“Oh, Lucia…” Raze reached for her and somehow she found she was in the big Kindred’s arms with her face pressed against his broad chest. “I’m so sorry,” he rumbled, rubbing his big hands up and down her trembling back soothingly. “I had no idea what a bastard this ex-mate of yours is! Why didn’t you come and ask me for help the minute he threatened you?”
“That’s what I was on the Mother Ship to do,” she admitted, sniffing. “I was going to ask to borrow money to hire a lawyer to defend me. But then I ducked into that Scent Shop place to get away from all the curious single Kindred who were wanting to talk to me, and that salesman with two noses made it seem like this was such an easy way to earn money and now look at me!”
She started to cry again and Raze held her closer.
“It’s all right,” he rumbled. “All right now, sweetheart. “I’m going to help you. To start with, we’re going to get that scent collector out of you and once that’s done, I’m going to find this ex-mate of yours and have a very serious talk with him.”
Lucia looked up at him with wet eyes.
“Please don’t go after Tony—he can get crazy. I know you’re way bigger than him but—”
“One problem at a time,” Raze told her. “The first thing is to get you taken care of. Did you bring everything you were given at the Scent Shop, like I asked you?”
“Oh, yes—here.” Lucia had put everything into a plastic shopping bag which she’d hooked over one arm. Now she opened it and showed him the scent collecting wrapper, the half-empty packet of lube, and the round silver sphere.
“All right.” Raze nodded. “Let’s move into the sleeping chamber so I can…” He cleared his throat. “So I can have a look at the problem.”
Luci felt her cheeks getting hot, but she nodded.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
Twenty-Three
It felt really strange to take off her panties and lie back in the middle of the big Kindred’s bed so he could examine her, but that was exactly what Luci had to do.
Biting her lip, she tried to get comfortable on the pillows Raze had arranged behind her head as he knelt on the floor in front of the bed to look at her.
“Hmm…” he murmured, tracing the base of the dildo with one fingertip. “Your little pussy seems to be somewhat red and swollen,” he remarked, looking up at her. “Do you think that could be why you can’t get it out?”
“I don’t know,” Luci whispered. Dios, but this was embarrassing! “It could be, I guess. But I did everything the, uh, instruction sphere told me to do—to the letter! This shouldn’t be happening.”
“The instruction sphere, hmm? Let me see it.”
Luci reached in the bag and handed it to him. Raze took it and she saw his nostrils flare and his eyes went half-lidded.
“This has your scent on it, Lucia,” he murmured, raising an eyebrow at her.
Luci felt like her face was on fire. She’d forgotten that she had used the sphere as a vibrator and rubbed it all over her pussy.
“I had to do what it told me,” she explained defiantly. “And that was part of the instructions.”
“Was it?” He frowned. “I’d like to hear these instructions you’re talking about.”
“They only played once and I don’t know if I can get them to play again,” Luci told him. “That thing doesn’t seem to have any buttons or knobs or anything you can use to make it work.”
“Of course not, if it’s meant to be used as a pleasure device as well as an informational one,” Raze said reasonably. “Protruding buttons or knobs might harm the delicate flesh of the female using it.”
“I guess so.” Luci frowned. “But then, how do you get it to work?” She had tried several times to get the damn thing to play again, thinking that maybe she had missed a step or some of the instructions but it had remained stubbornly mute, no matter how she fiddled with it.
“Sphere—play instructions for scent receptor insertion,” Raze said to it clearly.
At once the sensuous music began to play and the low male voice began to talk.
“Hey!” Luci exclaimed. “How did you do that?”
Raze shrugged.
“You have to remember that a lot of Kindred technology is voice activated,” he said. “Let’s listen and see if you missed anything. Oh—you have a visual as well, I see,” he added as the image of the Beast Kindred and his mate began projecting from the cube.
“Um…yeah.” Luci bit her lip in embarrassment as the holo-porno began to play out. She couldn’t help remembering how she had imagined Raze doing everything to her that the Beast Kindred was doing to his mate. When they got to the part about using the silver sphere as a vibrator, she wanted to sink through the bed because Raze knew that she’d done that too. What must he think of her now?
But there was no condemnation in his eyes or his deep voice when he finally spoke, after watching the vid all the way through.
“You said that you followed all the instructions to the letter,” he remarked. “But you didn’t, Lucia—you were missing one very crucial element.”
“What?” she asked, bewildered. “I mean, I used the lube and the little silver ball and everything. What did I miss?”
Raze looked at her directly.
“A mate.”
Twenty-Four
“A mate?” Luci frowned. “What are you talking about? Why would I need a mate?”
“Because,” Raze said patiently. “The kind of scent book the proprietor of the Scent Shop talked you into making is a couple’s book—one usually made by a mated pair so that both their scents are mingled on its pages. It’s a very rare and expensive type of book because not many Kindred males are willing to share the scent of their mate with strangers in that way.”
“Oh!” Luci nodded in understanding. “Now I get why he didn’t offer it to me until you showed up and he thought we were married, er, mated.”
“He must have thought he’d hit a gold mine,” Raze growled, frowning. “But in that, he’s fucking wrong. If you were my mate, I would never share your scent—any more than I’d want to let you dance naked in front of a bunch of strange males.”
“Is that really what it’s like for Kindred when they use one of these, uh, scent books?” Luci asked. She thought she was beginning to understand why Raze had gotten so upset at her for agreeing to do the scent book in the first place. “I mean, is it like some kind of porn?”
“Let me put it this way,” Raze told her. “For you to share your scent with strangers in the Kindred world is like you taking pictures of your naked body and letting anyone who wants to pay look at them.”
“Oh!” Luci put a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Raze—I guess I didn’t realize.”
“It’s all right.” He shook his head. “Right now we just need to worry about getting that damn thing out of you.”