“Well, I can’t walk around naked, either,” she muttered to herself. Then she caught a glimpse of her Great Aunt’s extended closet to her right. Apparently she wouldn’t need to walk around naked—she could just borrow something from here to wear.
She stepped into the closet, which turned out to be more of a very long hallway. Turning on the soft, overhead glows, Lexi saw there were two rows of hanging racks on either side of the hall with rows and rows of carved sweet-wood drawers in between—so named because the wood exuded a warm, cedar-like fragrance that perfumed any kind of fabric or clothing stored within. Shoe racks below the drawers were filled with dainty slippers and sky-high heels, making Lexi very glad her plain black flats were still functional.
She hadn’t bothered to explore this part of the penthouse yet, other than a cursory glance. What need had she for fancy clothes? And indeed, many of them were very elaborate gowns. The upper hanging racks seemed to be exclusively for dress-up clothes—feathery and silky and satiny fabrics in every kind of jewel tone were displayed, and many of them still had price markers on them. Apparently Great Aunt Granipants had kept on shopping for the latest Yonnite fashions long after she could wear them. Lexi wondered if she had gotten pleasure just from buying the pretty clothes and hanging them in her closet.
The bottom rack had more everyday type clothing. Here, too, there were many outfits that had never been worn. And not all of them were ridiculously revealing, Lexi saw, with some relief. She pulled what was either a robe or a wrap dress—it sort of looked like a mixture of the two—off a hanger and held it up to the light.
The fabric was soft—an emerald green that flattered her skin tones and though it had a low neckline, it at least covered her breasts and sex.
“Now to find some underwear to wear under this,” Lexi murmured to herself. But she had no urge to wear secondhand underpants.
However it was Great Aunt Granipants to the rescue again. Apparently the old woman had enjoyed buying pretty things of all kinds, even if she couldn’t wear them. The sweetwood drawers were filled with frilly panties and other underthings that still had all their price markers on.
Lexi soon found some silky new white panties that fit—though they were considerably briefer than the ones she’d taken off. But try as she might, she couldn’t find another breast binding like the one she’d been wearing. Finally, she had to settle for a brief cami top made of white silk. The top offered no support for her heavy breasts and didn’t even come down to her belly button but it was better than going bare beneath her new green wrap-dress slash robe, Lexi decided.
When she was dressed, she admired herself in the 3-D viewer. She had to admit she looked rather better in her Great Aunt’s clothes than she had in her own. Her own clothes were practical in the extreme—some might even call them “dowdy,” Lexi admitted to herself. But this new outfit was nice—the silky material clung to her curves and looked great with her brown skin.
Feeling refreshed in some way, Lexie decided she would go to the kitchen and do what made her feel best—she would do some baking and some cooking. After all, she still had two large Kindred to look after. She had bought them, so they were her responsibility and Lexi was certain they must both be hungry.
I’ll make some Phuka noodle soup and some fresh baked bread, she told herself. That will make me feel more like myself again. And I won’t think anymore about what I felt when we touched and I simply just won’t touch them again. Tomorrow I’ll hire a private ship and send them off to the treatment facility and that will be the end of that.
She had no idea how very wrong she was.
TWELVE
“You shouldn’t have done that—shouldn’t have grabbed her. And you sure as hell shouldn’t have begged her to stay with us and offered to ‘pleasure her all night!’” Gaze snapped at his brother as he paced back and forth in front of the bed where Bound lay. “What’s got into you, anyway? I thought you didn’t believe in the Twin Kindred way of sharing a female?”
“Dunno.” Bound shook his head and frowned. He was more awake now, though still quite weak. “The words just…came to me. It just seemed right to offer, you know?”
“No, I don’t know!” Gaze snarled, frowning at him. “What I do know is that she saved us and you repaid her by being disrespectful! We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t kick us out on the street!”
“She’s not gonna kick us out,” Bound growled. “Did you feel that—feel what I felt when she touched us both? She’ll want more of that—I know I sure as hell do,” he added, his eyes going half-lidded.