Page 12 of Abalim

Looked like Arakiba was getting the hang of Earth slang. Abalim didn’t have to read the man's mind to know how much that had to annoy Asmodel. Maybe exposing Arakiba to new experiences right now wasn’t such a good idea. Lips thinned, he headed to the dim hallway he’d pointed to.

“Don’t worry.” Azazel spoke in a soft voice behind him. The light in the corridor darkened as they got farther from the open entrance. “Arakiba is just trying to work around all the extra stimuli we’re exposed to at this time. He’ll eventually come to terms with who he is inside.”

Abalim grunted. Trust his philosophical brother to see the good in any situation. “I guess the only thing we can do is keep half an eye on him. Hopefully, he won’t end up somewhere where we can’t help him.” It was becoming impossible to see where they were going. “JR15, would you give us some light?”

The little droid opened his upper eye and emitted a wide beam of light.

Azazel’s red-and-gold JR14 did the same on the other side.

At the same time, a tentacle of familiar psychic energy grabbed Abalim’s attention. “There.” He stopped and grasped the filament with a sensory hold. “Just ahead. I feel a small portion of that woman’s energy just ahead.

Wordlessly, he and Azazel stopped in front of an open archway into a small room. Before he had a chance to lock on to the psychic trail, Arakiba and Asmodel joined them.

Azazel turned to them. “How did you get here so fast?”

Arakiba grinned and crossed his arms. “Place is just a round hallway with a lot of little rooms like this one. All are empty, with only a few droids scattered around like that one.” He pointed to a red sexbot lying on the floor with its hand extended. He stepped into the room and froze. His eyes glazed over.

“What do you suppose he’s looking…” Asmodel studied his blond brother before he too froze.

Abalim and Azazel looked at each other. “I guess…” Azazel didn’t finish because the same thing happened to him.

Abalim’s eyebrows rose. He’d never seen his brothers get caught in a trance at the same time before. The only thing he could do…

Abalim was swept into a vision. His brothers were there as well. All five of them stood in the middle of the room while three women were either sitting on the floor or sat on a narrow, thin cot. Two stood with their backs to him, talking in quiet tones as they faced the hallway at a safe distance from a shimmering force field.

Damn, he hadn’t experienced being in this type of psychic plane before. It took a moment for him to get his bearings.

“Where are we?” Asmodel looked around until one of the seated women caught his attention.

“Where do you think we are, you dumbass…” Arakiba started to harass his brother but then he focused on a different woman.

Azazel didn’t say a word. He’d turned to face the three women and froze.

In tandem, Arakiba and Asmodel also stood stock-still as their eyes turned white.

Abalim grunted. Looked like his brothers had entered a different psychic plane. Good. They must’ve latched on to the women’s psychic energy. Maybe they’d get more information that way.

“Do you think it’ll ever come back online?” The blonde woman standing next to Althea asked the question.

Abalim had to be having a vision of the past.

He turned his full attention to the woman speaking. He couldn’t catch his breath. His heart raced and his vision narrowed. On an intellectual level, he knew his physical body wasn’t suffering the unexpected reaction. But all the same, it didn’t matter. It was hard to focus on what the women talked about. The only thing he wanted to was do was concentrate on the blonde in greater detail.

He watched her profile and moved to face her. The mesmerizing shade of sapphire blue in her eyes struck him speechless. They sparkled with intelligence and a sense of a creative spirit. He narrowed his focus, hoping to read her and find out her name.

He sucked in a breath when his psychic tentacles hit a hard wall. Well, shit. That couldn’t be good. Turning his attention to the curly brunette next to her, he was able to penetrate Althea’s thoughts with no trouble. She was thinking she didn’t have to answer…Lisa.Ah, this one must be Lisa Ivy, the author who was a successful sci-fi romance writer. Thankfully, the Zerins provided him and his brothers with the extensive profiles they’d developed when the women were accepted into the alien exchange program.

But that dry information didn’t tell the full story. It listed her hair as “short, blonde”, but didn’t describe how it framed her pixie face and carried several shades of gold and light bronze in the strands.

The profile said she was “five foot four” but didn’t go into detail about the gentle dip where the indent of her waist met her hips and accentuated their prominence, emphasizing the timeless hourglass shape that defined her figure. The slight rise of her hipbones beneath the surface hinted at the strength that lay beneath their alluring exterior, a tantalizing juxtaposition of power and beauty.

“I wonder if it being frozen like that is a good thing.” Lisa crossed her arms, lifting up those mouthwatering breasts as if offering them to the gods. “Or a bad one.”

Abalim withdrew from Althea’s consciousness and didn’t bother to hear her response. Nor did he care what in the nine galaxies they talked about. With each movement of her plump lips, he got lost in erotic fantasies of what he’d love for those mounds to do to him… on him. A well of deep longing he’d never experienced before rose up. Damn, just watching her mouth move as she spoke created a harsh yearning for him to explore her in person. Need pounded in him.

It startled him when the two women left the entrance and sat on the hard-looking floor at the back of the cell.

Althea wrapped her arms around her bent knees and rested her head against them.

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