pain she felt now, after the big Hybrid had cut her loose, echoed the physical pain of his sting and caused an ache so deep it felt like a black hole had opened inside her chest.
“It’s over, it’s over,” she whispered to herself between sobs. “It’s over, it’s over.”
She didn’t come back to herself until she realized that the oval bathtub was dangerously close to overflowing. Hastily, she wiped her eyes and ran to turn off the water. It was steaming hot and it made Penny realize that she really did need a bath.
She used the restroom quickly—she also still had to pee and thank goodness the toilet was more normal in here—and then stripped off her stained and tattered toga.
As she sank into the steaming water, she tried to reason with herself—tried to reason with the deep unhappiness which had settled inside her, like a dark bird that had come to perch in her soul.
“It shouldn’t hurt this badly,” she told herself as she sank down, letting the hot water lap around her chin. It stung the place where the NeverBreeder’s knife had cut her, but Penny didn’t care about that.
“It shouldn’t hurt so much,” she told herself again. “We were only together a little under a month and we weren’t even really together. We were pretending so we didn’t get into trouble and get recycled. I was with Garret for almost a year and I got over that breakup just fine. So a month should be nothing!”
But it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt terrible—like V’rex had torn her heart out when he’d said, “I foreswear you.”
Even her breasts had dried up—they were no longer producing the nectar the big Hybrid had sucked out of them so often in the past weeks. Come to think of it, they hadn’t produced anything since she’d first entered the Deadly Jungle, Penny thought dully. Her pussy was fine too—no swelling or tenderness. It was as though her body had decided to follow her heart and end her need for V’rex entirely.
Except I still feel like I need him, she thought as the tears started again. Need him so much…
As she washed her hair, Penny tried to understand the source of her emotional agony. Maybe having V’rex break up with her was so much more painful because of everything they’d been through together. After all, they’d been fighting for their lives.
All she and Garret had ever done together was order take-out and watch shows on the various streaming services. They’d barely even ever gone out for dinner and a movie, let alone anything exciting or death-defying like what she’d been doing with V’rex.
The fact that there had been so much more on the line during her relationship with the big Hybrid had made it seem more intense, that was all. Or so Penny told herself. But it still hurt.
Oh God, how it hurt.
Ninety-One
Penny stayed in the tub until she was able to get her emotions under control—which meant she was in the bathroom for several hours. She hoped it wasn’t the only restroom and that V’rex wasn’t waiting to use it because she didn’t want to face him until she could look him in the eye without crying.
At last, after hours of self-analysis and talking sternly to herself about how she needed to act like a grown woman and not a teenager who had just been jilted right before the prom, she finally felt ready to get out. She splashed some cold water on her face and eyes to ease the swelling and redness from her prolonged bout of tears, and took some deep breaths.
Then she let the water out of the tub and looked for a towel. Rather than the fuzzy terrycloth rectangle she was used to, she found a long black piece of fabric hanging on the rack beside the deep oval tub.
Penny wrapped herself in it and found that it draped around her curves like silk but was twice as absorbent as any cotton towel she’d ever used. It fell to her ankles too and looked almost as elegant as an evening dress.
A glance in the 3-D viewer told her that she looked fine—if a little pale. Lifting her chin and telling herself everything was going to be all right, she left the bathroom.
There was a door right beside the one that led to the bathroom and she remembered vaguely that V’rex said it would be her bedroom and he had laid out some clothes for her. She was