Page 35 of Forbidden Desires

“Is this how you treat a chance to visit another planet and meet males that will love you like the goddess you are?” Amelia asked.

“Who’s going to want me?” a woman who wasn’t the possible fyra asked. She looked meek and mild, with mousy brown hair. She was also the biggest female there, but that didn’t hide the subtle gorgeousness that was her. Why was it subtle? Because she played it down, hoping if she did, no one would see her. She thought she needed to drift through life as a shadow because the people in her life had used words like ‘you’d be so pretty if you lost weight.’

Amelia hated that. It was a backhand passive-aggressive comment, and it should be against the law to murder someone’s confidence like that.

Zylar took a step forward, releasing Amelia’s hand. He looked over at the woman from head to toe and then made his way back up to her face. “I know an engineer who would make you his world and worship you. In and out of bed.”

The woman shivered and the smile that took over her face was so bright Amelia closed her eyes for a few seconds. So much for being mousy and boring. This woman was beautiful.

“Thank you,” she stuttered. The shyness was real, and it made Amelia like her even more.

“You three will be the last getting interviewed today. When we start again, we’ll let everyone know where and when. Zylar, pass the news along outside while I talk to my cousins.” Amelia turned to the door and took a big breath. This was where the rubber met the road. Were things right between her and her cousins and would they continue to be right or wasn’t their relationship worth saving?

Time will tell. She knocked on the door and entered when they told her to come in.

“Amelia!” they greeted her with enthusiasm.

“Bella, Jenna.” She wasn’t as enthusiastic, still not sure where her place in their lives was.

“Don’t make me get up,” Bella threatened. She moved back to show her belly, which seemed to have doubled or maybe tripled in size over the last few weeks. It turns out that humans and Diza don’t gestate at the same length of time. It looks like that I’ll gestate longer than the Diza, but shorter than the humans.”

“Are you enjoying the word gestate?” Amelia asked.

Bella started laughing like a demented gnome with laughter that was as clear as a high melodic bell.

“You know me too well. That’s why we need to be the three amigos. Cousins unite!” Bella declared.

Amelia’s eyes were wide as she deliberately turned her head to look at Jenna.

“Pregnancy hormones,” Jenna mouthed. She didn’t want her sister to hear her.

“I want some of whatever she’s taking,” one of the unfamiliar women in the room said. There were two that Amelia had never met before.

Amelia couldn’t deal with Bella right then. She was going to have to think about this. Her empathic abilities were crawling out of her and all over Bella. The need to cry and laugh at the same time was riding Bella hard. Amelia was sure, but she thought that actually might just be the pregnancy hormones coming out to play. There was so much going on inside of her cousin that she wouldn’t be surprised. Having a child was hard enough, adding to that the fact that the child was controversial at best and would break boundaries. She bet it was close to what happened when the first female slave got pregnant in the U.S. and no matter the spin; it was hard to see people with darker skin as animals when they could procreate with everyone else in the world.

It was like trying to see the Diza as monsters when they could make a human female pregnant. Yeah, in this case, they weren’t human, but how many degrees of separation were there between the races, six, maybe seven? Obviously, between humans, no matter the color of their skin, there were zero degrees of separation.

Amelia shook her head and focused on the two women in the room. As she looked them over, she realized her abilities as an empath were going to help when interviewing the females. Did she need to be in the same room to pick up their emotions or would it work long-range as long as she had a way to be incontact with them? She was going to have to ask Zylar. He was the only one she knew who understood what it meant to be an empath. He was also learning with her and that was okay.

“Hi, I’m Amelia. Jenna and Bella’s cousin. I’m mated to Zylar, I’m sure you never heard of him, but he’s a healer. He helped to deliver the baby of one woman living with Bella and Rakha.”

Baby? Who wants an alien spawn?

Jenna raised a brow but just smiled at them. “Don’t mind me. I’m here to offer my cousin’s moral support.”

Bella coughed to hide a laugh. Jenna cleared her throat.

“Where were we?” Jenna asked with a forced smile. It was kind of like when the person you hated came to dinner and you had to force yourself to seem nice.

“You were asking why we wanted to leave our beautiful planet and live on another world that might be as nice or even as advanced as Earth.” The woman that Amelia was fast learning not to like said.

Amelia assessed the woman’s emotional shields, surprised to find that they were so advanced. That made her question who she was.

Bella looked at a card in front of her before looking back up. “Stacey Carter, correct?”

“That’s me.” The woman’s shoulders went back as she preened. She also tried to push her abundant breasts in their face as if they were lacking breasts of their own.

“I find your answer kind of strange if you want to leave the planet,” Jenna said.

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