The Pearl (Galactic Jewels Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

women tonight, she and I would be the most wanted, the most sought after.
    At the blank gray doors to the simulation room—boring as hell when a sim wasn’t deployed—Fransín keyed the code and activated her sim. The doors transformed into glowing opaque glass slabs, hinting at the fascinating world beyond. Fransín pulled me tight against her side and grinned. “Are you ready?”
    I got caught up in the brightness in her eyes, our reflections in the glass doors, the vibration of the music against my feet as it curled beneath the doors like fog. This was our last night together as single women.
    We pressed our palms to the glass and the doors receded, opening up another world. She’d brought the galaxies inside, swirling the ceiling and walls with explosions of purples and oranges and blues amid glittering stars. Hundreds of dancers crowded the space, stretching to infinity and gliding across the magical backdrop. My favorite scents ruled the air, sweet Pai apples and Tyrill peppermint mingled with the tang of my favorite aftershave—one made famous by a Samarian Emperor that made my heart race.
    Music drenched us and the beat controlled my body. We danced our way onto the floor, shimmying against the sim dancers who were in full swing. Sims didn’t have names, and their faces were blurred features that Fransín hadn’t bothered to waste time creating. We didn’t need dancers with features, we needed dancers who could groove. She’d built them off a Lyrica template, giving them gaunt, bendy bodies that pulsed with the music, their bodies swelling and shifting with each beat.  
    Girls and guys accepted us without question, all a part of the sim and how Fransín had designed their reactions. Here we could be anyone. No rules. No judgment. Here, we could give into the beats, the motions, the dancers with nothing to fear and a promise of complete safety. My hips wiggled and gyrated, hands moved across my belly as another note of the pounding music.
    She’d made the ultimate playlist for us—sexy, sensual beats impossible to resist. Wallflowers didn’t exist in her sim; they needed walls and she’d designed the club without a single one. An endless dance floor continued to infinitum, packed with epic dancers leading us through song after song of pulsating encores. I danced with boys, girls, Fransín, multiple partners. This was a safe zone and signals couldn’t be misinterpreted here. Here we could simply be dancers, not targets, not flirts, not sluts. Here we were not the pearl and her consort, beings held to a higher standard of behavior where rules and judgements held the weight of the universe, here she’d built into the sim all the judgement-free zone a girl could want.
    Tonight existed for nothing more than dancing. And I wanted to dance. We all wanted to dance.
    I pressed my body into Fransín’s as we rotated our hips and waved our arms in the air, moving in sync to the beat. Joy and friendship entwined around us and language became unnecessary. At the end of the Samarian presentation, there would be less than one week of deliberation afforded me before I made the final announcement. Our time together had ended. I put my hand on her belly and swung us in a wide circle, dragging my fingers down the underside of her raised arm. She twirled away from me, spinning in a frantic circle as the music built in a crescendo.
    Bodies moved between us, holding us apart, then swinging us together. We laughed and swayed, fingers barely touching as we bent toward each other like tall, willowy Tipper trees. Partners drew us away, moving us across the dance floor, arcing closer, then apart. The dance became a story and I opened my heart to it, acknowledging the coming space as well as all our years of closeness.
    We laughed. We cried. We drank.
    Stumbling, we half-carried each other up the ramp to the bar for refills. I laughed and clung to her while another dancer held my elbow.  
    We leaned on the bar, gasping for