Abducted: Alien Mate Index Book 1: (Alien Warrior BBW Science Fiction Paranormal Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) by Evangeline Anderson Page B

uncomfortable feeling that Sellah wouldn’t like it one damn bit.
    Trying to shrug off the thought, I turned my attention to the task at hand—teaching Zoe how to use the food-simulator.
    The little Pure One would be gone from my life soon enough, I told myself. Though she looked distractingly lovely, dressed as she was in my shirt and nothing else so that all her ample curves were on display, I was determined to ignore her. Ignore her loveliness and the guilt I was tempted to feel when I got too near her.
    As soon as the diagnostic was run and the panels of the hydrogen scoop were fit to travel, I would take her straight to Giedi Prime and trade her to Tazaxx.
    Before she could worm her way any further under my skin.

Chapter Six
    Zoe
     
    So here’s the deal with simulated food—if you ever get a chance to try it, don’t. Just don’t, okay?
    It started out all right. Sarden seemed to have simmered down a little which was good. Being around him when he was pissed off was kind of like walking into the middle of a thunderstorm, wondering when the lightning was going to strike. But Sarden calm was not so bad—even if he did still look huge and scary.
    First he showed me into the kitchen—excuse me, the food prep area—and proceeded to explain how the food-simulator worked. The food-sim, as he called it, was the big gold stock pot looking thing I’d seen earlier when Al took me on my short tour. The one with all the wires coming out of it.
    As it turned out, the wires all had sticky pads attached to them and they were supposed to be placed at just the right spot on your temples so the food-sim could read your thoughts and know what to make you.
    “Why can’t I just tell it what to make?” I asked as Sarden pressed one of the sticky pads to his left temple.
    “You are telling it—with your mind. You can provide a much more complete idea of whatever it is you’re telling the sim to make, including taste, texture, and smell, by sending direct thought messages to its processing unit,” he explained.
    “So once you think what you want it appears in the pot?” Without waiting for an answer, I took the lid off the big gold pot and recoiled. “Ewww!” It was about two thirds full of green slime that looked an awful lot like snot.
    I’m sorry—I know that’s gross, but I have to be honest. That’s what it looked like.
    “You’re not supposed to remove the lid until the food-sim is finished,” Sarden snapped, snatching the lid back from me. “Are you paying attention? You’d better be because I don’t have time to make food for you and even if I did, I doubt you’d like the cuisine from my home world.”
    “I doubt I’d like any cuisine that’s snot-based,” I said, fighting not to gag. “What’s in that pot, anyway?”
    “Nutrient slime—the raw material from which all foods are simulated, of course,” he said impatiently, as though it should be obvious.
    “So…the food-sim uses this stuff…” I pointed at the green slime. “To make things to eat? And then you actually eat them?”
    “I’m beginning to wonder if the transport process from your planet affected your mind after all,” he growled. “Of course you eat them. What else would you do with food?”
    “Throw it away if it was made of green slime,” I remarked. Not that I’m a super picky eater—one look at my hips and you’d know that. But a girl has to have some limits.
    “The finished food product doesn’t retain any of the texture or flavor of the nutrient slime,” he said, frowning. “Watch.”
    Putting the lid back on the pot, he closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the pad at his temple. He looked like he was thinking really hard about a difficult math problem. I was beginning to wonder how long this whole process took when the food-sim made a small, discrete chime that sounded like someone ringing a fancy door bell.
    “There.” Opening his eyes, Sarden took the lid off again and a puff of fragrant smelling