It was un-fucking-believable, at least as far as Vorn was concerned. He wished he could get hold of this James and tell him his female was suffering and needed to be serviced. But of course he couldn’t do that. And clearly Jodi didn’t want to say anything else about it.
“I’ll call in some Chinese food,” she said shortly. “If you want to pay, you can, since you’re staying in my apartment.”
“Fine,” he said. “Just give me a call when you’re ready for the payment. I’m going to unpack.”
He left her looking at a paper menu and punching numbers into her phone and went back to the room which was permeated with her scent. He was going to have to live in here and smell her hot pussy every night while he slept and try to ignore it.
His shaft snarled in his tight leather trousers and Vorn sighed.
Gods, this was going to be a long, long mission, no matter when it ended.
Eight
“So my dorm is kind of messy, I’m afraid,” Melli said apologetically as Liosh carried her through the halls.
Everywhere students were laughing or talking or studying with headphones on. They got a few strange looks but nobody stopped them to ask who Liosh was—students were used to the hook-up culture where anyone might have anyone else over at almost any time of the night or day for a little action. Nobody minded except the elderly security guards who occasionally tried and failed to keep order. USF wasn’t exactly considered a party school…but it wasn’t all academics all the time either.
Melli liked that it was somewhere in the middle—not that she was a big party person herself but she would occasionally go out if a friend invited her. Right now, though, she was wondering if she could get things cleaned up in any way before Liosh saw them.
The moment he put her carefully down—with her weight resting on her good leg—she began unlocking the door and talking at the same time.
“Maybe you should go back and get the rest of that food and bring it up,” she said. “I mean, you wouldn’t want it to go bad and stink up your space car.”
Liosh smiled that dazzling, sunny smile she was beginning to like so much. It showed his fangs but she found she didn’t even mind.
“I’ll get you settled first. Then I can go back for it,” he told her.
“Better not,” Melli said earnestly. “The Florida sun can make things go bad fast. One time Jodi and I forgot a dozen eggs in the car and when we came back for them, half of them were practically hard-boiled. And I know another girl who used to put a piece of aluminum foil on her dashboard with blobs of cookie dough on it so she could have fresh chocolate chip cookies when she came back from her afternoon classes. The sun was so hot it baked them.”
Liosh frowned.
“The temperatures here on your part of Earth are certainly much hotter than what I’m used to back on Tranq Prime. But I hate to leave you without getting you to a safe spot.”
“I’ll just hop right over to the loveseat,” Melli promised him. “I’ll be fine. Go ahead—go on…” She shooed him away as she slipped inside the dorm room and cracked the door so that only her face was peeping out. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said and closed the door, hoping Liosh would take the hint.
“All right—I’ll be back shortly,” he called at last, which made Melli breathe a sigh of relief. Okay good—the trip back and forth to the parking lot was a bit of a hike, so she had at least ten minutes to straighten up—where should she begin?
Her dorm room wasn’t very big at all, which made her decide to start right where she stood. Bending down awkwardly, she grabbed the pair of crumpled jeans she’d left there a few days ago and then hopped into the tiny living room, gathering stray clothes as she went. She was careful on her hurt leg but found that it hardly twinged at all as she went on her clothes-gathering mission.
It wasn’t that she was a slob, exactly, Melli told herself. More like she was distracted and too busy to constantly be cleaning, which was what Jodi was always telling her to do.
“If you’d just clean up as you go, you won’t have such a big mess all the time,” she always lectured, whenever she visited Melli and took the opportunity to straighten up.
At least the dorm was too small to get very messy, Melli thought. There was the tiny living area with a single love-seat and a TV… a galley kitchen which had a half-sized fridge, a tiny microwave, and a hot-plate as the only appliances…a bathroom with a sink, shower stall, and bathtub…and a bed room with two beds in it—one full-sized and one twin—and that was it. That was the entire dorm room.
It was actually nicer and larger than many dorms, Melli knew. She was rooming with her good friend, Cindy, whose parents were both surgeons at Tampa General Hospital and who could afford the upgrade. But Cindy much preferred living with her long-time boyfriend, Kyle. She couldn’t tell her strict Catholic parents that, however, so she kept letting them pay for the dorm—where only Melli lived—which allowed them to believe that she was living there, when in fact she was in Kyle’s apartment off-campus almost all the time.
All Melli had to do was tell Cindy’s parents she was out of the dorm anytime they dropped in and keep up the convenient fiction that her friend still lived there full-time. She always texted Cindy to let her know when her parents were on the prowl so she could “come back home” and see her mom or dad, saying she had only been out to grab a bite to eat or had been in the library studying.
All
