Taming Two Warriors (Kindred Tales)

Was this room—the one she had given him to stay in—the place where she normally took care of herself? Had she given him her own sleeping chamber and that was why she was so upset with him?

Or one reason why, anyway.

“What’s wrong?” Jodi asked, breaking his train of thought. “Why are you just standing there wrinkling your nose? Do you smell something funny?” She frowned and sniffed the air herself. “I only smell the Glade plug-in air freshener I put in here.”

“Yeah, would you mind taking that fucking thing out?” Vorn asked her. “Kindred have a really sensitive sense of smell and that artificial flower stink is giving me a headache.”

“Sorry,” Jodi said tersely, going to the wall and wrenching the tiny stink-making machine out of the electrical socket. “I was just trying to be a good hostess,” she explained stiffly. “My mom always says if you have a guest over you offer them a neat, clean room that smells nice.”

Vorn thought of telling her that the best smelling thing in the whole damn domicile was her hot little pussy, but of course there was no way he was speaking that particular thought out loud. Better to keep such observations to himself.

“I appreciate the gesture,” he said. “But…is this your room? Have you given me your own sleeping chamber? Because that’s really not necessary.”

Jodi frowned.

“What would make you think that?”

Only the fact that I can smell you everywhere here—and not just you—I can smell your heat.

Again, a thought best kept to himself.

“It’s just that I can tell you’ve been in here,” he said. “The scent of your…uh, hair and skin is very strong here.”

Jodi stiffened visibly.

“I take regular showers, you know. So if you’re going to insult me by saying I stink, you can go right back up to the Mother Ship and—”

“Whoa…whoa!” Vorn put up both hands to stop her. “Seven Hells,” he growled. “Why is it when anybody ever mentions anything at all about personal scent, humans always assume we’re talking about a bad smell?”

Jodi’s frown deepened into a look of puzzlement.

“Well…because, when you say somebody ‘smells’ that’s mostly what you mean—that you can smell their body odor because they haven’t bathed properly.”

It was Vorn’s turn to look puzzled.

“So you’re saying the only time you can smell other people is when they’ve skipped a few bathing periods?”

“Well…yes.” She shrugged. “Except for when they have on a really strong cologne or perfume or you’re really close to them—like almost close enough to touch. Then you might smell their shampoo or body wash or something like that.”

Vorn gave her a horrified look.

“You mean your sense of smell is that weak? You have to be right up next to someone to smell their personal scent?”

“Well, yes—with most people, anyway.” She gave him a penetrating look. “I take it, it’s different for Kindred?”

“Fuck, yeah it’s different,” Vorn growled. “Listen, Josephine—I mean, Jodi,” he corrected himself, before she could get upset—though it felt wrong and disrespectful to him to shorten her name. “Everybody has a personal scent. It’s not good or bad—it just is. And when you smell that scent in a very concentrated form in one certain area, you assume they spend a lot of time there. Which is why I thought this…” He gestured to the room. “Must be your sleeping chamber that you were, for some reason, giving up to me in order to be ‘a good hostess’ as you put it. Which is not necessary, believe me.”

She sighed. “It’s not my bedroom—I sleep in the room right next to it with my fiancé, James. This room is just my…home office. I do a lot of, uh, work in here so that’s probably why it smells like me.”

She was lying and Vorn damn well knew it.

If she had actually only been working in this room, he would have mostly smelled her hair and skin—trace scents that anyone gave off wherever they went. But what he smelled in this room was her pussy—hot and wet and ready. So there was no way she just “worked” in here. Unless her work involved a hell of a lot of getting off.

But again, these were things he absolutely couldn’t say to her. Clearly she wasn’t about to discuss her masturbation habits with him—nor should he expect her to. So they would have to keep to the polite fiction that she was just giving up her home office when Vorn knew damn well that she was actually giving him the room where she regularly got herself off.

The question was—why?

Not why was she giving him the room—clearly it was the only other place to sleep besides the already-occupied sleep chamber she shared with her fiancé. No, Vorn’s question was, why was she getting herself off in a solitary space instead of getting off with her fiancé? Was she also getting plenty of sex in the other sleeping chamber and she just had a really high sex drive? Or was this the only place she was able to relieve her needs?