeves, the collar open, but still wearing his suit vest and trousers.
Yum.
He stood at the side of the couch-bed, gazing down at me. “Is that your dinner?”
I looked at the blobs and caught sight of the cheese dust on my fingertips.
Comet, who had been quiet and content (for once) passed out on the back of the couch, got up and howled his displeasure at Aleksei’s late arrival.
Nova made her approach, scrunch nose first, but thought better of it, because she was female, so she turned around and shook her booty at him.
She did not go wanting, Aleksei’s long fingers scratched the base of her tail.
She lifted it further.
Yep.
Female.
Jupiter, who’d been lying at the foot of the couch-bed as far away from me as he could get, got into seated position, his tail sweeping the luxurious upholstery, his somber gaze on Aleksei.
“I was feeling lazy,” I answered.
He moved around the arm of the couch-bed, then crawled in on all fours.
I watched, avidly, and managed not to have an orgasm, narrowly.
He lowered himself to his stomach, next to my legs, and reached into the tub of blobs.
“Vid pause,” I called, before I asked, “How was your meeting?”
“First, did Germaine get in touch with you?”
“No,” I answered cautiously because it was iffy I’d want to know why she would.
“You scored a ninety-seven percent approval rating in a poll she conducted after the pics from the photo op hit.”
So three percent didn’t approve of a woman they didn’t know a danged thing about?
“I sense, since you mentioned this, it’s important,” I remarked. “So I hope to cause no offense when I say I’m not sure I care.”
“Mom was the highest paid and most popular screen star at the time her engagement to Dad was announced. She was beloved. And she only scored an eighty-nine percent.”
“Oh, so my score is good.”
He swallowed the blobs he was chewing and just stared at me.
“Not good?” I asked, confused.
“Bissi, that is, for something like that, off the fucking charts.”
Oh.
I beamed.
“My last approval rating was eighty-six percent,” he shared.
I frowned.