and elegant atmosphere clashed with what I’d learned about its owner so far.
“What’s there?” I asked Omni, pointing at the smaller staircase that led down from the main floor.
“On the lower level, the Colonel Kyradus has his exercise room.”
“Does it take up the entire floor?”
“Most of it. There are also bathrooms and changing areas.”
I quickly ran downstairs, just to see it for myself. Instead of the gym I’d expected to find, the lower floor was a large, empty space. It had lovely wooden floors, the ceiling of average height, and walls made entirely of glass. The bright sunshine flooded a good half of the room.
“How does he exercise in here?” I asked Omni. His frame remained upstairs, but one of his drones flew down with me. “There’s no equipment.”
“The Colonel prefers sparring,” Omni’s voice came through the drone.
“With whom?”
“A number of my units have combat programs. Stay on the stairs, please. I’ll show you.”
The floor suddenly broke into large rectangles. Flipping over to their other side, they instantly turned the entire floor into a gym mat made of padded, dark purple leather.
“That’s neat.” I clicked my tongue in appreciation.
A whirring sound came from behind the stairs, then two weirdly shaped robots rolled into view. One appeared closer to a humanoid, with a pair of horns on its head, another looked very much like a large bean bag.
“They can fight each other,” Omni said.
The next moment, the bean bag rolled to the horned one. Thin wires sprang out of the bean bag, forcing the humanoid robot to block their lashing.
“Or they could serve as sparring partners to someone else.”
“Like the Colonel?” I watched the two robots go at each other. Their punches packed some real power and their aim was impeccable. Personally, I wouldn’t want to fight one of them. They might have different settings, but I doubted the Colonel trained with them in “gentle mode,” even if there was one.
Out of the entire house, this room suited the owner’s personality the best—masculine and minimalistic, with a sense of barely concealed danger.
The brutal kind of energy that the Colonel radiated scared me. Even if there was no need for me to barricade my door from him every night, I felt unsettled and flustered just thinking about being in his company.
“There can never be another man.”
I scoffed at his words from the previous night.
Who did he think I was that I needed that type of warning? Like I’d get so horny, I’d run searching for a random guy, one day?
“Then you’ll beg me for it.”
Really? Obviously, I could control my urges much better than he could.
The memory of the storm of lust in his otherworldly eyes rushed over me. The skin on my arms puckered with goosebumps again, only I wasn’t sure whether those were from fear or from...something else, this time.
I rubbed my bare arms, chasing away the phantom sensation of the soft caress of his fur against my naked skin.
“We shall go back.” I turned up the stairs.
When I wandered into the Colonel’s spacious kitchen, an itching desire to use it took over.
My Grandma had taught me to “look for pink when things were blue.” She believed there was always a spark of sunny pink in any situation, no matter how grim. Just because my hopes and dreams didn’t come true on Neron, it didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy at least some of what the City of Voran had to offer.
“Can I go to a store or a market, to buy a few things?” I asked Omni, sliding my hand along a glass counter top on one side of the kitchen.
“No. The Colonel did not allow for travel outside of his dwelling for you.”
“Of course he didn’t...” I huffed, forcing a spark of irritation down. “Well, then maybe you could help me get the ingredients? I’d love to bake something.”
“Bake? I have access to over a thousand recipes. If you tell me what you want, I’ll make it for you in minutes.”
“Oh, but what’s the fun in that?” I waved him off, moving to the mint-green, round stove in the middle of the kitchen. Two segments of glass countertop flanked it on both sides. “I’d love to make something myself.”
“All right. How would you like me to assist you?”
“Can you teach me how this works?” I pointed at the stove with what appeared to be a large oven compartment underneath. “But before that, we’ll need to go through whatever the Colonel has in his pantry and figure out what I