Bane Read Online Free PDF

you.” He gestured and directed her down a long hall to the side of the home facing the ocean.
    The tour was brief. He took her directly to a large bedroom central to the house. “I will return in a moment. Feel free to open the shutters.”
    With the brusque suggestion hanging in the air, Avaneer walked to the floor-to-ceiling panels, and she yanked open the shutters. The blast of air off the ocean greeted her and ruffled her robes. Ava walked to the edge of the balcony and stared out at the rocks being beaten by the surf. The violence of the scene managed to be the most peaceful thing she had seen on the surface of Nafki. The population was handling the plague well, but the very act of infecting an entire world was one of the most vicious and violent acts she had ever witnessed.
    Ava closed her eyes and drank in the sunlight, let the wind tug at her robes, and she wished with all her heart that she were home. Tears started to flow the moment she heard Kondr return and his footsteps brought her crashing back to reality.
    She wiped at her cheeks, trying to remove the traces of her crying.
    “I have brought you a few gowns to choose from. Once you have changed, we will have a meal and I will ask the questions I should have asked earlier.” Kondr’s voice was quiet.
    She nodded. “Of course. I will join you in a moment.”
    “I will heat up some food and bring it up in a few minutes.”
    She nodded again, and the moment that she heard him leave, she turned and examined the dresses that he had brought. The yellow one-shoulder gown immediately got her attention.
    She shucked out of her layers and slipped the gown over bare skin. Her toes wiggled on the floor, and she let out a giggle. A short exploration showed her the master bath, and she used the mirror to let her watch the length of her hair tumble to mid-waist. The gown left her left shoulder bare, and when she returned to the balcony, she spun around and around, loving the flare of the gown around her legs and the feel of it settling against her ankles when she stopped.
    “My sister used to do that when she first began to wear women’s clothing.”
    His voice startled her out of her girlish fun. She froze, suddenly aware of how the gown outlined her body from shoulder to hip before flowing out in soft yellow folds.
    He smiled. “You look lovely.”
    Her blush should have burst her gown into flames. It started on her cheeks and crept down her belly.
    He slid the tray he was holding onto a small table with two chairs. “Dinner is served.”
    She nodded and inhaled. “It smells good.”
    “Thank you. My grandmother has made sure that frozen meals are always available for me.” He placed a napkin across his lap, and she had to smile.
    “It is a good thing that she has. I am not sure I could manage cooking with your ingredients.” She mimicked him by placing the napkin across her lap, and she carefully explored the tastes of the dish. It was sort of a beef stew, if the beef was turkey and the vegetables were seaweed. Ava muscled through it, chanting to herself that it was better than nothing and she needed the protein if the next phase of this was to work.
    It took three small glasses of water to stop the meal from trying to return from whence it came.
    “So, how will you generate the cure for the plague?”
    She cleared her throat. “Do you want all the details?”
    “As much as you can manage, yes. Let’s start with, why does it have to be sex?”
    She blushed and sipped more water. “Well, that is a matter of rejected matter. Pardon the phrasing. If something enters my body and stays there, I have to find a way to convince my tissues that it is a good thing. Pleasure is the easiest way to fool my body into accepting foreign DNA.”
    “Why?”
    “My body, like many female bodies, wants nothing more than to propel my own genes, in order to do that, I need to have sex and get some DNA that is not my own into the picture. My body will be all for it.” She