Page 18 of Double Her Pleasure

The rains alone were bad enough, though he supposed that it was a small trade-off for the pleasant weather that the planet-moon enjoyed. He honestly doubted he would mind so much if he were at home with his twin and their talia nestled between them. At least if they were sequestered away together within their own rookery, they would have more space and the comfort of surroundings that had become familiar over the last several weeks. Like most of the rookeries set up since their arrival, theirs was comparatively small, as it was of a size suitable for a pair of avrhast twins and their mate. In reality, unless it was for a full avrhastal, the newly built rookeries were just the barest start to a proper rookery that would come with offspring should they have any. After all, their homes were designed to easily be added onto. Even so, their private quarters within their rookery were several times the size of the hotel room.

With a sigh, he stared longingly in the direction he now knew that their mate dwelt. He was certain that Jill would love it, though they would need to make sure the expansiveness of their simple abode wasn’t too chilly for her sensitive and delicate human flesh. But he suspected that she would enjoy the beauty of its line. They took special pride in the construction of their rookery. Brydis had patiently added all manner of decorative details, paying special attention to the high parapets that gave them plenty of space to comfortably roost on various ledges and shelves that were interconnected with a staircase running along the wall should they be needed. And they would be. In fact, they took care to make sure the staircases were well built with guard rails to make sure their wingless mate could get around comfortably.

All they needed was her. All they needed was Jill.

Chapter15

It finally stopped. Jill opened a window despite the chill in the air to drag in deep breaths of fresh, clean air. The sun was far more distant than it was from Earth, but the skies were a pale blue where Jupiter’s massive presence wasn’t creeping into view. By some point in the day, the planet would swallow a large part of the sky, but for now, it was all blue with the dark stone of the distant mountains stark against its horizon.

Unlike the flat landscape of the farmlands and the port, the mountains were alluring. Especially in the sun’s light following the dimness of the rain. Strangely, she didn’t feel as called to them as she usually did. Something itched beneath her skin that both made her reluctant to leave home in case she saw that shadow again and simultaneously made her eager to get out of her apartment and seek the source of that feeling she’d briefly experienced.

Of course, then again, she hadn’t seen that shadow return since that night, nor had she experienced the strange sensation that had caught hold of her, which made her suspect that it was a lot of wishful thinking on her part. Either way, the decision was out of her hands. It had already been made for her by the comm she’d received in the early hours that morning alerting her that she was on shift.

Good. It would give her something productive to do other than pacing in her apartment anxiously. Or aimlessly wandering the neighborhood in hope of pinpointing where that shadow might have come from.

Turning her back to the large window that dominated her living space, Jill swallowed the remaining coffee in her cup and rinsed the cup in the sink. She set it down and dried off her hands when she heard the light rap at her door announcing Diane’s arrival. Grabbing her coat from the peg where it hung by the door, Jill greeted her friend with a smile as she stepped outside to where the other woman patiently waited. Wrapping her coat firmly around herself as they headed toward the elevator, Jill could feel her friend’s eyes drilling into her inquisitively. It wasn’t until they were inside the elevator and the doors slid shut behind them that Diane broke her silence with an eager smile.

“So, any visitors tonight?”

Jill sighed. “No, and it wasn’t a visitor. I’m not even really sure what it was because it never got close enough for me to see it clearly, much less ‘visit.’ There hasn’t been any change since you asked me last night when we had dinner.” She glanced over at her from the side of her eye in exasperation. “Honestly, I never would’ve told you if I knew you were going to ask me every day.”

And she had. Every single day. The benefit of sharing the same building with Diane was that they’d been able to keep each other company when the worst of the boredom set in, but it also gave her friend an opening on a daily basis to inquire about it. It was exhausting, but not enough to keep her from venturing out of her apartment or welcoming Diane into her home. She was far better than being sequestered with nothing but her own thoughts. Of course, it wasn’t like they spent every moment of the day with each other either. They both valued their privacy too much and there were only so many times they could watch the same downloaded vids or play cards. And gossip had exhausted itself pretty quickly.

Diane bumped her lightly with her shoulder and grinned. “Come on, you know you like it when I ask. It makes you feel like you’re not going crazy while you get too wrapped up in doubting what you saw.”

Jill’s lips twitched because she wasn’t wrong. “Okay, that’s a very astute and fair observation.”

“I just call it like I see it,” Diane chuckled, dragging a reluctant smile from her. “I know that’s what my brain would be doing, and I’d want someone to drag me out of my own head regarding it. Besides, you know that I’m pulling for those boys. I just know that what you saw is because they’re looking for you. Which one do you think it might’ve been?”

“Out in that rain?” Jill snorted with laughter. “Agor is the only one crazy enough, and with his blue and silver coloring, he would have blended right into the gloom too.”

Her smile quickly fell, however, as the elevator opened to cold air outside blasting right in her face. Shivering, she dragged the collar of her coat up.

“Damn, I keep forgetting how cold it is out here when we are stuck inside for a few days.”

Diane groaned. “Fuck, why did I ever think coming to this planet was a good idea? It’s not like we’ve been bred for this damn climate like everything else has. Even the Geminidae come from a place with similar conditions. We’re the only ones on this rock freezing our asses off. You’d think with the way the climate has been engineered they would’ve cranked up the temperature to something a bit more livable.”

Jill chuckled again at the look of complete distaste on her friend’s face as they exited the building and hurried down the street toward the tram station.

“Itislivable,” she reminded her as they breathlessly ducked inside. “This would have been considered average mid-spring temperatures in most non-tropical zones on Earth, as they were some couple hundred years ago before the climate heated so much.”

“Okay, but this is summer, and I wasn’t born and raised a couple hundred years ago. This is miserable,” Diane pointed out. Despite her words, however, she wore an amused look on her face as she glanced around at the men and women slowly gathering on the platform with them.

“Well, we are quite a bit further from the sun, and there’s only so much they can reasonably do with the satellites. We should be thankful that we get something spring like in the summer. It’s a bit chilly in the morning, but it’s pretty damn nice by midday.”

“True,” Diane mumbled distractedly.

Frowning, Jill craned her neck to see what had caught her friend’s eye. A tall Geminidae male stood alone at the far end, his head turning this way and that as if looking for something, his yellow-tipped orange plumage distinctly beautiful against his bronze coloring.

“Is he one of yours?” her friend whispered breathlessly.

Jill slanted her a curious look, noting the flush darkening the faint pink that had already set in due to the cool air.

“No,” she drawled slowly, peering at the male once again. He was now staring in their direction, his crest raising slightly in a manner that she remembered all too well. Fuck, she missed the way Agor and Brydis had looked at her with such intensity. “Definitely not. But he is looking our way for some reason.”

Which was unusual. Other than Agor and Brydis, most of the Geminidae seemed uninterested, or possessed a faint passing curiosity in the humans sharing Ganymede with them. What was more unusual was seeing a lone Geminidos. Wait… there was another. The crowd shifted in a small, parting surge as a male with deep emerald plumage set against an extremely pale green complexion pushed forward to join him at his side. Their heads tipped toward each other, and they seemed to speak quietly between each other before the other likewise turned to look in their direction. She didn’t understand what they saw of interest, but she certainly didn’t like or want any other Geminidae looking at her that way. It felt wrong.

“I think they’re looking at me,” Diane whispered in awe. “Don’t you think?”

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