Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
“I’m not scared,” I declare, sitting taller. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m not the sort of person who would take a dare to even kiss my pillow let alone lie to my father, sneak out in the night, and go to a club.
I’m a grown adult. I should be able to go wherever I want. “I’ll do it.”
All three of them look at me with wide eyes.
“Seriously?” Allisa asks. “I didn’t really expect you to agree. I was kind of teasing.”
I push to standing. “A dare is a dare. What should I wear?” I hurry over to my closet and rifle through the hangers. I don’t own anything interesting. My clothes look like they belong to nuns. Except they aren’t dresses. I do have jeans, but all my shirts are boring. I don’t own anything sexy, nor have I ever worn anything that would attract anyone’s attention. My father approves all my clothes. Hell, he buys them.
I couldn’t purchase anything extra in my life if I wanted to. I don’t have access to money. He pays my bills, replenishes the funds I need in the cafeteria, and gives me an extremely meager allowance so that I’ll have a few dollars on me in case I need something from a vending machine or an ice cream.
Ten dollars a week. He thinks I use it on frivolous things like that. I even tell him about the imaginary items I purchase—candy, sodas, and movie tickets. The truth is I rarely spend a dime. I have saved those ten dollars a week for almost four years. I have nearly two grand saved.
I’m such a rebel. Sigh.
“You’re really going to do it?” Allisa giggles as she joins me at my closet.
“Yes,” I say definitively. I’m going to Club Zoom. I really am.
Chapter Two
Zingar
I swear. If I get stuck at this noisy club on this hazy planet for as long as my friend Bamgin did… I don’t know what I’ll do, but my frustration is growing, and I’ve only been here four nights.
The club is so loud. The music grates on my nerves. The females are annoying. Every night it’s the same thing. They pack in here to drink and dance, all so they can get a look at us.
I feel like I’m some sort of fascinating art on display. On Earth, they have circuses where people go to see animals in cages. That’s how I feel. Zoom is like a cage. We aren’t permitted to leave the club. We come down from the mothership in pods, land on the roof of one of these clubs, enter from there, and never step outside a single time.
It’s probably for the best, considering how polluted this planet is. I don’t want to inhale the air here anymore than necessary. I wouldn’t dare eat or drink anything. I’d hate to even step on the sludge that lines the streets.
I shudder at the thought. What I see on the television makes me cringe.
They say it would be too distracting to have us out wandering around among humans. Dangerous even. I get it. Humans have weapons we aren’t familiar with. Humans are not a peaceful people. A lot of them aren’t even kind.
The females I’ve seen are mostly catty and fake. Most of them come here wearing ridiculous outfits meant to entice one of us. I’ve come to realize a lot of them would give anything for one or two of us to take them upstairs, fuck them, and send them home.
It’s the oddest behavior. I can’t grasp why anyone would do that. Why would they want to be intimate with someone they don’t even care about? But it’s the norm for Earth.
Humans “hook up” with other humans. They have sex. They don’t always know each other’s names. Mindboggling. They don’t have firm commitments. Even their marriages are flimsy. When they get tired of one another, they simply get divorced. It’s not a word we use on my planet. It’s not even a concept. We don’t break our bond with our mates.
Eleadians don’t “hook up” with anyone ever. The only person I will ever be intimate with will be my mate, and I won’t even be choosing her. Fate will. When the right female walks through the door, I will know it, and so will she. That will be it for us.
I smirk. It’s not like I haven’t also witnessed my fellow Eleadians finding their mates. Three nights ago, Bamgin and Nanish found themselves fated to the same woman. Unheard of. And yet it happened. Now I’m wondering if I, too, might be stuck on this forsaken planet for weeks on end, waiting for some other Eleadian male to arrive so we can bond to the same female.
There are females in Club Zoom I’ve seen more than once, and I’m starting to wonder if one of them could actually end up being my mate. What if the reason I’m not scenting her as mine is because we’re both waiting for another Eleadian male to cinch the deal?