They want to make a “triumvirate” with me. I ask what it does.

They smirk. One whispers: “It makes babies.”

If you’re from Eden and see a man, it doesn’t always taint you right away. As long as your mind doesn’t think dirty thoughts too quickly, and as long as you don’t like what you see too much, you’re probably safe. At least you’d have time to look away.

It’s different with Khetar men. If you see one, you think of every dirty thought you never thought you could have, until this lifetime of repressed desire bursts through your resolve like a dam under a tsunami, and the unbearable longing for something you never knew you wanted brings you right down to your knees.

Yeah, that all just sort of happened to me. His name is Kaav.

I look up, still on my knees and tainted as sin, and he’s got parts of his body that we don’t even have words for on Eden. Kaav is big and golden, and he says he wants to have babies with me.

Normally it takes two, but Kaav is special. He has two bodies. He says that he’s all we’ll need.

When I see his second body for the first time, in all its glistening silver glory, I can’t wait to submit to it. To beg it to do to me all the things Kaav says only a Khetar with two bodies can do to a woman.

But in order to rescue me, Kaav had to make a deal with the devil. The devil’s name is Hive, and it’s taken over Kaav’s second body.

And now it wants to take me too.

Taken by Two is the third book in the Seeding Eden series, but it can be listened to as the first book.